As The New York Times just reported, The Us Open Is Now A Food Festival With A Side of Tennis. For the latest issue of BAGEL, our contributing editor, food writer Hilary Armstrong, met the people behind the event’s viral Honey Deuce drink (actually celebrating 20 years) and those $100 Golden Nuggets…
HONEY DEUCE
The Honey Deuce is a bit of a silly drink, really.
The three little melon balls, qua tennis balls, perched on top on a silly little skewer. The little splash of Chambord to make it pink. But, oh man, when the sun hammers down on Ashe and the New York City asphalt has melted into lava, who can resist?
Nobody, apparently. As the ever more astounding numbers released with each edition of the US Open attest. In 2025, some 738,459 Honey Deuce cocktails were sold, beating the 2024 record of 556,782. And at $23 a pop – you do get to keep the cup – that’s a tidy $17m for the USTA.
It’s easy to see why it’s so successful. It might have been made for social media – for fans to pose against a colour-pop backdrop of cobalt blue hard court – but in fact, the Honey Deuce came about before social media was even a thing. This year it celebrates its 20th birthday.
Honey Deuce’s creator, mixologist and restaurateur Nick Mautone, recalls: “The Honey Deuce came out in 2006. Facebook was only on college campuses then. There was no Instagram, no Snapchat. It was completely and utterly word of mouth and people flipped for it.”
So what makes a viral drink? The pun is fun (honeydew, Honey Deuce), but the garnish seals it. “There is no argument that the drink is fantastic,” says Mautone. “But the melon balls make it the perfect tennis drink. They make it joyous, fun, Instagrammable.” It has a story; it’s seasonal, it’s scalable, it’s delicious. That’s what the imitators tend to miss. “Because they’re forgetting the core of bartending is to make something that’s yummy. Very simple.”
GOLDEN NUGGETS
Would you pay $100 for six chicken nuggets? When Korean American restaurateur Simon Kim struck upon the idea of serving Coqodaq’s caviar chicken nuggets at the US Open, the USTA took a little convincing. “They were like, ‘$100 for chicken nuggets? Is this gonna sell?’ To everyone’s surprise, they became a big, big sensation.”
In 2024, their debut year, the ‘Golden Nuggets’ were available only in the Club Level of Arthur Ashe Stadium and quickly found an audience. The following year, after expanding to the CQDQ stall in the Food Village, sales exploded. They won’t reveal sales figures but suffice it to say, says Kim, “It was insane numbers.”
Going viral helped. The gold-embossed, glossy orange box of the Golden Set stood out on social media against a backdrop of blue and green tennis courts. And sightings of celebrities including Martha Stewart, Mindy Kaling, Katie Holmes, Lindsay Lohan and Usher with their boxes of nuggies didn’t hurt either.
With the caviar chicken nuggets, Kim is looking to create a new tradition. “Wimbledon has strawberries and cream. I feel like each tournament really needs that iconic dish.”
He thinks all this extravagance is only an upward trend. “There is definitely a trend of higher-end things, higher-end boxes, higher-end suites, so I think it’s inevitable that stadiums are going to adopt higher-end food, especially with a proof of concept that $100 food can be popular at sporting events. There’s literally no reason why we need to eat terrible food just because we’re at a stadium.”
Money, so far, hasn’t been an object. “It’s not like I’m at the US Open every day. I wait an entire year to go. I’m looking for something special. I’m at the US Open. I’m already drinking a $23 Honey Deuce.”
- Hilary Armstrong
THE GAY GAZE
Also in the new issue, founder of queer tennis collective Serving, Gavin Has, does some very important reporting on the rise of lusty fandom around the men’s game.
“It’s accidentally become the internet’s safest and most socially-accepted thirst trap,” he says. “With Carlos Alcaraz, Arthur Fils, Lorenzo Musetti and various other beautifully-moisturised 20-somethings coming up the ranks, the internet has responded not with tactical analysis, but ever-more unhinged and lustful content.”
Of note: Carlos Alcaraz’s Vanity Fair shoot, Tomas Machac’s short shorts, Matteo Berrettini’s lethal face card, Andrea Pellegrino’s pecs and Valentin Vacherot’s powerfully thrusting victory celebrations.
“Gay tennis internet used to be associated with Serena Williams devotion, Maria Sharapova glamour, Jelena Ostapenko chaos worship, but attentions have shifted towards pure hottie content. The discourse in my WhatsApp group has drifted to tan lines, tiny shorts and erotic victory celebrations.”
TENNIS PLAYERS: A KINKY BUNCH
Whilst we’re on hot topics, alt dating app Feeld, has been running the numbers on the correlation between their members’ love of tennis, sex and relationships and some interesting stats have emerged…
Tennis players over-index on a distinct set of kink-forward desires: Role Play (1.42x), Edging (1.34x), Exploration (1.29x), Doms (1.28x), Switch (1.22x) and Brat-tamer (1.18x). As well as the kinks, they have an outsized appreciation of some slightly more pedestrian pursuits: Backgammon (10x), Chess (6.5x) and Pub Quizzes (6x). More generally, members who play tennis generate 45% more meaningful connections than fans of other major sports.
Generationally, tennis interest is exploding among Gen-Z Feeld members too: it’s up 160% vsersus this time last year. That’s 3-4x the growth of any other generation with Millennials up 52%, Gen X 35% and Boomers 32% on the app.
If you’re single and ready to mingle, you chose the right sport.
Some of us never left the Jelena.ostapenko_baking channel x