Jennifer Lopez’s go-to bodega order gets ruthlessly mocked by New Yorkers: ‘Bronx and the ‘hood are tired’
If you know, you know.
Jennifer Lopez is still getting ruthlessly mocked.
Last week, she got trolled for a clip from her film “This Is Me … Now: A Love Story.”
And now, Lopez’s Bronx go-to bodega order is going viral. In the footage, she says that she’d ask for a ham and cheese on a roll, a small bag of chips and an orange drink — adding about the unspecified drink, “If you know, you know.”
Spoiler alert: Nobody really does know.
The resurfaced clip comes from Lopez’s 2022 interview with Vogue for their “73 Questions” series.
TikToker Alex Duncan posted a video in reply, saying: “Bronx and the hood are tired.”
In one video, TikToker Gianna Christine even went to a Bronx bodega — Adam’s Deli — and tried getting Lopez’s meal.
Christine filmed herself asking for “ham and cheese on a roll” and “small chips.” She then hunted for the “Mystery of the orange drink,” noting that Lopez said, “If you know, you know,” but she added, “I don’t know! There’s a million orange drinks! We have Crush, we have Sunkist.”
After eating the food, however, she concluded: “I was ready to roast her, but this is actually a 10 out of 10 lunch.”
Another TikToker, Cara, chronicled her outing to go get the “J. Lo” order, and filmed herself in New York City, asking for “ham and cheese on a roll.”
Cara paused to note her confusion with the beverage, noting, “I don’t know what orange drink she meant,” opting to get a Fanta.
She added about Lopez and the mysterious orange drink, “It has been a really long time since she lived there, so maybe it’s like, discontinued.”
“This J-Lo discourse…I can’t, it’s so funny,” Cara added.
One of her commenters defended the “Let’s Get Loud” singer, 54, writing, “Back in the day you would get a sandwich combo. A small bag of chips and a drink. That order she has was super common. People are just being weird.”
“Here’s the thing about the ham and cheese sandwich that y’all non-New Yorkers are not getting,” another TikToker with the handle WellWithTiffany said in her own video.
Pausing, she added, “I don’t know what she was talking about with the orange drink.”
But she turned the topic back to the ham and cheese sandwich.
“Anybody that’s really from New York — I’m from Brooklyn, she’s from the Bronx, whatever — knows that it’s not just a ham and cheese sandwich. It comes with a whole bunch of other stuff after it and it just rolls off the tongue,” she explained.
“You don’t just go in there [and] ask for a ham and cheese on a roll. They’re gonna look at you like you’re crazy, they need to know the rest of it.”
WellWithTiffany said that her personal order is, “Ham and cheese, lettuce, tomato, salt, pepper, oil and vinegar, with mayo, on a hero, not a roll. It comes with all that stuff. You just know that.”
One of her commenters said, “Exaaactly like does she think she has fooled us?”
TikToker Ryan posted a video noting that his non-American followers asked him to explain why so many New Yorkers are making fun of the musician’s bodega order.
“What’s funny about this is not so much that it’s technically incorrect,” he said.
“It’s that it is generic to the point of unintentionally being really comical. Like, this would be like, if someone were to ask you, ‘What is your go-to fast food order?’ And you were to say, ‘a cheeseburger, with a cola-flavored soda — if you know, you know — and a small order of fries.’ That’s what it sounds like. You would be like, ‘What are you talking about? What do you mean?’ ”
Going through the items individually, Ryan said about the sandwich, “All right, I’ll give it to her. Technically, yes, that is something you can get at a bodega. Sure. I wouldn’t say it’s a particularly common order.”
But, he said, “That’s actually not really what she was being asked, and I feel like New Yorkers would know that. It’s not what you order, so much as how you order it. It’s all about customization at a bodega. So, it’s all about, ‘OK, you want ham and cheese on a roll. Do you want mustard? Pickles? Peppers and onions? Extra cheese?’ ”
Then Ryan moved on to breaking down Lopez’s beverage order.
“She says, ‘With an orange drink, if you know, you know.’ I’m going to put my cards out on the table right here: Jennifer, I don’t know. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Ryan mused that it didn’t sound like an orange juice or soda, because then she would have used those words.
As for the small bag of chips, he said, “The fact that she specifies ‘small’ is redundant, really, because of course in a bodega, yes, you could get a full family-sized bag of chips, but that’s not what’s being asked. Of course, with your order, it’s being assumed you’re getting an individual-sized bag of chips. Why not specify? Just any chips?”
Ryan added that her order “so clearly smacks of something that was manufactured, or Googled, or something.”
“No one would ever order that,” he alleged. “Even if that is technically what you would order at a bodega, that’s not how you would articulate it.”