Flavor Flav, Red Lobster teaming for special off-the-menu meal
Flavor Flav has teamed up with restaurant chain Red Lobster for an off-the-menu special. Credit: Getty Images for The Recording Academy / Neilson Barnard
Roosevelt-born and Freeport-raised hip-hop star Flavor Flav is teaming with the Red Lobster seafood chain for a curated off-the-menu item at all locations, including the half-dozen on Long Island.
“As a longtime Red Lobster fan, I'm fired up to bring a little bit of my own flavor to fans with a meal featuring my seafood favorites,” Flav, 64, born William Drayton Jr., said in a statement via the restaurant chain. “You gotta get to Red Lobster and give it a try because this signature meal is hype, boy!”
“[F]or a limited time, guests can sink their claws into Flavor Fav's signature meal — Flavor Flav's Faves,” said the announcement. The meal consists of a Maine lobster tail, snow crab legs, garlic shrimp scampi, and bacon mac and cheese, plus a choice of one side dish.
Using a pun, and referencing the signature clock the rapper wears around his neck, the announcement alerted customers “to a little sea-cret: Flavor Flav's Faves is an off-menu meal, so only those in-the-know can clock in for flavor time. To order, guests should just ask their server for the Flavor Flav's Faves ... .”
The meal starts at $39.99 depending on location, a company representative told Newsday, noting the bacon mac and cheese “is made to order” and "can be requested without the bacon.”
However, at the six Long Island locations — Carle Place, Copiague, Deer Park, Hicksville, Ronkonkoma and Valley Stream — the price is $46.99. One person answering the phone at the Hicksville restaurant expected the promotion to last “at least a week or two.” Red Lobster is a corporately owned chain in the United States and a franchise operation internationally.
The Orlando, Florida-based company had announced May 19 it was declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy in order to restructure through “operational improvements” and “a reduction in locations,” among other moves. The chain's Stony Brook restaurant was one of those shuttered.
Grammy Award nominee Flav, a founding member of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame hip-hop group Public Enemy, responded to the news on social media June 3 with a photo of himself standing at a table of more than two dozen dishes, writing, “Took my family to @redlobster and ordered the whole menu,!!!”
Since then, he and the company each have posted multiple times in the run-up to the announcement, with Flav providing voice-over for a June 10 commercial advertising the promotion Crabfest: “When the internet said Red Lobster’s going away” — conflating Chapter 11 restructuring with Chapter 7 liquidation — “your boy Flavor Flav said, ‘Not today!’ ”