The Appeal Behind Late-Night Food in Fort Collins

Why does food taste so good after midnight?

I cannot claim to know much but I do know this: there are few greater feelings in the world better than walking (or stumbling, let’s be honest here) out of an Uber at 1:30 in the morning into the nearest Cosmo’s Pizza and sinking your teeth into a huge, greasy, cream-cheese adorned slice of pizza dripping in spicy ranch.

Now, maybe I have a few details wrong. Maybe you’d rather be chowing down on mac’n’cheese bites from Fat Shack. Maybe you’re not stumbling out of an Uber, but driving home from work after a late-night shift. Regardless, the bottom line remains the same: late night food tastes so. damn. good.

But why?

From a practical standpoint, the case for late-night eating doesn’t look so good. According to Science Alert, you should avoid food up to three hours before going to bed so that your body have time to digest it before you sleep. And on top of that, we tend to go for unhealthy food (and more of it) when we eat after dark, which often leads to unwanted weight gain.

Another negative tends to be a low quality experience. Take a look at the Yelp pages of places like Cosmo’s or Krazy Karl’s and you won’t have any trouble finding bad reviews and complaints. You’ll notice the problem is not the food but the service. Incorrect orders, rude service, and long delivery times seem to be the biggest gripe Yelpers have with the night-time food industry.

But in spite all of this, people don’t seem to care. Head into Cosmo’s on any given Friday night and you’ll frequently be in a line out the door. Mention Krazy Karl’s or Fat Shack to a group of college students and you’re guaranteed to receive an enthusiastic round of “OH MY GOD, YES!” Love handles and bad service aside, the residents of Fort Collins love their late-night food.

So what is it that makes it taste so good?

It could be that the food is actually, well, good. But I can’t imagine stopping by Fat Shack to grab a mac’n’cheese bacon mozzarella stick sandwich at noon. These kinds of foods are meant to be eaten after dark. That’s their appeal — it’s the reason these businesses spend the time and money to stay open until three or four a.m. It just doesn’t taste as good during the day. Plus, during the day, an unspoken but known truth — we all have to keep up the perception that we make healthy choices and would never put all those calories in our bodies.

It may be possible, maybe even probable, that another reason late night food is so popular in FoCo is an abundance of alcohol consumption, which may lead to a case of the midnight munchies. Being a huge college town, it’s no secret that Fort Collins has a hoppin’ nightlife scene. What a better way to top off a night of hitting the bars than with salty carbs? It makes business sense for restaurants to capitalize on the throngs of slightly (or not so slightly) inebriated young adults. But I think the late night cuisine of FoCo relies on a lot more than just alcohol-fueled binge-eating. If it didn’t, Fort Collins would have a lot less cream cheese pizza and a lot more McDonald’s and Taco Bell.

In an interview with the K99 radio station last year, Krazy Karl’s owner Nate Haas spoke about the affection that Fort Collins residents have for local business: “There is a mentality here that people will always at least try a local place before they go for a national chain.”

I think he’s right. Fort Collins residents love their city. And, even under the influence, I think they are proud to call local businesses like Krazy Karl’s their go-to drunk food.

And it’s more than that. When people go out to eat late at night, more often than not, they are with good friends whom they know and love, making memories together. Like that time my roommate and I ate at Cosmo’s late one night…my roommate accidentally spilled the entire container of parmesan cheese onto her pizza and proceeded to eat the whole thing anyway. I can point out the exact booth we were sitting in. It sounds corny, but I love that memory, it was a great time. It’s a memory I wouldn’t have had if we had decided to hit up the Taco Bell drive-thru. And, it makes we want to go back and eat at Cosmo’s again. A Taco Bell experience can happen anywhere. A cream cheese pizza experience at Cosmo’s or Krazy Karl’s can only happen here.

As cheesy (speaking of pizza…I’m sorry) as it sounds, this is why the people of Fort Collins love food after midnight. College students can make memories with their friends over pizza. Alumni go back to eat there and remember the good times they had. People getting off late night shifts can unwind, eat and visit with friends after a hard day of work. It is late-night restaurants like these that serve as home base for many Fort Collins residents and their friends and the memories they make together — all over some pizza and spicy ranch.