The Small Distractions Bringing Me Joy

April 20, 2020 Admin 0 Comments

From the Editor: Everything you missed in food news last week

This post originally appeared on April 18, 2020 in Amanda Kludt’s newsletter “From the Editor,” a roundup of the most vital news and stories in the food world each week. Read the archives and subscribe now.

I had a long week, and I bet you did too. So I’m just going to list a few things that are bringing me joy right now before getting to the news. It would thrill me to no end if you could email me (amanda@eater.com) to tell me what small things are bringing you joy as well.

— On the recommendation of my co-worker Britt, I ordered $50 worth of candy from Swedish candy shop Bon Bon to my house, and it is pure joy to dip into the stash whenever I need to.

— Smitten Kitchen’s marbled banana bread recipe

— The dramatic opener to the last Ibeyi album.

— These TikToks of makeup tutorials set to John Mulaney’s stand-up comedy.

— This unicorn head and streamers that my mother-in-law just sent to my son to put on his scooter.

— I just finished On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, which I found to be a slog at first but then I really fell for it in the end/in this moment.

— This podcast about long haul trucking.

— I got new pillows a couple of weeks ago after I realized I have never bought a pillow in my entire adult life and I’ve been sleeping on lumpy hand-me-downs for the last 18 years.

— I have a garden, and the violets are blooming and beautiful and, weeds that they are, spreading everywhere. I hope some pretty spring thing is happening near you.

And, finally, crucially, honestly, my cabinet full of gummies, bottles of wine I keep buying from my local, The Fly, and batched margaritas supplied by my neighbor Calaca.

On Eater

Gary He/Eater

Intel: President Trump chose a pretty predictable group of fast food CEOs and super high-end chefs to represent the interests of restaurants in the pandemic (and one of its members does not appreciate the criticism!); Fuku is opening a bunch of ghost kitchen operations in Portland, Miami, and Brooklyn; D.C.’s Call Your Mother opened a planned second locaion, just for takeout only; Shake Shack, Ruth’s Chris, and other large chains got their $10+ million checks while small businesses are still waiting for help from the Small Business Administration; NYC restaurant spending dropped by more than 90 percent in late march; Santa Cruz, California might start easing restrictions on public gatherings by May 4; and Houston’s Southern Smoke Foundation has now distributed over $600k to service industry workers in need.

• You know this but, yeah, the gradual reopening of restaurants will be really slow and weird.
• Chef and entrepreneur Fany Gerson on the exhausting business of staying open.
• The Move: Marie Kondo the liquor cabinet.
• The Sanity Saver: Christina Tosi’s baking club.
• How LA’s Josef Centeno is feeding LA’s hospital workers 100 enchiladas at a time.
• The upsides and the downsides of owning a large restaurant group during the pandemic.

Wonho Frank Lee

This week on the podcast

Daniel and I talk to chef and first-time restaurateur Helen Nguyen about what it’s like to open a restaurant in a pandemic, supply meals to hospitals, get enough to-go containers to keep her business in operation, and deal with the general exhaustion of this moment. Then we talk about the biggest stories of the week.

Off Eater

• Chefs and restaurateurs are relying increasingly on the kindness of landlords to survive this. [Bloomberg]
• How America is drinking now. [Vox.com]
• BIG shoutout to photographer Gary He and all the work he’s doing out in the restaurant world right now. [NYT]
• A small business owner on the myriad ways in which the Paycheck Protection Program is failing restaurants. [The Atlantic]
• One of Chicago’s most successful restaurateurs on the experience of furloughing 1,800 people days after his mother’s death. [Esquire]
• RIP Jesus Roman Melendez, the “backbone” of Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Nougtaine. [Grub Street]
• My weekend project: baking Dorie Greenspan’s take on gougeres. [NYT Mag]
• Is it time to buy a tiny island 75 minutes from New York? Maybe yes. [Curbed]