Why 10,000 People Are on the Waitlist for Kora’s Filipino Doughnuts
December 29, 2021
Admin
0 Comments
Glossy purple ube variaties and doughnuts stuffed with an entire flan have exploded in popularity at the Queens, NY-based shop
“You just have to be super confident when you approach this task,” says Kora founder Kimberly Camara. She’s flipping a large tray of flan from one pan to another for the shop’s flan doughnut. It’s because of unique flavors like this that the New York-based Filipino doughnut shop has a 10,000-person waitlist.
“Kora is my grandmother’s name,” says Camara. “The leche flan recipe is from my grandmother’s cookbook that I found after she passed away.” This doughnut begins with a brioche dough. Once the doughnut is formed, Kevin Borja, Camara’s partner at the shop and in life, cuts a hole in it, and adds flan cream. Next, an entire round piece of flan is added to the center.
“I don’t know how I came up with it, honestly. I think what it came down to is they wouldn’t be actually experiencing the flan unless there was an actual flan in it.” The top of the doughnut is brushed with caramel and dusted with powdered sugar. “We basically got two desserts here in one,” says Borja.
Another creative doughnut inspired by Camara’s heritage is a glossy purple ube doughnut. “We had to have ube on our menu, I already knew this. You can’t pass that vibrant purple color,” says Camara. After the brioche dough with ube extract is made, Camara creates an ube pastry cream with milk, cornstarch ube extract, and frozen ube imported from the Philippines. The doughnut is fried, filled with the cream, rolled in sugar and topped with fried purple yam chips. “I think when a lot of people make ube desserts, I feel like they don’t go hard, they don’t take it all the way home. Every component of our doughnut has ube somewhere in it”
“Kora is the coming together of my entire life. There is no way that my grandmother is looking down on us and isn’t so proud of all of the work that we’ve done,” says Camara. “Wherever Kora takes us, behind all of it is my connection with her and my connection with my heritage.”
Check out the full video to see more of what goes on behind the scenes at Kora.
Dates often get served up around the holidays, but the fruit’s religious significance is bigger than you might think
Dates — especially in the United Kingdom, but also in the U.S. — are often associated with Christmastime, showing up in fruitcakes, served stuffed with goat’s cheese and wrapped with bacon, or just sharing a side plate with dried apricots and prunes.
On this week’s episode of Gastropod, hosts Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley explore what exactly dates have to do with the winter holidays, as well as the fascinating history of how date palms made it from North Africa and the Middle East to the Coachella Valley in California, which was once thought to be “America’s Arabia.”
Why dates show up a lot around the holidays is partly to do with their association with the Biblical lands: dates are found all over the Middle East and North Africa, and Joseph and Mary might well have relied on them as a portable energy source while wandering the desert. Dried fruit is traditional at this time of year in much of the Northern Hemisphere, stored from the harvest bounty.
In the Middle East, dates and religion have been associated even longer: Nawal Nasrallah, who wrote the book Dates: A Global History, says they were a favorite food of the prophet Mohammed and they even hold a special place in the Adam and Eve origin story. In the Islamic version, God asks Adam to bury his hair and nail trimmings, which then sprout into a date tree. Satan then weeps tears of jealousy that turn into the thorns of the date palm. During Ramadan, it’s still traditional to break fast with a date, and date sales spike during the holy month.
Today, date palm trees are in danger of extinction in parts of the world; this episode, Gastropod tells the story of how one Native American couple likely saved the Medjool date for the world. Americans first experimented with growing dates in the late 1800s and early 1900s, spurred by the western world’s obsession with ancient Egypt and biblical archeology. The Coachella Valley in Indio, California turned out to be one of the few places in the U.S. that date palms could thrive, leading to the bizarre — and problematic — rebranding of the area as “America’s Arabia” to increase tourism, complete with camel races and “hoochie-coochie” dances.
Listen to the entire episode to learn more about why it make sense to play the field when it comes to dates, how they can take a hot dog to the next level, and the fruit’s curious connection to the Temple of Dendur — which is famously housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, but was almost sent to the California desert instead.
The pandemic and social media have fostered an intense level of commitment from collectors, as well as fraudsters creating fake cups
Most people who love Starbucks are in it for the drinks. Whether you’re obsessed with dirty chai lattes or love the sugar rush of a white chocolate mocha Frappuccino, it’s what’s inside the cup that you care most about. But for a growing number of seriously devoted collectors, Starbucks’s reusable cold cups, tumblers, and mugs are the number-one real draw, so much so that people are hitting upwards of 20 Starbucks locations in a single morning — driven not by the caffeine in their veins, but the hope of scoring the most coveted new releases.
Obviously, we’re not talking about Starbucks’s regular, disposable paper cups or cold-drink single-use plastic cups. These collectors are obsessed with Starbucks limited merch, like hard plastic tumblers decorated with flowers or iced coffee cups made from recycled glass. The drinkware retails between $20 and $30, and is almost always sold out on the Starbucks website. Which means that collectors have to visit the stores or make a foray into a secondary market that is both thriving and competitive.
Ashley Spaulding, a collector in Fort Worth, Texas, got her first reusable Starbucks cup as a gift from her husband in 2017. Over the next couple of years, she slowly collected more cups and became involved in online Facebook groups for cup collectors. Things really changed in 2019, though, when Starbucks released its now-iconic matte black studded tumbler for cold drinks. “I fell in love with that studded look,” she says. “And it just opened up a whole new world for me, and then I really got into it.”
Scattered across Facebook groups, Instagram accounts, and reselling platforms like eBay and Poshmark, this secondary market gives collectors the opportunity to score special-edition, limited-release cups that are only available in certain locales. Hundreds of seriously dedicated resellers wake up in the wee hours of the morning, sometimes forming lines outside Starbucks locations, to clear the shelves of newly released tumblers before anyone ever orders a cup of coffee.
That shared level of intense commitment has produced a great deal of camaraderie in these groups, with collectors making close friends with the folks they’re selling to and buying from. It’s not uncommon for collectors to post photos in their Facebook groups of what’s available at their nearby Starbucks while they’re actually at the store, willing to snap up cups for those who can’t make it out for the hunt. Spaulding doesn’t consider herself a reseller, but does occasionally snag duplicates when she’s out shopping to help her fellow cup enthusiasts find the specific colors and prints they want.
The resale market really ramped up during the pandemic, as cup collectors found themselves stuck at home and many actual retail locations were closed. They started buying cups from previous collections released in China, Hong Kong, Australia, and other locales, and trading amongst themselves. In May 2020, Poshmark CEO Manish Chandra told CNN Business that his site had seen a 100 percent increase in sales of Starbucks merchandise, much of it centered around cups and mugs.
And of course, a market this hot has predictably inspired some fraud. The Facebook groups for Starbucks cup collectors are replete with warnings about scammers who take a collector’s money for a cup, never ship it, then ghost. Other scammers steal photos from legitimate cup sellers and try to pass them off as their own. Counterfeits are also surprisingly common, which means that collectors have to inspect each and every online photo for specific details like the cup’s barcode to discern whether or not it is legit.
According to Spaulding, Starbucks baristas are an invaluable resource, often providing intel to Facebook groups and Instagram gossip accounts on when Starbucks will debut new merchandise in stores. “We’ll get a heads up about basically all the release dates of the year, and on release days, a lot of us collectors are waiting at the store before it opens so that we have a chance to grab what we’re really hoping to get,” she says.
It’s a little surprising that Starbucks baristas are, at least anonymously, willing to help cup collectors. Back in November, baristas began sharing their experiences with merch obsessives on TikTok, saying that they’ve been harassed and assaulted for refusing to sell as many as 42 cups at a time to resellers.
The company itself is less willing to get involved in the Starbucks cup craze. When Eater reached out for comment, it declined to make a representative available, but did provide a statement on how the popularity of its reusable cups will help the company meet its sustainability goals. “We know our customers look forward to new drinkware at Starbucks each season, with some even taking up collections, and we love being able to bring a moment of joy to their day,” the company said. “Customer adoption of reusable cups is one part of Starbucks’s ongoing commitment to reduce single-use cup waste.”
Mostly, though, Starbucks cups collectors don’t seem to be actually using their cups for Starbucks drinks. Now that the brand sells its coffee, syrups, and other accoutrements in both its own cafes and grocery stores, it’s easy enough — and cheaper — to make your own iced lattes at home. “It’s just fun to walk around with a pretty cup,” Spaulding says.
A Hearty Southern Bouillabaisse Recipe, Just in Time for Winter
December 23, 2021
Admin
0 Comments
Louiie Victa/Eater
Catfish, shrimp, Gulf oysters, and lump crab put a regional stamp on the Provençal fisherman’s stew
The onset of winter shifts something in me. Maybe it’s the fact that after months of enduring oppressive heat, it’s now time to break out chunky sweaters, firepits, and whiskey. It could also be that I know the holidays are just around the corner, and this year, I have a brand-new baby girl to introduce to the joy of the season. Either way, I love the slow deliberateness that the cool weather brings. How it makes magic of simple things like the changing leaves or the smell of burning wood in the air. The change of pace also influences my own kitchen: lately, I can’t help but want to cook thick stews, time-consuming braises, and silky soups.
One dish that I love making when the weather grows cold is a hearty bouillabaisse. While a bowl will often cost you a fair amount of money at a restaurant, making it at home is more affordable, and recalls its origins as a humble Provençal fisherman’s stew made with scraps of fish that were too undesirable to be sold.
The magic of bouillabaisse isn’t in the value of the fish or the technique used to prepare it, but in the melding of its ingredients. Like a carefully crafted spell, they alchemize to create something soulful and worth savoring.
Traditionally, bouillabaisse is made with several different kinds of firm white fish, cockles, mussels, and occasionally bits of lobster or shrimp. Thankfully, living down South means that I have access to some of the most beautiful seafood the Gulf Coast has to offer. Since the ports of Marseille, where the stew originated, are a little far for me, I get creative with the ingredients I can get my hands on.
In this Southern-inspired bouillabaisse, tender catfish chunks are substituted for Mediterranean fish like red snapper or turbot, while local shrimp and lump crab add a plump sweetness. The stock is fortified by meaty gulf oysters and gets an unmistakably briney punch from a generous addition of littleneck clams and mussels. The dish is elevated by tiny ribbons of saffron that are swirled into the burnt-orange broth. Throw in a few slices of a toasted baguette (extra points if you rub them with garlic) and abracadabra, you’re holding a warm bowl of magic in your hands.
Southern Bouillabaisse Recipe
Serves 6-8
Ingredients:
Olive oil, as needed (about ¼ cup to start)
1 onion, chopped (about 1 ½ cup)
2 carrots, small dice (about 1 cup)
2 celery stalks, small dice (about 1 cup)
4 cloves garlic, sliced (I prefer the texture this way but they can be minced or chopped as well)
3 sprigs of thyme
1 small bulb fennel, sliced, fronds reserved for garnish
5-7 small Yukon Gold potatoes, sliced in half
¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper, optional (plus more to taste)
¼ teaspoon saffron, optional but strongly encouraged
4 cups (32 ounces) store-bought seafood stock
2 cups (16 ounces) clam juice
¾ cup crushed tomatoes
12-15 mussels, debearded
10-12 littleneck clams, scrubbed, rinsed and purged
1 jar of fresh Gulf oysters, reserve juice and check for shells
1 catfish filet (about 1 pound), cut into 1-inch slices
8-10 shrimp, shells left on
1 cup jumbo lump crab
Salt and pepper to taste
4-8 thick slices good bread
Instructions:
Step 1: Add the olive oil to a Dutch oven and heat over medium heat until it shimmers. Add the onion, carrots, and celery and cook until softened, about 8 minutes. Add the garlic, thyme, fennel, potatoes, crushed red peper flakes, and saffron. Cook for an additional 2-3 minutes.
Step 2: Add the stock, clam juice, and crushed tomatoes and bring to a gentle boil; cook until the broth is thick and slightly reduced, about 20-25 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Step 3: Lower the heat to a gentle simmer and add add the mussels, clams, and oysters along with the oyster juice. Cook for 5 minutes. Add the catfish and shrimp and cook for an additional 5 minutes. Turn off the heat. Add the crab meat and let sit for 10-15 minutes.
Step 4: Remove the thyme stems from the broth, then taste and adjust seasoning. Add more red pepper if you want a spicier broth.
Step 5: Garish with fennel fronds and serve immediately with a few slices of crusty French bread.
Ryan Shepardis an Atlanta-based food and spirits writer. She loves Mexican food, bourbon and New Orleans. Louiie Victais a chef, recipe developer, food photographer, and stylist living in Las Vegas. Recipe tested by Louiie Victa
In West Bengal, Date Palm Jaggery Is a Winter Delicacy. It’s Also in Danger of Extinction.
December 22, 2021
Admin
0 Comments
Cha Pornea
Valued for its seasonality and hyper-local terroir, the beloved natural sweetener is facing an array of threats, from urbanization to climate change
It’s 3 a.m. in Nimpith, a tiny town in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal. Sixty-one-year-old Chuno Mistry heads towards a row of wild date palm trees. Mistry is a shuli, or date palm tree tapper, and he carries earthen pots slung from a bamboo pole, known as a byank, on his shoulder. It’s about 46 degrees out and his lungi and full-sleeved shirt are hardly enough to keep him warm; goosebumps spring up along his exposed skin.
When he reaches the first tree, Mistry ties a rope around his waist and attaches a curved pin to the rope, then latches an empty clay pot, or kolshi, to the pin. Near the top of the tree, another kolshi hangs precariously. Mistry balances his bare feet on the trunk, and climbs up to replace the kolshi, which is full of fresh date palm sap. Called khejur rosh, the sap is the key ingredient to khejur gur, or date palm jaggery. And khejur gur is, in turn, the secret to Bengali sweetness.
Before daybreak Mistry repeats this exercise on 12 date palm trees. After he collects the sweet, clear sap, it is boiled in an earthen wood-fired oven for a couple of hours. “This,” Mistry explains, “is how we make nolen gur, the most premium version of date palm jaggery.”
The whole neighborhood knows when the jaggery is ready from the aroma wafting in the air. It’s cause for celebration: amber-tinged, sticky, fragrant, and slightly viscous, this jaggery, with its distinctive smoky sweetness, is the most precious winter ingredient in a Bengali pantry.
Date palm jaggery is a special type of natural sweetener made by evaporating the sap of wild date palm trees. Harvested between the months of November and February in West Bengal and throughout Bangladesh, it is available in liquid, grainy, and solid forms, known as jhola gur, khejur gur, and patali, respectively. While the grainy gur is used almost exclusively as a side dish to Indian flatbreads, the solid and liquid forms are used as both side dishes and as flavoring agents for Bengali sweets like sondesh, roshogolla, payesh, naru, and pithe. The liquid nolen gur is prized as the best kind of date palm jaggery for its distinctive smoky sweetness. When refrigerated, both liquid and grainy jaggery can be stocked for a week, while patali is good for a year. Unlike cane jaggery, which is ubiquitous throughout the subcontinent all year round, date palm jaggery is valued for its seasonality and hyperlocal terroir, qualities reflected in its distinct aroma and sweetness.
Not surprisingly, most of jaggery’s uses are in sweets and desserts. Tanmoy Das, the owner of the 120-year-old Adhar Chandra Das sweet shop in West Bengal’s Nadia district (a center of jaggery production and sales), says, “like others in Bengal, we suffuse our roshogolla and sondesh [curdled milk sweets] with nolen gur in winter.” His is one of millions of Bengali sweetmeat shops across the subcontinent to create nolen gurer mishti, or desserts; among them are payesh, a rice-and-milk-based pudding, and narkel naru, balls of grated coconut and jaggery. Nolen gur is also now an ice cream flavor, and has found its way into Western-style desserts served in the region. “We serve nolen gur caramel custard, tembleque, and pastries,” says Madhumita Mohanta, chef at the Lalit Great Eastern Kolkata.
As a Bengali, I always look forward to Poush Parbon, a celebration held on the last day of the Bengali month of Poush to mark the Hindu astrological transition of the sun moving into makar rashi, or Capricorn. Sweets made with seasonal ingredients like gur are central to the celebration, which has its origins as a harvest festival in Bengal’s agrarian communities. On this day, our homes hang heavy with the aroma of nolen gur bought from neighborhood grocery stores and sweet shops. Pithe, a dumpling made of rice flour and filled with coconut smeared with nolen gur, circulates among family, friends, and neighbors. We snack on patishapta, a rice flour crepe that encloses coconut splashed with nolen gur.
Our love for nolen gur is shared by Bengalis all over the planet: it is a food that can truly be said to be universally beloved. But this, unfortunately, does not negate another truth about nolen gur: Unadulterated date palm jaggery is on the brink of extinction.
In Bengal, date palm jaggery has been around for so long that it likely “predates cane sugar in the region,” writes culinary historian Michael Krondl in his book Sweet Invention: A History of Dessert. Considering that the use of granulated cane sugar in the region has been traced back to the fourth century BCE, according to the ancient Sanskrit text Arthashastra, that’s saying something.
Wild date palms grow naturally near canals, isolated ponds, farmland, and wetlands. Their sap is harvested from incisions made in the tree’s trunk with sharp, sickle-like iron tools, then channeled into clay pots through split bamboo stalks that the shuli attach to the trees. Composed of 10 to 20 percent sucrose, the sap breaks down and ferments when it is heated, a process that turns it from sweet to sour; this is why the sap is ideally collected in the hours between dusk and dawn, before the heat of the sun can sour it. “Apart from the microclimate, at what time of the day the sap has been tapped makes all the difference in the quality of the jaggery,” explains Amit Kumar Ghosh, a jaggery dealer with 26 years of experience who hails from Majhdia, a jaggery hub in Bengal.
Sugar is added to the sap — only in small quantities to the most premium jaggery — which “hastens the boiling and increases quantity,” in the manufacturing process, Ghosh explains. It also expands the jaggery’s shelf life. Part of the reason why grainy and solid jaggery are considered inferior to the liquid variety is the high percentage of added sugar. “Patali cannot maintain its shape without sugar,” explains Tanmoy Bera, the owner of Sree Sreemanta Gurer Arath, a 204-year-old cane and date palm jaggery wholesale shop in North Kolkata’s Shobhabazar. In his opinion, the best-quality patali is soft, melts in heat, and is chocolatey in color.
But the main reason sugar is added to date palm jaggery, according to Ghosh and Bera, is to meet soaring demand in the face of reduced production. Many shulis now do a second round of tapping, one that stretches from dawn until noon and yields sour sap: To compensate, the shuli add generous quantities of sugar. To further slow the fermentation, “the pots are coated with quicklime on the inside,” Ghosh says.
The downward trend in production has been playing out for the last two decades, and is attributed to a number of culprits, environmental and otherwise. Natural habitat loss, the destruction of trees, over-tapping, and the attrition of skilled tappers from the profession due to its physical demands and uncertainty are all at play. And then, of course, there is the impact of climate change, which has delayed the arrival of winter in Bengal, making it shorter and unpredictable. Since jaggery can only be made on cold, sunny days, its season is now even more restricted. “Untimely rain, clouds, and fog [are] date palm jaggery’s enemy — the sap on those days turns foul,” says Bera.
Recurring floods, another effect of climate change, have increased soil salinity and caused habitat loss in Bengal. “Our NGO had planted 1,000 seeds of date palm around Joynagar in 2020, but in 2021 we dropped the plan of planting more by the riverside as the saline inundation due to cyclone Amphan has made the soil inhospitable,” says Amitava Roy, a native of Nimpith and the secretary of Lokamata Rani Rashmoni Mission, a nonprofit that promotes sustainable development in the region.
On top of the peril posed by climate change, there is the growing threat of urbanization. In addition to being cut down and replaced with more “economically significant” trees like betel nut, says Roy, date palms have also become the “favorite fuel” of the brick kilns used to produce bricks for concrete houses.
“We have lost many trees to them,” says Ghosh, the jaggery dealer. The district of South 24 Parganas, which was once known for its jaggery, now has almost no trees, or remaining shuli.
While there is no satisfactory study or data available on the depletion of date palm trees, the experience of longtime shuli illustrates the magnitude of the problem. When Mistry, the shuli in Nimpith, began working around 45 years ago, he would tap at least 48 to 50 trees a day. Today, he taps 12.
Meanwhile, fewer trees have led some shuli to engage in unsavory practices to extract their sap. After an incision is made in a tree’s bark, sap flows continuously from it for one to five days. Normally, the next incision isn’t made until the previous one has dried completely, a process that requires at least three continuously sunny, cold days. “Without rest, the trees would eventually die,” says Bera.
But due to booming demand, some overly ambitious shuli refuse to wait, tapping again too early and killing the plants. This is the reason why the date palms of the Middle East and North Africa are not extensively tapped for sap: If trees bear economic and cultural significance, the risk of tapping is generally avoided. “But where the trees in those regions are highly valued for their dates, Bengal’s date palms produce very bad fruit and thus have little economic value aside from that of their seasonal jaggery output,” says Dr. Asok Kanti Sanyal, the former chairman of the West Bengal Biodiversity Board. As such, the government has done little to protect them, aside from conducting periodic environmental awareness drives at government colleges; at Lady Brabourne College in Kolkata, for example, students have been encouraged to plant more date palm trees around campus.
The risks posed by irresponsible tapping underscore the extent to which the trees’ survival depends in part upon the skill of the shuli, who typically do not own the trees they tap but instead lease them for the season from landowners they pay in either cash or jaggery. If shuli continue to quit the profession, something occurring at an increasing rate, their skills could soon become extinct, putting the trees in further danger.
The shuli who stay in the profession mostly do so out of emotional attachment to their identity as gur makers, Ghosh says. It is an extremely demanding job that requires climbing up and down trees barefoot in the cold, he points out — “it terribly harms the feet.”
Those issues have trickled down to the end product. Some shuli use bottled nolen gur essence, which claims to successfully mimic the natural sweetener’s olfactory and flavor notes, to flavor poor-quality jaggery. (The essence is intended more for use by sweetmeat sellers.) And some sweet sellers eschew the seasonality of the product: “Nolen gurer mishti is nowadays available the whole year round,” says Saurav Gupta, owner of The Whole Hog Deli & Charcuterie, a Kolkata-based online store that sells nolen gur only during the winter, when it’s in season. “The sweet sellers would never confess to using the essence and [instead] claim they stock the whole year’s supply of nolen gur and store it in freezers.”
Miles away from Bengal, at my home in Mumbai, I take the last ounce of patali from the fridge. It doesn’t melt, so I use pliers to break it. I know that it is of bad quality, but at least I get to have some. As I eat, Chuno Mistry’s words haunt my thoughts. “I am the last surviving shuli of my village,” he told me. “The trees I tap are the last surviving trees here.” Unless the trees, and the shuli who tap them, are conserved, that scene will continue to play out until the future of Bengal’s date palm jaggery is relegated to the past.
Restaurants Opting into Proof-of-Vax Policies Find Happy Guests, Angry Commenters
December 22, 2021
Admin
0 Comments
Shutterstock
In cities without vaccine mandates, restaurateurs who require vaccination face online backlash — but diners aren’t staying away
A few weeks ago, as COVID-19 cases spiked across the state of Arkansas, veteran Little Rock restaurateur Capi Peck finally knew that it was time to implement a requirement that all diners passing through the doors of her 35-year-old restaurant, Trio’s, show proof of vaccination. It was a decision that she knew would come with some controversy in the conservative state, where Donald Trump secured more than 60 percent of the vote in 2020.
Peck, who also serves on Little Rock’s city board of directors, consulted her colleague and COVID-19 task force member Dr. Dean Kumpuris daily as she weighed whether or not to become the first independent restaurant in Little Rock to require masks. There were other businesses, including the restaurant inside the William J. Clinton Presidential Library, and a nearby music venue, that had already implemented the use of “vaccine passports.” As case numbers ticked upward in Arkansas in early December, Peck asked Kumpuris whether or not it was time, and he said, “Hell yes.”
The issue of getting vaccinated — and more specifically, the notion that governments or businesses can require vaccination for specific activities — has become intensely politicized, inspiring a wide range of conspiracy theories, confusion, and anger. But under the threat of losing their businesses, already cash-strapped after two years of operating during a pandemic, and experiencing harassment from people who are fervently opposed to vaccine mandates, restaurateurs like Peck are holding firm and navigating these testy, troll-infested waters without the support of their governments.
Like most municipalities across the country, Little Rock has not implemented any sort of proof-of-vaccination requirement for indoor dining. Only a few cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, and New Orleans, have passed such mandates (though with the omicron variant on the rise, more might follow suit). In a number of states, like Texas and Florida, Republican governors have banned government agencies and businesses like restaurants from asking for proof of COVID-19 vaccination before providing service. This state-by-state, city-by-city approach has created a patchwork of uneven enforcement, leaving many restaurateurs across the country to their own devices in navigating the implementation of a policy that has proven to be deeply divisive.
Peck made the announcement on December 5; the backlash was swift. “I had no idea just how ugly people can be. The haters were scripted and very organized. I’ve been called a brownshirt and a Nazi, which is very funny since I’m Jewish and my family fled Nazi Germany,” she says. “But this is a private business, and we can do what we decide is best. And it has overwhelmingly been the right and popular decision.”
The story is similar in Arizona. Back in August, Scottsdale chef Charleen Badman announced that her acclaimed restaurant FnB would require proof of vaccination. Immediately after blasting the news on social media and via her email newsletter, she was flooded with emails, phone calls, and actual picketers outside the restaurant who opposed the policy. “We had people calling us Nazis and telling us that we had committed business suicide,” Badman says. “Someone threatened to throw rocks through our windows. People would call and rant for two or three minutes and tell us that they’re putting our staff on some kind of watchlist.”
At one point, Badman even had to call the police after a man entered the dining room of her restaurant with a megaphone and began ranting about the policy. He was later arrested for trespassing.
Even in liberal Cambridge, a deep-blue Boston suburb that’s home to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, Pagu chef-owner Tracy Chang dealt with harassment over instituting a vaccine policy. (Boston will be enacting a vaccine mandate in January.) Chang was among the first Boston-area restaurant owners to require proof of vaccination earlier this summer, which brought a flood of one-star reviews on Yelp and Google, plus a slew of harassing comments on social media and phone calls to the restaurant. The backlash was so intense that Chang began to worry about the safety of her staff, who are largely Asian and Latinx, and coordinated with local law enforcement to beef up police presence around the restaurant in the days following her decision.
“We really did have the support of the Cambridge community,” Chang says. “All of a sudden, I started getting calls from people who wanted to leave 10-minute voicemails calling me a fascist, calling me a communist. When we looked at where those calls were coming from, it was almost always out of state. They never referenced having any actual experience with us before picking this fight.”
As the threats subsided — both Badman and Chang say that the bulk of the backlash only lasted about a month, though a few negative comments still trickle in from time to time — both restaurateurs realized that the decision had not actually driven very many customers away. Badman says it’s been “business as usual” at FnB, and according to Chang, the numbers at Pagu returned to pre-pandemic levels. “We used to be open seven days a week, and now it’s just dinner. We’ve been really, really lucky,” she says. “Bottom line, we are flourishing.”
Even though Peck’s policy is much newer, she’s noticed a similar bump in business. Since it’s been open for 35 years, Trio’s has a pretty devoted crowd of regulars, and Peck says that not a single one of them has told her that they won’t be coming back for the restaurant’s famed strawberry shortcake.
“Ultimately, I think that the way we responded to this has created such goodwill that my regulars are even more regular right now,” Peck says. “I saw the same people in the restaurant three or four times [in one week], just because they wanted to support me. I hate that this has been politicized, but I have always worn my politics on my sleeve. If somebody chooses not to eat here because of that, that’s okay. I’m going to survive.”
At 63 Clinton, a New Kind of American Tasting Menu Starts With a Breakfast Taco
December 22, 2021
Admin
0 Comments
Chef Samuel Clonts and general manager Raymond Trinh created their version of the dish as an ode to their Arizona roots
“When people ask us about what type of food [we serve], we kind of fall back on saying ‘Modern American’ or ‘New American,’ but I think overall it’s very much a New York-style menu,” says 63 Clinton co-owner Raymond Trinh. “There are things from all over the world and all over the country, and for me, that’s very New York. This is the most diverse city I’ve ever lived in or got to experience.”
Diners at 63 Clinton can experience a tasting menu filled with ingredients, flavor influences, and cooking techniques from from Japan to France to Arizona — where Trinh and chef, co-owner, and friend Samuel Clonts are from — and beyond. For example, the first course on the tasting menu is Clonts and Trinh’s own spin on the classic breakfast taco, a nod to a dish they ate often growing up. 63 Clinton’s version features a homemade grilled flour tortilla, topped with a slice of an ajitama seasoned egg, salsa verde, a fried hash brown, and a dollop of trout roe.
“We’ve been cooking in restaurants a long time, doing other people’s food...,” says Clonts. “But we never really told our story or our background, and we’ve been able to bring that to the menu.”
“I think that’s why the breakfast taco is so important to us,” adds Trinh. “It kind of offers a little bit of our past.”
Check out the full video to see how the two make a baked Alaska in a pizza oven, and incorporate Japanese influences like tamaki with caviar and a house-made tofu dish.
Tourist Desiree Baker shared her bizarre experience at Cassa Times Square on TikTok
One of the best parts of eating in a restaurant is eavesdropping on dates. You may like to think you’re better than that, but you’re not, because the second you sense the tension in the voice of someone two tables away, it’s next to impossible to ignore. Now, what if you had a one-way mirror and could watch random people chat over dinner for hours, them none the wiser? And what if the mirror opened and you could take something directly off their table and eat it for yourself? One TikTok user experienced that exactly when she discovered the window of her Airbnb rental at a Manhattan hotel opened directly into a fully operating restaurant.
Desiree Baker (@desireerosebaker) posted on December 20 about arriving at Cassa Times Square, where she was expecting a room with skyline views of Manhattan, as advertised in the listing’s photos. Instead, she says, “I pull up the shades, there’s no buildings. We’re in a restaurant.” Showing and not just telling, she pulls up the room’s blackout curtains, revealing a couple enjoying a dinner directly in front of her window, though they seemingly have no idea she’s there because the windows were set up like one-way mirrors.
In follow up videos, Baker is contacted by one of the diners she filmed dining directly outside her room, and went to visit the restaurant, Tempura NYC, to tap on her room’s window, which her friend then opened. The restaurant’s staff even gave her shots of tequila — in glasses she was able to return by passing them back through the window and placing them directly on the table.
Baker attempted to contact her hosts via Airbnb and allegedly received the following message:
Hi Desiree, apologies for taken [sic] some time to replay [sic] you, actually we were going to cancel your reservation as we had some room issues, however we managed to be able to host you.
I believe everything went and is going well during your stay and glad to know we were able to host you this time of year.
best wishes
After seeing the TikTok, Airbnb contacted Baker and gave her a credit.
Looking at photos of Cassa Times Square and Tempura NY, it appears that the hotel built out the restaurant on an outdoor patio space. Looking at interiors of the restaurant, the window to Baker’s room appears to be right in the corner of the dining room.
While I understand what the issue is, I also don’t, because this room sounds amazing. Posting up in my hotel room with some wine and listening to strangers trying to relate to each other over midtown tuna rolls? What else could you possibly want out of a vacation to New York?
A festival in Long Island City, Queens is on a mission to expose the U.S. to fresh, handcrafted versions of the Italian holiday favorite
This winter, 250 made-in-Italy, naturally leavened panettoni got to partake in one of the birthrights of traveling to New York: Getting stuck at JFK airport.
Cafe owner and Italian foods importer Cristiano Rossi had shipped the panettoni to New York at the end of November for the first-ever New York Panettone Festival. So began the weeks-long saga with customs to release hundreds of panettoni — 49 varieties — from import limbo. “I didn’t sleep for a week,” said Rossi.
By December, he was begging with customs agents at 2:30am the night before the festival to let his precious breads out of the cursed airport. “I promised a panettone for each of them and they release[d] some,” he said. Bribery with baked goods is too easy — “everyone is the same,” Rossi said — but, va bene, at least it worked.
Rossi, an Italian pastry superfan, organized the festival to celebrate the past, present, and future of a holiday dessert that has — at best — a checkered fandom in the United States. For many Americans, the delicate, fruity Italian holiday bread is more than an acquired taste — I’ve tried for years to convert friends but have had little success. That’s in large part due to the decades of dishonor brought on by commercially produced panettone, sold cheaply and sometimes year-round in grocery stores across the country. Those breads share almost nothing in common with the traditional, labor-intensive panettone made and sold all over Italy. What most Americans know as panettoni are overly sweet, dry, and dense fruit breads. And so this Italian Christmas treat, which takes a minimum of 36 hours to make if done correctly, is stripped of its artisanal spirit.
Rossi is on a mission to change that. Over two weekends this December, Rossi hoped to prove — through generous free samples of panettone made by some of Italy’s world-famous, award-winning pastry chefs — that panettone can be and should be for everyone.
In the small plaza right on the waterfront in Long Island City, Queens, there was at least one guest of honor there to help Rossi on his mission: Lidia Bastianich, the beloved Italian TV personality, cookbook writer, and sauce purveyor walked around with Rossi as he led a handful of visitors at the free event. While tasting chunky slices hand-cut by Rossi himself, Bastianich explained the flaws of the panettoni most Americans have access to.
“You can really taste the preservatives in all of them,” Bastianich said. The industrial versions are nothing like Ischian panettone with caramel and pistachios, a Vesuvio-created variety made with white figs and chocolate, or a Tuscan version with saffron, whiskey, and chamomile from San Gimignano, all of which have much shorter shelf lives.
Despite failed past attempts to introduce artisanal panettone to Americans, Bastianich maintains that better days are coming as palates evolve. “People are really informed, they’re educated now. They are willing to spend money to eat well and eat healthy,” she said. What role do Italian pastry chefs have in that effort? “You gotta bring the good stuff from Italy, like the Italians eat.”
Like Rossi, Bastianich grew up eating panettone for the holidays, often alongside a nip of grappa. Due to the bread’s naturally leavened nature, panettoni tend to keep for several days after Christmas is over. “Then, it’s breakfast with a cafe latte. For the next few days, even if it gets toasted, it’s good.” It turns into great desserts, too, Bastianich says: “a slice of panettone with ice cream, with some cherries on top of that.”
“French toast,” added Rossi enthusiastically, bread knife in hand.
While there were still some producers absent from the first day of the panettone festival, their products still being inspected for contraband by the TSA, those present were committed to Rossi and Bastianich’s dream of a great American panettone future, too.
Biagio Settepani, owner of Bruno’s Cafe in Staten Island, has been making panettone for over 40 years. He believes that American consumers have many misconceptions about it, but the hardest barrier to entry is the cost of a handmade loaf.
“You see a commercial panettone for $5.99 at Costco,” he said. “You come to my shop and it’s 30 dollars. What the consumer gets at Costco, that product is done a year before.” At Bruno’s, where Settepani’s son Joseph is executive pastry chef, Settepani sells fresh panettoni, almost always made only three days before. “Sometimes you have to explain to people when they say, ‘Oh my god, you’re so expensive.’ You’re welcome to come and see the process of making panettone.”
That process is incredibly labor intensive — from the days of monitoring and feeding a natural starter (called a lievito madre), to the delicate art of shaping and allowing to rise an extremely wet, buttery, and loaded enriched dough. Panettone bakers must be highly skilled, which is why Settepani’s favorite part of the whole ordeal isn’t necessarily the making part. It’s the eating.
There was at least one panettone convert at the waterfront that Friday: a little girl with a giant slice held tightly in a tiny hand, chomping away with a studied intensity. Her mom hadn’t tried much panettone, but she was impressed by the thoughtful packaging of many of the breads on sale. “I’m a food fan so I thought it would be a great opportunity [to come to the festival],” she said. “I’m going to buy them as gifts.”
The day ended with glasses of prosecco and Americanos, to the grumbling disdain of at least one of the Italian organizers. (For him, it was espresso or bust.) Reflecting on the future of panettone stateside, Bastianich brought up its popularity in Italy. “In Italy, we sell mountains of them,” she said. “[In America] it’s gaining traction. It’s the Italian flavor, it’s the Italian tradition. It’s an art.”
Restaurants Nationwide Temporarily Close as Staff Test Positive, Case Counts Rise
December 20, 2021
Admin
0 Comments
Shutterstock
Restaurants are cancelling reservations and shutting down dining rooms as nation braces for winter surge
Restaurants are suddenly in a situation not dissimilar to that of the early pandemic, as the delta and omicron variants of coronavirus sweep the the country: Case counts are shockingly high, staff and guests are testing positive, and restaurants — the responsible ones, at least — are choosing to close while staff are tested. Restaurants that would otherwise be experiencing some of their most profitable weeks are being forced to reckon with COVID surges. Again.
In New York, where new COVID cases are nearing their highest daily rate since the onset of the pandemic, restaurants started closing in droves during the week of December 13. Now, it’s impossible to scroll Instagram without coming across a post from a favorite restaurant announcing a temporary closure. In some cases staff are testing positive, and in others, it’s diners who have spent prolonged time in the confines of a restaurant’s dining room before discovering they had COVID. Since mid-August, New York City restaurants have required patrons to show proof of vaccination to dine indoors. “A lot of these [restaurants] are places that are very open about being masked all the time, their team is vaccinated, we’re doing everything we need to do with the new mandate… We really can’t catch a break,” Stephanie Gallardo, co-owner of the bakery Love, Nelly, told Eater NY.
The dozens of restaurants that have closed across New York in the past week have, for the most part, announced that they’ll reopen when they’re able to confirm that their staff are COVID-negative. But with lines at nearly every testing site in New York wrapping down the block, staff that feel ill are left with few answers, and restaurants that desperately need to reopen may have as much trouble finding available tests as they do protecting their staff from COVID while they work. Eater NY notes that the closures come at a particularly unfortunate time of year, when most restaurants hope to see increased business and high profits before the quieter months of the new year.
Though New York City seems to be at the forefront, other cities are starting to witness similar closures. In Houston, Texas, where one hospital confirmed on December 19 that the omicron variant was responsible for 82 percent of new symptomatic cases, restaurants and bars are shutting down in response to exposures. Others are closing out of an abundance of caution, all too familiar with the open-close cycle that COVID fuels, and opting to avoid it entirely by extending their holiday closures. And while California has yet to feel the full impact of this latest surge, early signs point to what will likely be a similarly unpleasant situation unfolding there. According to Eater LA, the popular restaurant group Gjelina has reported 28 new COVID cases, and plans to operate with “a limited team.” Eater LA notes that Los Angeles County has yet to announce plans to reinstate any mandates surrounding business restrictions or capacity limits. And while California public health officials announced a reinstated mask mandate last week, some counties have already made clear they will not enforce it.
In Chicago, surging cases and staff exposures have reignited political rifts and issues of worker safety. According to Eater Chicago, there’s a sense of deja vu as some restaurants take steps to close and protect their staff, and others are accused of staying open even after learning of possible COVID exposures. For restaurateurs like Alsonye Ugbebor, the owner of a catering company and associated taco business in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, being flippant about COVID isn’t an option. Ugbebor has an underlying health condition that increases the risks associated with contracting COVID, and is the mother of a young son. She’d already had COVID once when, even after being vaccinated, she was diagnosed with a breakthrough case earlier this month. With the help of staff, she was able to keep her business operating for some time while she was out sick, but with Ugbebor and her son both fighting COVID, she announced recently that her business would be closing until she recovers and can get tested.
Omicron was classified as a “variant of concern” by the World Health Organization in November, and in the past two weeks has spread across the country. While scientists are still working to understand its lethality and what this means for the long fight to end the pandemic, it’s important to also note that this is not a repeat of March 2020 from a health perspective: The public knows more about how COVID spreads and what tools (namely masking, vaccination, ventilation, and testing) keep it in check.
But while the public may be better prepared, restaurants are in some ways in worse shape than they were during the first shutdowns of 2020. The months of reopenings and pivots and closures were costly. Supply shortages and inflation have made the cost of ingredients and materials needed to operate more expensive. There’s no Paycheck Protection Program on the horizon, and the Restaurant Revitalization Fund is in dire need of replenishment. The industry knows the story from here: Owners and workers are once again doing their best, with very little. And right now, that looks like shutting off the lights, cancelling the reservations, and hoping for the best.
Hosts Are a Restaurant’s Front Line. It’s No Wonder They’re in Such High Demand Now.
December 20, 2021
Admin
0 Comments
Shutterstock
Some restaurants are packing their host stands to make the job more manageable
On a Friday night last month, some friends and I walked into La Chinesca, a new bar and restaurant on Spring Garden Street in Philly, and were greeted by three smiling hosts at the host stand. We were heading to the indoor/outdoor bar, about 20 feet away, and all three hosts eagerly asked if they could help us find our way there. Compared to how short-staffed and overworked most restaurants have been lately, the attention initially felt out of place. But things like that kept happening, leading me to think, Is it just me, or does it feel like there are a lot more hosts working doors in Philly than there used to be?
“It’s a new property and it’s very big — that place requires a few extra hands at the host stand,” Michael Pasquarello, co-owner of La Chinesca, says. The restaurant is only a few months old, after all; there may be kinks to work out and managers want to make sure service is running smoothly. However, Pasquarello accepts that the hosting role has changed this year. At one of Pasquarello’s other restaurants, Prohibition Taproom, he has had to hire an additional member at the host stand on the weekends just to check diners’ proof of vaccination.
“Our staff are essentially frontline workers. The hospitality worker is in harm’s way,” Pasquarello says. Prohibition Taproom is a few blocks down from a big music venue in Philly. To safeguard against big groups wandering in without following the restaurant’s proof of vaccination restrictions, the extra host is a necessary barrier to entry. “They’re very diligent about it. My staff takes it every seriously.”
While the fuller host stands I’ve seen have been in Philly — and keeping in mind that there are other restaurants where there is clearly a burden falling heavily on only one host — the numbers bear out the fact that the current demand for hosts is also high at a national level.
Alice Cheng, founder and CEO of Culinary Agents, an online job platform for hospitality workers, says the company’s data shows plenty of open host roles nationwide — but not enough applicants. Comparing the periods of March to November 2020 and March to November 2021, Cheng says there are seven times as many host positions this year than last. That first period covers some of the earliest and most severe pandemic shutdowns, and Cheng speculates that restaurants have been staffing up again, now that food businesses in many cities are back in full swing. With changing regulations, openings and then shutdowns, and angry guests to contend with, restaurants have become even more all-hands-on-deck, everybody-wears-several-hats enterprises, and Cheng suspects hiring a lot of hosts could be a way to get entry-level applicants in the door in order to quickly train them for lateral or higher roles. “We see some businesses looking at ways to train across skills,” Cheng says. The host could become a potential busser or potential server or manager. “In colder cities, you have hosts that double as a coat check.”
And while it might seem to me that there are so many hosts at the door these days, Culinary Agents data shows that applications for host jobs have declined 40 percent compared to 2019. Cheng speculates that “the increase [in job postings makes up] for the fact that they didn’t have hosts for a while,” noting that many restaurants did away with the role during various pivots. At restaurants and bars that rely on walk-in service and foot traffic, Cheng also theorizes that the staffing up is related to needing more muscle at the entrance to the restaurant. “There is an increase of responsibility and potential stress for these particular positions,” Cheng says, and the sheer volume of host jobs available could be acting as a bulwark for restaurant workers who take a host job, then quickly learn how stressful it can be. Turnover is already high in the restaurant industry — and with these additional coronavirus-related challenges, employees are being even more selective about where they want to work. The decline in applicants for the host stand, Cheng says, could also be related to the job’s high stresses. “The applications are probably lower because of potential extreme exposure and having to police vaccine cards in certain cities.”
With the staffing shortage, not all restaurants are able to follow suit. Some owners don’t feel it’s necessary, anyway. Two local restaurateurs I spoke with both said that they have sidestepped the lack of predictability at the host stand because they rely almost entirely on reservations rather than walk-in traffic. Most diners coming into their restaurants are aware of their vaccine policies and are generally well prepared on what to expect on arrival, which means there is less need for multiple hosts to wrangle unruly guests.
For those that have staffed up their front door, they are left wondering how long they can expect their many hosts to stay on the job. After learning that hosts at another of his restaurants, Cafe Lift, were dealing with disgruntled guests responding to their city-mandated indoor mask policy, Pasquarello says he’s seeing more people bristle at the unwelcome additional responsibilities that come with greeting diners at the door: “Entry-level college students at the host stand are like, ‘I don’t know, did I sign up for this?’”
Fast-Food Fashion Is Everywhere — Except on Fat People
December 20, 2021
Admin
0 Comments
Excluding fat bodies from food world trends is nothing new, but that doesn’t make it any better
Merch is trending. And while everyone from podcast hosts to niche astrology meme accounts is selling something wearable, the highest-profile drops are from fast food and “junk” food brands. There’s a huge amount of ’90s nostalgia at play — AriZona iced tea’s jackets with the brand’s classic patterns and Pizza Hut’s plastic red cups are meant to hearken back to the decade that’s just so trendy right now. This holiday season, consumers can buy McDonald’s tees, Chick-Fil-A crewnecks, and Stouffer’s sweatsuits, giving those brands both their money and free advertising. But one group has been almost completely excluded from the fast-food merch bonanza — fat people.
Nearly every major fast-food merch drop has topped out at XL or 2XL since the trend started back in 2016 when Taco Bell opened a physical merch store. Fast-food merch took off at the end of 2019, when Dunkin’ and McDonald’s launched stores just in time for the holiday season. Now, KFC has Colonel Sanders basketball jerseys that stop at a size XL, while a Cheez-It onesie is “one size fits most.” Fat people have been mocked with Twinkies for decades, yet a fat person over a size 2XL cannot purchase a Twinkies shirt (and size 2XL is two dollars extra). Anyone can wear a “This Bride Runs On Dunkin’” robe on their wedding day, except a fat person. Popeyes and Megan Thee Stallion released lots of merch to support their Hottie Sauce release — flame bikinis, anime-style graphic tees, and denim jackets — and none of it goes above a size XL. And McDonald’s collaboration with Saweetie features pastel shirts and sweatpants that top out at 2XL.
Now, influencers might post their late-night Taco Bell on Instagram, and then buy a Taco Bell mild hot sauce onesie to take funny photos in. But these companies know that fast food can’t keep its cool-kid clout if fat people are part of the image. Fat acceptance is about more than just access to fashion or clothes, but as a fat person that writes about pop culture for a living, it’s impossible to not notice when a major clothing trend is excluding bodies like mine.
With their merch, these companies signal that they won’t make room for fat people in the food world, even if it costs them sales. It’s estimated that 68 percent of American women wear plus sizes; the “average” woman wears a size 16 to 18. The value of the men’s plus-size market is estimated at $1 billion. It’s not a niche market; this is a huge group of Americans who are being ignored and marginalized. Being fat makes you hypervisible — literally, people are more likely to notice my body — and also serves as an excuse for people to keep ignoring you.
When a brand releases merch, they get an onslaught of positive press, but it’s hard to imagine these happy fast-food merch moments happening even 10 years ago. Fast food has been an American villain for a long time. It was implicitly and explicitly blamed for rising rates of “obesity,” especially “childhood obesity,” beginning at the turn of the century. Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 documentary Super Size Me, in which he ate McDonald’s three times a day for a month and gained weight, was used as proof that fast food was dangerously unhealthy. Meanwhile, magazines featured sensationalized covers about the obesity epidemic. In 2008, Time magazine lamented “our super-sized kids,” while a Newsweek cover in May 2012 featured a baby holding a pack of french fries with the headline: “When I Grow Up, I’m Going to Weigh 300 Lbs. Help!” The connection between fast food and fat people was clear: Even the proudly liberal and aggressively friendly sitcom Parks and Recreation featured fatphobic jokes about how fat Pawnee residents couldn’t resist the siren call of Paunch Burger. (Even so, it’s worth noting that while it might not have been fashionable, fast food remained popular, with the industry bringing in around $170 billion a year throughout the aughts.)
Part of what helped change the narrative for fast-food companies were connections to thin celebrities. Chrissy Teigen and Jennifer Lawrence both used fast food to burnish their “cool girl” reputations. J. Law once even ordered McDonald’s in the middle of a red carpet interview. The Kardashian-Jenner squad has Instagrammed their love of every fast food joint from Chipotle to Popeyes, and McDonald’s has collabs with Travis Scott, BTS, and, most recently, Mariah Carey.
The fat acceptance movement has also shifted American culture’s understanding of fast food. Fat activists and eating disorder educators have been trying to get Americans to give up diet culture for a long time. Diet culture preaches that some foods are “good,” while others are “bad.” Fat acceptance teaches that all food is good food, because it nourishes us and we enjoy it. Listening to your body and what it wants is better than judging yourself for craving a McFlurry — or judging others for the same. There’s now growing acceptance that junk food hasn’t caused the “obesity epidemic,” which has certainly helped these brands. (In fact, many aReddit commenterhas wonderedif the fast-food lobby isn’t actively funding fat activists.) The same thing has happened in food media, where thin cooks and chefs embrace fat and carbohydrates in ways that would have been verboten a decade or two ago.
But, as often happens in fat acceptance spaces, this radical, anti-diet message has been watered down. Just as fat acceptance turned into “body positive” influencers posting Instagram photos where they have one tiny roll of belly fat, this call to end diet culture has turned into acceptance of wanting fast food or junk food — as long as the person desiring it is thin. There’s nothing progressive about thin people enjoying this food. Allowing fat people the same opportunity would be. Fast food companies are benefiting from diluted fat politics, all while further stigmatizing fat people through erasure.
The message from the food world is clear: It’s okay to love food, to use full-fat milk and delicious oil and real sugar to make something tasty; it’s okay to love Big Macs and animal-style fries and Crunchwrap Supremes — as long as you’re not fat. For a food brand to be associated with fat people would be anywhere from inconvenient to disastrous. But when fat people are excluded from food spaces, it shows how vapid the food world can be. The focus isn’t on food, but on aesthetics. In this ecosystem, only thin people have earned the right to enjoy a juicy cheeseburger or a decadent cake; to exclude fat people, to make them invisible within the food world, is to reinforce that they deserve invisibility.
I have such warm memories around eating my mom’s cookies on Christmas, of going through the Wendy’s drive-thru with my dad, of getting Dunkin’ iced coffees with my best friends. To marry my love of food and my passion for fashion at once would be great. And then I wonder if I, as a fat person, would be safe wearing a McDonald’s shirt anyway. Would I want to be seen in public in a Krispy Kreme hoodie? Could I wear a Panera “Soup” bathing suit to the beach and not fear that someone would harass me for it? Or would loudly claiming a love of fast food just put a target on my back? I can’t really find out.
Victoria Edelis a writer from Brooklyn, New York.Daniel Fishelis Brooklyn-based illustrator, animator, educator, and writer.
A Creamy, Spicy Pasta Recipe Made With Shin Ramyun Seasoning
December 20, 2021
Admin
0 Comments
Louiie Victa/Eater
Inspired by recipes that add milk instead of water to Shin Ramyun, I decided to try something similar with pasta
One of my most prized home decor elements is my instant noodle shelf, its contents displayed just like what you would see in a convenience store. It takes over a whole section of my bookshelf and is always stocked with at least four to five different instant noodles, from spicy Korean ramyun to tart Thai noodles.
It’s hard to pick my favorites, but I always end up reaching for Shin-Ramyun, a brand that for me is attached to nostalgia. Growing up, I could often be found slurping squiggly Shin Ramyun noodles as a treat, with a glass of milk on the side. Whenever the spice hit my throat, I chased it with the cold milk, taming the heat of the savory, flavorful broth.
Pairing dairy with spicy ingredients isn’t unusual for me; it’s a combination that I find exciting. But I recently noticed that my Instagram feed has been flooded with recipes that add milk instead of water to Shin Ramyun, creating an orange broth reminiscent of vodka sauce. Like many milk-based pasta sauces, it thickens slightly as it simmers, beautifully coating the noodles. You end up with a creamy, slightly less spicy sauce that still has plenty of heat and tang.
The delicious flavor profile inspired me to try to create something similar with pasta. Instead of relying solely on Shin Ramyun seasonings, I also used gochujang, tomato paste, soy sauce, and rice wine vinegar. Mixing gochujang and tomato paste deepens the color of the sauce, and the gochujang adds extra heat while the tomato paste provides a subtle sweetness, especially when it’s caramelized. The soy sauce contributes another layer of umami, and the acid from the rice wine vinegar keeps the rich sauce balanced.
The sauce also calls for heavy cream and milk, making the final result extra-velvety and glossy. You can use any pasta shape for the recipe, but I find rigatoni to be ideal since its hollow tubes really soak up the sauce. Because the recipe only calls for Shin Ramyun seasonings, you can either break apart the unused noodles and eat them like a snack or sprinkle pieces of them across the pasta as a textural garnish. And, of course, you can forego pasta altogether and use Shin Ramyun noodles instead.
This weeknight-friendly recipe has been in my rotation for weeks now. I’ve been experimenting with different variations by adding proteins like chicken and shrimp, and even chewy rice cakes to make it extra hearty. If you have any Shin Ramyun — or any other spicy Korean ramyun noodles — sitting on your shelf, give it a try. I bet it will end up in your rotation, too.
Shin Ramen Cream Pasta
Serves 3-4
Ingredients:
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 onion, sliced
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1/2 tablespoon gochujang
1 cup milk
½ cup heavy cream
1 pack Shin-ramen soup base seasoning (or any types of spicy ramen seasonings)
1 pack Shin-ramen vegetable mix
½ to ¾ cup any cheese, from grated Parmesan cheese to shredded cheddar
8 ounces dry rigatoni, or pasta shape of choice
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon rice wine vinegar
Furikake for garnish (optional)
Instructions:
Step 1: Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.
Step 2: In a large saucepan or Dutch oven, melt the butter over medium heat and add the sliced onions, cooking until they become translucent, 2-3 minutes. Season the onions with salt and pepper.
Step 3: Add the chopped garlic, tomato paste, and gochujang and continue to cook for another minute. If the tomato paste and gochujang start to stick to the bottom of the pan in places, reduce the heat to prevent burning.
Step 4: Add the milk and heavy cream and bring the sauce to a simmer. Once the liquids bubble up, add the ramen soup seasonings and vegetable mix. Add the cheese and stir to get everything mixed, and let the sauce simmer for a few minutes until it thickens slightly. Turn off the heat
Step 5: Cook the pasta in boiling water to al dente. Drain, making sure to reserve a little bit of the pasta water in case you need to thin out the sauce.
Step 6: Drain the pasta, then toss it in the ramen cream sauce with soy sauce and rice wine vinegar. Continue to stir until the sauce fully coats the pasta. Garnish with the furikake if desired and serve immediately.
Louiie Victais a chef, recipe developer, food photographer, and stylist living in Las Vegas. Recipe tested by Louiie Victa
TikTok Kitchen will bring the internet’s most viral recipes to your door
On the day that TikTok is making headlines for uhh other reasons, the platform has also announced that you no longer have to cook feta pasta yourself. The video-sharing platform has partnered with Virtual Dining Concepts, the brand behind MrBeast Burger, to launch the delivery-only TikTok Kitchen. Quick, get a time machine and say “TikTok Ghost Kitchen” to yourself in 2018 and see if you can understand what you’re talking about.
Virtual Dining Concepts, which is run by Robert Earl, the restaurateur behind Planet Hollywood and Buca Di Beppo, said the menu of TikTok Kitchen will feature some of the platform’s most viral recipes. Though it didn’t specify what would be on the “ever changing” menu, a press image features corn ribs and pasta chips, and other viral recipes include Jenni Häyrinen’s oven-baked feta pasta, dalgona coffee, cloud bread, pesto eggs, and a salmon rice bowl from Emily Mariko.
TikTok Kitchen will have 300 locations to begin with, with a goal of 1,000 by the end of 2022. It will operate in a ghost kitchen structure, with the food being cooked in the kitchens of Earl’s brick-and-mortar restaurants, and available only via delivery. According to Bloomberg, “TikTok said it would devote its profits from the restaurants to the creators of the menu dishes and to support promising culinary talents on the platform.” Which raises even more questions.
“It isn’t clear how TikTok will determine the authorship of certain viral dishes — which sometimes belong to more than one person — or what revenue it expects to generate and distribute,” writes Bloomberg. After all, many people have probably thought of combining eggs and pesto. Some recipes, like the feta pasta, have a clear author. But for those that have murkier origins, TikTok and Virtual Dining Concepts could have a harder time. They may wind up relying on the fact that a recipe can’t be copyrighted, which is true, but lifting someone’s labor and creativity and pretending it came out of nowhere doesn’t have to be illegal to be a dick move.
TikTok viral recipes have also become notorious for smoothing over any cultural origins of dishes, favoring fusion dishes that appeal to a “mass” audience, and creators that fit narrow beauty standards. At Food & Wine, Reina Gascon-Lopez describes food TikTok as “a constant flurry of videos with white hands often preparing and cooking non-white foods, white hands plating the food, and a white person (often a woman) smiling and eating on camera. What we don’t see behind the multicultural dishes shared? The brown hands that spice and braise beautiful and indigenous ingredients to make savory and filling curries. The Black hands that create a delicious and culturally significant recipe like soup joumou. The brown hands that introduced corn, tacos, and quesadillas to the entire world.”
Then there’s the strange fact that these are not just viral dishes, but recipes. The whole point of cooking TikTok — and the whole reason why it exploded as a pandemic forced us inside — is easy, visual guides for how to make things at home. Recipes go viral because they make something that looks delicious feel manageable. And sure, being able to order feta pasta is a great option when you can’t make it because your grocery store is out of feta because everyone else is making feta pasta but you see the spiral that leaves us in, right? It’s great to end the year not even knowing what a restaurant is anymore.
0 comments: