Plus, the city announces Takeout Chicago to encourage carryout orders during the pandemic

Le Dix-Sept Patisserie founder Michelle Hernandez fuses her French training with her Guamanian and Mexican heritage

Picture a cake. It’s frosted or iced, isn’t it? Often, that’s the best part. And more often than not when we’re thinking about frosted cakes — the ones coated in a thick and creamy outside layer — we’re imagining a particular style of frosting that’s often flying around the Great British Bake Off tent: buttercream.

Invented in the 1950s, there are six styles of buttercream that bakers know and love, or if you’re a contestant on GBBO, perhaps fear: American, Swiss, Italian, French, German, and pudding-style. American buttercream is considered the easiest among the bunch to attempt, made simply by creaming butter with confectioners’ sugar until the two become spreadable. Adding vanilla extract is very common here too.

From there, things get slightly more involved. The remaining five styles all start with a base before butter is added in. For Swiss and Italian, it’s a meringue base using egg whites and sugar (it’s each country’s style of meringue that makes them different — in France, the base uses whole eggs and eggs yolks; in Germany, the base is a pastry cream).

Swiss buttercream is the favorite of Michelle Hernandez, a Bay Area baker and the founder of custom cake business Le Dix-Sept Patisserie, which opened its first official storefront last month. For Hernandez, Swiss buttercream is the ideal choice when building a layered cake, since its meringue base makes for a fairly light texture that’s easy to spread and layer with; it’s also great to work with when using decorative tools like scrapers. A bonus: Hernandez loves to incorporate bright and fun colors to her cakes, which are inspired by her Guamanian and Mexican heritage, and Swiss buttercream’s pale hue makes it easy to add color.

For those looking to master cake decorating, Hernandez recommends starting with her Swiss buttercream recipe (which you can find below) as well as a few favorite pastry tools: a revolving cake stand ($15), a standard ruler, disposable piping bags ($33 for 100), a mini strainer ($9), and a stainless steel pastry scraper ($10), plus decorative scrapers ($11.55).

Le Dix-Sept Swiss Buttercream

Ingredients:
454 grams egg whites, preferably at room temperature
800 grams sugar
10 grams salt
900 grams unsalted butter, cubed and preferably chilled

Step 1: Whisk together the egg whites, sugar, and salt in a large bowl using a hand mixer or a stand mixer.

Step 2: Make a bain-marie using simmering water. Place the mixing bowl inside and whisk constantly until the mixture comes to 161 degrees and the sugar is dissolved, approximately 8 minutes.

Step 3: Remove from heat and beat the mixture with the whisk attachment until firm, stiff peaks form.

Step 4: Gradually add the cubed butter a few tablespoons at a time and continue whisking until all the butter has been incorporated and the mixture is silky and smooth, about 10 minutes.

Plus, Starbucks is giving away reusable holiday cups, and more news to start your day

Land O’ Lakes says sales are up even compared to a “normal” year

The dairy industry has been facing numerous challenges recently. Americans are increasingly turning to alternative, plant-based milks, and with the pandemic, restaurants aren’t buying cheese like they used to. But butter producers seem to be doing fine, thanks to everyone who is channeling their anxiety into baking. Land O’ Lakes said in a statement that net earnings were way up this year, and that it “expects butter sales to reach 275 million to 300 million pounds in 2020, an increase of more than 20% from a normal year.”

Land O’ Lakes typically stores butter made over the summer, the slowest baking season, for the holidays, but this year Americans have baked right on through the heat, because literally what else were we doing? Butter does have an edge though. As Fooddive writes, “The ingredient has benefited from clean-label trends as well as fad diets like keto, which require high fat intake. Butter also has gained ground as shoppers avoid processed alternatives like margarine.” So if it helps thinking that baking that extra snacking cake is saving the American dairy industry, all the more reason to go for it.

And in other news...

• Starbucks’ red holiday cups are returning on Friday, and the chain is also giving away reusable versions. You can’t actually use the reusable cups at a Starbucks location right now, but if you show up with one, they’ll give you a 10-cent discount on your paper cup drink. [BI]
• Some Panera locations are testing out beer, wine, and hard seltzer. [RB]
• Chipotle is closing some locations, and limiting hours at others, because so many of its employees are contracting COVID-19. [BQ]
• A crate of satsuma mandarin oranges sold for $9,600 in Japan to an as-yet unidentified bidder. Some inspirational pandemic shopping right there. [CNN]
• Did we need an official report to tell us Americans were mainlining ice cream and alcohol while watching election results? [CNN]
• Even though fast food breakfast has been disrupted because fewer people are commuting to work, Wendy’s breakfast menu remains popular. [NBC]
• Marks & Spencer is making a flaky pastry donut called a Yumnut. Yumnut! [Twitter]
• Pizza to the Polls raised $1.4 million to give out over 66,000 pizzas at poll lines across the country. [Insider]
• Waiting for Nevada like:

• All AM Intel Coverage [E]

The beloved bar welcomed about 200 voters in its first year as a polling place

Doordash, Uber, Postmates, and others poured over $218 million into the race

Plus, Whole Foods grocery truck drivers threaten to strike, and more news to start your day

The seven men will be subjected to an external investigation

Last week, the New York Times broke a story about a pattern of sexual harassment and abuse within the Court of Master Sommeliers, Americas, the non-profit that oversees the process by which wine experts can assume the coveted title of master sommelier. The court has now suspended seven men, including co-founder Fred Dame, who all hold the title of master sommelier, and who were accused of sexual harassment by women who were candidates of that title.

The seven men will be barred from participating in any court activities, but the organization stopped short of revoking their membership altogether, pending a California hearing process. Geoff Kruth, one of the leading educators in the court, resigned on Sunday, as numerous women accused him of manipulating them into sex. Matthew Citriglia was also one of the men suspended. The original Times report recounts Citriglia allegedly shutting student Alexandra Fox out of classes and training after she rejected his sexual advances.

The scandal at the Court of Master Sommeliers highlights the ongoing sexism within the wine industry. The Court issued an apology on Sunday, saying it “recognizes that it has failed its membership, our industry, and most importantly, the women who bravely shared their stories,” and that the “investigation will be led by an outside, independent firm, which will examine all allegations to the fullest extent possible.”

And in other news...

• Aurify Brands has bought Maison Kayser’s NYC locations, and plans to turn them into Le Pain Quotidiens. [NRN]
• Teamster’s Local 445 members who drive delivery trucks for Whole Foods are threatening to strike, claiming Whole Foods has failed to supply them with PPE, and hasn’t disinfected their trucks. [NYPost]
• Great British Bake Off finalist Luis Troyano has died of esophageal cancer. The show put out a statement, saying “It was a huge honour and pleasure to have him in the Bake Off Tent for Series Five. Our condolences and thoughts go out to his friends and family.” [EW]
• Cheesecake Factory is doing really well with to-go business, even as in-restaurant dining resumes. [RB]
• It’s the day after the election, do you know where the Chinese food near you is?:

• All AM Intel Coverage [E]

The flat iron is one of the most difficult to cut yet tender steaks on the animal

“Beef shoulder is not the typically most sought after part of the animal,” says butcher Brent Young. “Heavily used muscles are not usually quite as tender. But deep inside there, we have a super tender, super delicious steak.”

“Turns out the flat iron is also one of the hardest things to actually butcher,” finishes Ben Turley, the other half of Brooklyn butcher shop The Meat Hook.

The two go on to discuss how until very recently, the cow shoulder, or beef chuck, has been mainly used for burger grind or braising and roasting steaks. This is because industrial meat companies realize it takes skilled labor and extra costs to find skilled butchers who know how to seam out the flat iron, and other steaks that hide under the tough muscle of this part of the cow. But Turley and Young believe there’s a lot of value in seeking out the flat iron steak.

The duo compare the flat iron to a famously tender and expensive steak: the filet. “The flat iron is the second most tender muscle on the animal but it has so much more flavor, and is a fraction of the price,” Turley says. “The customers that come in for the first time...they think ‘I gotta get the most expensive thing, that’s going to be the best thing.’ You don’t have to...this is a better value and you’ll be super happy with it,” says Young.

The two demonstrate the quick, simple, and “foolproof” way to grill up a flat iron steak to get the best flavor.

How a canned blend of tomatoes, chiles, and spices became at million-dollar business

When Erin Smith, chef and owner of Houston’s Feges BBQ, makes queso, she does it the Texas way. She cuts a package of Velveeta cheese into half-inch cubes and adds them to a saucepan until — after the addition of peppers, spices, and tomatoes — the resulting mix is fully melted. By the time the queso is served alongside chips for dipping, it’s rich, yes, but also a bit spicy. Hints of chile pepper and tomatoes seep through the layers of cheese, thanks to a not-so-secret ingredient: a can of Rotel.

“I am a native Texan, and I lived in New York and San Francisco for a few years,” Smith says. “At the time, you couldn’t find Rotel in either of those cities. I would get care packages with shipments of Rotel because it was the only way to make a proper queso. I truly believe that you just can’t make a proper queso without Rotel.”

The original Rotel was and still is a simple mix of diced tomatoes and chopped fire-roasted green chile peppers, plus minimal amounts of cilantro, citric acid, salt, and the ever-ubiquitous “natural flavors.” The marriage of chiles and peppers is stirred at the canning site into tomatoes simmering in a bit of water, and it packs heat — the branding is quick to label the taste “zesty,” with a “distinctly regional flavor.” For Sade Onadiji, Rotel was one of the essential ingredients her mother adopted when she moved to Texas from Grenada. “I only use it for nachos and queso,” Onadiji says. “It’s part of my mom’s queso recipe, which I’m sure she had to pick up in Texas, because she’s an immigrant from a country where queso isn’t a thing.”

The story of Rotel, which is now available in different spice levels and chile types, dates back to 1943. It originated in Elsa, Texas from a vegetable canner named Carl Roettele. Evolving from chile con queso in 19th century Mexico, recipes for cheese dip with various veggies in the early 1900s called for an exhausting process of roasting, peeling, and chopping chiles, then sautéing them with tomato and onions and mixing them with grated cheese. By the 1920s, this type of chile con queso was a common menu item in Texas restaurants and home kitchens. However, according to food writer Robert F. Moss, the cooking process of pepper roasting and cheese grating was exhausting, leading Texans to wonder if there was a simpler alternative.

A Mexican horticulturist named Fabian Garcia is considered the father of the Mexican food industry in the United States, according to Paul Bosland, director of New Mexico State University’s Chile Pepper Institute. In the early 20th century, Garcia invoked hybridization to create the “New Mexico No. 9,” a pepper that was a bit milder in heat, and was sized to allow for more cost-effective processing. This chile became the prototype for more commercial chile processors of both canned green chiles and dried red chiles. Merchandisers were able to scale up their production, which expanded the chile pepper’s reach and popularity across the south, including Texas.

Recognizing the penchant for tomatoes and chiles in Texas, as well as the frustration with preparing them, Roettele came up with a grand idea. “He saw how popular the combination of tomatoes and chiles were together, so one day, he just had this idea: Why not can those together?” says Rotel brand communications manager Dan Skinner. Skinner says while there are new flavors and versions of Rotel — like chipotle and chili fixin’s — the original recipe stands as a foundation. “Rotel,” a phonetic spelling of the inventor’s last name, took off.

Throughout the rest of the ’40s, Rotel became popular in the major Texas cities like Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio, finding a place in dishes like guacamole, stews, nachos, crockpot dishes, mac and cheese, and of course, queso. Numerous iterations of queso already existed throughout the south before the inception of Rotel — even inciting some friendly border wars between states — but Rotel quickly became an essential ingredient, and queso’s popularity as an essential dip for football games, family events, and other gatherings became omnipresent. Rotel began marketing itself as a queso ingredient in 1949 through a recipe for chile con queso that simply required adding the canned good to melted cheese and serving it with chips.

Similar to many other canned good companies of that time, like Van Camp’s, Dinty Dinty Moore Beef Stew, and Campbell Soup Company, after gaining hometown popularity, Rotel slowly began to spread to nearby states like Oklahoma and Arkansas in the ’40s and ’50s, inspiring a cult following of sorts in the South. Not having to dice peppers was appealing, and an inexpensive canned good that could add so much seasoning to household staples was appreciated. Between 1948 and 1958, the number of supermarkets in the United States doubled to more than 2,500 stores; though fresh ingredients were valued at the time, housewives gained a renewed appreciation for consumerism and convenience after World War II, sparking a devotion to canned goods that reached homes and neighborhood cooking competitions throughout the country, including the White House.

“In 1963, when Lady Bird Johnson was second lady, she gave Rotel its first big PR win when she listed some of her favorite Texas recipes,” Skinner says. “She had a chili recipe that she shared, and Ro-Tel was the secret ingredient.” Lady Bird’s Pedernales River Chili was served at the family ranch and the White House. Though many versions of that recipe simply called for canned tomatoes, purists have remained committed to the version that Lady Bird touted publicly, which includes the beloved ingredient in exchange for the listed whole tomatoes.

In 2005, Rotel and Velveeta, that other essential queso ingredient, became partners, allowing Rotel to reach the Northeast and Midwest. Over the last 10 years, Rotel has become nationally available at 95 percent of retail locations; it’s now available at about 82 percent of stores in the Northeast. In 2002, ConAgra Foods acquired the Rotel brand, and now, its reach is far beyond the Texas cities that first popularized the pantry item. According to financial news site 24/7 Wall St., “Original” Rotel was the fifth most sold canned canned good in the United States in 2018, with $69.1 million worth of cans sold. The “Mild” variety placed 24th, with an additional $36.4 million in sales in 2018.

According to Skinner, the flexibility of Rotel is what’s made the item so popular both in Texas and around the nation. “You can take a basic recipe you’ve done a million different ways, but then you add Rotel, and suddenly it becomes spicy mac and cheese,” he says. “I think that versatility appeals to chefs and home cooks.”

For Savannah Bock, who has roots in Georgia and South Carolina, Rotel was an essential ingredient at her home, even if she didn’t know it growing up. “My mom put it in so much: ropa vieja, stewed okra, and black beans whenever we’d have taco night,” Bock says. “I found out Rotel was that secret ingredient when I went to college and tasted it in this Velveeta queso mix — I realized that my mom had been using Rotel all along.”

But not everyone is fully committed to the can. Mexico native and Houston chef Felipe Riccio prefers making his queso — tomatoes and chiles included — from scratch. Still, he recognizes the value of pre-canned tomatoes for home cooks and chefs alike.

“Rotel is a comfort food,” he says. “I don’t think it’s a bad product, I just prefer to tweak it or use it as a base.”

In a world burdened with the ongoing effects of a global pandemic, comfort food is exactly what many home cooks are looking for. “It just has a really nice flavor that’s unique, and slightly spicy,” says Bock. “It’s really something that you have to bring to your dishes.”

For home cooks and chefs throughout the south, Rotel will likely make an experience on the football snacks table, in warm stews, and in old family recipes. Packing the harmonious blend of tomatoes and spice, Rotel — demonstrative of a beautiful marriage between convenience and flavor — will be a fall pantry essential for years to come.

Kayla Stewart is a freelance food and travel writer based in Harlem with roots in Houston, Texas.

French chefs and restaurateurs fear for more than their businesses as the country shuts down once more in response to COVID-19

If you put aside the masks, the bottles of hand sanitizer on each table, and the contact tracing forms distributed along with menus, last Wednesday looked like a normal pre-COVID -19 lunch hour at Paris’s Ibrik Kitchen, a popular Balkan canteen. Regulars filled the intimate dining room without hesitation and relished bites of chiftele and baked feta, questioning whether it might be their last restaurant meal for a while.

“See you in a month, maybe?” was the refrain from Ecaterina (Cathy) Paraschiv, owner of the 4-year-old restaurant and its sister coffee shop, as diners zipped up their coats and returned to the streets of a city once again at the mercy of the pandemic.

Later that evening, President Emmanuel Macron would address the nation and announce the next round of measures to slow the spread of the virus, which is surging across the country. Rumors and predictions had been ping-ponging between restaurant owners in industry WhatsApp groups for weeks; all the back-and-forth was stoking anxiety among Paraschiv’s peers. That anxiety was quickly replaced with resignation when their fate was revealed: a nationwide shutdown that would last at least through December 1 with only essential businesses (bakeries, pharmacies, supermarkets, and wine and tobacco shops) remaining open. And just like in March, restaurants would have less than 24 hours to prepare for the closure and to adjust for take-away business, should they even want to.

Kiran Ridley / Getty Images

“For the last three weeks, we’ve all been on edge. Part of that is due to a lack of clear communication from our politicians,” said Paraschiv from one of the banquettes in her restaurant the day after the announcement, as her staff prepared for their final day to sell off as many dishes, and even ingredients, as possible. For weeks, she had been dealing with out-of-stock products from her suppliers who were scaling back due to the rumors, disrupted deliveries, and uncertainty about how much to buy and prepare. “It’s been a war of nerves,” Paraschiv said. “On top of that, there’s the impact on our staff who understandably expect us to provide answers and protect them while us owners are questioning whether the government is really in control of the situation. Frankly, I take the news as a liberation.”

In some respects, Ibrik has been fortunate: Staff have been put back on temporary “partial unemployment,” (a government measure to prevent mass unemployment), and unlike many average-sized restaurants in France, Ibrik met the tricky conditions — based on the number of salaried workers and loss of revenue from 2019, among others — to have payroll taxes waived. There’s still the issue of rent and the ongoing construction work on Paraschiv’s forthcoming Balkan deli, a new venture slated to open in February 2021, but, she says she won’t pursue take-away or delivery. “You can’t adapt your business overnight and I don’t want to fill the pockets of the usual food delivery services,” she says, referencing Deliveroo and UberEats, both of which have been the subject of several investigations for exploiting couriers, many of whom are migrants, across Europe.

Food apps have been the source of more than just a moral dilemma in France. To many, they’re a cultural challenge to the critical role that dining and gathering around the table plays in everyday French life. With many food businesses unable or unwilling to bend to the mounting pressure of a more Anglo-style delivery culture, the shutdown only seems to amplify the tensions in France between preserving local food traditions and adapting to a modern gig economy.

Still, if the Ibrik owner appears untroubled by the unknowns of the coming months — the question of cash flow, and what the industry will look like on the other side of this round of confinement — she attributes it to a sort of mantra she repeats to herself. “Life is neither fair or unfair; we’re at the mercy of nature and there are things bigger than us,” she said. “Remembering that helps me move forward.”

Laura Vidal, sommelière and co-owner of La Mercerie, 483 miles south of Paris in Marseille, has found optimism harder to come by, a struggle exacerbated by the feeling of being jerked around in the weeks leading up to this latest lockdown. In response to rising cases in the region at the end of September, the French government forced only restaurants and bars in Marseille and nearby Aix-en-Provence to close for what was then the second time this year. The backlash, including from local municipal authorities, was immediate: Some restaurants disregarded the order and continued to operate while other owners demonstrated against the forced closure in the street.

“It’s the first time I’ve participated in a rally, but I had to,” said Vidal, who has run the Mediterranean neo-bistro with chef Harry Cummins and Julia Mitton since February 2018. “The measure felt unfair, like the government needed to pin the surge on someone so they went straight for the restaurant industry as if to say, ‘See! We’re doing something about it!,’ But at no point since deconfinement in May were there inspections conducted to ensure we were respecting all sanitary protocols. None of our peers were checked on, either.”

Marseilles’s targeted restaurant shutdown was reversed two weeks later, but the damage to local confidence had been done, leading many in the industry to perceive the measures as politically driven. And just as Vidal suspected, the industry’s October reopening was short-lived. “Right after the announcement was made, Cummins started looking at what ingredients could be transformed, pickled, or frozen, and what we could give to staff,” Vidal said. “Since we sensed this was coming, we weren’t overwhelmed with product like last time.” The restaurant is, however, beset with fixed costs and what Vidal cites as the biggest hurdle of all for her and her partners: supporting themselves.

Getty Images / Stringer

“As owners, we’re not entitled to any financial support. We didn’t pay ourselves during the months we were closed but that’s not sustainable for long,” she added. In the background, Cummins and the team can be heard cleaning the kitchen and moving bottles around to prepare for their new temporary business. To keep some cash coming in, Vidal and Cummins have begun selling wine packs and plan to partner with their various suppliers to get fruits and vegetables directly into the hands of consumers.

They’re also banking on a particularity of French culture to help them rebound. “I’ve always believed that the French treat going out to restaurants and feeding themselves as a form of self-care,” Vidal said. “I hope we can rely on them returning en masse, as they did during the summer.” While she is aware that there is no place completely free of risk from contracting the virus, including restaurants, she feels the messaging from leaders on the “problem” of dining establishments risks persuading consumers that dining out is inherently dangerous. “If the government continues to brainwash people into believing it’s at restaurants that they’ll get the coronavirus, then it’s going to be very challenging.”

For Stéphane Jégo, the fast-talking chef-owner of the 18-year-old institution L’Ami Jean, in Paris’s 7th arrondissement, the damage of this open-and-close dance may be irreversible. And it’s not just financial, but psychological, too. “This time is even more complicated than before,” says Jégo. “The government outlines health and hygiene protocols — taking out seats, distance between tables, disinfectant, masks, staff training, tracing — we bend over backwards to ensure we meet them to continue operating, and here we are, taken for fools yet again, having to recalibrate our businesses overnight.”

The restaurateur is on a short break from preparing the first batch of Jégo-to-Go orders, and I can hear the rumbling and clicking of delivery motorbikes resounding in the background. With 12 employees, down from 18 at the start of the pandemic, and an annual average revenue that puts his business just above the threshold for aid, the chef doesn’t qualify for any payroll tax relief. On top of that, he’s still waiting to receive the funds for loss of business that he lobbied for (and won) from his insurance company during the springtime shutdown.

“The government has promised entrepreneurs 10,000 euros for loss of business this time around — that covers one day for me. It’s nothing! I need to bring in 9,000 euros per day to cover costs, pay my staff, and ensure cash flow,” explains Jégo, on the verge of tears. “It was a good day in the last two months if we brought in 2,700 euros a day. To really get help, you need to be on the verge of bankruptcy. But we don’t want aid or promises, we want to work.”

According to Jégo, France’s lack of enforcement of basic health and safety measures during the summer and early fall makes the latest shutdown especially hard to swallow. Echoing Vidal, he expresses frustration with the lack of inspections and punitive action against restaurants flouting the rules. “Instead of shutting down places that disregarded protocols all along, the government struck all of us equally. But which is better: Allowing us to continue working if we adhere to strict measures and assist with tracing, or the clusters that invariably form within homes? Because I can tell you that I’ve delivered orders for groups of 10 in individual households during the curfew and that’s not any safer.”

Ultimately, Jégo is worried not only about his own circumstances but what these measures mean for the industry at large. “This isn’t just about restaurants, it’s about the whole ecosystem, about the survival of singular French know-how and a gastronomic heritage France claims they want to see protected by UNESCO,” he says. “It’s about the growers and producers that work with chefs; it impacts the dishwashers and cleaners who rely on this work and even students who work to pay their way through school.” If nothing is done, Jégo fears a total erosion of the country’s culinary legacy. “What will be left is uniformity, led by investor-backed groups and chains, delivery apps, and dark kitchens. Is that what they want for this country?”

After the last egg was fried and the final pistachio-rose cake slice served at Ibrik kitchen on Thursday, Cathy Paraschiv lowered the shutters and headed home to her husband and two young children. The next day, she and her staff would return to clean up and prepare for at least a month at home. During this lockdown, schools will remain open. Without needing to play teacher and boss this time, she hopes the next several weeks will bring her a little rest and some time to strategize. “I’m actively choosing to focus on my next project,” she says with a smile. “This isn’t the end.”

Getty Images

Lindsey Tramuta is a Paris-based writer and the author of The New Paris and The New Parisienne: The Women & Ideas Shaping Paris.

Former Requin employees allege the business began issuing irregular, and in some causes fraudulent, paychecks as the restaurant floundered

This is crisis cooking, the kind of recipe you really can’t screw up

May I humbly suggest that, on this historically high-stakes and anxiety-provoking day in the United States of America, you roll out a big ball of beef, find some scraps of cheese and a few slices of onion, and make yourself a smashed burger. It’s this particular comfort food that carried me through the first weeks of the pandemic in March, when leaving home felt more even terrifying than it does now, and all I wanted was to wrap myself in a soft blanket of American cheese and beef fat. In the months since, my eating has become a bit more regulated, and I worked some salads and the occasional green vegetable back into my diet.

Today though, I’m back where I started, wanting nothing more than to eat the kind of meal that makes me slump back with eyes closed and mouth half open. I need to double the American cheese today, and when the first burger is almost finished, I’ll slap another ball of beef into my smoking cast iron pan and have another.

Making a smashed burger is physical work; it’s a smoky mess, and for the few minutes it takes to pull the dish together, you really can’t think about anything else. That’s a perfect project for today, as far as I’m concerned. You’ll start with a big handful of ground beef, about a third of a pound, rolled into a ball and plopped into a smoking cast iron pan slicked with the smallest bit of oil — you won’t need much, you’re working with something in the realm of 80/20 lean-to-fat beef here. Using a metal spatula, maybe even standing on your tippy-toes for leverage, press the meat down, hard, until it’s a thin pancake on the griddle. The edges will crisp in mere moments, you’ll shower down a generous bit of salt and pepper, and pile a handful of thinly sliced white onion onto the patty before flipping it over. The steam from the cooking onion is enough to melt the slice of cheese (or three) you’ve put on top. And like that, lunch is done. Or dinner. Or breakfast, for that matter.

You could use a recipe as your guide, but you probably don’t need it — especially since no one can really focus long enough to read through a recipe today. Put all your weight into your hands as you press down on the beef, and feel confident that you’re doing everything right as you slip the spatula under the craggy edges and flip the meat. This is crisis cooking, the kind of recipe you really can’t screw up. There’s no medium-rare here, no need to pull out a thermometer and check temperature. You want the beef well done, the melty bits of cheese nearly burnt. You could serve it on a potato roll, a crusty piece of sourdough, or slide the meaty mess onto some lettuce and call the thing a salad.

Once you’re all done and the flame is off, there will be a thin sheen of grease coating your kitchen. But that burger will keep you full, warm, satisfied — at least physically — as you head to the polls, phone bank for one more hour, or just sit anxiously checking if election results have started to come in (I can confirm, they have not). As for cleaning up the mess, that’s a project for tomorrow.

Doing away with hard rules about how diners dress means doing away with the ability to enforce prejudice

It kicked off with sneakers. On October 23, Kaylan Colbert and her husband, William Johnson, arrived to dine at Umi Sushi in Atlanta. However, they were turned away because Johnson, who is Black, was wearing Nike Air Force 1s. Umi’s website says it has a “strictly enforced” dress code, which bars “ball caps, sneakers, athletic wear and sports jerseys,” but the couple says not only had Johnson worn those exact shoes to Umi before, but a woman at the bar, who was white, was also wearing sneakers. It escalated from there. An assistant manager told the couple the woman was wearing “dress sneakers,” while the owner, Farshid Arshid, threatened to call the police on Johnson. While Arshid has apologized and said he’d rethink the sneaker policy, there are calls to boycott Umi over racial discrimination.

“Of course owners can make their own rules and decide how they want their restaurants to be run,” Colbert told Eater Atlanta. “But if you’re not going to enforce those rules on everybody, then yes, it does become a discriminatory practice at that point.”

Similar stories go viral with semi regularity: A Baltimore restaurant denied entry to a Black child because of the dress code, while letting a similarly dressed white child sit and dine. A Detroit sports bar faced backlash for a guideline dictating that patrons not wear “ghetto gear,” among other things. “I don’t like going into places and seeing that,” said one former patron. “It felt like a modern-day ‘no colored’ sign to me.” Dress codes — particularly ones barring clothing like sneakers, hats, “athletic wear,” and Timberland boots — frequently target Black customers, while white customers are allowed to dress as they choose.

As Vice’s Jelisa Castrodale wrote in early July, dress codes “are perhaps the last ‘acceptable’ way for restaurants and bars to scrutinize and discriminate against Black patrons, and those ‘at the discretion of management’ disclaimers just serve to underline their purpose.” And yet, despite the rounds of news outrage, some restaurants still insist on implementing them, whether it be the racist dog whistle of “no athletic attire” or class signifiers like “jacket required” and “cocktail attire.” Until now, the latter category has been how a restaurant advertises that it is a place worthy of occasion, a different experience than going to a diner or a Chili’s. But restaurants are perfectly capable of using menus, setting, and price points to demonstrate how special they are without firm dress codes. With a pandemic raging across the country, and nationwide protests fighting anti-Black racism, restaurants are facing a unique opportunity to change how business is done, and an imperative to make things equitable. One small step in this direction is to abolish dress codes.

According to Reuben A. Buford May, author of Urban Nightlife: Entertaining Race, Class, and Culture in Public Space, dress codes that obviously target Black patrons go back to the 1970s, as business owners attempted to bar Black customers in ways that couldn’t be defined as segregation. However, these dress codes really began to proliferate in the early 2000s. “There’s a little bit of affluence [in the Black community], and then people can kind of try different places,” he says. “So these kinds of customs pop up as a way to slow that.” Dress codes are a tool to codify de facto segregation, keeping Black customers out of “white” businesses.

Those types of dress codes come with an air of plausible deniability, and the excuse that if a white person were to dress the same way, they too would be denied entry. But most of the time, non-Black people wind up slipping by the code. May recounts bringing two Black men, two white men, and two Latino men to nightclubs in Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston. “They were becoming frustrated, particularly the white guys, because they saw that they were dressed like their Black peers, but the Black peers were receiving greater scrutiny,” he says.

Dress codes largely rely on the discretion of staff, many of whom might be inclined to overlook some people more than others because of race or gender. It’s not that restaurants aren’t allowed to be formal, but that “who gets accommodated is based upon the manager or maitre d’ making the exception and providing the material necessary,” says May. If a jacket is required, the restaurant can decide to whom a reserve jacket will be bestowed, or whose jeans allow for bending of the rules. And the rules often get bent away from Black people.

Food writer Karon Liu also notes how easy it is for restaurants to not adhere to their own codes. Commander’s Palace in New Orleans is an old-school Creole restaurant, which lists on its website that it requires “Business Attire,” meaning that jackets are “preferred” for men, jeans are discouraged, and shorts aren’t allowed. Liu and his partner brought suits to change into for their reservation, but “what did we see when we got in? Dudes with short-sleeved polos.” While Commander’s Palace doesn’t specify long sleeves under its requirement of “collared shirts,” a golf shirt and chinos feels closer to casual than business attire.

Those codes also discriminate on the basis of gender and gender expression. As Soleil Ho wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle, the “jackets for gentlemen” requirement of some upscale restaurants can lead to discomfort and discrimination for trans, nonbinary, or gender-nonconforming customers: “When certain items are recommended or required for ‘gentlemen’ and ‘ladies,’ what do you wear when you straddle the line — when you’re a masculine-of-center nonbinary person or a trans person who struggles with passing as your gender?” Twitter user Jared B. recalls a time where he felt bouncers were using a bar’s dress code as an excuse for homophobic discrimination. In 2014, he recalls going to a reggae night at the Eighteenth Street Lounge in Washington, D.C. “I absolutely wore shorts there on other occasions and saw other people in very casual clothes there many times,” he tells Eater. But this time, dressed in pleated Brooks Brothers shorts, a button-down shirt, a bow tie, and lace-up dress shoes, he was told his particular fashion was not appropriate.

“Fashion changes a lot of the things [dress codes] supposedly ban,” says May. Even if bouncers and maitre d’s don’t intend to be malicious, they are still enforcing norms, which change depending on time and place. In the wake of the pandemic, some restaurants have developed new ways outside of dress codes to elevate the dining experience. The reservations page on Tock for Thomas Keller’s the French Laundry, which previously encouraged jackets and forbade more casual clothing, now says, “There is no dress code, please dress comfortably!” Practically, it doesn’t make business sense to set up barriers for customers at a time when many restaurants are hanging on by a thread.

Getting rid of dress codes is about more than just business savvy. Most importantly, doing away with hard rules about dress means doing away with the ability to enforce prejudice. “The most frequent justification given by owners or managers is, ‘We have a particular type of clientele that we want and we want people to be safe,’” says May. “If people continue to match danger to Black bodies,” as he puts it, what Black people wear won’t make a difference. However, retiring a restaurant dress code at least make it easier to call a racist action what it is. When there’s no dress code to hide behind, outright discrimination becomes more obvious. And if a diner is upset because they’re eating next to someone in Air Force 1s or without a jacket? Restaurants can enforce a new “mind your own business when something isn’t hurting you or others” policy, which almost everyone can get behind.

Daniel Fishel is a Black illustrator based in New York City.

Plus, Muji is making plant-based meat in Japan, and other news to start your day

Businesses board up in anticipation of potential election night activity

Restaurants, bars, and other businesses across the country are boarding up their storefronts in anticipation of civil unrest that experts say could unfold on or after election night.

In New York, iconic stores like Macy’s Saks Fifth Avenue — as well as other businesses stretching from Times Square to SoHo to Brooklyn to the Bronx — have boarded up. In Chicago, businesses along the Magnificent Mile shopping district have covered over their storefronts, and the city has snow plows and other vehicles ready to act as barriers if needed. In San Francisco, the Union Square Business Improvement District says that it expects 75 percent of its tenants to cover over their windows. A similar sight of boarded-up storefronts can be seen in commercial areas of Boston, Los Angeles, D.C., and other cities.

The demand is such that some stores have run low on plywood, and construction and security companies hired to secure storefronts say that they’ve had to scramble to find larger quantities of material, CBS News reports. Some retailers say they have also added extra security personnel.

No matter the outcome of the election, there are bound to be people angry with the result, especially given years of increasing polarization. Experts tell Vox that a summer of mobilization — including, on the left, largely peaceful protests against police brutality that sometimes escalated into unrest, and on the right, rallies against pandemic lockdown measures, including an instance of armed protesters entering Michigan’s state Capitol building — has made people more likely to demonstrate if their candidate loses.

And in other news…

• Minimalist Japanese home goods purveyor Muji is selling its own plant-based meat made from soybeans (currently only available in Japan). [Fast Company]
• Inside the Pennsylvania bakery whose cookie tallies have predicted the last three presidential elections. [Vogue]
• In response to another discrimination lawsuit that Black franchisees have recently filed against McDonald’s, the fast-food company accused the two franchisees leading the suit of mismanaging their restaurants. [NRN]
• Mike Isabella — of Top Chef and D.C. restaurant fame — faces a lawsuit filed by a group of former employees claiming that Isabella and other managers of Requin, a restaurant that closed in 2018, owe them lost wages and damages. [WaPo]
• Searches for election cake, a centuries-old recipe that has faded into obscurity, have increased over the past few days. [NYT]
• What happens to cities when restaurants close? [NYT]

• All AM Intel Coverage [E]

And they’re getting some help from [checks notes] Jägermeister?!

After months of barely holding on, America’s few remaining lesbian bars have found an unlikely patron in the German digestif best known for being dropped in beer and chugged by frat boys. As a part of its larger “Save The Night” campaign, Jägermeister has partnered with an organization called the Lesbian Bar Project to raise funds for 15 lesbian bars across the country. The campaign launched with a short video narrated by Lea DeLaria (of Orange is the New Black fame) that covers the broad strokes of why these bars matter, and how many have already been lost, in conjunction with a 30-day donation drive for the month of November.

Pandemic lockdowns and closures have decimated wide swaths of the bar industry, but few are more vulnerable than lesbian bars. Decades of rising urban rents, lack of capital, and cultural shifts have winnowed their number down to as little as 16 locales, even as these bars serve as essential community hubs for queer women, nonbinary people, trans men, and others who feel more at home in those spaces than in a gay-male-centric one. In June, I spoke with lesbian bar owners around the country who described maxing out credit cards and skipping rent hoping to keep their establishments afloat until bars could open again.

This moment of crisis has connected lesbian bar owners with each other in a more meaningful way, and they began to think of themselves as one big, threatened group, rather than trying to survive on their own. For months, the bars have been supporting each other on social media and sharing strategies. Now, the Lesbian Bar Project aims to boost the 15 participating bars. The money raised this November will be split evenly between them. The short film’s co-directors, Erica Rose and Elina Street, are also developing a documentary series about the history of these bars. Through a representative, Rose and Street say, “It started with a phone call between us back in April. As filmmakers our industry was shut down and we had nothing but time to think about our lives pre-pandemic. We were reminiscing about the last time we had met in person, which was at the Lesbian Bar Ginger’s in Brooklyn. That was our last moment before lockdown, our last time inside a bar. When it came to our attention that lesbian bars were disappearing at a staggering rate, we knew we had to act fast and put our filmmaking skills to good use.”

Julie Mabry, who owns Pearl Bar in Houston, says thanks to a generous GoFundMe campaign that raised over $40,000 and a preservation grant from Showtime and HRC, her business is surviving, and she will donate her share of the proceeds to bars with greater need. But she is enthusiastically participating in the campaign and documentary because she knows how essential it is to keep these businesses alive. “Lesbian bars are hard to open and hard to maintain,” she says. “I don’t know when or if another bar will open. I don’t want to see any more bars close.”

This week on Eater’s Digest, Silver Apricot’s Emmeline Zhao talks al fresco hospitality

These days, it’s hard to know what you’re going to get when dining outdoors. Will you be eating out of take-out containers with plastic cutlery? Ordering at a window for counter service? Sit down service but ordering through an app? Or an as-close-as-possible simulacrum of the Before Times fine dining experience, complete with table service, pricey glassware, mints and tampons in the bathroom, and purse (or mask!) hooks?

This week on Eater’s Digest, Emmeline Zhao, partner and sommelier at upscale West Village newcomer Silver Apricot discusses how her team translates the tenets of fine dining to the unpredictable and uncomfortable confines of the outdoor dining environment (in ways that don’t break her budget).

Then, Amanda and Dan talk the latest restrictions, drama in some Facebook cooking communities, and a mean-spirited marketing campaign from Burger King.

Listen and subscribe to Eater’s Digest on Apple Podcasts.

Plus, Kendall Jenner blows out her birthday candles during a pandemic, and more news to start your day

Friendly’s files for bankruptcy a second time, plans to sell restaurants to investor group

Friendly’s, the East Coast restaurant chain known for its ice cream and diner fare, has filed for voluntary bankruptcy amid declining revenue due to the pandemic.

“Over the last two years, Friendly’s has made important strides toward reinvigorating our beloved brand in the face of shifting demographics, increased competition, and rising costs,” Friendly’s CEO George Michael said in a press release. “Unfortunately, like many restaurant businesses, our progress was suddenly interrupted by the catastrophic impact of COVID-19, which caused a decline in revenue as dine-in operations ceased for months and re-opened with limited capacity.”

The 85-year-old chain intends to sell its assets to Amici Partners Group, an investor group affiliated with Brix Holdings, the restaurant company behind Red Mango, Smoothie Factory, and other franchises. Restaurant Business reports that the selling price will fall just under $2 million. Friendly’s boasted more than 500 locations a decade ago, before it first filed for bankruptcy in 2011; currently, the chain is down to 130. Nearly all of those locations are expected to remain open as the bankruptcy and sale proceedings continue; afterward, Amici expects to retain employees at corporate-owned restaurants, per the release.

And in other news…

• The company that owns Burger King, Popeyes, and Tim Hortons plans to equip 10,000 of its restaurants with “predictive selling” drive-thru screens, which will use a variety of factors to personalize menu options and promotions. [NY Daily News]
• The deal between Inspire Brands and Dunkin’ Brands, rumors of which were previously reported, has gone through for approximately $11.3 billion, creating one of the world’s largest restaurant companies as a result. [NRN]
• Nestlé has acquired NYC-based subscription meal service Freshly for up to $1.5 billion. [TechCrunch]
• Costco is the latest retailer to drop Chaokoh coconut milk following a PETA report accusing Chaokoh’s Thai suppliers of using monkeys as forced labor. The maker of the milk, Theppadungporn Coconut Co., denies the allegations. [USA Today]
• Growing huge vegetables is the new windowsill scallions of pandemic gardening. [Modern Farmer]
• Eating at Joe Biden’s favorite hometown restaurants. [F&W]
• Actual Halloween horror:

• All AM Intel Coverage [E]

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced new measures in England to counter the spread of COVID-19; they will be in place for at least one month

The eel gets the yakitori treatment right on the beach

“For as long as I’ve lived in Oregon, you generally assume the further you can cast out here, the better chance you have of catching a fish,” says Portland-based chef Jacob Harth, as he stands on a jetty in shallow water in Netarts Bay, off the coast of Oregon. “But in reality, you’re just standing right on top of them a lot of the time.” He’s making the point to show how reasonably easy it is to catch a monkeyface eel with a poke pole . — they’re generally quite close to the longer, walkable jetties.

The eel can breathe air as well as survive underwater, and it gets its name from its face, which resembles a monkey. “With this eel, it’s not any more or less intimidating than any other fish,” Harth says. “It’s a little bit uglier, but as far as the flavor goes, it’s just as delicious as anything else you can get out of the ocean.”

After the chef catches a few, he cleans and fillets the eels by cutting them right along the spine. He then skewers them, and grills them over hot charcoal on his yakitori grill. Once the skin on the eel is crispy, Harth brushes it with a glaze made from reduced fish stock, tamari, and fish sauce. “The flavor is so sweet, so clean, still has all that fat in there,” Harth says. “And has delicious crispy skin.”

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

This post originally appeared on October 31, 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.

Oftentimes, when we talk about why there aren’t more members of marginalized groups in positions of power, we point to a surfeit of societal factors. They are saddled with more domestic responsibilities due to gender norms or debt due to redlining and the theft of generational wealth. They are subject to unconscious (or explicit) bias. They don’t have access to the right circles to raise capital or have the right shorthand. There are myriad subtle and powerful ways a discriminatory society can grind away at gains toward equality.

What’s been so compelling about stories coming out of the #metoo movement and the ongoing reckoning over racism in our country and in the restaurant industry in particular is how they’ve shone a light on those generalized forces at play but also on absolutely bonkers undeniable abuse people confront on a regular basis.

This week’s example comes from Julia Moskin’s investigation into the highest echelons of the wine world, where women were subject to harassment, assault, bullying, and debasement to get coveted training and certification. This isn’t an issue of judges going easier on men than women because they identify with or like them. It’s an issue of retaliating against women who wouldn’t sleep with them.

Last week’s example was Chris Crowley’s look at the culture at Mission Chinese, where a Black dishwasher was burned with hot oil and regularly called ‘boy.’

It’s beyond cliche but I can’t help but think of that famous Sarah Moore Grimké quote (often attributed to the late, great RBG): “I ask no favors for my sex ... All I ask of our brethren is that they will take their feet from off our necks.” I know of so many panels and think pieces about why there weren’t more female Master Sommeliers and the answer was blindingly clear and depressingly obvious.

News

Sabine [Official Photo]

— This week, Chicago and its surrounding suburbs paused indoor dining (much to the chagrin of the city’s mayor); Newark added an 8 p.m. curfew to indoor dining, San Francisco paused plans to raise capacity limits, and Michigan is demanding restaurant and bars collect information from customers for contact tracing. And in Europe, France, Germany, Belgium, and others limited bar and restaurant operations.

— Chef and restaurateur Andy Ricker officially pulled the plug on his Pok Pok restaurant group, partially because of the pandemic and partially because he didn’t like how hard it had gotten over the last half decade, saying his work was “more and more about logistics and putting out fires, less and less about hospitality and and vision.”

— Openings: Maison Nico, an epicerie with gorgeous pastries and terrines, in San Francisco; Locust, a surprisingly named dumpling and kakigori destination from big name local chef Trevor Moran, in Nashville; Hiyakawa, a stylish omakase spot from a Morimoto alum, in Miami; Kol, an eagerly anticipated debut from Noma Mexico’s Santiago Lastra, in London; and El Oso, a Mexican pop-up looking for a permanent spot, in Chicago.

— Also opening is Sabine, which looks like a good option for Seattleites who want to try the famous ricotta and jam brioche toast, rugbrod toast, crispy rice salad, and sorrel pesto rice bowl of LA’s Sqirl without getting on a plane.

— Minneapolis’ alt-weekly paper City Pages, home to a variety of talented food writers and critics over the years, ceased publication after 41 years in business.

— How a potential banning of WeChat in the U.S. could impact immigrant-run businesses in New York that rely on the platform as a ”fan-filled Facebook page, a commission-free Seamless, a long-distance Groupon, and a three-person Zendesk rolled into one.”

Features and More

Gary He/Eater

— The surprisingly compelling history (and extinction in some regions and democratization in others) of finger bowls.

— What the closing of Dialogue and other high-end spots means for the future of fine dining in Los Angeles.

— How to make your home as cool-looking as Portland’s Gado Gado.

— Review: I loved New York’s Thai Diner when it opened, and I love its current iteration. Ryan Sutton perfectly captures how it’s adapted to this moment.

— A sweet and sad essay about how foraging for food during the pandemic reminds one home cook of foraging for food as a homeless teen.

— Meghan McCarron embeds with the wonderful charity No Us Without You, which feeds 1,300 undocumented restaurant workers and their families around LA.

— Let’s all be a little less snobby about frozen food. It’s fine.

— The baker who is making a pie for each American state, a project that is way more complicated than you might imagine.

Off Eater

• Powerful first-person accounts of what it’s been like to be unemployed through the pandemic. [NYT]
• Mourning the restaurants that we never made it to. [Grub Street]
• AOC now, AOC forever. [VF]
• What does a home and homeownership mean and look like now that we spend so much damn time in them? [Vox.com]