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

This post originally appeared on September 26, 2020 in Amanda Kludt’s newsletter “From the Editor,” a roundup of the most vital news and stories in the food world each week. Read the archives and subscribe now.

I’ve probably asked this before but, I’m curious how you’re feeling about going to restaurants right now and how that opinion has evolved over the course of the summer. We’ve polled readers, I ask my friends, I talk to my editors in two dozen cities across the country and in the UK, and it seems hard to come to a consensus. (Yet people seem, as is the case with so much these days, very sure in their own convictions about what is right.)

Some people will only do takeout, some only counter service. Some will go to a waiter service restaurant. Some will eat indoors warily, some happily. Some will speak about it openly, post about it readily. Some will sneak in visits, hoping their friends don’t know. The restaurateurs I’ve spoken with seem just as divided, with some ready and willing to open full throttle and others holding out or taking baby steps.

It impacts coverage because we want to thread the needle of providing the information, recommendations, and guidance people are looking for while providing context around safety and risk.

If you have thoughts, I’m amanda@eater.com.

On Eater

— Closures: Lawry’s the Prime Rib in Chicago; Bellwether in Los Angeles; The Shed at Glenwood in Atlanta; and lauded Chinese destination Kym’s in London.

— Openings: a brick and mortar location of Filipino food truck Carabao in Austin; a pretty serious-looking taqueria called Umbrella Taco, Post Script, a restaurant in a tented parking lot, and Bull & Butterfly, a steakhouse inspired by the flavors up and down the coast of California, in LA; Lucky Day, a mezcal bar draped in 15,000 LED lights, in Vegas; Ostia, a Mediterranean restaurant from a chef leaving Jonathan Waxman’s empire, in Houston; Joomak, a cool playful Korean pop-up restaurant, in New York; popular Portland brewery Great Notion’s first Seattle outpost; Nopalito, a restaurant serving vegetarian tortas, in Montreal; and Olin, an American-Mediterranean brasserie, in Detroit.

— New York’s outdoor dining can continue indefinitely, and Chicago released its new rules for fall and winter outdoor dining (though restaurants are scrambling for heaters). Meanwhile, Indiana and Florida have opened at 100% capacity indoors. In both London and Seattle, bar and restaurant owners are fighting their cities’ 10 pm last calls.

Jakob Layman

— If you want to know how Eater readers are feeling about dining indoors, check out these surveys in SF, Portland, and New York.

— A judge issued an emergency “no contact” order against a big name chef and restaurant owner in Chicago because of his alleged deranged retaliation campaign against a staffer who publicly complained about the workplace environment he fostered.

Post Script, a new restaurant in a parking lot in Venice, CA | Jakob Layman

— Surveying the interesting and innovative San Francisco fine dining landscape.

— I may or may not have demanded the Eater NY staff write a guide to Instagram bakeries in town, because I’ve become enamored with certain outfits I’ve tried.

— Michigan’s Upper Peninsula had a record summer due to increased domestic tourism.

— The move: Pen pals but for snacks.

— To watch: How a former rock star opened the first bibimbap spot on the French Riviera.

Off Eater

• A visual history of Mexican restaurants in New York City. [Stony Brook University]
• The downside of the pet-nat trend is it’s overshadowing the wines that inspired the style in the first place. [Punch]
• I hate karaoke but love Thrillist’s ode to it. [Thrillist]
• Gabriela Cámara made this year’s TIME 100 list. [TIME]
• Big brands are helping Daniel Boulud reopen his upscale Upper East Side restaurant, so he’ll be name-checking his sponsors on the menu. [Bloomberg]
• Every relationship has a beverage abandoner. [MEL]

Plus, Cream of Wheat will no longer have its Black chef mascot after considering racist connotations, and more news to start your day

Americans can have a little pumpkin spice mac and cheese, as a treat

Americans have a lot to be jealous of Canadians for these days: Kinder eggs, healthcare, a COVID-19 response that doesn’t amount to a death cult. But one thing that Americans will no longer have to envy their northern neighbors for is Kraft’s pumpkin spice mac and cheese, which is now available to people in the U.S. after originally only being offered to Kraft fans in Canada.

The fall-themed monstrosity was created as part of a promotion in Canada — where Kraft mac and cheese is such a staple that Kraft Dinner is simply known as “KD” — in which 1,000 people will be chosen to try it for free. Late last week, the brand decided to bring the promotion stateside, as well, announcing that U.S. residents can tweet by September 29 for the chance to win the limited-edition product.

“After seeing the huge response Pumpkin Spice Mac & Cheese received north of the border, and even hearing some heated debates about it down here, we had to bring it to the U.S. for Americans to try,” a Kraft representative told Delish. “Who knows? Maybe it could become a new North American fall favorite.”

Sure, maybe!!!

And in other news…

• Cream of Wheat is removing the image of a Black chef from its packaging, after announcing in June that it would be reviewing its branding in light of anti-racism protests and movements across the country. [Food Dive]
• Starting this week, Maryland is the first state to ban the use of styrofoam products — including cups, plates, containers, and trays — for carryout and food services. [CNN]
• Winemakers along the West Coast have to decide whether to test their grapes for smoke contamination or to refrain from producing wine this year. [WaPo]
• IHOP has a new “IHOPPY” happy hour with discounted food from 2-8 p.m. [USA Today]
• U.S. food insecurity by the numbers. [NPR]
• A Spanish winery was flooded with 50,000 liters of red wine spilling forth from a busted tank, as captured in a viral video. [News.com.au]

• All AM Intel Coverage [E]

Without any Restaurant and Chef Awards, a series of presentations hammered home the desire to keep restaurants “Open for Good”

The 2020 James Beard Awards were effectively cancelled, in that there was no gala event and not even a whittling down of the Restaurant and Chef Awards finalists to a list of winners. (For a full rundown of a truly confusing year for the James Beard Foundation, consult this timeline.) Instead, the September 25 live Twitter broadcast was held to honor the nominees and previous award winners in categories like Leadership, Lifetime Achievement, and America’s Classics.

The evening began with an address from James Beard Foundation CEO Clare Reichenbach, who acknowledged the unusual circumstances of the evening: “We recognize this shift is a disappointment to many,” she noted, before outlining the Foundation’s efforts to support the restaurant industry in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. “It is our collective duty to do all we can to get restaurants through this,” she said. Reichenbach also announced that the 2021 James Beard Awards will look different — in lieu of a Restaurant and Chef Awards, the Foundation is hoping for an in-person event that will “honor people in our community who have risen to the challenge of this moment.”

Reichenbach handed off the ceremony to its host, Chicago media personality Ji Suk Yi, who stood on a real stage, as she made it clear that the Foundation needed to fulfill its contract with the Chicago tourism board. It was a recurring theme: Throughout the night, Yi highlighted Tweets commenting on the broadcast; they appeared on a screen behind her and many appeared to be pre-Tweeted messages from sponsors.

In the weeks leading up to the non-ceremony this year, the James Beard Awards encountered a problem when it seemed the 2020 winners list contained no Black honorees, and the Foundation’s commitment to do better by this community was another prominent theme of the awards. Near the beginning of the broadcast, James Beard VP of community Colleen Vincent and chef Sean Sherman re-announced the Foundation’s newest initiative: the James Beard Foundation food and beverage fund for Black and indigenous Americans, which will provide grants to Black and indigenous business owners. Erick Williams of Virtue and Maya-Camille Broussard of Justice of the Pies urged the restaurant community to allow people of color to take up space. (They also contributed to a JBF meal kit of sorts that 2020 nominees received as a consolation for no gala this year.) And as she announced the recipient of the second Leadership Award of the night, Tahiirah Habibi, founder of the Hue Society, called for equality in the wine world.

The Leadership Awards winners did more to highlight the Foundation’s commitment to a more just future. In video segments, viewers learned about the work of Operation Spring Plant, La Cocina, the Come Up Project, Community to Community Development, and Abundant Seafood.

The previously announced America’s Classics award winners were also honored via video segment, and Alice Waters accepted her Design Icon award from a beautiful tiled kitchen before presenting the Humanitarian Award to Zero Food Print, which received a $20,000 grant.

Missing from the broadcast: Any mention of the 2020 Restaurant Design winners, which were announced quietly earlier this week only after the New York Times reported they would be announced during the official Awards ceremony.

Questlove presented the final award of the night to Jessica B. Harris, this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award winner. The cookbook author and culinary historian once again emphasized the need for a restaurant industry that values Black and brown people who “still form the unpaid underpinnings of the industry.” She referred to this time as a “cosmic reset that is combination punishment and blessing” and acknowledged that a reset for restaurants is long past due.

The message was a natural setup for a roundtable discussion moderated by Gail Simmons and featuring D.C. chef Kwame Onwuachi; Tanya Holland, chef of Oakland’s Brown Sugar Kitchen; and Beverly Kim and Johnny Clark, owners of Chicago restaurant Parachute. The group discussed ways forward for the restaurant industry amid a pandemic and protests. Onwuachi closed out the discussion with his request for a better future, saying simply, “I want a new president.”

Throughout the broadcast, the nominees who would have been the recipients of James Beard medals appeared on screen to extoll the value of restaurants, underlining the urgent need for support if they’re to stay open.

After an awkward interlude about All-Clad, which would have sponsored the Outstanding Chef award had there been one, Reichenbach ended the tight two-hour ceremony, which was refreshing in the way it highlighted the James Beard Award winners that usually get short shrift — a good sign, perhaps, for next year’s non-awards, whatever they might be.

Disclosure: Some Vox Media staff members are part of the voting body for the James Beard Awards.

A consolation prize for no Restaurant and Chef awards doled out this year: a pretty nice-looking meal to make at home

The James Beard Awards were not their usual selves this year. There was no Chicago gala, for one, and months after that announcement, the Foundation nixed handing out its Restaurant and Chef awards altogether. Instead, the James Beard Foundation held a Twitter broadcast to honor awards winners outside the main chef and restaurant categories, like the Leadership Awards, America’s Classics awards, Design Icon, and the Humanitarian Award.

The chef and restaurant awards nominees presumably watched from home with no expectations for a win. But, they did get some acknowledgment from the foundation — each nominee received a gift bag (according to Eater’s sources, it included items like a hydro flask, chocolate, and a tote bag, among other things) and what was essentially a James Beard Award-approved meal kit.

But this wasn’t Blue Apron. According to images posted by nominees to Instagram, the three-course meal included recipes for a cream of cauliflower soup with grilled shrimp and a blackened salmon with corn succotash, both from Best Chef: Great Lakes nominee chef Erick Williams, of Virtue in Chicago, complete with a page each of instructions. It also came with a pre-assembled carrot soufflé pie from Maya-Camille Broussard of Chicago’s Justice of the Pies, plus a mini bottle from longtime sponsor San Pellegrino and a bottle of rosé (?).

It looks pretty good! Of course, unlike the home cooks of many a Blue Apron box, the professional chefs that make up a number of these meal kit recipients have the skills to do it justice.

Before:

And after:

Disclosure: Some Vox Media staff members are part of the voting body for the James Beard Awards.

Watching the bar fill up, I felt like I’d reached my breaking point. I knew I needed to do something, anything.

This is Eater Voices, where chefs, restaurateurs, writers, and industry insiders share their perspectives about the food world, tackling a range of topics through the lens of personal experience.

It was a Friday in August, about 9 p.m., and I was working one of my regular shifts as a line cook at a bar in Seattle’s University District. The bar up the street had closed a full hour before COVID-19 restrictions required it to, sending us a flood of customers. As they filed in, I felt completely overwhelmed. A couple of months earlier there had been a coronavirus outbreak in the nearby University of Washington’s Greek system. A lot of the customers coming into the bar now were wearing Greek-lettered shirts.

This wasn’t the first time this had happened, but the day before I’d run out of gloves, and when I’d told my boss he just said it was too bad and shrugged it off. So watching the bar fill up, I felt like I’d reached my breaking point. I knew I needed to do something, anything.

But I had no idea what; nobody offered information about what to do if you, as a worker, need to tell on your workplace. Not King County, not the city of Seattle, not the state of Washington. I needed to tell someone, but carefully.

I felt guilty, because I knew that my boss was hurting — he and his wife have three children they’re trying to send to college. Not having a reliable flow of customers had been really hard.

Still, I couldn’t reconcile my desire for him to do well with my concern for my own safety, and the safety of diners in the bar. Everyone can make their own decisions about whether or not they want to go out, but as an employee, I knew firsthand how poorly managed the bar’s sanitation was. When I’d run out of gloves the day before, it wasn’t the first time, and running out of soap and paper towels had also been a recurring issue. And in the dining area, night after night, groups were being seated one after the other without the table being wiped down.

Meanwhile, my boss seemed very unconcerned with whether or not he would become infected with COVID-19. His goal every night was to get as many people as possible in the door, and he often said that he’d stay open later if he could. He also said it wasn’t his business if people came in and wanted to have a good time. If all the tables were seated, he encouraged people at the door to wait for five or 10 more minutes. Our seating capacity was around 50 (and COVID restrictions halved that), but a lot of people would just crowd around, so often there would be 60 or more in the bar at a time, in very close proximity to each other. At the tables, which were limited to five seats, there were parties of six, seven, or eight. It was infuriating to see so many people drinking, yelling over the noise and loud music, eating and sharing finger foods, while I thought, “Oh my God, this is not okay.”

I had started working at the bar in June, three months after I’d lost my previous job as a host at another restaurant. I needed money, and so many people had told me what a mess it was to get unemployment; I had industry friends who waited three months to get paid. I only have a couple years of experience, so it was kind of a miracle when the bar’s owner wanted to hire me. I was surprised, but then I realized that he hired someone he could pay a low rate. He couldn’t afford to pay somebody with 10 or 20 years of experience what they deserve.

I felt very low in the bar’s hierarchy, and I believed that I should just shut up and be grateful to have a job in pandemic times. It seemed out of place to be stern about my needs. There is an order to the way that things are done: who can speak, who can make changes, who makes certain decisions. I put the hours in, but I still didn’t feel as though I had any right to speak up to the boss.

Still, I expressed my concern to him when I realized there were no gloves. He’d never provided them when he trained me, and I’d previously worked with chefs who didn’t wear them. I figured, surely, in light of the pandemic and safety and hygiene issues, that everybody would be wearing gloves and washing their hands a lot. But my boss didn’t wear gloves at all. And when I asked for them, I could tell it was a confusing request for him. “Why do you need so many gloves?” he asked. “Why are you going through them so quickly?”

He gave me a box that he had, but I went through them pretty fast. I had to be sparing with how I used them, and that didn’t make me feel particularly good. I was freaking out. I was very concerned for my health, but also about my job. I felt conflicted as an employee who was witnessing and working in unsafe conditions, but who also desperately needed to keep her job. I didn’t want to be responsible for shutting down my workplace altogether, because that’s a lot of pressure, and I felt horrible for snitching because that’s not a good look for anyone. And because I was the only employee, aside from the bar back who had been working for my boss for 30 years, I was really anxious about anonymity.

So I looked for some kind of anonymous complaint phone number, website, or email address to air my grievances with somebody who would then have the authority to come and do something. I went to the OSHA website, scrolled for a few minutes, and just panicked. I needed an actual human person to tell me what to do, to talk to someone whom I felt I could trust to not get me or my job in trouble.

If there were somebody else working there with me, maybe it would have been different. We would have had more power in that situation, and the ability to organize with coworkers. Being able to withhold our labor until we got what we needed, even if it was a freaking stupid box of gloves, would have been huge.

I ended up filing an anonymous complaint with the county health department’s online form. They asked for a name and contact information, but I didn’t fill them in. I wrote it as if I were a customer at the restaurant: “Today I came in and this and this happened, I observed this many people sitting and this kind of behavior.”

I’m not sure if anybody from the health department actually showed up. Normally, my boss would call each day I was scheduled to tell me when to come in, but the week after I filed the complaint, I mysteriously wasn’t called to come in at all.

Thankfully, a good friend who was opening a restaurant asked me the following week if I wanted to work for him. So I quit and took the job. His restaurant is doing takeout only, and I do mostly prep work. The kitchen is pristine. It’s been such a relief working there.

I drive by my old job often. Some evenings that I expect them to be open, they’re not. Other random times in the middle of the week, there are tons of people inside. I got lucky: Had it not been for my friend, I would still be working there. I’m independent; I need to pay my rent. I have nothing else.

To anyone in a similar situation, I would say to do research. Check your county, city, or state guidelines so that you can specifically point out which rules and regulations a business is violating. If you know somebody who you think can help, you need to reach out to them. Health department websites should be able to accommodate these kinds of issues.

Many of us in the industry were at some point taught to keep our heads down and defer to the authority of chefs, managers, and owners; there is a huge problem with workers not feeling like they have the authority to stand up to their bosses. In the time of COVID-19, however, there has to be a clear and efficient way for us to speak up and report problems when we see them happen. After all, if we’re responsible for serving the public, then whether we like it or not, we’re implicated in the protection of the public’s health and safety.

Miriam Wojtas is a cook and aspiring food writer based in Seattle.

It’s a concerning decision for the state, where nearly 700,000 COVID-19 cases have been documented

Following Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb’s announcement that his state will allow restaurants and bars to reopen at full capacity on September 26, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a similar lifting of restrictions in his state, as it moves today, September 25, into phase three of reopening. The full reopening of restaurants in Florida, which were previously allowed to operate at 50 percent capacity, is concerning, considering the COVID-19 pandemic is far from under control in the state. The order also allows local governments to lift the 50 percent capacity limits on bars, if they so choose.

According to data collected by the New York Times, more than 2,500 new coronavirus cases were documented in Florida on September 24, representing a five percent increase in cases over the past 14 days. The announcement of Florida’s extreme loosening of restrictions comes as the state marks almost 700,000 coronavirus cases since the beginning of the pandemic, and nearly 14,000 COVID-19-related deaths, according to the Times database.

The lifting of restrictions in Florida comes by way of an executive order issued by DeSantis. The order takes effect immediately, and strips city and county governments of the power to enforce mask-wearing mandates, shutdown restaurants, or issue fines to businesses that ignore other coronavirus-related mandates. The executive order will make it extremely difficult for city and county governments to crack down on restaurants and bars that are identified as COVID-19 hotspots. In a Friday press conference, the governor said that any local governments that do intend to enforce limited capacity measures will have to “identify what the costs of doing that are.”

That COVID-19 spreads aggressively when social distancing isn’t enforced has been well documented, and this is of particular concern at restaurants and bars where people are in close proximity to one another. A study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that “adults who tested positive for Covid-19 were approximately twice as likely to have reported dining at a restaurant in the 14 days before becoming ill than those who tested negative.” Enforcing social distancing and mindful mask-wearing greatly diminishes these risks, while lifting any and all restrictions can be closely tied to spikes in COVID-19 cases.

Florida’s rollout of reopenings has been anything but smooth. Throughout the pandemic, bars and breweries in the state closed and reopened twice due to spikes in COVID-19 cases, according to FOX 13 Tampa Bay. Those reopenings (and reclosings) took place even as the state enforced capacity limits of 50 percent. Now that all limits have been lifted for restaurants, and restaurants and bars are free to welcome crowds indoors again, there’s no telling what magnitude of case surges will come over the next several weeks.

After months of calling, writing, and protesting, the city’s restaurant owners finally have an outdoor dining plan

Walkerswood Jamaican jerk seasoning has quickly become a kitchen staple

I smear the dark brown paste on everything. I pat it onto salmon filets before I slide them into the oven and sneak it between tightly stacked leaves of cabbage layered into a steamer basket. I use my hands to massage it into Brussels sprouts, roughly chopped carrots, and broccoli florets. And every time I pull the container from my fridge, I ask myself how the hell I lived so long without a jar of jerk seasoning.

I didn’t grow up eating much Jamaican food in Oakland, California. This city, awash with some of the best Ethiopian and Eritrean, Filipino, Mexican, and Laotian food in the country, has comparatively few spots offering flavors of the Caribbean. And neither of my vegetarian Jewish parents were making a whole lot of curry chicken or braised oxtails.

My introduction to jerk chicken — its skin soaked in the flavor of sweet smoke, of Scotch bonnet peppers, allspice berries, ginger, and green onion — was during my first year of college, across the Hudson river from a New York town called Kingston. That’s where I had my first meals at Top Taste, where you’ll find the best — and more or less only — jerk chicken, curry goat, and oxtails in town. The snug restaurant, painted with wide stripes of yellow and green in the colors of the Jamaican flag, and set on the corner of a sleepy residential street, sells all sorts of groceries you can’t find elsewhere in the area: ackee, saltfish, canned callaloo and Tastee Cheese in vacuum-sealed aluminum containers.

As soon as the door swung open on my first visit four years ago, I was greeted by booming dancehall coming from a boombox propped above the entrance and the smiling faces of owners Melenda Bartley and Albert Samuel Bartley, known to a stream of friends and loyal customers as Sammy. For many, Top Taste brought familiarity and reminders of faraway homes. To me, everything about the experience was new, a welcome and deeply needed change of pace and scenery from the always-boiled, never-baked food of my college dining hall. I didn’t own a car, but whenever I could convince one of my new friends to drive me there, I was at Top Taste.

Over the years, Melenda and Sammy became friends, and their restaurant felt more like home than the cement-block dorm where I slept. I’d order from the menu scrawled on a piece of neon green cardstock on the wall, and while Melenda was filling my square plastic plate with rice and peas, stew chicken, oxtails, and plantains, I’d walk around to the restaurant’s snug concrete patio, where a plume of smoke tipped off the whole neighborhood that Sammy was making a fresh tray of jerk chicken.

That chicken was like nothing I had eaten. The meat was almost blackened by the time it absorbed the smoke, and while the skin was crisp, it gave way between my teeth. The flesh was ever so slightly past the point of juiciness, the fat and connective tissue broken down over hours of gentle cooking, so that the meat melted with each bite, mixing with starchy sweet plantains, steamed cabbage and peppers, and a dot of ketchup and scorching hot sauce.

A few months into my often twice-weekly trips to Top Taste, I asked Sammy how he made his jerk chicken. He sat down next to me with his spice-smudged apron still on, and explained the process in very matter-of-fact terms: The meat gets marinated overnight in a rich jerk seasoning blend (very, very heavy on the ginger), and the next day — rain or shine — he lights a spark under the pimento wood in his old barrel grill, caked with a thick layer of seasoning from good use, and cooks the chicken until it’s done.

I’d known as soon as Sammy first walked me through his process that this wasn’t the sort of recipe I could transcribe, fold up, and stash away for safekeeping. He’d made the dish on so many occasions that each step was second nature: an inkling that more scallion, garlic, or Scotch bonnet was needed, a sniff test confirming the salt, heat, and herbage was balanced to his liking.

When I moved to the city after leaving college, I made it a point to seek out jerk chicken whenever and wherever I could, always comparing it to the meat that came off Sammy’s grill. Some restaurants in Brooklyn had plantains more plump than the ones at Top Taste. Others had the perfect rice and peas, each grain and bean whole and separate, never mushy. Many served a jerk chicken that was good — exceptional, even. But despite following every recommendation, no one’s chicken compared to Sammy’s.

I came back to Oakland to spend the first month of shelter-in-place with my family. But like so many others who up and left cities with no real plan, a month turned into three, and then four, and now here I am, writing from my childhood home six months later. When I lived in Brooklyn, I hadn’t once tried to make jerk chicken in my own kitchen, knowing when a craving really hit — which it reliably did — I could buy an Amtrak ticket for $38 and be perched comfortably at one of Top Taste’s plastic-upholstered booths by lunch. Now, I feel pangs of sadness thinking about Sammy and Melenda and the plate of jerk chicken and rice and peas I could be eating 3,000 miles away.

But on YouTube, where I spend so much of my life now, I recently came upon Terri-Ann, a Saint Lucian home cook who walks viewers through hundreds of incredibly appealing recipes. They include pandemic classics — banana bread and dalgona coffee, our old friends — but also some favorite dishes I didn’t get a chance to peek into the kitchen and watch Sammy or Melenda make on visits to Top Taste. Terri-Ann has recipes for oxtails robed in velvety gravy, flaky golden beef patties, and, to my great satisfaction, jerk chicken. In one video showing viewers how she makes her chicken, Terri-Ann pulls out a glass jar of Walkerswood Jamaican Jerk Seasoning, a pre-blended mixture of spices and herbs which she says she swears by. She plops a generous spoonful of the deep brown mixture into a bowl of chicken drumsticks, along with a big spoonful of her herby green seasoning blend and a drop or two of browning sauce for color. I hastily switched tabs and bought three jars of the seasoning blend with expedited shipping. It wouldn’t be the same, but maybe it’d do the trick.

Since then, the Walkerswood blend has become a staple in my kitchen. The spicy mixture of scallions, Scotch bonnet, allspice, nutmeg, and plenty of thyme finds its way into more or less everything I cook. It’s notably lacking in the generous heaps of grated fresh ginger I know Sammy adds to his blend, but still, it’s excellent. I live just blocks from Minto, one of few Jamaican markets in Oakland, and I regularly stop in to add new sauces and seasoning blends to my growing pantry. I have a jar of browning sauce now, and I’ve bought as many of the hot sauces I remember seeing on the tables at Top Taste as I can find. But nothing I’ve added to my pantry since coming home comes close to my jar of jerk seasoning. In addition to using it in recipes from Terri-Ann and other Caribbean and Caribbean-American YouTubers and food bloggers, I add the paste to fried rice, to tofu, to — you get it.

The boldly flavored mixture is a perfect match for chicken, but that’s where I use it least, instead opting to put it on a thick slab of salmon or slather it on vegetables before roasting. Perhaps there’s just too much dissonance when I pair it with chicken, the bar too high to meet.

I miss Sammy’s jerk chicken like I’ve never missed food before. It’s a yearning that’s become familiar during this pandemic, for those things I know I can’t have. There is no takeout order that will meet the craving, which is as much about the environment surrounding a plate of chicken as it is about the blend of spices or the kiss of smoke that permeates each bite. Those meals were colored by a sort of care and hospitality that you can’t pay for and that’s hard to even seek out. The extra steamed cabbage and carrots because Melenda knew I liked to run the mixture through a pool of curry goat gravy on my empty plate. A piece of bubblegum set on the table as I finished eating, just something to chew on during the drive back to campus. Later, Melenda would send me off with a warm slice of her homemade rum cake wrapped in aluminum foil. It sat in my coat pocket and warmed my hand as I boarded Amtrak to go back to Penn Station.

The first time I bit into a piece of baked chicken I’d marinated in the Walkerswood seasoning blend, I felt pulled in two directions: It was delicious — fragrant and hot, every spice and herb present but not overwhelming. I also felt a little disappointed, as if I’d really expected my thrown-together Wednesday night dinner to taste anything like what Sammy pulled off his smoker after hours and hours of slow cooking and constant attention. I know now, as I go on seven months without a single meal in a restaurant’s dining room or even on a reopened patio, that what’s missing isn’t a handful of grated ginger or the smoke from pimento chips (though both would improve my chicken game dramatically). What’s missing is something only a restaurant like Top Taste can provide, that can’t be found in a jar of seasoning. But right now a jar of seasoning is what I’ve got, and until I find myself in that tiny dining room again, this one is pretty damn good.

Plus, Ohio might become the second state to legalize to-go cocktails for good, and more news to start your day

Whole Foods workers say Amazon Prime shoppers are crowding aisles and ignoring safety rules

Online grocery shopping is more popular than ever, which of course requires someone to actually go to the grocery store and pick up all those items. Through Amazon Prime, members can do their Whole Foods shopping from their computers, but Whole Foods employees say stores are now being overrun by Amazon Prime shoppers, who are ignoring safe distancing rules, emptying shelves, and generally making it harder for Whole Foods employees to do their jobs, according to a new report from Business Insider.

One Whole Foods employee called Prime shoppers “vultures,” saying empty shelves before anyone can restock them, and often have to rely on Whole Foods employees expertise when locating items. There’s also the issue of missing items. “If the item is out of stock, the Prime shopper must scan a QR code belonging to the Whole Foods employee to continue working,” writes BI. This leads to Whole Foods employees sometimes having lines of Prime shoppers around them, waiting to have QR codes scanned.

It’s a frustrating situation, but one in which everyone is trying to do their job. Whole Foods employees need to stock shelves safely. Amazon Prime shoppers need to get as many orders as they can in a day to make a living wage. No one wants to lose a job right now.

Anyway, Whole Foods is owned by Amazon, meaning the shoppers and the Whole Foods employees are all employed by Jeff Bezos, who has made $35 billion this year.

And in other news...

• McDonald’s all-day breakfast might be gone forever. [Delish]
• 7-Eleven is giving away free pizza on October 4, in order to get in on the popularity of delivery pizza. [RB]
• Ohio legislature has passed a bill that would make to-go cocktails permanently legal. If signed by the governor, Ohio would be the second state to legalize to-go cocktails, after Iowa. [Restaurant Hospitality]
• Buying veggie burgers made by Big Meat still contributes to their factory farming and emissions. [Vice]
• Daniel Boulud is experimenting with a new restaurant ownership model — sponsorship by luxury brands. [Bloomberg]
• An 89-year-old pizza delivery man got a $12k tip after a customer fundraised on TikTok, because we live in a country where the elderly have to financially rely on going viral rather than any comprehensive social safety net. [KSLTV]

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More than 150 chefs and restaurateurs signed the letter condemning President Trump’s COVID-19 response

In a show of support for presidential candidate Joe Biden, more than 150 chefs and restaurant owners across the country signed an open letter condemning President Donald Trump’s handling of COVID-19, which, they say, created an “existential crisis” for restaurants. The letter, titled “Restaurants for Biden,” and released by the Biden campaign, details how conflicting information from government officials and the president, as well as the shortcomings of the PPP loan program, personal protective equipment shortages, and “arbitrary social distancing capacity cap guidance,” created a perfect storm that put “the prospect of a recovery into an even deeper hole.”

Included on the list of signatories are dozens of respected and well known chefs whose restaurants and bars represent both fine dining and more casual establishments. Among the signers are celebrity chef Elizabeth Falkner, television star and baker Duff Goldman, chef and cookbook author Anita Lo, Nina Compton of Compère Lapin in New Orleans, Brandon Jew of Mister Jiu’s in San Francisco, and Fran Camaj, owner of the Los Angeles-based Gjelina restaurant group. A number of the chefs and owners who signed the open letter helm restaurants that have notably closed — either temporarily or for good — during the pandemic.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, independently owned and operated restaurants have been regularly overlooked and ignored by the federal government, receiving little — if anything — in the way of clear guidance or financial support. When President Donald Trump met with a group of restaurateurs in mid-May at a roundtable event to discuss extending and modifying the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), the attending restaurant owners and CEOs were notably all male, mostly white, and almost exclusively represented the interests of major companies and fine dining restaurants. Earlier, in April, the White House brought together a similarly limited group of fast food CEOs and fine dining chefs to advise on a plan to support the restaurant industry.

The PPP loan program that the CEOs and chefs were at the White House to discuss at May’s roundtable has faced criticism since its inception. In a first round of PPP funding, franchise locations of major restaurant chains like Shake Shack and Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse received millions of dollars in loans. Only after facing public pressure and scrutiny did many of those major chains return the funds. At that point, the first round of funding had been depleted, shutting out many small restaurants that had applied. The loans often failed to reach and support Black restaurant owners. The forgiveness requirements — a majority of the loan money must be spent on payroll and rehiring staff — left even those restaurateurs who did receive funding unsure whether they could or should use their loans to pay rent, utilities, and jumpstart their reopening plans.

As restaurants continue to close at an alarming rate across the country, federal support and guidance remains extremely limited, and as winter approaches, many restaurants are on the verge of permanent closure. The open letter slams the Trump campaign for “failing to lead our country through this crisis.” In it, the signatories write:

Throughout the crisis, the restaurant industry has begged this administration for support. We have pleaded with officials to fix the PPP program, recognize the oncoming tsunami of restaurant closings that we are now starting to see and respond with a plan. Yet, at every turn, the President has mishandled the response. He has downplayed our struggles, refuted the idea that restaurants will suffer because they rely on social interaction and insisted there were no personal protective equipment shortages that are required to keep restaurant staff safe.

In contrast to the president, who the restaurateurs say has “proven his unfitness to hold the office of the presidency,” they argue that Biden is prepared to solve the current crisis and show restaurants the support they so need. Biden has vowed to raise the minimum wage and end the tipped minimum wage if he is elected, and his campaign website lays out plans to reform how PPP loans are awarded, so that they better serve small businesses, and “allow for small businesses in need to both keep workers on payroll and cover fixed costs for the duration of the crisis. Of Trump, the letter signers write:

He has failed the restaurant industry, our employees, our customers, and the stakes are too high to continue down this path. America needs a new direction and real leadership. We need to elect Joe Biden as the next President of the United States.

As President, Joe Biden would take the immediate steps needed to solve the COVID crisis and support America’s small businesses and restaurants in our recovery. He would establish a true small business fund to ensure resources are set aside for restaurants, main street shops and other entrepreneurs. He would authorize more generous loans that allow for small businesses in need to both keep workers on payroll and cover fixed costs for the duration of the crisis. And he would provide a guarantee that every qualifying small business will get relief, rather than capping funds in a way that forces small firms to compete against one another.

The 150-plus chefs and restaurant owners who signed the letter, which you can read in full here, say that American restaurateurs “believe deeply in the American Dream,” and create economic opportunity through their business ventures. They also point out that beyond their economic impact, small businesses such as neighborhood restaurants “contribute to the unique character of American towns and cities.” The restaurateurs sign off with a warning, and a call to action: “Without a change in leadership, many of our businesses simply will not survive to see the end of this crisis. We must elect Joe Biden on November 3.”

Parachute’s most celebrated dish is stuffed with potato, bacon, cheese, and scallions

A staple in Chinese food is bing, a wheat flour-based flattened or disk-like item that resembles the parathas, crêpes, and pancakes of non-Chinese cuisines. In stateside Chinese restaurants, you’ve likely encountered it on the menu as “scallion pancakes,” also known as cong you bing. But there’s also chun bing, which is a bit thinner, and other kinds of bing that might include egg in the batter. In Taiwan, dan bing is a traditional breakfast food sold by street vendors every morning that’s a thin crepe with an egg on top. Jianbing is one of China’s most popular streetside breakfasts and bing variations; here, the batter is made of wheat and grain flour, and egg is generally a main ingredient. Some bing are cooked on a griddle or skillet while some are baked.

In other words, bing has become shorthand for an endless array of flour-based, round, and flat items that can be the vehicle for sauces like hoisin and chili and fillings like scallions, ham, and pickled things. In Chinese, pizza is commonly referred to pisa bing, crêpes are keli bing, and tortillas for tacos are known as Mexican thin bing.

The “Korean bing bread” by chef Beverly Kim at Chicago icon Parachute, a restaurant celebrated for its modern approach to Korean food, is another departure. “The dish is Chinese by way of Korea with a detour through the American Midwest,” say its creators. Namely, Parachute’s bing is still round and flat but uses yeast, where nearly all other forms are unleavened pieces of dough. And the kitchen there stuffs the bread (stuffings include scallions, potatoes, bacon, and cheddar) before it’s fried, baked, and then brushed in bacon fat.

A menu mainstay since the day Parachute opened in 2014, this is just about as good of a bread starter at a restaurant as you can get; it’s the most-ordered dish at the restaurant by a wide margin. The crispy exterior offsets a fluffy and chewy filling that the diner coats with a whipped sour cream butter that’s served alongside.

Kim and Parachute co-chef/partner Johnny Clark released a micro cookbook ($12) that details for readers who are up for the weekend task — according to Kim and Clark, it takes at least three months before a new cook can tackle the dish solo — how to recreate the prized item. The book, which the couple worked on with James Beard Award-winning food writer Kevin Pang, is 32 pages with more than 5,000 words detailing the exact method used at the restaurant for the best shot at Parachute’s bing bread. For now, there’s a simplified version of the recipe below.

Ingredients:

For the sour cream butter:
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 tablespoons sour cream
¾ teaspoon kosher salt

For the bread and assembly:
1 ¼-ounce envelope active dry yeast (about 2 ¼ teaspoon.)
2 tablespoons plus 1 ½ teaspoon sugar
2 ½ teaspoons kosher salt, divided
4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for surface
1 large russet potato, unpeeled, cut into ½-inch pieces
3 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided
1 pound bacon, cut crosswise into thirds
2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil, divided
8 ounces white cheddar, grated (about 2 cups)
1½ cups thinly sliced scallions (from about ½ bunch)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons sesame seeds, divided

Step 1: To make the sour cream butter whisk butter, sour cream, and salt in a medium bowl until smooth and set aside. Butter can be made 3 days ahead. Cover and chill.

Step 2: Combine yeast, 2 tablespoons sugar, 2 teaspoons salt, and 2 cups warm water in a large bowl, whisking to dissolve. Let sit until appearing to foam, about 5 minutes. Add 4 cups flour and mix with a wooden spoon until dough comes together in a shaggy ball with only a few dry spots of flour remaining. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit in a warm place until doubled in size, about 50 to 70 minutes.

Step 3: Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400 degrees. Toss potato with 1 tablespoon vegetable oil and remaining ½ teaspoon salt on a rimmed baking sheet and roast, tossing once, until potato is golden brown and soft, about 15 to 20 minutes. Let cool.

Step 4: While potato is roasting, chill bacon in freezer until firm, 12 to 15 minutes (the bacon should not be frozen). Transfer to a food processor and pulse until coarsely chopped. Cook bacon in a large skillet over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until brown and crisp, 15 to 20 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer bacon to paper towels.

Step 5: Once dough has doubled in size, gently punch down and transfer to a generously floured surface. Knead, adding more flour a tablespoonful at a time if dough is very sticky, until smooth (dough should be very soft, pliable, and only slightly sticky).

Step 6: Divide dough in half and flour a work surface generously. Cover 1 piece of dough with plastic so that it doesn’t dry out. Roll out the second piece of dough, adding more flour as needed to prevent sticking, to a 13-inch round about ¼-inch thick. Brush excess flour from dough, then brush with 1 tablespoon sesame oil. Sprinkle with half of potato, bacon, cheese, and scallions.

Step 7: Roll up dough like a jelly roll. Pinch together seam and each end to seal. Gently squeeze and press from the center toward the ends to elongate the roll slightly and even out thickness.

Step 8: Starting from one end, coil roll (like a rope) to form a large spiral. Gently flatten spiral with your hand to form a 9-inch circle, sprinkling lightly with more flour if needed to prevent from sticking. Cover and repeat with remaining dough, potato, bacon, cheese, scallions, and 1 tablespoon sesame oil. Whisk soy sauce, 1 ½ teaspoon sugar, and 2 tablespoon water in a small bowl until sugar is dissolved; set aside.

Step 9: Heat a 10-inch cast-iron skillet over medium. Add 1 tablespoon vegetable oil to coat. Carefully place 1 spiral of dough in hot skillet (keep remaining spiral covered) and brush with soy glaze. Cover pan with a lid and cook until underside of bread is golden brown, 5 to 10 minutes (rotate skillet on burner as needed for even browning). Uncover and flip bread. Brush top with soy glaze and sprinkle with 1 tablespoon sesame seeds.

Step 10: Transfer skillet to oven and cook, uncovered, until underside is golden brown, 15 to 18 minutes (tent with foil if top gets too dark before bottom is golden brown). Transfer to a wire rack and let cool 15 minutes. Repeat with remaining round of dough, soy glaze, 1 tablespoon sesame oil, and 1 tablespoon sesame seeds. Cut warm bread into wedges and serve with sour cream butter, enjoy immediately.

Forget that gum impulse buy if you’re shopping in Berkeley

“Stump Sohla” will air Saturdays on the Binging with Babish YouTube channel

Chef and YouTube star Sohla El-Waylly has announced a new show, Stump Sohla, on the Binging with Babish YouTube network. In the episodes, El-Waylly will be challenged to make meals in a particular styles, but will have extra challenges — decided by spinning a wheel — as roadblocks. The first episode is now live on YouTube; in it, El-Waylly must make mac & cheese with 18th century tools.

“Welcome to the Babish Culinary Universe @sohlae, an incredibly talented chef and all-around amazing human being. Let’s see if we can Stump Sohla!,” announced Binging with Babish on Instagram.

The premise of the show echos the fun, weird challenges El-Waylly’s performed in the Bon Appétit test kitchen’s popular YouTube videos. Though she remains at the magazine as the assistant food editor, El-Waylly was released from her video contract, along with fellow staffers Rick Martinzer, Priya Krishna, Molly Baz, Gaby Melian, and Carla Lalli Music, following unsuccessful negotiations over race-based pay discrepancies within the test kitchen. Over the summer, the magazine faced numerous allegations of racism and inequity. Bon Appétit editor-in-chief Adam Rapoport’s resigned in early June, following a series of tweets by food writer Tammie Teclemariam that included a photo of Rapoport and his wife dressed as Puerto Ricans at a 2013 costume party.

Prior to his resignation, El-Waylly revealed on on Instagram that “only white editors are paid for their video appearances.” The chef and editor was also the subject of a viral video, showing how many times she appeared on screen in Bon Appétit videos, unpaid and being asked for help by the white hosts.

The “Binging With Babish” YouTube channel has nearly 8 million followers, which is about 2 million more than Bon Appétit.

Bon Appétit recently hired Dawn Davis as its new editor-in-chief, and in a statement announced that the company would be “implementing anti-racism training for our staff, and resolving any pay inequities that are found across all departments.” The publication has yet to announce plans for its YouTube channel.

As one El-Waylly fan wrote on Instagram, “BWB about to get the entire Bon Appétit viewership.”

The legendary French chef was an early founder of the nouvelle cuisine movement in France

Pierre Troisgros, the chef credited with facilitating France’s influential nouvelle cuisine movement, has died. He was 92 years old.

“An emblematic figure of the great French cuisine, Pierre Troigros was one of those chefs whose name has become an international reference in gastronomy,” Gwendal Poullennec, international director of the Michelin guides, said in a statement. “Pierre embodied the transmission and innovation that has always permeated the kitchens of the establishment.”

Troisgros rose to fame alongside his brother Jean at his family’s restaurant in Roanne, France. The Troisgros brothers took over their parents’ restaurant, the Hotel Moderne, which opened in 1930, and renamed it Les Frères Troisgros in the mid-1950s, two years after it received its first Michelin star. There, their cooking style departed from French traditions, prioritizing lighter, fresh ingredients in what’s now acknowledged as a precursor to nouvelle cuisine. (Paul Bocuse, who died in 2018 at the age of 91, was a close friend, compatriot, and other nouvelle cuisine ambassador.)

By 1968, Troisgros’s restaurant would consistently earn three Michelin stars, a distinction that it’s held for a stunning 52 consecutive years: Troisgros’s son Michel and grandsons Cesar and Leo now continue the restaurant’s legacy, and in 2017, they moved the it from Roanne into a villa five miles outside the city, in Ouches. The Troisgros family empire also now includes an outpost in Tokyo and two more-casual concepts, in what France24 calls “the country’s greatest gastronomic dynasty.”

• Legendary nouvelle cuisine pioneer Pierre Troisgros dies aged 92 [France24]

Gov. Eric Holcomb announced that the state is moving into Stage 5 of reopening this Saturday

Starting on September 26, Indiana will move into its final Stage 5 of reopening — a phase that includes allowing restaurants and bars to serve at full capacity — Gov. Eric Holcomb announced today.

Face masks will still be required, but as part of the previously announced Stage 5 guidelines, other kinds of restrictions will be noticeably loosened. Per WTHR, there will no longer be size limitations on gatherings and events under 500 people; restaurants, bars, nightclubs, stores, and other indoor and outdoor venues can open at full capacity; senior centers and meal sites can reopen according to Family and Social Services Administration guidelines; gyms and fitness facilities can resume normal operations; and nursing homes and assisted living facilities must allow visitation opportunities. Holcomb said that Stage 5 guidelines would be updated with new changes by Thursday, IndyStar reports.

There are some stipulations attached to the restaurant and bar reopening guidelines: customers must be seated, for instance, and social distancing must still be observed. But it’s difficult to square these requirements with the blanket blessing to open at full capacity. How will a bar with customers occupying all seats maintain six feet of distance between patrons? And while masks are proven to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus, one hallmark of restaurants and bars is that people, by necessity of the nature of these establishments, remove their masks for long periods of time to eat and drink. Unmasked diners seated indoors at full capacity sounds like, to be frank, a disaster in the making — which might explain why other states have not yet charged full speed ahead to reopening at full capacity.

It’s unclear what will happen if cases spike after Indiana moves into Stage 5 of reopening. Earlier this summer, Holcomb declined to proceed with Stage 5 after cases increased, and instead created a new midway Stage 4.5, which the state has been stuck at since July.

Indiana has confirmed a total of 113,337 positive COVID-19 cases and 3,305 deaths, according to Indiana State Department of Health numbers (a New York Times database puts the reported cases and deaths at 115,578 and 3,530, respectively). The state’s seven-day positivity rate is 3.9 percent, a number that Holcomb cited as a sign of improvement when announcing the move into Stage 5 of reopening. Across the U.S., there are more than 6.9 million reported cases, and more than 201,000 people have died since March.

Even with COVID-19 capacity restrictions and social distancing, some Up North dining destinations served more customers than they have in recent memory

Plus, Uncle Ben’s is now Ben’s Original, and more news to start your day

The “retro recipes” aim to lure 80s kids back to cereal with nostalgia, and artificial colors

Cereal was one of the first things millennials murdered on their endless killing spree into adulthood. Either they were too enamored with avocado toast, too put off by the sugar, or too busy to eat breakfast at all. For a while major cereal brands tried to appeal to their health-conscious tastes by removing artificial ingredients, but that didn’t work, so now General Mills is reversing course. The company is rereleasing Trix, Golden Grahams, Cookie Crisp and Cocoa Puffs with a “permanent return of the 80s taste.”

In a press release, Jennifer Jorgensen, vice president of marketing for General Mills cereal said “Our fans crave a taste of nostalgia — and, while these four cereals have always remained popular, we’ve answered their requests and brought back the taste they remember from childhood.” With these new old recipes, Trix will go back to having wacky fruit shapes, Golden Grahams will again be made with actual honey, and Cookie Crisp and Cocoa Puffs will have more “chocolate taste,” whatever that entails. Food Dive notes that millennials are increasingly driven by nostalgia as they round into middle age. Extra-sugary Trix — along with General Mill’s upcoming partnership with Saved by the Bell’s Mario Lopez — is as good a distraction as any for the fact that they’ll never be able to afford to retire.

And in other news...

• A previously unknown virus is causing the mass die-off of freshwater mussels. [NYTimes]
• Uncle Ben’s will start appearing in stores in 2021 under the name Ben’s Original, after backlash to its racist brand image. [CNN]
• That banana taped to a wall that took Art Basel by storm has been donated to the Guggenheim, except sans banana. So just tape. [Insider]
• Travis Scott is dropping a new song, “Franchise,” on Friday to commemorate his collaboration with McDonald’s, and not the new ruling that makes fast food corporations liable for labor violations at franchises. [BI]
• A new poll shows 58 percent of essential workers report being burned out, compared to 45 percent in April. [Guardian]

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