Gullah Geechee cookbook author Emily Meggett’s version of the Southern staple is an essential

When it’s time to make fried chicken, 89-year-old cook and cookbook author Emily Meggett always starts by grabbing a brown paper bag. A woman who appreciates simplicity, she relies on only four key ingredients: raw chicken, seasoning salt, vegetable oil, and White Lily self-rising flour. She cleans, seasons, coats, shakes, and batters the chicken before placing it in unbelievably hot vegetable oil, where it cooks until it floats to the top, showing off its golden brown and crisped exterior. One bite of the chicken, and Meggett’s process makes sense: The thin layer of crunchy, seasoned, flaky skin heightens the tenderness and juiciness of the meat. It’s a marriage that Meggett officiates regularly, alongside thousands of Black cooks around the country.

“This kind of cookin’? This is the cooking that’ll keep you full for a while,” she says as she serves the fried chicken with sides like dirty rice and stuffed yellow squash and zucchini. For Meggett, fried chicken can be the centerpiece of a meal that tells a story about food, culture, and family. It’s also an important part of the story that Meggett tells in her first cookbook, Gullah Geechee Home Cooking, which came out earlier this year.

Fried chicken is a crucial component of Black American foodways, especially in the South and Lowcountry region. Along the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia, and the northern coast of Florida, Gullah Geechee people have preserved their culture and played a fundamental role in the proliferation of Lowcountry favorites like red rice, fried seafood, and fried chicken across the greater South. Meggett, considered the matriarch of Gullah Geechee home cooking and a winner of the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award, has been instrumental in those efforts.

Clay Williams

Clay Williams

“Miss Emily’s 89 years old, and she got [the culinary traditions] from her grandmother,” says BJ Dennis, a Lowcountry chef and Gullah cultural bearer who has been deeply influenced by Meggett’s culinary knowledge and intellect. As someone who has stopped by her home on Edisto Island — one of South Carolina’s Sea Islands — to learn and enjoy a plate of Lowcountry food, Dennis remains captivated by not only the crisped exterior of the matriarch’s perfectly battered and fried chicken, but also by the tradition that’s preserved within each and every bite.

“When you do the math and connect those dots, [cooks like Meggett] held on to the traditions that we’re talking about, at a minimum, 100-plus years,” says Dennis. “I think it’s really important because you’re getting not only a legacy, but a history lesson with something as simple as fried chicken.”

Like countless other Black women who turned to cooking — and fried chicken specifically — as a vehicle for economic opportunity, Meggett has been able to use her fried chicken, along with dishes like fried fish, red rice, and chicken perloo, to forge her own path in South Carolina’s culinary space. That space was previously dominated by white cooks who labeled Black food as “Southern food”; Meggett’s work has served as a reminder of the critical role Black people continue to play in the development and proliferation of dishes that have become synonymous with the South. Her storied career — which includes contributing to her local church cookbook during the 1980s, catering for her community on Edisto Island, and cooking for various prominent homes in her neighborhood — has also allowed her to support her husband and 10 children, all while continuing a rich culinary lineage that’s endured across generations. In doing so, she has avoided what Dennis believes could be an irreparable loss. “You lose part of your heritage, you lose part of yourself,” he says.

For Meggett, the best fried chicken continues to be made by Black hands. “There are so many ways to enjoy fried chicken,” she says. “Our community has figured out how to make the chicken shine.” Meggett is eager to teach her guests her “paper bag method,” instructing them, “You’ve got to hold the bag from the bottom!”

While Meggett’s instructions are vital, it’s always the story behind the food that matters most to her. “When I was growing up, everybody had fried chicken — everybody,” she recalls. “You didn’t even have to go to the store for it. Folks raised their own in those days, and they knew how to clean it, cook it, and serve it. We looked forward to it in those days; we look forward to it now.”

Fried Chicken Recipe

Serves 20 to 30

Ingredients:

Chicken pieces: 8 legs, 8 thighs, 8 wings, 4 whole breasts (10 pounds/4.6 kilograms total)
1½ tablespoons seasoning salt, plus more to taste
4 quarts (3.8 liters) vegetable oil
4 cups (500 grams) self-rising flour, preferably White Lily

Instructions:

Step 1: Peel back the chicken skin to reveal some unnecessary fat. Remove by scraping with a knife, and then put the skin back in place.

Step 2: Season the chicken with seasoning salt.

Step 3: Heat the oil in a cast-iron Dutch oven over high heat. Heat the oil to a high temperature, but be careful not to let it smoke.

Step 4: Pour the flour into a large paper bag, such as a grocery bag. Add 6 to 8 chicken pieces to the bag at a time. Use one hand to close and grip the top of the bag, and one hand to support the bottom of the bag. Gently shake the bag from side to side, coating the chicken pieces with flour on all sides.

Step 5: Fry these pieces, carefully placing them into the oil one at a time. Do not flour all the chicken pieces in advance. Flour them just before frying.

Step 6: Once the first batch of chicken is placed in the oil, reduce the heat to medium-high and cook the chicken on one side for about 20 minutes. When the chicken is golden brown, turn it to brown on the other side, 8 to 10 minutes longer. The chicken will float when it is fully cooked. Regulate the temperature as needed. If the oil is not hot enough, the chicken will absorb the oil and become greasy.

Step 7: When the first batch is finished, place the chicken on a paper towel-lined plate to drain. Repeat this process until done.

Reprinted with permission from Gullah Geechee Home Cooking: Recipes From the Matriarch of Edisto Island by Emily Meggett with contributions by Kayla Stewart and Trelani Michelle, copyright © 2022. Published by Abrams Books.
Photography by Clay Williams, copyright © 2022.

If you live within 100 miles of this ice cream and burger destination, you need to go

There are few things about living in Dallas-Fort Worth that make me feel smug. It’s hot as hell here, there’s too much concrete, and the traffic is miserable. My city doesn’t boast the stunning natural beauty of San Francisco, or the hallowed cultural institutions of New York City. But it is, at least, home to a location of Braum’s, the best American fast-food chain that I’d wager most Americans have never heard of.

Founded in Oklahoma City in 1968, Braum’s is a decidedly unique concept. It’s equal parts burger joint, ice cream shop, and small grocery store, all tucked under one roof. The menu is classic American comfort food — think burgers, fries, a chicken strip dinner served with a side of chocolate pudding. The burgers are solid, but the real star of the show is the full line-up of ice cream in classic flavors like peanut butter cup and mint chip, made with milk sourced from cows at the chain’s own creamery in Tuttle, Oklahoma, and all of which taste perfect by themselves, or scooped into a hot-fudge-drenched sundae.

And although it is small, the grocery section at any Braum’s location punches well above its weight. After eating a cheeseburger and slurping down a chocolate malt, you can stock up on eggs, butter, bacon, and fresh produce staples, but the real allure is the chain’s milk. Growing up in small-town northeast Texas, there were plenty of folks I knew that made the special trip to Braum’s to buy a gallon of milk instead of the grocery store. It’s hard to explain, but there really is a difference — Braum’s milk tastes creamier and fresher than the typical gallon of milk, especially those that have been ultra-pasteurized to maximize their shelf life at the expense of flavor.

In fact, the milk — and the company-owned creamery where it is produced — is the cornerstone of the Braum’s business model. The chain makes and produces all of its dairy products and bakes its own burger buns, and as such, Braum’s only opens locations within a 330-mile radius of its production facility in Tuttle. From there, refrigerated trucks are dispatched every other day to make deliveries to its more than 300 stores scattered across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Missouri.

In a time when many fast-food chains are chasing every trend and trying to keep up with the times, Braum’s is almost aggressively the same as it’s ever been. Its pink-and-navy color scheme makes dining inside one of the restaurants feel like a brief trip back in time, and who doesn’t love the child-like appeal of choosing an ice cream from among a vast array of flavors and seeing it hand-scooped into a crunchy waffle cone? The prices also feel nostalgic, at only around $2 for a double-dip, especially in an era where some swanky pints are selling at the supermarket for upwards of $9.

Most of those 300 locations are in small towns, which means that Braum’s is a bit of a well-kept secret, especially for folks who don’t often find themselves vacationing in Branson or road-tripping to Oklahoma City. But if you’ve got one within 100 or so miles of where you live, it’s definitely worth making the drive to experience the surreal, of-another-time vibe — and excellent ice cream — that only Braum’s can offer.

The idea that bottoms need to adjust their food choices for a cleaner sexual experience is pervasive. Queer food personalities and chefs are pushing back.

Years ago, I visited my high school beard, who lives in New York City, for a long weekend of fun that I thought would center food. Our Southern California teen years were characterized by getting high and driving to the famed restaurant the Hat, where the god-tier order is the stacked pastrami dip, onion rings, and an Orange Bang. Though we were closeted in high school, we are both out now, him, a gay male, and me, a nonbinary dyke.

As we planned out meals for the trip, he shot down my requests for Balthazar and Momofoku, instead making a midday reservation for a now-shuttered Meatpacking District restaurant where his favorite dish was thinly sliced squash on porous pancakes. In the mornings he would religiously drink a green vegetable puree that was so foul that I spat it out in the sink when he shared it with me.

I didn’t understand at the time, but toxic gay diet culture had already reached him. It made more sense as I watched his Instagram grid populate with Fire Island group shots featuring other cisgender gay males with rippling six-packs and short-shorts. He adheres to what some degradingly call the “bottom’s diet” — a restrictive way of eating specifically designed to attempt to avoid what the community calls a “mess” in the bedroom when on the receiving end of anal sex. That diet usually involves a regulated intake that avoids rich foods including meat and dairy, cuts out cruciferous vegetables and other bloat-inducing foods, preps before sex with anal douching, and mixes in generous helpings of the fiber supplement Pure for Men. The goal of all this is not necessarily six-pack abs, but anxiety-free sex.

The idea that bottoms “need to” or “should be” adjusting their choices for a cleaner sexual experience inspired a viral meme: a picture of a plate of ice cubes accompanied by a knife and fork. In a culture that’s already squeamish when it comes to talking about our bodily functions, to greater extremes, bottoms anxious about a night of intercourse might even resort to starving themselves before sex. This kind of abstention still exists in the gay community, though conversation around bottom food has reached new heights this Pride season. Joel Kim Booster’s Fire Island inserted a joke that characters wouldn’t be bottoming as they chowed down on cheese. Earlier this month, Postmates launched a national campaign claiming to have created the “world’s first Bottom-Friendly Menu” that was criticized on social media for appropriating an intimate part of the queer experience for marketing clout and for stealing from the digital creator and chef Alex Hall, who popularized the idea.

But food personalities and chefs have been pushing back, in recent years, in favor of reinvigorating pleasure into the bottom’s diet. Hall, who founded the viral account The Bottom’s Digest in June 2021, cooks up bottom-friendly food year-round with the aim of empowering bottoms. “We created the Bottom’s Digest with our recipes doing one thing as top priority, and that top priority is minimizing bloating and gas,” says Hall. “For the people eating pastrami and such, have at it. As long as you don’t feel like a sack of potatoes afterwards and still feel your best, go for it. That’s the whole point.” Hall counts more than 132,000 TikTok and 28,000 Instagram followers, numbers that have only grown in support of his work since the Postmates debacle.

To understand bottom food today, we have to go back to San Francisco in the 1980s. Food writer, author, and sometimes bottom John Birdsall was freshly graduated from UC Berkeley and living in the Bay Area. He recalls how the gay community then, despite it arising because of exclusion from mainstream America, closely mimicked cisgender and straight sexual attitudes and body ideals. “There was anxiety about being thin enough and about having a small enough waist to be attractive,” he says. But this started to change as the AIDS crisis heightened and those affected were challenged to keep weight on at all, experimenting with cannabis to drum up an appetite and fermented foods to boost their immune systems. As a foil to the thin and hairless gay male trope, bear culture — where larger bodies and appetites reigned — began to emerge. Birdsall recalls a Starbucks in the Castro that was dubbed “Bearbucks,” where bears would congregate, sipping on rich, milky drinks and cruising for cubs.

There was no roadmap for bottoming or bottom food that Birdsall recalls, but service journalism from the still-publishing Bay Area Reporter (BAR) and book The Joys of Gay Sex filled in some gaps when public sex education was woefully inadequate, or rather nonexistent. Feminine behaviors and bodies have long been a target for degradation, and Birdsall shares that bottom-shaming was prevalent back then in misogynistic reverence for more masculine tops. A lack of education left the gay community to educate themselves, to the point of derision and discomfort. These are attitudes that the “Gaytriarchy” still wields today, which continues to reduce empowerment for bottoms.

Now, that narrative is changing. Fred Latasa-Nicks, the gay chef-owner of famed Provincetown restaurant Strangers and Saints, says the staff sees most of their reservations toward the end of the week, but he’s not sure whether to attribute that to partying earlier in the week or “bottoms being bottoms” by saving their dinners out for later.

Despite this, Latasa-Nicks says, “I hate to say this, but the younger queers seem less hung up on things in general. And eating is one of them. You see people eating and drinking and really living a more sort of balanced and pleasurable lifestyle, and then they practice preparation, if you will, rather than denying yourself a meal.”

Strangers and Saints sells thousands of its whole burrata dishes with grilled peaches, jalapeno, and arugula pesto by the end of the gay tourist town’s season. Cavatelli with homemade ricotta, Tuscan white beans, and escarole is another top seller, alongside the ham and cheese croquette — directly in opposition to what the toxic bottom’s diet preaches.

“Even within these subcultures of the gay community, there’s always this rulebook like, ‘Oh, I need to do this, or I need to do that.’ And what I see changing is the rulebook. For a lot of us, we don’t want to live by somebody else’s rules, we want to live by our values and our rules that we set for ourselves,” says Latasa-Nicks. “I think the ultimate goal is to seek pleasure. So you’ll eat good food, you’ll prep when you need to, you’ll be a top today, you’ll be a bottom tomorrow, maybe you’ll be in a threesome. Why not?”

Across TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, Hall of the Bottom’s Digest shares cheeky recipes “for a peachy clean time” that are predominantly vegan and fiber-rich. The account’s most popular recipe is vegan queso, a food that would strike fear into some bottoms but allows many to reintroduce a “risky” item back into their diet. The account is also reintegrating consent and affirmation of bottoms into the equation.

“One of my phrases is ‘submissive does not equal weak,’” says Hall, who often speaks to the anxieties of bottoming on his account. He asserts that it should never get in the way of living your life. “I’ve heard people use the term ‘bottom’ as an insult. And now I’ve taken this back, like, ‘No, you have to ask for my permission to make fun of me, let alone put your dick in me.’ I’m not going to starve. There’s no consent with that, that’s just peer pressure.”

Hall takes the lore of bottom food a bit further on their account, directly addressing the dreaded “mess” that sometimes accompanies anal sex. Hall likes to say “shit happens all the time,” recently stitching together a video of a gay porn star saying he couldn’t bottom because he hadn’t cleaned up down there. Hall, who uses they/he/she pronouns and is nonbinary, made it a point from their first video that the identity of a bottom is not limited to the cisgender gay male. Every recipe that Hall’s account drops is tested by a 10-person team including trans individuals taking hormones and people experiencing IBS. They even have received messages from cis women from Hall’s home state of Texas trying anal sex for the first time for fear of unwanted pregnancy.

One thing that’s changed dramatically since the gay culture of the ’80s is who is using the label top/bottom/vers and who the bottom’s diet might apply to — and that includes people of many different orientations, genders, and kinks. Self-described “bottom supreme” and writer Chingy Nea told me her ex-girlfriend made a shirt that said, “Lesbians Love Anal Too.”

Disregarding all the preparation that a bottom can do, Nea says she likes to play it “fast and loose” with food, relishing in a meat- and carb-heavy diet. I’ve even seen her brag on social media about eating a Reuben and getting railed, and when I spoke to her by phone for this story, she shared an anecdote about getting spontaneously fingered in a Downtown Los Angeles gay club and coming out squeaky clean. “My girlfriend says I have an immaculate butthole and most of the time I can eat a bunch of food and do anal and like the toy will come out pretty much clean,” said Nea. “When I was younger I would try to be good about what I ate before but now you can’t always plan these things out.”

Consent is at the center of bottoms reclaiming their diet: consenting not just with your partner, but also with your bowels. Those reclaiming bottom food are filling in sexual education that had previously been taboo, and while food personalities and younger generations may be more permissive with attitudes around food and bottoming, one source reminded me that no matter what your diet, you’re still going to have to go to the bathroom eventually.

In the research for Birdsall’s acclaimed biography of gay American chef James Beard, he found materials referencing the first time Beard cooked for his partner of 30 years, Gino Cofacci, inviting him over for a meal of a poached calf’s head. Beard cultivated an image of eating massive amounts of extremely rich food, so the meal, in comparison, was quite sparing.

“I wouldn’t say spartan meal, but it was very restrained. There was a course of calf’s head broth. There was the cold calf’s head with bread and some cheese, and that was it,” says Birdsall, adding, “So, who knows, maybe he was thinking of the next step after eating.”

Rax Will (they/them) is a graduate of UC Riverside’s MFA program in fiction and is at work on a memoir exploring their multiracial identity through food. Jett Allen is a cartoonist and illustrator based in Los Angeles, California.

Having a meat-free night? Here are the best recipes for a vegetarian dinner menu

It’s no longer news that more and more people have started incorporating vegetarian dishes into their cooking repertoire. For all manner of reasons, vegetarian food has of late become ever more mainstream, and consequently, vegetarian dinner recipes are now found everywhere. They are so plentiful, in fact, that it can sometimes be hard to choose exactly what to cook when you’re in the mood for a meatless meal. Here, eight Eater editors provide some guidance with their own go-to recipes for cooking veg.

Shaksuka

Deb Perelman, Smitten Kitchen

It’s hard to find meatless recipes that aren’t pasta-based, and as someone whose stomach is not happy if she eats a ton of bread every day, it’s sometimes a struggle to figure out how to lessen my meat intake without causing other dietary distress. This is why shakshuka is a savior. The North African dish of eggs poached in a peppery tomato sauce is hearty, flavorful, incredibly easy to make, and also adapts well to riffing. I mostly use Smitten Kitchen’s recipe, but I add other vegetables, change up the herbs and spices depending on what I have around, and occasionally remove the feta cheese if I don’t feel like a dose of dairy. It says to serve it with pita, but it also works well over rice or other grains, or just on its own like an eggy tomato stew. — Jaya Saxena, senior writer

Savory Kale and Tempeh

Rochelle Bilow, Bon Appétit

As much as I love tofu, I understand why some people — particularly those looking for a meat replacement — can struggle with its texture: It requires a little more manipulation in order to achieve a meat-like density and level of textural variation. For those people, might I suggest tempeh, the fermented protein from Indonesia? The commercial versions you’ll find at major grocery stores are usually soybean-based and have a dense, hearty texture, straight out of the package. This (vegan!) tempeh-and-kale recipe was my gateway into tempeh, and it’s still the dish I turn to the most often. Crumbling the tempeh into chunks by hand results in bite-sized pieces with craggy corners and lots of texture. In just a few minutes, it’s crispy on the outside, nice and chewy on the inside. Fermentation gives the soybeans a pleasant, nutty flavor, so this dish doesn’t need much to be delicious. — Bettina Makalintal, senior reporter

Grilled Asparagus With Caper Salsa

Yotam Ottolenghi, NYT Cooking

Ever since I went vegetarian again — after 10 years of meat eating — I’ve suffered from a lack of creativity when it comes to dinner. Snacks, side dishes, and desserts are all easy enough to adapt for a vegetarian diet, but I have lost my touch for main courses. It wasn’t until I went to a restaurant and ordered a big ol’ plate of asparagus with toppings galore as a main dish that I realized, Oh, anything is dinner if you want it to be. Double the number of asparagus in this recipe and make some rice pilaf on the side, and you’ll see the power of the vegetable as standalone dinner in no time. When I made this I didn’t have the caprino fresco cheese the recipe calls for, so I just went with crumbled goat cheese, and I was not mad at the results. — Dayna Evans, staff writer and Eater Philly editor

Spring Hot-and-Sour Soup

Chris Morocco, Bon Appétit

When spring arrives and I’m either struggling to deal with seasonal allergies or fighting that inevitable cold I get when the weather dramatically changes each day, soup is just about the only thing that will do. This is the one I come back to most often because all but two of its ingredients are kitchen staples (sometimes I’m just missing the mushrooms it calls for, and sometimes I already have frozen peas instead of fresh ones), and it comes together in less than 30 minutes. Plus, it’s open to modifications. My favorite ways of mixing it up have been to add frozen dumplings or thinly sliced asparagus. You can also up the heat by drizzling some chile oil on top, and/or subbing the water for your go-to broth. No matter how you make it, I recommend doubling the recipe to have this soup on hand for a few days, especially if you’re making it to bring yourself back to life. — Patty Diez, network development manager

Vegan Cacio e Pepe

Alexa Weibel, NYT Cooking

Alexa Weibel’s vegan cacio e pepe recipe is one of those great back-pocket recipes that’s tailor-made for weeknight cooking: It requires only six ingredients, one pot, and less than 20 minutes of effort. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve made it, but I can say that it has caused a 1,000-fold increase in my household’s cashew butter consumption. The cashew butter, along with miso and nutritional yeast, forms the foundation of the ersatz cheese, to which you add ladles of starchy pasta water to create a silky sauce. The combination yields a very cheese-like flavor, while a tablespoon of cracked pepper more than fulfills the “pepe” part of the equation. And while I have happily eaten this on its own, it also works well with vegetables — I like stirring sauteed kale and/or broccoli into it. If you don’t have cashew butter, you can substitute tahini; if you’re wary of salt, you can leave out some or all of the miso and just add salt to your taste. In other words, it is very, very hard to go wrong here. Whether you’re vegan or not, this is a dish that can truly be said to be a godsend to weeknight cooks everywhere. — Rebecca Flint Marx, At Home editor

Pickled Peach Salad With Pistachios and Parsley

Sarit Packer and Itamar Srulovich, Honey & Co. at Home

Salad for dinner? All summer long, honestly. Pickling is the solution (no pun intended) for any odd peaches (or nectarines) in a punnet that aren’t up to my frankly wild expectations. You do have to turn on the stove to make the pickling brine, but only to low, and the leftover brine makes a fridge-door go-to for future dressings, marinades, or more pickles. Flat white peaches are good here, but any will do. Once pickled, you could just eat the fruit and dispense with the salad, but I like the recipe more or less as written, finished off with a feta or goat cheese, really anything soft and salty that crumbles. Or, if you have a grill or are willing to turn the stove back on, you could make this a main with a few slabs of halloumi and a loaf of sourdough. I’m sure any lettuce will work, but the contrast of firm and buttery makes it more interesting, actually. Best eaten while the neighbors’ outdoor cats flop around on the brick pavement, ideally after 9 p.m. on one of the longest nights of the year. — Rachel P. Kreiter, senior copy editor

Mushroom Bourguignon

Melissa Clark, NYT Cooking

After the meat-cheese-booze self-pity fest of 2020 and 2021, I have spent much of 2022 trying to remind myself that vegetables (and optimism) are a thing. I’ve added a number of easy, quick, plant-based recipes to my repertoire, but sometimes dinnertime calls for a project. This mushroom bourguignon recipe is what I’d call moderately fussy, with lots of time spent chopping and searing and browning and braising, but the results are nothing short of restaurant-quality. As a main course, this dish is stunning. I’ve served it at dinner parties, to my deeply carnivorous parents, and even on Valentine’s Day to rave reviews. Do not skip the final crisping of mushroom slices to garnish the top. And while the recipe calls for a side of potatoes or pasta, I love to spoon it over a thick pile of stone-ground polenta. — Lesley Suter, special projects editor

Creamy Cauliflower Pasta With Pecorino Bread Crumbs

Alison Roman, NYT Cooking

In a world where cauliflower has replaced all of your beloved carbs — from rice to pizza crust to tater tots — the versatile vegetable plays only a supporting role in this creamy, carby, comforting pasta dish from Alison Roman. Here, cauliflower and shallots are melted down along with the heavy cream and bitey pecorino to make a decadent sauce that sticks to every ridge of the pasta. The breadcrumb topping, which is made with lemon zest, chives, red pepper flakes, and pecorino, adds the perfect amount of brightness and texture. I often use cascatelli pasta (you can see how it’s made in our video!) instead of rigatoni so that I can scoop up all the creamy goodness of this dish, but any tube-ish pasta will do. — Terri Ciccone, associate director of audience, analytics, and operations

Where Martha Stewart and Ina Garten might have instructed previous generations of hosts, TikTok influencers and services offering downloadable guides and tablescape rentals are here to help today’s party hosts

When Mya Gelber started making videos on TikTok early this year, the 26-year-old went for the known format of the fit check, posing while putting on Carhartts and coats. But in April, it was a video of one of her monthly dinner parties, showing handwritten menus tied to gingham napkins and a tablescape scattered with eucalyptus leaves, that found unexpected success, drawing over 500,000 views.

Gelber now uses the platform primarily to share dinner party inspiration and guides, budget tips, and playlist suggestions, but the fashion hasn’t dropped out entirely since she also dreams up outfits for hypothetical dinners around the world (a flouncy dress for Lima; a black turtleneck minidress with a tan trench for Paris). Speaking truth to that one 2011 Onion headline, Gelber learned to host as a student at Bard College, where the small size limited the nightlife options, and then spent time in London’s vibrant supper club scene. “I wanted to bring that to my friends,” says Gelber, who’s now based in Brooklyn. She found added motivation during the pandemic to bring the feeling of the restaurant home, and now, with over 64,000 followers, it’s clear that Gelber has found a niche for herself on TikTok as a dinner party influencer.

Her brand of instructive-meets-aspirational content comes at exactly the right time. After over two years of caution, dinner parties are back in a big way. As people return to gathering, there’s a sense for many of having to relearn old conventions, while for those who came of age during the pandemic years, a chance at trying something new. An opportunity not only to feed and to gather but also to present one’s home and cooking, the dinner party is a feat of domesticity, and accordingly, an affair rife with potential stressors. Making all the moving parts work is a skill honed by practice, or for those with money, hired aid. But where Martha Stewart and Ina Garten might have instructed previous generations, a growing niche of guides, services, and influencers is emerging to demystify hosting: Welcome to the new dinner party economy.

While getting meal delivery boxes from HelloFresh last year, sisters Hanna Ray Flores and Lea Raymond had an idea: “What if we had that for dinner parties?” Flores says. Though their family hosted every weekend growing up, “we were realizing as we got older that people weren’t hosting as much as our family was,” says Flores. Ages 22 and 30, respectively, Raymond and Flores found themselves well-positioned; they could cater to both younger people making the shift from college partying to having their own apartments, as well as older, experienced hosts looking for ways to streamline. They started Hauste (pronounced like “host”), a company that primarily produces and sells “Hauste Its,” downloadable dinner party guides.

Hauste’s guides go for $16 or $26 depending on the gathering; pasta night for two requires less guidance and effort than Thanksgiving. Either way, it offers a shopping list, menu, recipes, playlist, design inspiration, checklists, and in some cases, templates for name cards or invites. Tasks are broken down into the days and minutes leading up to the meal, even including small touches like lighting a candle in the bathroom and putting on music from a provided Spotify code right before guests arrive. Unlike the typical dinner party move of pulling recipes from cookbooks and then figuring out which tasks can be done simultaneously, “our [guides] are all intertwined, so you’re not wasting time,” says Raymond.

There’s a sense of thoughtful curation in Hauste’s guides. “To make sure you and your guests have a full experience, you (as the hauste) need to style for the senses,” reads a guide for a Sunday night salmon dinner; it also recommends a light color palette, a “wildflower chic” vibe with optional flower-studded ice cubes, and scattering tea lights across the table. While much of the motivation behind the dinner party boom is the simple pleasure of gathering, there is also the undeniable influence of social media: The dinner party is both IRL experience and fodder for lifestyle inspiration to be captured and shared online later.

Because we’re in the age of Instagram aesthetics, there are dinner party services that rent out tablescapes, like Casamia (with the tagline: “Host more. Stress less.”), Table + Teaspoon (which has “the goal of making entertaining accessible for everyone”), and Social Studies (“rentable looks for any occasion”). The latter’s “field day fête” package offers a full spread of tableware — including nonbreakable plates, horn cheese knives, and caviar cocktail napkins — for a fancy picnic, at the rate of $68 per guest. “A lot of people don’t have the storage, or desire, to hold on to 25 pink-themed place settings that they’re using for a shower, and that’s really how the concept was born,” says Social Studies co-founder Jessica Latham, whose background in event production included working as Vanity Fair’s director of events.

In addition to those logistical motivations behind Social Studies, Latham points to a bigger hole in the dinner party industry. “There wasn’t a brand in the market that was owning entertaining in the home in the way that Martha Stewart has done in the past for previous generations,” she says. Though Stewart still exists as a resource, “we felt like there was room for a young, fresh brand to come in and do it in a little bit of an edgier and modern fashion,” explains Latham, who falls within the upper age range for millennials.

This new dinner party economy is guided by distinctly millennial and younger sensibilities, with a keen awareness of the inevitability of social media. Like a manifestation of a New York 20-something’s Instagram ads, the Brooklyn store Big Night is a one-stop dinner party shop, with tinned fish, Dusen Dusen placemats, and Estelle Colored Glass. Pearl Banjurtrungkajorn of the supper club Her Name Is Nala shares candlelit TikTok videos of her life as a dinner party planner in New York City, while Meredith Hayden of Wishbone Kitchen shows the similarly romanticized dinners she creates as a private chef in the Hamptons. Chef and artist Jen Monroe’s virtual “The Table as Canvas” class teaches would-be food artists to embrace and execute the bizarre dinner party. (For a recent event, Monroe made chains out of sugar and suspended stockings with fruit and vegetable feet from the ceiling.) The Australian brand Into the Sauce sells dinner party conversation cards, which it also promotes frequently on TikTok.

The fact of these services that help viewers dream up picture-perfect dinner parties indicates that there should be some amount of effort and aesthetic curation involved in hosting a dinner party. According to the people that offer them, however, the point of these guides and services is to facilitate gathering, not to get hung up on the minutiae of curating perfection. “We always say at Social Studies: Snap a picture of it and post it on Instagram — and then put your phone down and connect with the people you’ve invited over,” says Latham.

Perhaps the return of dinner parties provides an opportunity to redefine the requirements of hosting. In Bon Appétit, writer Alicia Kennedy explored the dinner party’s potential for reframing: Choosing to forgo the standards set by domestic grand dames like Nora Ephron, M.F.K. Fisher, and Martha Stewart has allowed her to treat dinner parties as an exercise in sharing abundance, not displaying wealth. “All that advice about the perfect dinner party? I no longer listen to it,” she writes. Indeed, millennials and younger generations may be less conditioned on the Betty Draper-esque conventions of our forebears; we might be more likely to actually use our fine china even if it chips (and that’s if we have fine china in the first place).

Gelber’s ultimate goal for her TikTok is to make dinner parties more accessible, especially to the platform’s younger audience. “It doesn’t need to be this elitist thing,” she says. Her priority is sticking to her budget (generally, $80 to $100 split with her partner, for up to nine guests) and making sure everyone is full and happy, with enough food for leftovers. On Gelber’s table, a pink knife might accompany a silver spoon and fork, the plates might not match, and the re-used table decorations might come from Dollar Tree; the point is the gathering. “I’m not trying to tell anyone how to do the perfect anything,” she says.

By providing would-be hosts with enough structure to achieve an experience that’s thoughtful and artful, but without having to stress over each element from scratch, the sisters of Hauste hope to enable a happy medium between “the Martha Stewarts and the cool girls,” Raymond explains, the latter of whom have perpetuated the idea of the effortless, just-thrown-together dinner party. (This, as some have pointed out, is a bit of a myth, after all.) “I think our culture and society is obsessed with being effortless,” Raymond says. “As much as that is a style, I think there’s a beauty in effort and putting together things for people you love.”

One thing that’s true of our culture is that disruption comes for everything — even, apparently, dinner party clean-up. While Social Studies asks renters to “clear all dinnerware of food particles (sauce included!)” before returning their dinnerware, the competing table-setting rental company Table + Teaspoon specifies there’s no need to wash anything at all, “just pack up and send back via prepaid label.” A dinner party without a sink full of dirty dishes? That truly is perfection.

The new FX series fictionalizes trying to turn around a failing Chicago sandwich shop, and how chef egos (always) come into play

Over the past decade or so, much of food television, scripted or otherwise, has focused almost entirely on haute cuisine. We’ve seen plenty of fancy chefs on the brink in films like Chef and Burnt, but few have taken on the challenge of showcasing the gritty, chaotic reality of life in a regular neighborhood restaurant that’s on the brink of financial collapse. Enter The Bear, a new series from FX streaming on Hulu today.

Starring Jeremy Allen White and created by Christopher Storer of Eighth Grade fame, The Bear follows Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto as he returns to Chicago after a brief (but successful) turn in the world of fine dining. Before coming back home to run the Original Beef of Chicagoland, a workaday sandwich shop, Carmy’s a bit of a prodigy, having spent time in some of the world’s best kitchens — including Noma and the French Laundry — and was named a Food and Wine Best New Chef, all before the age of 21. The script notes that Carmy won a James Beard Award, and was in charge of the “best restaurant in the world, at least according to Eater.” (Note: Eater does not actually host the Best Restaurant in the World Awards anywhere but inside our own minds.)

But now, Carmy is stuck in Chicago running the Original Beef after the sudden death of his brother; he does so alongside a seriously compelling cast of side characters. Carmy’s trying to bring the restaurant’s kitchen — and its sandwiches — up to his own exacting standards, so he brings in Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), an ambitious and organized sous chef who’s tired of not being taken seriously in the restaurant world. She’s a perfect foil to surly line cook Tina (Liza Colón-Zayas), who’s deeply skeptical of how Carmy is changing both the recipes and the way that things have always been done at the Original Beef. And then there’s real-life Toronto chef Matty Matheson, who makes recurring appearances, bringing both chef cachet and the occasional comedic relief to some of the show’s most tense scenes.

Across eight breakneck episodes, The Bear offers what may be scripted TV’s most authentic portrayal of life inside a failing restaurant. Its early moments feel like a reality show, perhaps an episode of Restaurant Nightmares, as Carmy tries to whip the kitchen into shape. The restaurant is, like so many others, deeply in debt, leaving Carmy to trade vintage men’s fashion for the beef he needs to make his sandwiches and with a stack of bills he has no idea how to pay. The air of this restaurant and its chef feel viscerally real, especially for anyone who’s ever worked in a restaurant kitchen that’s steeped in chaos.

But Carmy’s determined to make it work. Seemingly overnight, the staff of the Original Beef learns how to say “behind!” and “corner!” when they’re walking through the kitchen with hot food or sharp knives, and “yes chef!” becomes as common a refrain in this dingy storefront as, I imagine, it is at the French Laundry. As in restaurants and in real life, though, every step forward for the Original Beef comes with at least one step backward as Carmy tries to both save his brother’s restaurant and battle his own trauma after working for an asshole chef, played in flashbacks by Joel McHale, in his former life.

Along with its gritty authenticity, The Bear is also deeply steeped in late millennial “foodie” culture. Carmy is written with all the hallmarks of important culinary credentials that lend the credibility he needs — that Food & Wine nod, the James Beard Award — to make the audience understand that he is a Serious Chef. The actual scenes involving food, the roasting of top round to make the Italian beef, the perfectly brunoised vegetables that are transformed into fresh giardinera, are beautifully shot, and hunger-inducing without wandering too far into food porn territory. To be sure, Carmy’s sandwiches would look killer on the ‘Gram, and it seems likely that this is the kind of spot that would go viral on TikTok for serving top-tier sandwiches in an unassuming space. Hell, even the wildly popular Our Place Always Pan makes a cameo.

The series also crystallizes much of what we’ve learned about the impact of this kind of high-stress environment has on the people who make the restaurant industry possible, specifically mental health struggles and substance abuse disorders. Those maladies have been heavily reported on in publications like the one you’re reading right now for nearly the past decade, and fit in perfectly with the show’s themes. Is there anything more peak millennial foodie than an ex-Noma chef with an anxiety disorder? I think not.

And although it is certainly entertaining for a food writer like myself, I do wonder who exactly this show is for: What is its audience? Surely it isn’t chefs looking to unwind at 2 a.m. after a long night of running dinner service — nobody wants to watch a show about their job when they’re off work. Much of The Bear feels a little bit like inside baseball, and many viewers won’t necessarily understand why Carmy is so frustrated that nobody bothers to say “behind!” when they’re walking around the kitchen with a plate of hot food. For those viewers who do know food and restaurant culture intimately, it feels a little thematically dated. Tweezer food and chef angst is very 2010, but the acting and the writing in The Bear give it just enough heart to make it worth the watch.

At the end of the series, you might be left wondering why Carmy has any interest in transforming this shitty old restaurant into something great. Why wouldn’t he just cut his losses and start all over again? But that is, largely, the fundamental question of why anyone chooses to run a restaurant in real life, knowing that turning a massive profit is nigh impossible and that there is no end to the work that will need to be done. Like The Bear, the restaurant industry is built on chaos and uncertainty and men wrestling with their egos, and that’s exactly what makes this series feel so accurate and compelling.

All eight episodes of The Bear are now streaming on Hulu.

Chef and former Top Chef contestant Byron Gomez on how the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program paved the way for his career

Chef Byron Gomez wouldn’t have his career if it weren’t for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program that temporarily allows certain young undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children to remain in the U.S. and also receive work authorization. He immigrated with his family to New York from Costa Rica when he was a child, and later worked his way up from Burger King to cook alongside chefs like Daniel Humm and Daniel Boulud. Recently, he appeared on Season 18 of Top Chef, and now he’s the executive chef at 7908 in Aspen, Colorado. Here, he speaks about his life in America as an immigrant, and how DACA allowed him, and many others, to live a life of dignity. — Jaya Saxena

When my parents made the decision to move us to the U.S. from Costa Rica, they were well-established in their careers. My mom had gone to college, one of the first ones in her family to be able to get an education past secondary school. My dad was a salesperson and was doing really well. The reason they left is not because they were at the brink of poverty or were living on the streets; they just wanted a better life for themselves and their kids. Now I realize how brave that was, how scary that was. I was eight years old and undocumented when we moved. And I can confidently say the only reason I am where I am today professionally, as a chef, is because of DACA.

From a young age, I knew that I was growing up in a different environment from those who were here legally in this country. It’s scary, you have no idea what it takes to battle what’s coming ahead in your adulthood. I have lived in the U.S. much longer than I lived in Costa Rica. New York was my home but I felt like an outsider. When I was a teenager, I started working in a Burger King on Long Island. One of the reasons was because it was easier to work there without documentation. But also, I did not want to be a factory worker like my parents. I felt I needed to do something creative with my hands, and I wanted to see opportunities past what my parents and other people in my community were doing. At that time, I had no idea that start would lead me to amazing places.

When DACA was introduced in 2012, I was a young adult, and I was skeptical. I had recently moved to New York City, and had worked my way up to working at Épicerie Boulud. But when someone from outside the immigrant community says they want to help out with something like DACA, you think, “Is this a trap? Are you trying to get all my information so eventually you can report me?” I wanted to give it time. But by 2014, seeing the trial and error, seeing how people in my community were able to go to college, or just open a bank account, gave me more confidence.

It was a life-changing experience. It opened so many doors for me. Receiving my DACA status allowed me to work under chefs Daniel Boulud and Daniel Humm, both of whom are immigrants themselves and who became mentors for me. When I joined the team at Eleven Madison Park, it was the first time I was able to take full advantage of employee benefits. I was able to contribute to a 401(k) and receive employer-based health insurance. I was able to start building credit and open bank accounts. But more than that, it gave me confidence. Now that the 10-year anniversary of DACA is here, I’m able to speak about it and say, “Hey, I was the guy that America didn’t want to give a shot.” And I’m not the only one. There’s close to a million of us here that provide an estimated $7.8 billion to the economy. And that was just from a permit that you guys granted us 10 years ago. So I think it actually is working.

Of course, nothing is guaranteed. During the last presidential administration, for those four years, I was waking up and looking on my phone to see how far they might go to take DACA away. You feel like you’re in prison in a place where they preach freedom. You’re walking around places not being able to say, “Hey, this is who I am and this is what I’ve done.” It was a very stressful and fearful period, those four years. Last year, President Biden recognized Immigrant Heritage Month with a proclamation for the first time, nine years after DACA started. But on July 6 there’s a court hearing that’s going to determine whether DACA protections will continue, and it’s not looking too well for recipients. After all that’s been said, after all that’s been promised, there’s still that situation.

But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to be scared of stepping out. In 2021 my season of Bravo’s Top Chef aired. That was the first time I had ever talked so publicly about being a DACA recipient and the outpouring of support was incredible. I was nervous to talk about it at first — would people judge me? Would they see me differently? The number of parents and kids who reached out letting me know that I inspired them made me more proud than I’ve ever been before. Today I’m proud to be a prime example for immigrants and how DACA can change a life. A lot of fear about and within the immigrant community is due to lack of knowledge and education. If I can change one person’s mind about the value that immigrants bring to the United States, and show them how important DACA is, my job is done.

I just think there needs to be a better way for the government to honor those who have honored this country. I want to be part of this society. And the more we educate people, the more we start to speak about this, the more examples that we show of this program, the more it will give people a different outlook. We are no different from anyone. We have aspirations, we have dreams. It just takes a couple of people to speak up and to do a movement for these things to get recognized.

Winemakers around the country are working to bring back Indigenous and hybrid grape varieties that are better adapted to extreme weather

This story was originally published on Civil Eats.

In his almost 50 years in the wine industry, J. Stephen Casscles has watched the weather in New York’s Hudson Valley become wetter, hotter, and more humid — the perfect environment for fungal diseases and pests to thrive. Facing everything from black rot and downy mildew to stink bugs and spotted lanternflies — invasive insects that feed on plant sap — winegrowers across the region have been more frequently and liberally applying pesticides and fungicides, including the copper-based alternatives used in organic viticulture.

“I’m the one spraying these things, [so] I just would rather not use things that are highly toxic,” Casscles says. “Or, if I am, I’d rather use them three times a year rather than 12.”

And yet, even copper poses potential health risks, and researchers have found that it can build up in vineyards over time, negatively impacting soil health. For these reasons, Casscles and other winemakers are hoping to spray less overall by growing grape varieties better suited for an increasingly unstable climate.

Together with Milea Estate Vineyards, Casscles recently launched the Heritage Grape Project, a line of wines that aims to conserve and promote hybrid grapes, which are crosses between Indigenous American grapes and the European varieties that most wine drinkers are familiar with. Once shunned as “foxy,” “musky,” or “unidimensional,” these hybrid grapes are being re-evaluated as the climate crisis stands to reshape vineyards across the world.

“Everyone is concerned with yield and the continual health of their vineyards,” explains wine distributor and former wine cellar manager Peter Szilagyi. “People who are leaning into these Indigenous and hybrid grapes are doing so out of a concern for soil and for laborers — often because they themselves are much closer to the labor.”

Grape species such as labrusca, aestivalis, rupestris, and riparia co-evolved in North America with many of the regional pests and funguses. Historic hybrid grapes are spontaneous crosses between vinifera grapes used in the European wine industry and Indigenous American grapes, or were purposefully bred in the United States and Europe in response to pressures like the phylloxera epidemic to help the European wine industry recover or to create more productive and better-tasting grapes.

As wine-growing regions are projected to shrink by as much as 56 percent around the world, costs are going up, and the world’s wine map is set to change radically, the Heritage Grape Project sees hybrids as helping local viticulturists grow grapes in both an ecologically and economically sound manner. And in our current era, efforts to bring hybrid grapes to fields and markets are taking on a new urgency — while facing an array of challenges.

Fragile Vines

For U.S. winemakers, growing the Vitis vinifera species highly prized in Europe has always been a struggle. Vinifera grapes often failed across the Atlantic due to differing climates, pests, and fungal diseases.

When Nicholas Longworth, heralded by many as the “father of the American wine industry,” began growing grapes in Ohio in the early 1800s, he worked for decades to grow Vitis vinifera, to no avail. In response, Longworth and other growers turned to hybrids such as Catawba, a cross between vinifera and the indigenous labrusca grape. Catawba wines soon grew in popularity: Henry Longfellow wrote an ode to the grape, arguing that no wine is as “dulcet, delicious, and dreamy” as that produced with Catawba.

But Catawba and other hybrids fell out of favor when Prohibition effectively shut down most vineyards in the Eastern and Midwestern U.S. and the industry eventually moved to California, where new, more industrialized practices took hold.

In recent decades, winemaking has returned to other pockets of the country, but as temperatures rise and weather becomes more and more unstable, calls are growing for a new approach.

TF-Images/Getty Images

The Hunt for Ignored Grapes

Casscles began working in the wine industry when he was 14, but has spent his full-time career as an attorney working for the state of New York. Now, he says, searching for ideal hybrid grapes reminds him of his time spent regulating New York’s horseracing industry. “It’s sort of like racehorse breeding,” he explains. “You look at its parents and its grandparents to see what the offspring might be capable of.”

In his collection of 200 old and new books on U.S. grape varieties, Casscles searches for promising hybrids. “I’m trying to look back in history for varieties that are able to be grown sustainably today,” he explains. Based on this information, Casscles extrapolates whether the grapes will be resistant to fungal diseases, how easily they can be grown in different soil types, if they will “roll with the punches” in droughts or floods, and, of course, if he thinks they will produce pleasing wine. He then orders free vine cuttings from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Plant Genetic Resources Unit in Geneva, New York, which aims to preserve crop biodiversity and improve breeding.

Expanding grape biodiversity is critical for more than just aesthetic reasons, says Anna Katharine Mansfield, professor of enology at Cornell University. “The genetic variability of all the Vitis vinifera is really, really tiny. They are all so closely related that if one of them gets a disease, they all are going to get it.”

Since the 1980s, university scientists at Cornell and elsewhere have used molecular tools such as genome sequencing to guide crosses between vinifera and other species, including riparia and amurensis. The University of Minnesota, for example, draws on Vitis riparia, often referred to as “Minnesota’s native grape,” to produce hybrid wine grapes that can flourish in the region’s colder climate. Together with the Minnesota Grape Growers Association, the university hosts an International Cold Climate Wine Competition featuring these hybrids.

Casscles, though, prefers “heritage” hybrids, which were propagated intentionally as a result of disease in the 19th century or spontaneously after European settlement, over these newer varieties. “Not only do [“heritage”] grapes grow sustainably, but they have historic relevance,” he says. Through the Heritage Grape Project, Casscles is now producing around 900 gallons a year of these hybrid wines made from 107 varietals grown on his 12-acre farm.

Like many older varieties, however, they’re not bred for yield or speed of production. In Casscles’ experience, the hybrid vines, like vinifera grapes, often don’t reach full production until their fifth year, but he sees the gamble as worth it. “We already know they are very well-adapted to the environment and matched up with the region,” Mansfield adds. All told, Casscles’ endeavor will amount to 375 cases of wine sold this year at Milea Estate Vineyards, though he is beginning to plant more of certain hybrid varieties in order to increase future production.

That amount won’t make a dent in the total U.S. wine consumption — Wine Spectator pegs 2019 consumption at around 328.9 million cases. But for Casscles, this is a critical first step to highlight grape diversity and popularize these hybrids among consumers and other winemakers. Beyond producing his own wine, Casscles has also donated several local hybrid varieties to botanical gardens and arboretums on the East Coast, some of which are planting their own small vineyards for educational purposes and to raise the profile of hybrid grapes.

Other grape-growers and winemakers are also drawing on the deep history of hybrid grapes to tackle current problems. Justine Belle Lambright is the director of external business at the Kalchē Wine Cooperative, a Vermont-based worker cooperative that produces wine with locally grown hybrid grapes.

For Lambright, hybrid grapes can contribute to a redefinition and reclamation of wine. “Although the majority of workers in a vineyard are Black and brown bodies, they only make up 1 percent of the ownership level,” Lambright notes. As they see it, hybrid grapes, which require fewer chemical inputs, have the potential to improve labor conditions for those workers of color.

But hybrids are no silver bullet. Art and food historian Shana Klein has detailed how in the 19th century, “viticultural development promised to elevate America’s cultural importance as well as colonize landscapes that were thought to be divinely sanctioned to white Americans.” This viticultural development heavily relied on hybrids, many of which came about through spontaneous cross-breeding after settlers brought vinifera grapes to the Americas. Hybrid grapes thus are heavily implicated in the violence of settler colonialism and Indigenous displacement.

“When people are talking about heritage, whose heritage are they actually talking about?” Lambright asks, arguing that winemakers need to contend with the violent past — and present — of the industry. As Kalchē’s website declares, “It’s up to us to redefine and reclaim this next wine world.”

A Hybrid Future?

While hybrids are no panacea, Lambright sees hybrid grapes as an important part of the next era of wine production as they have the potential to improve “exploit[ation] of workers, consumers, and the environment” when given the proper considerations.

Nonetheless, hybrid grapes may still face an uphill battle to widespread acceptance; they’re new to most consumers, and restaurants can be reluctant to stock wines made with them. “I have a lot of people that come from old-school styles of wine that think there are right and wrong ways to consume this beverage,” says Marcie Gsteiger-Cox, the wine director at Michelin-starred Reverie in Washington, D.C. “There are still a lot of stigmas around hybrid grapes.”

Casscles believes consumer taste could change with more education, however. There is “not as much name recognition for these French-American hybrids and almost none for the heritage varieties developed in the Hudson Valley and New England.” He’s hoping the Heritage Grape Project and others will lead to increased recognition of these varieties. Others, like Szilagyi, suggest that hybrid wines need to chart their own path. “I’ve found some of my favorite wines from hybrid grapes,” he says. “Instead of trying to make a European-style wine with hybrid grapes,” he recommends winemakers, “just embrace them and sit comfortably with [their] qualities.”

The fact that non-vinifera grapes are less of a “known quantity” means that the kinds of large capital investments needed to get vineyards up and running can be harder to come by. And launching one of these atypical vineyards takes even more time and money.

Jerry Eisterhold of TerraVox Vineyards in Missouri got his start in winemaking after coming across a copy of the 1909 book Foundations of American Grape Culture, which catalogs the vast diversity of American grapes. Inspired, Eisterhold set out to put these varieties back on the map. He tracked down the community college in Texas that once housed Munson’s nursery and began growing Indigenous grapes.

Eisterhold notes that choosing the right grape variety in the changing climate can be even more difficult in the case of transplanted or untested varietals. “We are not exploring one grapevine; we are exploring a diverse sweep of them. So, the efficiency of all the labor to monitor and analyze and do all the tests is multiplied,” says Eisterhold, who began TerraVox with sweat equity and 60 varietals. “It is a lot of labor that is not amortized over huge amounts of wine,” he says.

Despite the challenges inherent in any shift of this size, a number of winemakers and others in the industry see hybrid and Indigenous grapes as key to wine’s future.

“The wine industry today is a largely agricultural-industrial complex,” explains Boston-based sommelier and gastronomy graduate researcher Marie-Louise Friedland. “But where we’re going to see the continued success of American wine is by embracing hybrid grapes in a more real way.”

• Will Climate Change Help Hybrid Grapes Take Root in the U.S. Wine Industry? [Civil Eats]

For the cookbook author and YouTube star, dinner is often an impromptu affair — except on the nights when a grand aioli comes calling

We all could use a little dinner inspiration — even Ali Slagle, who dreams of dinner. In “Dinner Is Served,” she’ll ask colleagues about one night when they somehow transformed ingredients into dinner with all this life going on. In this installment: In between filming her YouTube series and putting the finishing touches on her next cookbook, What’s for Dessert, Claire Saffitz pulls together a grand aioli. But she doesn’t pretend to be Martha Stewart: “I’m not making this every night.”

It will probably be surprising to people who think I make elaborate meals all the time that a lot of times dinner is either very simple or almost snacky or impromptu or informal. Most nights it’s 9 p.m. and my husband and I are trying to decide what we have to eat. Over the winter and when I’m really intense in my recipe testing mode, most of my dinners are frozen dumplings that I steam on the stove and then fry. In an ideal world, I’d steam some broccoli with the dumplings but that usually never happens.

Certainly now that some of the spring and summer stuff is coming in, I’ve been a little more inspired. Recently I had a couple artichokes and asparagus. This was maybe a Wednesday but the day of the week is somewhat irrelevant because what is achievable for me on a weekday is very particular to my circumstance. I’m always in the kitchen and so a lot of times I’m prepping dinner while I’m finishing up a recipe.

The idea of a grand aioli started when I went to the store earlier in the day and there was some wild-caught shrimp at the store that looked pretty good. They were U-12. I really love the really big shrimp. They’re just fun to eat. So that’s when I put it together that we’ll have like a spring vegetable aioli, which is truly one of my favorite meals.

As I was testing other recipes, I was trimming the artichokes and snapping the ends off the asparagus and deveining the shrimp. I do really minimal prep on the artichokes. I just use scissors to snip off the spiky ends of the leaves and then I cut with a serrated knife across the top to trim most of the leaves in one fell swoop. I rubbed a cut lemon on the cut side of the artichoke [to prevent browning].

I think I prepared a salad dressing before I started steaming, too. If I’m going to really make dinner, it’s always going to start with a salad. My go-to salad components are endive, radicchio, and romaine with a very simple French vinaigrette of really finely minced shallot and honey and mustard and then just olive oil and whatever good red wine or white wine vinegar I have around. A little bit of honey helps when you have chicories and bitter stuff. I make the salad dressing in a really large bowl so that all I have to do is toss the greens into it. We always have a hunk of Parm around so I’ll just shave some Parm into it, too. So I made the dressing and set it aside and then I started steaming.

I tend to use my metal steamer only because the bamboo steamer is really high up in a cabinet and I can’t reach it. First I steamed the artichokes, which take a good 20 minutes if not longer; a lot of times I actually undercook them and it’s annoying. While the artichokes were cooking I made a quick aioli with egg yolk, grated garlic, lemon juice, and half olive oil and half neutral oil, which is a nice balance. Then I took out the artichokes and while they were cooling I steamed the asparagus and then the shell-on shrimp. I peeled the shrimp after steaming, then put the shrimp, artichokes, and asparagus on a big platter and I just did lemon juice and salt and a little bit of olive oil over everything. Then we had it with the aioli and our salad.

This dinner took a little while but it’s very hands-off and you need very little prep. I don’t think this was a particularly late dinner but if this wasn’t going to be ready for a while no one seems to mind. My husband and I eat at like 10 or 11, which is too late, for sure, but we are both night owls and tend to work into the wee hours. Sometimes I’m still in the kitchen cleaning up or recipe testing after dinner.

This meal was a little more aspirational for us, but it’s definitely a dinner I’m excited to make and eat. I think it feels so luxurious. And I’ll eat anything with aioli on it, so that helps.

This interview was condensed and edited for clarity.

Ali Slagle is a recipe developer, stylist, and — most important of all — home cook. She’s a frequent contributor to the New York Times and Washington Post, and her cookbook is called I Dream of Dinner (so You Don’t Have To): Low-Effort, High-Reward Recipes.
Daniela Jordan-Villaveces is a creative director and illustrator. She was born in Bogotá and raised between Colombia, Holland, and the US. She currently lives in sunny Los Angeles with her husband, their son, Lou, two kittens, and a pup.