This is it! I stripped out almost all the intros, outros, and all other genius non sequiturs to copy/paste the entirety of Family Meal 2022 in one long endless scroll for your endless scrolling (and command+F’ing) pleasure! Unfortunately, right at the end, Substack wouldn’t let me add any more text, so a few from December are just links at bottom.

So it goes.

Here it goes…

January 4th:

The Relief – Remember when you got your Restaurant Revitalization Fund application in right away and still missed out? Per the NYT’s Stacy Cowley, maybe it would have been better to file at the last minute… “James Hutton submitted his claim just one minute after the application system opened on May 3, seeking $2.4 million for his business, Players Sports Grill & Arcade in San Francisco. At the end of June, his grant was denied. Rocky Aiyash applied on May 24 — the last day the program accepted applications — seeking $1.8 million for Pazzo’s, an Italian restaurant in Chicago’s financial district. His grant was approved.”

Some of that may have had to do with the lawsuits and rule changes that happened around priority groups, but there’s also this: “A senior [Small Business Administration] official… acknowledged that some late applications had zipped through the system. Myriad technical reasons affected their speed, the official said. For example, claims for large sums faced more extensive vetting, and single-location restaurants were less complicated than chains seeking multiple grants for multiple spots, the official said. Perhaps most crucially for Pazzo’s, Mr. Aiyash applied using Toast, a restaurant sales software vendor that worked with the Small Business Administration to integrate its system, which significantly simplified the agency’s review.

“The agency official compared the very late applications that got funding to a ‘perfect straight flush’ — a wildly unlikely jackpot.”

Sounds fair!

That Hotel $$$ – “José Andrés and his D.C.-based ThinkFoodGroup are returning to Los Angeles, with plans to open three restaurants and a bar at the Grand L.A., a new retail, residence and hotel development designed by Frank Gehry. Located across Grand Avenue from Walt Disney Concert Hall, Andrés’ restaurants will join a number of shops, apartments and the Conrad Hotel Los Angeles.” Jenn Harris has details in the LA Times. “And similar to the hotel arrangement Andrés had when he first opened the Bazaar at the SLS in 2008, the chef and his team will be responsible for the entirety of the Conrad Los Angeles’ food and beverage program, including room service.”

On a side note: I think there is a solid argument to be made that the two biggest chef winners (depending on your metrics!) over the last year were Andrés and Kwame Onwuachi (both of whom got their clearest career starts in small market / media heavy DC). After quitting his sole successful solo restaurant, Onwuachi is signing endorsements left and right, headlining parties and guesting on shows with A-list celebrities, hosting the 2021 James Beard Awards placeholder, moonlighting as an Executive Producer at Food & Wine, and is set to release his first cookbook into a warm spring shower of positive attention this May. Andrés has all but been beatified by his fans (including some in the media), is opening massive restaurant complexes with design/build credits from Gehry and Philippe Starck in Chicago, LA, and NYC, had board seats more or less named after him (Eat Just), and got Jeff Bezos to cut him a small check for charity.

The biggest losers of 2021 were, of course, birds.

The Crypto-staurants (working title) – The team behind anachronistically named VCR Group, a hospitality company launching the “World’s first NFT restaurant” has officially announced plans to start selling their NFTs / club memberships to the public on January 7th. They promise: “Members will have unlimited access to a private dining room that will span across 10,000+ square feet in an iconic, New York City location. The space will consist of a bustling cocktail lounge, upscale restaurant, intimate omakase room, and an outdoor space.” Which will all sound sweeeeet to some people, but… there is one small caveat per the email announcement from principals Gary Vaynerchuk, David Rodolitz, Josh Capon, and Conor Hanlon:

“We are actively looking for the ideal space within New York City, with an expected opening of early 2023. In anticipation of opening… we will produce physical and virtual events, pop-ups, tastings and culinary experiences exclusively for members.”

Bold 2022 crowdfunding pitch: Be a member of a club so exclusive, it doesn’t even know where it is.

The Media – There are way too many “Most Read” lists out now to include here — highly recommend a quick scan of your local food section / website’s list — but I do want to run through NYT Food’s top 10 (via Sara Bonisteel), as classified by me:

1.     One simple trick to master this popular dish!
2.     “Best Of” Listicle
3.     Easy recipes listicle
4.     Bad chef exposé
5.     Holiday recipe listicle
6.     Easy recipes listicle
7.     Easy recipes listicle
8.     Regional Food Fight Clickbait
9.     White Woman Nice to Black People?
10. Negative Restaurant Review

So… maybe pivot your “Complicated Recipes From My Restaurant’s Pro Kitchen” cookbook to something a little more like: “Le Bernardin? Sheet pan!”

And last and least – If you’d like to jump Through the Looking Glass real quick, here in Hong Kong, an airline worker skipped out on mandatory home isolation and visited a restaurant while infected with omicron just before New Years. That breaks the city’s long COVID-free streak, and now six people who were at the restaurant and have still not come forward for testing are basically on the city’s most wanted list.

“Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” - The Red Queen.

January 7th:

The Relief – First, the bad news you probably already knew. Headline in Restaurant Hospitality: “Another round of the Restaurant Revitalization Fund is looking less likely.” Joanna Fantozzi backs that up with some anonymous source reporting from John Harwood and Betsy Klein on CNN — “Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland and Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi held preliminary conversations with stakeholders on additional relief… in December… But the talks were shelved before any legislation was introduced and there was no buy-in from Senate leadership.” — and a perceived lack of urgency from press secretary Jen Psaki at around the 34:15 minute mark in Wednesday’s media briefing.

JOURNALIST: Would the White House be open to spending for restaurants — COVID relief for restaurants — or would the President be opposed to that?

MS. PSAKI: Well, as you know, we did a major relief package that included helping restaurants just last year…

Oh, and CNN also quoted a “senior Biden admin official” as saying, “We are not going to write checks to incentivize people to sit at home, and we are not going to bail out businesses if the economy seems strong.”

If a tree gets blight in the forest, but the forest seems strong, does the parks service care?

Lists I Like – It’s time for another round of Eater’s “Most Anticipated Restaurants of Next Season” listicles, which are among the more useful roundups around for those of you keeping track of comings and goings. So far I see Vegas; LA; the Bay Area; Portland, OR; NOLA; Chicago; Atlanta; Austin; Nashville; Boston; and London, with presumably more out there or on the way.

The Media – Not necessarily restaurant related, but maybe some of you tag dishes with #feedfeed on Instagram time to time? Welp, you might should read Tim Carman’s latest in the Washington Post: “Women allege racism, sexism at food media company Feedfeed.” Is there a word in English for “Unsurprising story you’ve read several versions of before but is still important”?

Oh, and since many of you have followed Alison Roman’s ups and downs over the past few years, you should know she just signed a deal for a new show on CNN+, in collaboration with Anthony Bourdain’s old production company Zero Point Zero. I think it’s safe to say she’s made it all the way out of the cancelled box at this point? Though it might still be a while yet before paragraphs like this one stop feeling the need to mention that time she was cancelled.

The Media Too (Opportunities) – Eater DC is officially hiring for their vacant editor position, and Maine’s Portland Press Herald is looking for a Food & Dining reporter. It would be great if no one would apply to the DC job so that Eater EIC Amanda Kludt is forced to email me and ask how many zeros I need to move back home. Thank you.

For Design Fans – I had a whole paragraph ready to go about how I didn’t really like the look of Evan Funke’s new Mother Wolf space in Hollywood, because it felt like it needed another color to offset all those shades of red, and the space looked like it couldn’t decide if it wanted to be fun and busy or staid and neat. But the writing was a bit harsh so I looked back and am now reconsidering my initial call for the walls to be painted in a stripey mishmash homage to Swiss Guard’s uniforms because… I think I love it as is? Even those lamps? You? Photos in Eater LA by Wonho Frank Lee.

And last but not least: The Zeitgeist – Almost didn’t read this Brooks Barnes NYT piece about how “Hollywood Glamour Is Pandemic-Proof at the Polo Lounge,” but it really has it all: A disrupted and flailing industry (film), liberal Hollywood’s inability to stay away from a restaurant owned by a man who literally made gay sex punishable by stoning (the Sultan of Brunei), Harvey Weinstein stench, and a classic old vs new money confrontation for a kicker: “At tables favored by film executives, there is eye rolling and nose upturning about Silicon Valley’s push into entertainment: Apple is spending how much on Martin Scorsese’s next film? And barbarians await at the gate. TikTok creators and Instagram influencers have discovered that the hotel’s lawn makes an interesting backdrop. Mr. Mady, the hotel’s general manager, tensed up when asked about the social media crowd. ‘We’re not proud of that,’ he said. ‘We’re trying our best to curb it.’”

Truly, all the magic of the world happens in and around restaurants.

January 11th:

The Optimism – After noting last week that a refill of the Restaurant Revitalization Fund looks unlikely, a restaurateur / reader in Hawaii noted he had read a few more optimistic takes, including this “flicker of hope” piece from Peter Romeo in RBO. I love some good hope! And the Independent Restaurant Coalition did get a handful of American mayors to sign a letter asking congress for help, but… Ted Cruz et al are banging an “inflation bomb” drum, and I’m not sure even targeted spending can escape that messaging beat this election year?

The Next Exposé? – Reading both Chris Crowley in Grubstreet this week (“The Restaurant Industry Has Always Treated Sick Workers With No Remorse; Will anything change because of Omicron?”) and Judd Legum in Popular Information (“Red Lobster workers say they are forced to work sick”), I’m wondering what impact a potential “This Indie Restaurant Is Serving While Infected” story will have, and who it will be about…

The Profile Treatment – Sorry I missed this when it came out on December 27th, but I had no idea that during the pandemic, the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park hired its “first female Black chef instructor”?! In Albany’s Times Union, Abbe Wichman has a profile of chef Roshara Sanders, who came back to teach after coasting into culinary school the easy way a decade ago: “She was accepted by the CIA in 2007 but couldn’t afford the tuition, so she joined the military. ‘Just to get back to the CIA on the GI Bill,’ she said. Two deployments later, one in Iran and one in Afghanistan, the veteran returned to the school in 2011 and graduated in 2014.”

So… Is the CIA suddenly a case study of solid DEI progress? “Sanders points to a growing number of Black hires in both the front of the house and in the kitchen at the CIA and notes the CIA’s nine-week extracurricular course: ‘The Cuisines of Africa and its Diaspora in the Americas,’ developed in collaboration with Dr. Jessica B. Harris… ‘The school is really doing what it needs to do in regards to diversity,’ says Sanders.”

The Profile Treatment Too – In the LA Times, Jean Trinh has a long look at Yangban Society, a new project from Katianna and John Hong. It’s a deli / minimart with a bit of an upscale side (“Customers will be able to buy canned cocktails and bottles of Hite beer or Krug Champagne to pair with their meals…”) and would sound like a classic COVID pivot-to-grocery story except the two say they started dreaming it up in 2019.

My warm and fuzzy side liked the intertwining journeys of personal cultural acceptance (Korean-American style in this case), and the industry career love story: After meeting at Mélisse, “Katianna and John were still only colleagues when she moved on to work at Christopher Kostow’s The Restaurant at Meadowood in Napa, where she eventually became the first female chef de cuisine at a Michelin three-star establishment in the United States. She convinced John to join her, and they eventually began dating and moved up the ranks together. Katianna went on to open Charter Oak, Kostow’s second restaurant in Napa, and John became Meadowood’s chef de cuisine.”

My business details side is happy to know: “They funded Yangban by partnering with Sprout L.A. — the restaurant group that oversees spots like Bestia and République — through a random connection, John explained.”

And my design side learned both that: “Shin Irvin, the founder and creative director of Folklor, notable for his work with the Line Hotel and Gjelina, helped design the space.” And that Shin Irvin’s blue paint dealer is now very rich.

The Media (Moves) – I put all this in a tweet on Friday after details came in too late for that Family Meal, but wanted to include again here… ATTN PR: There’s a big hire-and-shuffle going on over at Eater this month: Stephanie Wu started as Executive Editor last Monday. Lesley Suter is moving from Travel to edit “Special Projects.” Matt Buchanan is moving to a new role handling larger stories as "Enterprise editor," with Jesse Sparks joining that Enterprise team as Senior Editor. Jade Stewart took over as editor in Seattle yesterday. Brittany Britto Garley starts as editor of Eater Houston on 1/18, which is the same day Paolo Bichieri officially becomes an Eater SF reporter. And Nat Belkov is joining as Design Director on 1/24.

And they’re also looking for a part time editor in the Twin Cities, alongside that open DC Editor job. Jeeze.

The Media Too – Maybe omicron is “mild” for most people, but mild is relative, especially for food folks. NYT Food’s Kim Severson tweeted yesterday that she recently joined her colleague Tejal Rao in (hopefully temporarily) having lost her sense of taste and smell. Severson asks (as far as you know) that PR pitches now first wish her well, before tying totally unconnected restaurant news to her illness in a deeply insensitive way. Good luck, all!

The Media Three: For the Somm – Editor Serena Dai says, “The [SF] Chronicle’s food and wine team is thrilled to announce our new wine reporter: Jess Lander, a seasoned Wine Country journalist who has covered topics ranging from the impact of wildfires on wine to the unique parenting challenges of women winemakers.” If you haven’t seen Lander around Napa, the Chronicle’s official press release has a full bio and headshot here. NB: Landler’s Instagram handle is “WillWrite4Wine,” so if you need good press, try bribes?

And last but not least: The Critics – You wild ones went and freed Britney and now she’s a restaurant influencer! Recent restaurant review on Instagram (via Mona Holmes in Eater LA): “I immediately go to the bathroom… holy crap !!! I wanted to stay in that bathroom forever !!! It was so beautiful and the lady in there offered me candy !!! I declined…. Then I went to my seat and was given the menu. First up… the salad. HOLLLLLY WOWZA !!! Is God food??? … I failed to mention I had my first glass of red wine in 13 years !!! I felt more sexy in that restaurant than I ever have in my entire life… I cried over food in this beautiful restaurant.”

She has 38.7M followers, folks. Get her in for a comp.

January 14th:

The Funge – There are a handful of articles out there right now treating VCR Group’s “World’s First NFT Restaurant,” Flyfish Club, as if it wasn’t announced months ago, but if you want some useful information about this new crowdfunding strategy, head to Lisa Jennings interview with co-founder/CEO David Rodolitz in Restaurant Hospitality, where you will hear a bit of an NFT restaurant SWOT analysis that goes something like:

STRENGTHS: Free money. “I brought in a little bit north of $14 million on my NFT drop, not including (10%) royalties on the secondary market. Every time it trades hands, I make money. And there’s been over $14 million as it gets traded on the secondary market over a couple weeks (including the smaller private launch in December).” Assuming that’s the royal “I” (meaning the partners?), but the NFT-buyers have zero equity beyond their membership. Those members have just given VCR fourteen million American dollars and are hoping/trusting for the best!

WEAKNESSES: Non-dining NFT traders. “This is a private dining club and I need to make sure the club is full [of members paying for food]... I’ll give a drastic example, but if people who bought [membership tokens] originally all live in China and are just doing this for a quick speculative investment, we could have 1,500 token holders and end up with an empty restaurant.” The partners have held back a number of tokens they can release selectively later, but that might obviously piss off current owners who value the supposed rarity.

OPPORTUNITES: Rich people. “Some people spend $20,000 to do an idle wine tasting with [co-founder Gary Vaynerchuck]…. Companies pay [co-founder] Josh Capon $10,000 hour to do a virtual cooking class.”

THREATS: Crypto rollercoaster. Memberships are bought and sold via Ethereum tokens. “And, as it happened, on the day [the NFT] dropped, Ethereum was down a bit. It would have probably been a couple million dollars more if Ethereum pricing was from two days earlier. But that’s the volatility and some of the exposure that we have, but it’s all been calculated already.”

Always a little wiggle room in the biz plan when a bunch of strangers hand you $14M for a pocketful of mumbles (such are promises)!

That Secondary Market – Meanwhile, there exists a world in which restaurant guests trade access passes without a middleman… Headline in Eater from Luke Fortney: “Diners Turn to Reddit to Sell Their $1,500 Reservations During Omicron.” Peer-to-peer ticket resale. Brave new world.

The Lists – Both Vogue (via Kat Odell) and Robb Report (via Jeremy Repanich) are out with more Most Anticipated Restaurants of 2022 lists this week. Congrats, all! Plus big congrats to those making both lists, including: Brochu’s Family Tradition (Savannah); Kono (NYC); Bar Spero (DC); Marigold Club (Houston); Little Saint (Healdsburg); and Philotimo (DC).

And congrats also to folks getting featured in the upcoming season of PBS’s Migrant Kitchen series, including: Jon Yao of Kato in LA, “Bonnie Morales of Portland’s Kachka, José Enrique of Jose Enrique Restaurant in San Juan, Chris Williams of Lucille’s and Jonny Rhodes of Indigo, both in Houston, and Brooklyn’s Jenny Kwak of Haenyeo and Sohui Kim from Insa.” Announcement details and show trailer from Eater’s Madeleine Davies here.

Runnin’ Down a Scene – Also lists of sorts… NYT Food is apparently spending these slow January days putting out roundups of cuisine scenes city by city. Brett Anderson and Christina Morales had a photo heavy look at Miami’s baking world on Tuesday, which comes after Tejal Rao sang the praises of LA’s sushi masters last week. (Nice to see Miami food getting national attention for something other than New York chain restaurants moving there these days.)

The End of an Era – In Oakland, “After nearly 15 years in business, Tanya Holland’s game-changing restaurant, Brown Sugar Kitchen, has closed the doors of its last location for good.” Berkeleyside’s Eve Batey has the obit (including what feels like a bit of a gift to Bay Area crime hawks?): “Like many other restaurants, including well-funded chains like California Pizza Kitchen, Brown Sugar Kitchen filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last May, a last-ditch attempt to save her business… But still, it wasn’t enough. ‘We were undercapitalized from the beginning,’ Holland said. Add to that high rents and increasing crime in Oakland, and ‘It was all too much,’ Holland said. ‘Safety. Car break-ins. Murders. A reduced police department...’”

And last but not least: The Longest Year – Hate to end on a downer, but this COVID story, from the Miami Herald’s Carlos Frías, shook me a bit: “Everyone thought it odd when Nino Pernetti called the afternoon of Dec. 31, 2020, to say he was skipping the annual New Year’s Eve dinner at his landmark Coral Gables restaurant of more than 30 years, Caffe Abbracci. He injured his ankle while playing his daily round of tennis, he told his friends, family and staff... ‘We should have known better,’ his ex-wife Marlén Pernetti said… Days later, he would be transferred to the COVID-19 ward at Mercy Hospital, where no visitors were allowed… More than a year later, Nino Pernetti has not returned home… He is fighting for his life.” Pernetti turned 76 in the hospital last summer.

January 18th:

The Big Day – Email from the Independent Restaurant Coalition: “TUESDAY: National Day of Action to Save Restaurants.” That’s today! The plan: “Look out for an email from us that morning as well as posts on Instagram explaining how we can unite our voices to deliver relief for not just those who were left behind by the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, but every single independent restaurant and bar impacted by the pandemic.”

Nothing says capital ‘A’ Action like an email teasing an email… Good luck out there today, folks!

The Comeback – Headline in the Seattle Times: “7 months after sexual misconduct accusations, ‘it’s time to reopen JuneBaby,’ Edouardo Jordan says.” Details via Jackie Variano: “On Friday… Jordan announced via Instagram that he is ready to reopen the Ravenna soul food eatery: ‘As someone who has been taught to stay the course through all of life’s obstacles, I’ve always kept moving, growing, and learning. I’ll continue to do just that, but with a clear lens, and renewed purpose. The future is unknown, but i do know it’s time to reopen JuneBaby — a small, Black-owned family restaurant that is my livelihood and my purpose.”

Jordan got a bunch of support for the comeback on his MLK-inspired Instagram post, but several commenters also said negative posts were being deleted. The gist of the positive notes seems to be: “No one is perfect. I’m hungry!”

The gist of the critiques is that Jordan has still never really apologized or fully dealt with the allegations (detailed here). That’s backed up by Variano in the Times, who says that after a couple attempts at lackluster apologies on social media, “By the fall, all apologies had been deleted from Jordan’s Instagram.”

Reaction from Seattle writer Naomi Tomky on Twitter: “AYFKM. Here is what we are not going to do: talk about this. Cover this. Eat here.”

Will a media/awards boycott matter? We shall see…

The Bad PR – Everyone’s struggling to figure out the best way to handle sick leave and safety with omicron, but damn some own-goals read a lot worse than others…. Shannen Joachim, service director at Gabriel Kreuther in Manhattan told the NYT’s Priya Krishna and Christina Morales “that last month, members of management encouraged several employees not to get tested, even if they had been exposed to the virus. She said the person in charge of the restaurant’s Covid protocols told her he didn’t believe the virus was real. One chef, she said, led mandatory breathing exercises on Saturdays before service in which many people were unmasked.” A spokeswoman for the restaurant denied all that, but per the NYT, “All of these allegations were corroborated by other employees.” Oof.

The Managers – In her Food Section newsletter, Hannah Raskin sorts through some new data from between March 1, 2020 and Sept. 1, 2021, and finds that (at least in Georgia), while it’s true that COVID killed more cooks than any other food service worker, the deadliest job per capita was actually “Food Service Manager,” which Raskin equates to a GM role. Obviously, it’s not a competition(!), but her math goes like this:

“173 restaurant, fast food and institutional cooks died of Covid in Georgia during the 18-month span, which works out to 24 percent of deaths in the industry statewide.” But over that same time period, 102 food service managers also died, and because “as of May 2020, there were 61,000 cooks working in Georgia… compared to 8,440 food service managers… if you were a food service manager in Georgia during these 18 months, you were four times more likely to die of Covid than if you were a cook.”

A bunch more interesting numbers and useful caveats in The Food Section here.

The Media – Tweet from (now former) Wine Enthusiast editor Layla Schlack: “I'm still enthusiastic about wine, but [Friday was] my last day at Wine Enthusiast. Starting [today], I'll be editorial director at Whetstone Magazine — my dream since before it even existed.” NB: Whetstone is making all kinds of moves lately, including launching a new suite podcasts, at least one of which topped iTunes charts last week. And its founder, Stephen Satterfield, hot off starring in the first season of Netflix’s High on the Hog, signed a “major” book deal late last year. Congrats, all!

Some Sad News – “Ed Schoenfeld, who helped open the eyes of New Yorkers to the glories of Chinese regional cuisine with a series of top-rated restaurants in the 1970s and ’80s, notably Uncle Tai’s Hunan Yuan, Auntie Yuan and Pig Heaven, died on Friday at his home in Newark, N.J. He was 72. The cause was liver cancer, his son Eric said.” Full, very fun obituary from William Grimes in the NYT, who says, “Mr. Schoenfeld, a Jew from Brooklyn who in his 20s looked like a roadie for the Grateful Dead, seemed an unlikely ambassador for Chinese cuisine....” Cameos from teachers and business partners Joe Ng, Jeffrey Chowdorow, David Keh, Michael Tong, Grace Chu, and more. Obituaries and tributes also from critic Adam Platt in Grubstreet, Luke Fortney in Eater NY, and others, I’m sure.

And last but least: For Design Fans – If you’re up for a trip to the architecture side of things, take a look at Wallpaper’s 2022 Best Restaurant Design award winner in Thailand, which goes by its full name, The Artisans Ayutthaya: The Women Restaurant. I usually see glass bricks used in spotty, unnecessary ways, but I like their critical mass here (they are the entire structure), at least from the outside. From the inside, feels like it might get a bit boring — and hot? Still, probably fun for staff to watch guests get lost in the relatively small grounds…

January 21st:

The Hike – Headline in Robb Report: “NYC’s Eleven Madison Park Is Reinstating Tipping. The… $335 tasting menu will no longer be inclusive of service.” Eater NY’s Luke Fortney got the news first, but RR’s Jeremy Repanich got the quotes: “‘When we reinstitute gratuities, we will be able to adjust the hourly pay of our food service team as a result of their wages being supplemented by the gratuities collected,’ restaurant spokesperson Ben Rosenthal told Robb Report. ‘Using that savings, we will increase the hourly pay of our kitchen team. Being able to pay our dining room and kitchen teams at Eleven Madison Park more competitively was our key motivation behind this adjustment.’”

Which… is exactly what EMP said they were trying to do when they eliminated tipping! Per their Friday email to customers (included in Fortney’s piece): “Like many of our peers, we originally embraced this model in an effort to ease the historic, often glaring financial stress between those that work in the kitchen and those in the dining room… After years of using this system, we learned that it does not positively provide for anyone in this new normal.”

Effectively raising prices by 20%, however… Massive positive potential all around!!!

For the Somm: The red flags – According to the latest Silicon Valley Bank report on the state of the wine industry: “In 2021, wine consumption in the U.S. did not grow. Wine lost market share to spirits, taking a nosedive into the negative for sales growth at liquor and retail stores, restaurant and bars, while spirits growth increased from 2020. Total wine sold wholesale, such as to supermarkets, also declined throughout most of the year…. That’s notable because restaurants and bars reopened last year, which should have been a boon for wine, [report author Rob McMillan said.” Story from Jess Lander in the SF Chronicle, with maybe the no-context kicker of the year so far…

“‘We’ve ridden the 65-plus-year-old for too long,’ he said. ‘There’s a saying in Texas. “When the horse is dead, get off.”’”

For the Bar: The big gig – “MGM Resorts announced [Tuesday] that Julian Cox will be stepping up as their executive director of beverage and corporate mixologist starting this month. [Cox’s] lengthy career spans projects in Chicago, Austin, and Los Angeles.... He’s worked with beloved LA restaurants like Tartine, Bestia, and Otium, as well as… Lettuce Entertain You Hospitality Group.” Details in Eater LV via Maddy Sweitzer-Lamme.

The Critics – It’s back to outdoors only for at least a handful of prominent restaurant critics, including Bill Addison at the LA Times, Soleil Ho at the SF Chronicle, and Pete Wells and Tejal Rao at the NYT. Addison, Wells, and Rao all give personal reasoning. In conversation with each other, Wells said his son has COVID (as of earlier this week), and Rao said she’s “terrified of losing my sense of smell again, among other things.” Addison says his partner “has a close family member living with a chronic illness whom he goes to see monthly.”

Ho wrote (ten days ago) that with many dining rooms closed anyway (“since the highly contagious omicron variant seems to take to indoor dining like a dolphin to water”) and lots of outdoor options still bumping, indoor info “isn’t very relevant to the public at the moment.”

Keep eyes peeled on the patios…

For Design Fans – Are we designing restaurants with COVID in mind, or are we ordering long communal tables like at the new Good Good Culture Club in SF (photospread by Patricia Chang in Eater SF)? I mean. Looks fun! Bright. Simple. Love the high school desk chairs (though maybe they could also use color?). And… Maybe there’s a fancy HVAC or something? That, or we’re placing more and more bets on a more normal new normal?

And last but not least: The Media – Eater is on a hiring spree this week, adding openings for editors in Las Vegas (full-time) and Dallas (part-time) on top of the Twin Cities (part-time) and DC (full-time) roles already out there (plus a few audience, social, and video gigs). Will keep you posted on who gets what (and what they look like)! I’ve started on my cover letter for the DC job, but so far the entirety of it is just a two-line riff on a slow service experience I had at IHOP one night:

3 in the morning, the pancake house.
I am a patient boy. I wait, I wait, I wait, I wait.

We shall see.

January 25th:

The Rock and the Inflating Place – Headline in the Washington Post: “Inflation is wiping out pay increases for most Americans.” But not all Americans, according to Abha Bhattari: “The only sector where pay increases outpaced inflation last year was in the leisure and hospitality industry, where workers generally make the lowest hourly wages of any sector. Workers there saw a 14 percent average raise from about $17 an hour to more than $19.50, according to an analysis of Labor Department data.”

Great for staff! But if I’m a restaurateur hoping Congress will refill RRF, I’m wondering how to convince constituents (who are watching cable news stoke inflation fears) that they should give a big aid package to the industry with highest wage growth in the country right now…

For the Bar – A Scottish investigative reporting show is out with another round of accusations of bad behavior at BrewDog this week. The full show is currently streaming only for UK-based TV license holders (and the lying liars who steal remorselessly from the British Broadcasting Corporation), but print reporting gives me the impression we’re looking at a case of…

Not only: “BBC Scotland's Disclosure programme has been told that staff at [BrewDog’s] Ellon brewery in Aberdeenshire knew that two of its flagship products, Elvis Juice and Jet Black Heart, contained extracts which were not approved in the US… One US-based importer said they had been deceived by Brewdog. In a social media post on Wednesday, CEO James Watt admitted to ‘taking shortcuts’ with the process.”

But also: “Brewdog chief James Watt accused of inappropriate behavior.” In this case, Watt denies the allegations, which involve several different ways he purportedly made (especially female) staff uncomfortable in their workplaces in Ohio and elsewhere.

For the Somm: Some Sad News – “Nicholas Molnar, a vintner who helped pioneer fine wine in the now-famous Napa County region of Carneros, died on Jan. 11. He was 94.” Per the SF Chronicle obit from Esther Mobley, beyond moving wine country borders, Molnar was also responsible for opening minds to new cooperage terroir, bringing Hungarian Kádár barrels to CA wineries for the first time in 1993.

And Last but not Least: For TV Fans – Here comes Top Chef Season 19. Yesterday’s Bravo TV press release says the 15 contestants “ready to mess with Houston, one dish at a time” are: Ashleigh Shanti (Asheville); Buddha Lo (NYC); Damarr Brown (Chicago); Evelyn Garcia (Houston); Jackson Kalb (LA); Jae Jung (NYC); Jo Chan (Austin); Leia Gaccione (Morristown, NJ); Luke Kolpin (Seattle); Monique Feybesse (Vallejo, CA); Nick Wallace (Jackson, MS); Robert Hernandez (SF); Sam Kang (NYC); Sarah Welch (Detroit); and Stephanie Miller (Bismarck, ND). Links go to their Bravo profiles, and there’s a trailer on the main page too.

There will be the usual cameos from a lot of the usual Top Chef suspects, plus Houston flavor from “Ope Amosu, Aaron Bludorn, Irma Galvan, Greg Gatlin, Robert Del Grande, Christine Ha, Trong Nguyen, Hugo Ortega, Monica Pope, Chris Shepherd, Kiran Verma, and Chris Williams.” And on the media side: “Hunter Lewis, Editor-in-Chief of FOOD & WINE, joins the judges for the final challenge.”

Good luck, all!

And for those of you working on cookbooks, there’s also a new Jamie Oliver show coming out in the UK that “will offer budding cookbook authors a deal with a prestigious publisher as its prize… The show will be a blend of cooking challenges devised to test and judge recipes, and publishing challenges devised in part to push the contestants and, according to [Penguin managing director Louise Moore], to ‘demystify’ an industry frequently criticised for its narrowness of scope and reliance on existing networks.”

Eater’s James Hansen has details on the show, but a broader profile on Oliver’s cookbook career in The Times (paywall) has more on the business side of things. There are very big numbers — Oliver’s cookbooks have brought in over $255M in revenue so far, almost $175M more than Nigella Lawson’s haul — and very small numbers: “More than 5,000 cookery titles were released into the UK market in 2020, but only 556 sold more than 100 copies and only 48 sold more than 5,000.”

There is also a throwaway line that went viral in good faith and bad: “These days Oliver employs ‘teams of cultural appropriation specialists’ to ensure his books don’t land him in hot water.”

And then there are the critics: “Marina O’Loughlin, [The Times’s] restaurant critic, owns between 500 and 700 recipe books, despite the main dish she cooks being toast.”

January 28th:

The Hike – Breaking down Eleven Madison Park’s imminent return to tipping this week, Eater NY’s Ryan Sutton says: “The current price of dinner… is $335, or $729 after tax for two. When the tipping policy returns, that same meal, if you leave a 20 percent gratuity, will clock in at $863.” He calls it a “Stealth Hike,” and takes EMP to task for more or less hiding the new fees from guests: “Unless you drill down to the middle of the ‘frequently asked questions’ link — a document that’s about as compelling as [airline safety manuals] — you probably won’t realize that service is no longer included until after you’ve made your non-refundable, prepaid reservation.”

Meh. Most guests will be fine. What the restaurant needs to worry about are staff. EMP said very clearly in their email to customers that this change will allow them “to increase the wages for all of those in our kitchen.” Imagine my surprise when several former EMP staff messaged me this week to say some version of: “Yeah. That’s what they said last time….” Food media loves a big, verifiable promise from a restaurant with a “Best of the Best” target on its back!

The Hike Too – Obviously, price points at the fast food level are not all that informative on the mid-upper range restaurant side of things, but still worth knowing what’s lining drive-thru pockets these days: “Price increases [of about 6 percent] on Big Macs, Chicken McNuggets and other food items helped McDonald’s more than offset sharp rises in food and labor costs and propelled the company’s revenues for 2021 to the highest level since 2016. McDonald’s said in a financial report on Thursday that global revenues topped $23.2 billion last year, a 21 percent jump from 2019... Profit soared 59 percent from a year earlier, to $7.5 billion.” Details via Julie Creswell in the NYT.

The Critics – The Infatuation has rebooted their website a bit, with what EIC Hillary Reinsberg calls “a pretty solid Covid-era glow up.” That glow up includes a return to rating restaurants on a scale of 1-10, which The Infatuation paused way back in 2020 (when there was that pandemic that came and went and was forgotten by all). FYI, Reinsberg says a big ratings update is ongoing: “Every rating you see on The Infatuation today is based on or verified by a visit that happened during the past year, most of them during the second half of 2021 or later. We’re launching with well over 2,000 new ratings, with more being added daily.”

But don’t worry. If you get a bad review, there’s a chance no one will ever see it. The new site has apparently decided against a search bar?

The Critics Too – SF Chronicle critic Soleil Ho took down three big ghost kitchen concepts this week: DJ (and Benihana heir) Steve Aoki’s Pizzaoki; YouTube star Mr. Beast’s MrBeast Burger; and DJ Khaled’s Another Wing. It’s a brutal review. Sample quotes:

Re Another Wing: “I hoped that the attempts would reveal that, yes, DJ Khaled did have some talent somewhere, if not in music then perhaps in the kitchen.” Nope.

Re Pizzaoki: “It was actually insulting to have to try so hard to eat something so bad.”

Re MrBeast Burger: “The doughy burger seemed to shrink away in shame as I looked at it.”

Maybe all fish in a barrel there, but I’m interested in what wasn’t in the review: Who made (assembled?) the food. I reached out to Ho, who says all three of the places they ordered from were working out of commissaries, so no restaurants had to take the fall this time. But not hard to see a ghost kitchen’s kitchen SEO getting dragged down in the future by association with bad ingredients (“black olive that stank of aluminum”) and shoddy cooking (mangled buns and “carelessly cut” pizzas) or worse. Sell out at your own risk.

And Last but not Least – Here’s Turkey and the Wolf’s Mason Hereford on Instagram this weekend: “I have some wild and unfortunate cookbook news so bizarre that it warrants using lowercase text. I’m sorry to say the Turkey and the Wolf cookbook won’t be shipping out in February as planned. There was a container collapse on the cargo ship that contained the Turkey and the Wolf books. The good news is that there were no critical injuries, as can happen in these situations. But the bad news is the books might be in a cargo container at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.”

His weren’t the only ones. NYT Food’s Melissa Clark said her Dinner in One cookbooks were also on that ship and probably lost. Releases for both books were pushed back a few months, and everyone seems to be greeting the news with a mix of sadface sympathy and fish puns, but I believe I speak for all of us when I say, buuuuuuullllshiiiiiiit. The ocean ate your homework? Your excuses are like your sandwiches, Mason; bologna.

(I’m glad no one was hurt. I hope all turns out well. I regret using the word bologna in a deeply uncool way.)

February 4th:

Tired: Bourdain Market. Wired: – “In an unexpected twist to NYC’s ever-expanding stable of food halls, restaurant industry nonprofit the James Beard Foundation is throwing its hat in the ring. The national foundation and restaurant awards machine has teamed up with Jamestown — the seasoned food hall operators behind Chelsea Market and Brooklyn’s Industry City — and Google to launch a new food hall with over a dozen vendors at Pier 57 in Chelsea, opening in fall 2022.” Scant available details via Erika Adams in Eater NY.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to reach out to JBF with questions before sending this newsletter. I have several! About the business setup (licensed name / paid consultancy?); conflicts of interest (awardees as employees again?); reputational risk (wages, tipping policies, sourcing, etc etc.?); and more. Will let you know what I hear back.

Awards Season – And speaking of the Beards… At their 2021 no-awards awards ceremony, Tanya Holland teased a possible change to future awards that might have moved us away from the “Best Chef” concept: “It is past time for the JBF awards to admit that the pinnacle culinary accomplishments are never the work of one person… Food is a collaborative medium, the James Beard Awards of the future will shine more light on everyone in the kitchen not just the person at the top.”

Now, Allecia Vermillon, vice chair for the Beards’ Restaurant and Chef Awards is out with an essay on the foundation’s site explaining that won’t happen this year: “One idea we discussed was changing our regional Best Chef awards—perhaps honoring regional restaurants rather than individual chefs. This could cast an award’s shine across all the people whose talent and effort create the runway for this recognition.” But after some objections from people in the discussions: “In the end, we decided to not rush any decision on our regional awards and will revisit the topic this summer, armed with the learnings of our first post-audit Award cycle.”

That essay about not changing just yet is incongruously titled “Change is never easy, but necessary” and begins (I kid you not): “Call it the waffle principle.”

The Suits – That group of restaurants that sued the city of Minneapolis to stop the vaccine mandates has lost round one in court. Per David Schuman and WCCO Minneapolis, “They argued that the mandate required them to hire and train new employees to check vaccine cards and tests at a time when they were already struggling to hire workers. There would also be lost profits from patrons who refused to comply with the mandate, they said. But the judge found the plaintiffs’ evidence of economic harm to be ‘speculative,’ and said in part that they are already required to check cards of patrons to confirm they are old enough to drink alcohol. ‘This is simply another card to be checked,’ the memorandum reads.”

For the Bar – “Columbia Room, one of the most ambitious and revered cocktail bars in DC and around the country, will permanently close on February 11. Taking over the Blagden Alley space is another legendary bar—New York’s Death & Co—which inspired founder Derek Brown before he opened his original drinking den 12 years ago.” Per the Washingtonian’s Jessica Sidman, as he moves away from strong drinks and bar management, “Brown is now studying positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and working as Director of Education for Spiritless, a company that produces a zero-proof bourbon called Kentucky 74. He also just released a book on no- and low-alcohol cocktails called Mindful Mixology and plans to continue educating people on that topic—in whatever form that ultimately takes. One thing he doesn’t have planned, however, is another bar.”

For Design Fans – I don’t know how it’s possible that I’ve never seen a picture of the interior of Sexy Fish in London before, but now I’ve also seen pictures of the new Sexy Fish in Miami (via Ken Hayden in Eater) and… as much as that photo of the dining room sends my Wes-Anderson-meets-The-Shining heart into a pitter patter of whimsically surreal horror warmth, the moment I saw those blue vs. pink bathrooms, the spell was broken, and I was dumped into a bad undersea version of the Rainforest Café. Even for people very-on-drugs, feels like a little subtlety could go a long way there.

Over-the-top designers, juxtaposition is your friend! Let that gorgeous, marble(?) octopus invade a less in-your-face space than that all-blue men’s piss-palace, and watch it truly take over the room!

But stick with the mermaid and pink theme in the ladies room. All ladies love pink and mermaids. Known fact.

February 8th:

The Big Picture – “Foodservice and bar employment grew by 108,000 jobs in January, but leisure and hospitality employment remained down 1.8 million, or 10.3%, since pre-pandemic February 2020, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.” Details via Ron Ruggless in Restaurant Hospitality. While nationwide unemployment remained around 4%, the Independent Restaurant Coalition’s Erika Polmar issued a statement saying the “unemployment rate for leisure and hospitality works is 8.2%,” and added: “When people working in leisure and hospitality are more than twice as likely to be unemployed, it’s hard to argue the economy is thriving.”

Meanwhile… Ian McLernon, the CEO for the Americas of Remy Cointreau (the company which partnered with IRC on its Super Bowl ad last year) told Bloomberg TV that while between 50-90k accounts (i.e. restaurants and bars) have closed in the U.S., “the average check is about 15% more than it was before the pandemic,” and the company is raising prices to meet demand again in April. He also says they’ve got a new Super Bowl ad coming this year called “Spirit of Community” aimed at “supporting the on-premise and the bartenders and the restaurateurs across the U.S.”

Woohoo?

The (International) Lists – The World’s 50 Best people are out with their first 50 Best list for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), plus a few individual awards (including an obligatory “Best Female Chef” entry). Of note off the top of my head: The top two restaurants are sushi-centric places in Dubai, one of which doesn’t serve alcohol (3 Fils), and the other of which is a Zuma. Rounding out the top 10: OCD (Tel Aviv); Trésind Studio (Dubai); Sachi (Cairo); Orfali Bros Bistro (Dubai); Fakhreldin (Amman); LPM (Dubai); George & John (Tel Aviv); and Gaia (Dubai). Almost a third of all restaurants on the list are in Dubai, and none are outside major cities (with the exception of one that’s about as far from Tel Aviv as Stone Barns is from Manhattan). 50 Best’s usual issues apply, I assume...

The Books – It’s time for the annual “SPRING COOKBOOK PREVIEW!” from Paula Forbes in the Stained Page News, and it’s a doozy (I lost count at 50)! But here’s a quick sample of (North American) restaurant and bar names I spied while skimming: Matt Horn; Kenji Lopez-Alt; Pat Martin; Adrienne Cheatham; Kevin Bludso; Jason Bangerter; Suzanne Barr; Natasha David; Sally Schmitt; Nyanyika Banda; Reem Assil; and more. And, as always, highly recommend SPN if you are considering writing (or just interested in) cookbooks.

The TV – On top of everything else he’s had going this past year, José Andrés got Ron Howard to make a documentary about World Central Kitchen? “We Feed People” will be premiering at SXSW in March before going to Disney+. Oddly enough, it was announced as part of a long Twitter thread from Disney+ that included new travel shows, nature shows, fiction shows, but… no new cooking, restaurant, or food shows? Some of you oughta pitch those guys…

And Last and Least: The Metaverse – Headline in the NYT: “How The Sims Became the Internet’s Most Exciting Place to Eat.” Story from Nikita Richardson: “In the last year, Kayla Sims [that’s her actual name] began raising her own cows and chickens. She did a bit of traveling, trying dishes like bhel puri, tuna maki rolls, beef yakisoba and feijoada for the first time. She even did some cooking; one day, she made a crown roast and baked a birthday cake shaped like a hamburger. But she didn’t need a farm or an airline ticket or a stove — just The Sims, the long-running video game that allows players to create characters, called Sims, and build a virtual life around them…”

Hm. I’m not a big scare quotes guy, but try reading all that aloud without your fingers going full Bennett Brauer on words like “raising her own cows and chickens”; “did a bit of traveling”; “trying dishes”; “did some cooking”; etc. etc. If the metaverse lives up to the hype, we’re going to need some new typography to signify the difference between eating at Noma 2.0 and “eating at” Noma Web3. This Luddite suggests “wingdings.”

February 11th:

The Opacity – I regret to inform you that I have gone back and forth several times with reps for the James Beard Foundation over the business arrangement for their upcoming NYC Food Hall and still am not entirely sure what exactly is going on there. One minute they are an “anchor tenant” and “in full control” of one kiosk in the hall, the next we are talking in third person about wages.

I’m zeroed in a bit on wages (Will any employees be paid via the tipped minimum? What will minimum wage at the JBF kiosk be?) because I think it’s fair for the restaurant industry to know what the most visible industry non-profit “pushing for new standards in the restaurant industry to create a future where all have the opportunity to thrive,” thinks is actually doable when it comes to paying staff.

If the James Beard Foundation, with its big (good!) goals and expectations, thinks the best they can do for their own food service employees is minimum wage, or that taking the tip credit is the best way to make the numbers work, I think that’s a helpful data point in the larger conversation.

To be fair, the one thing I have gotten out of them is that, much like for awards nominees, they expect each prospective tenant to sign on to this Mission and Values Alignment document. In it, they ask that tenants strive “to make the industry a more viable career choice through the furthering of sustainable wages and benefits.” And that tenants join the JBF in being “open and honest about the ever-evolving nature of creating a more equitable industry and invite others into the process.”

Open the books, fearless leaders! (Or at least give me a call...)

The Vigorish – Story from Amy McCarthy in Eater: “As part of the company’s ongoing push for growth and expansion, DoorDash announced that it’s getting into the financial services business with plans to offer cash advances to restaurants that will be automatically repaid via deductions from every DoorDash order the establishment fulfills. DoorDash Capital will offer what the company describes as ‘fair, fast and convenient financing’ which they say can help restaurant owners cover payroll and rent if revenue comes up short, to establishments that use DoorDash to handle delivery and pick-up orders.”

You can probably guess Eater’s standard take from the headline: “Attention Restaurants: DoorDash Will Eat Your Profits and Loan You Money.”

The Wizard’s Tower – Not a great sign when an article about “how far is too far to be pushed for the sake of fine dining,” begins with a trigger warning about suicide, but here we are (and that’s your warning). The restaurant in focus is LA’s Vespertine, and the head chef doing the pushing is Jordan Kahn. Re that suicide: Eater LA editor Cathy Chaplin does give a cook and friend of the deceased a chance to say that, “we can’t blame the restaurant for… whatever was going on with [Jonathan, the man who took his own life],” but that almost feels like too little too late after several paragraphs of accusations building on the way Kahn singled out and bullied Jonathan — accusations Kahn denies. I have no personal connection with Kahn or Jonathan, and this part of the story absolutely broke my heart, but to be clear: Ben, the friend, is right. You can’t lay all that on Kahn.

That said, it’s a long, detailed piece worth reading, mostly full of the kinds of accusations that will divide readers (and staff) into “Yeah, there are standards at this level, get over it” vs “This is exactly what the industry needs to leave behind,” camps. Kahn denies almost everything, but he does so via a crisis PR firm that you probably shouldn’t hire if you get called out. (Asked about Kahn’s decision to go on with service the night the staff learned of Jonathan’s death, the firm’s response was basically: “What? And make the guests sad?”)

And some of his denials feel almost laughable. One particularly tough accusation worth pulling out: “Typically, former employees say, whenever a guest was unable to scale the stairs [to the allegedly ADA-contravening rooftop], the restaurant enacted what was called the ‘rain play,’ which involved shutting down the roof for an entire seating... On October 30, 2018, the late Top Chef contestant Fatima Ali, who publicly had stage 4 cancer at the time, had an 8 p.m. reservation. She was assumed to be in a wheelchair and, according to service notes for the evening that Eater has reviewed, slated for the ‘rain play.’ Earlier that same evening, fellow Top Chef alum Mei Lin was set for the full Vespertine experience, which included appetizers, drinks, and conversation with Kahn on the rooftop deck. Kahn, several former front-of-house employees allege, directed staff to exhibit discretion to ensure that Ali didn’t catch on to the discrepancy.”

Kahn “claims that the roof was closed that night because of the weather,” but I’ve got five American dollars for the first person who can look at historical records of weather in Culver City that night and tell me how that’s true…

The Honor System – Changing gears and continents for a quick hop to London to check in on an incredibly emotional Wednesday tweet from the official account of The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall (Chuck and Cam): “Chefs Margot and Fergus Henderson both received an OBE today for services to the culinary arts. The married couple have founded a number of restaurants in London.” Is there dust in this room?

And Last but not Least: V-Day and The Big Game – No context headline in People (via Expedite): “Gwyneth Paltrow Takes a Bite Out of Her Vagina Candle in New Uber Eats Super Bowl Commercial.”

Quoth Paltrow: “This candle tastes funny. Not bad, but funny.”

February 15th:

The Festivals – Are back. “South Beach Wine & Food Festival (SOBEWFF) kicks off its 21st year on Thursday, February 24,” and per Eater Miami’s Olee Fowler, “Guests of the multi-day food and wine event can still expect all of the safety protocols enacted last year like a contactless ticketing system, temperature checks, COVID-19 sniffing dogs, capacity restrictions, cleaning, sanitization, limiting physical contact, masking requirements, and one-way traffic flow inside the events.” They’re also requiring, “attestation of either: a negative COVID-19 test no more than 72 hours prior to the event OR completed vaccination,” according to the website.

And then there’s Charleston Wine & Food, where the same vax-or-test restrictions apply, but in investigating some complaints from volunteers, fellow newsletterer Hanna Raskin found: “In an e-mail provided to [Raskin’s] The Food Section, festival representatives confirmed that mask use is optional for all festivalgoers.”

Honestly, with mask and vax requirements tumbling like dominoes across the US, I think the real question moving forward for food and wine festivals is: Can Dave Chappelle still come???

That Fast Casual $$$ – Lotta chefs get into fast casual, but this is the first non-Tosi I’ve heard of chasing dessert-based fast casual dollars. Via Holly Petre in Restaurant Hospitality: “Former ‘Top Chef’ contestant and celebrity chef Fabio Viviani is partnering with franchise development company Fransmart for his latest venture, JARS… The plan is for the fast-casual dessert concept, where everything from tiramisu to cookies is served in jars, to be in the top 60 media markets across the U.S. with the help of Fransmart, which has helped companies like The Halal Guys, Qdoba and Five Guys franchise nationally.”

To be fair, almost all dessert / ice cream shops qualify as fast-casual, so this is probably just business jargon to attract capital, but still… Jars! Who knew?! (I mean, high people, obviously. But who else?)

That Scarcity $$$ – I interviewed an international ad exec about the “metaverse” for an unrelated project yesterday, and they brought up FlyFish Club (totally unprompted) as an example of the future of metaverse utility, so I decided to check back in on that NFT-based private restaurant club from Gary Vaynerchuk, David Rodolitz, Josh Capon, and Conor Hanlon. There are some usual restaurant things going on: They just released a polished little trailer for the restaurant — a restaurant that presumably still doesn’t have a signed lease yet. And they’re having some growing pains managing expectations from members who paid top dollar for tokens but can’t bring plus-ones to one of the first events (see Rodolitz’s latest in their Discord if you’re in it).

All normal, but I was surprised to see they also ran a very public video contest for members to try to earn a spot at a Miami yacht party during SOBEWFF. That means anyone can pull up #bubbleboatffc on Twitter and meet… some characters! Enjoy.

And last and least: For TV Fans – If you like trash and/or hate watching, you’ll love the news from Jennifer Maas in Variety yesterday: “Discovery Plus has ordered ‘Serving the Hamptons,’ a docuseries following the ‘young, sexy restaurant staff’ at a hot Hamptons restaurant and all of the drama they dish up on and off the clock.… Premiering on Thursday, April 7… the show brings viewers inside 75 Main Restaurant as its staffers hook up, argue and work together to make sure the clients come back for more, per the show’s official logline.”

Woohoo! Everyone is very excited. Except maybe one Mr. or Mrs. Tushy McBumblesnazzle, who responded to one of the reality stars in the comments: “Who cares? You, all the scumbags on the show and everyone like you destroyed the place I once called home when it was regular blue collar people.”

Can’t stop progress, Tushy. Can’t stop progress.

February 18th:

The Classics – From the James Beard Foundation on Twitter Wednesday: “The James Beard Awards… is officially back! After an extensive audit of policy and procedures, we’re thrilled to kick off the 2022 [Beard Awards] cycle by announcing the six America’s Classics honorees.” And the winners are… Casa Vega (LA); Corinne’s Place (Camden); Solly’s Grille (Milwuakee); Wo Hop (NYC); The Busy Bee Café (Atlanta); and Florence’s Restaurant (Oklahoma City). Details on the official site here, but there are a lot of proud local news stories out there too. Congrats all!

Oh, and in case you were wondering, there is a lot of interesting, deep history in these places, but Eater LA’s Mona Holmes also says, “Yes, you HAVE seen Casa Vega in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” With the picture to prove it.

The Aid – And in news you can use from the JBF: “The 2022 scholarship application is now open!” I count 40 or so opportunities in the brochure, starting with Andrew Zimmern’s $10,000 “Second Chances” scholarship (applicants must submit 250 words explaining why they need a second chance and how culinary studies will help them use it), and moving on through specific programs based on demographics, subject matter, and need, all the way to thousands of dollars in tuition waivers from ICE and Johnson & Wales. If you know someone going the F&B studies route, send them to jamesbeard.org/scholarships for details.

The NRA – Headline in Restaurant Hospitality: “National Restaurant Association names Michelle Korsmo president and CEO.” Details via Holly Petre: “Previously, Korsmo served as president & CEO of the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America, prior to which she served as CEO of the American Land Title. Additionally, Korsmo was executive vice president at Americans for Prosperity Foundation and served in the 2001-2004 Bush Administration as deputy chief of staff to Secretary Elaine Chao.” DRAIN THE SWAMP (and use it to refill the RRF?).

The RRF – Missed this last week, but Maryland Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D) gave Roll Call’s Lindsey McPherson and Laura Weiss some helpful insights into the Restaurant Revitalization Fund refill bill he and some colleagues have been working on. Key points:

- They’re trying to attach it to the upcoming omnibus spending package, which could pass sometime next month. (Though a good rundown on the broader political situation in WaPo this week warned: “It’s still not clear there will be an omnibus.”)

- Any new money will be focused on people who applied and couldn’t get funds for whatever reason last time (“There will not be a new application process for restaurants and bars that did not apply for the last round, Cardin said.”)

- “It won’t be more than $48 billion, the amount he and [Republican Senator Roger Wicker] proposed in a bill they introduced in August to backfill the Restaurant Revitalization Fund.”

- And finally: “‘We’re not going to be asking to come back again for any additional funds,’ the Maryland Democrat said. ‘This is it.’”

Grain of salt. Knock on wood. Eggs in various baskets. Etc. etc. Good luck, all!

The Media – Tweet yesterday from erstwhile Eater writer Elazar Sontag: “In about a week I'm starting my new job as restaurant editor at Bon Appétit, where I'll write and edit stories about incredible restaurants and restaurant culture across the country. There is such a good team at BA right now and I can't wait to work w them!!” Here are Sontag’s Twitter, Instagram, and personal website for reference.

And about that team he’s excited to work with… SF Chronicle Food editor Serena Dai announced this yesterday too: “It’s time for a big dose of PERSONAL NEWS: I’m leaving the SF Chronicle and will be joining Bon Appétit as its new digital editorial director, overseeing the website.” She’s also moving back to NYC, where she worked at Eater, to join BA Exec Editor Sonia Chopra, who also worked at Eater. Bon AppetEater? (I’m so sorry. I blame Food Media.)

Not sure how this moves mastheads and organograms around at Eater and BA, but Dai’s Chronicle job is already up for the applying. If you know my friend Big Willy Hearst III, please forward this email to him as my cover letter, including this link to my official A.B.B.A. C.V. I am definitely willing to relocate. Thank you.

And Last and Least: The True Crime – Remember Sarma Melngailis and all the weirdness that happened around NYC’s Pure Food & Wine circa 2015? There was some kind of “cosmic endurance test,” an attempt at canine immortality, and alleged raw vegan embezzlement? Welp. Netflix is giving it the true crime treatment. May they present: Bad Vegan. Fame. Fraud. Fugitives. Limited series coming March 15th…

February 22nd:

Today’s Family Meal will be the long delayed and much anticipated reveal of the results of last fall’s Family Meal Reader Survey. If you don’t care about those, please navigate away from this email, and I’ll see you on Friday for next Family Meal. If you do…

Let’s get to it…

This goes, in order: Who responded; What they want from Family Meal; Fun questions. Skip around as you wish.

First, Responders – Close to 200 people filled out the form, but some skipped questions here and there. Around 54% of responders worked in and around restaurants, 20% worked in food media, and 25% don’t have jobs related to restaurants. (I don’t think that reflects actual Family Meal readership. I think that reflects Family Meal survey takers.)

Those that worked in restaurants were 57% owner or head chef; 30% management; 28% BOH; 26% FOH; 7% bar; and a handful of marketing managers, operations types, etc etc.

NB: Wherever percentages add up to more or less than 100, assume I allowed people to check multiple boxes and/or my rounding is off. It was my first survey.

Those that worked around restaurants were all over the place: Investors, tech workers, various versions of “consultant,” a restaurant bike mechanic(!), and more. But the majority were in PR, supply, design, and real estate.

88% said they read Family Meal to see things they might have missed otherwise. 66% read it for my takes on the news. And 33% read it to confirm their own cold-hearted yet improbably optimistic worldview. My soulmates.

Second, Opinions – I’ll save you a full rundown on the advice I was seeking, but: A solid majority of you like Family Meal the way it is, though many said an update of format “wouldn’t hurt” and a picture now and then would be just fine. If you were to add anything, it’d be lists of links to more headlines (working on it!). Oh, and if Family Meal were to team up with other related newsletters for some kind of bundle subscription deal, 80% of you would be into it!

Third, Based – Here come your opinions, Q by Q…

Dave Chang is…

2%: A spectacular chef who promotes a diverse leadership team in a great restaurant group and is constantly working on himself so deserves forgiveness for past issues in an industry where everyone has been doing the same bad shit forever.

6%: Just another abusive jerk who should go away.

65%: Somewhere in between but he gets too much attention either way

8%: Somewhere in between but I don't think he's overcovered

5% Going to start putting out some ridiculous video content soon and there's nothing any of us can do about it.

Sample “other”: “The overcovered option but wanted to add he was in an episode of Blues Clues for godsake!” (The other category here was mostly a mix of “That guy sucks!” and “We’re all human.” with a smattering of “New faces, please!”, so it feels like the pre-populated answers captured the zeitgeist.)

Eater is…

32%: A great source for restaurant news, and all kinds of industry / food stories!

28%: A great source for restaurant news, but beyond that not for me.

1%: The anti-capitalist, social justice food site of my dreams.

4%: The anti-capitalist, social justice food site of my nightmares.

Sample “others”: “Is Eater anti-capitalist? I must be more commie than I thought.” “As good as its editor in whatever city.” “It puts asses in seats!” (There were also a handful of somewhat accusatory comments which I can’t include here without more vetting / reporting. Sorry!)

Restaurant critics…

39%: Play a vital role in the restaurant ecosystem.

18%: Are an anachronism we can leave behind.

12%: Should stick to food.

57%: Should consider the wellbeing of staff, the politics of the chef, and beyond.

5%: Basically tousled Trump's hair and are the reason for January 6th.

One Fair Wage is…

39%: Doing God's work (and I think God is cool).

5%: Doing Beelzebub's bidding (and I don't think highly of Beelzebub).

56%: A real purgatory situation.

The James Beard Foundation is a force for…

7%: Good

78%: The James Beard Foundation

5%: Evil

10%: Jesse Tyler Ferguson

Alice Waters once told the NYT, "Younger men are my Achilles' heel." Your reaction:

11%: "A man would never get away with saying something like that!"

16%: "Mine too, sister. Mine too."

1%: "Oh. Hey. Cool cooking and stuff. Ever hear of TikTok? I'm kind of a big deal..."

12%: "Gross."

35%: "Meh."

25%: "Oh my God, Andrew, that was like four years ago. How often do you think about her?"

Name someone who got cancelled but you don't think deserved it or think they should be forgiven:

Top answer by a mile: Alison Roman.

Interesting inclusions: Johnny Iuzzini, Andrew Zimmern, Paul Qui, April Bloomfield, Chrissy Tiegen, “everyone deserves a second chance,” and “Maybe that white guy that did the pho video (for eater?)”

Name someone who hasn't been cancelled yet but should be:

For obvious reasons, I’m not going to start listing out everyone you guys thought should be cancelled, but wooo boy. It’s about 70 names long and an impressive list! There are big name chefs and restaurateurs, people from your favorite food non-profits, TV personalities, and on down to the locally infamous. One somewhat righteous food Twitter type was described as “a ticking time bomb” and different dead people were described as “recipe writing hack” and “born into privilege but insists the industry is a meritocracy.”

Are you nervous? YOU SHOULD BE.

And last and least:

How can "moist" be the worst word when "polyp" exists?

40%: GREAT QUESTION!

60%: GOOD POINT!

And that’s it for today!

Sorry I didn’t have time to put this all into some sort of fancy infographic for you all. If you made it this far, thank you so much for bearing with me and responding to the survey and generally supporting this newsletter. It is a labor of love, and I love you all. Though based on responses to the “who should be cancelled?” question, I am also VERY suspicious of some of you…

February 25th:

Beard Season – Press release Wednesday: “Today, we are announcing our 2022 Restaurant and Chef Awards semifinalists in advance of the returning James Beard Awards presented by [a credit card similar to Amex, say, or Visa].” This is the long list, with around 20 semi-finalists each in over 20 categories, so you’re better off heading straight to the source to scan them all.

Sample bellwether: Best New Restaurant. And the semifinalists are… ABACÁ (SF); Angry Egret Dinette (LA); Bacanora (Phoenix); BARDA (Detroit); Café Mamajuana (Burlington, VT); Casian Seafood (Lafayette, CO); Dhamaka (NYC); Fritai (NOLA); Gage & Tollner (NYC); Horn BBQ (Oakland); Kasama (Chicago); Kimika (NYC); Laser Wolf (Philadelphia); Leeward (Portland, ME); Lengua Madre (NOLA); MACHETE (Greensboro); Matia Kitchen & Bar (Orcas Island, WA); The Marble Table (Billings); Nani's Piri Piri Chicken (Asheville); NiHao (Baltimore); Owamni (Minneapolis); Oyster Oyster (D.C.); Pier 6 Seafood & Oyster House (San Leon, TX); República (Portland, OR); Roots Southern Table (Farmers Branch, TX); Sooper Secret Izakaya (Honolulu); Union Hmong Kitchen (Minneapolis); Ursula (NYC); Zacatlán Restaurant (Santa Fe); and Zitz Sum (Coral Gables).

I’m already seeing some names pulled out for special (not good) attention, so the Foundation’s vetting team has its work cut out for it…

Next key dates:

March 16, 2022: Restaurant and Chef nominees (finalists) announcement, plus awards ceremony (in Scottsdale?) for the Leadership Honorees, Lifetime Achievement winner, and Humanitarian of the Year winner.

April 27, 2022: Media Awards nominee announcement.

June 13, 2022: Restaurant and Chef Awards ceremony in Chicago.

No dates yet for the media ceremony, but if I am nominated, I will be there. Please take that into account — pro or con — voters!

P.S.: The Cards – I kid, but the 2022 Beards are really presented by Capital One, and there’s a good chance they’ll use this year’s awards to remind everyone that they’re taking on Amex-Resy and creating what beloved humanitarian / celebrity chef / corporate-finance shill (multitudes!) José Andrés calls: “Capital One Dining, a reservation platform… that lets cardholders book reservations at some incredible restaurants in select cities in just a few taps.” Launching next month, per his Instagram.

The Fallout – “In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the World’s 50 Best Restaurants organization has confirmed to Robb Report that it will no longer hold its marquee event in Moscow this summer.” A rep told Jeremy Repanich, “At this current time, we are planning on holding the World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2022 in London in July.”

Awards Season – If you need to butter up some food media types, the American Society of Magazine Editors is out with finalists (and some awardees) in various digital and print categories. Quick scan of food related noms: Epicurious for “How to Serve Every Cheese,” with Anne Saxelby; The New Yorker for “How to Cook With Your Microwave,” “The Timeless Fantasy of Stanley Tucci Eating Italian Food” and “How to Get a Table at Carbone,” by Helen Rosner; SAVEUR for “Meet Manhattan’s New Guard of Wine Pros,” photographs by Paola + Murray; Eater for “Filling Up”; and probably others… Congrats, all!

(Fun fact: ASME awardees are presented with a miniature sculpture designed by renowned artist Delia Deetz.)

The Boycott – Full disclosure, I have not delved into the recent Joe Rogan stuff as much others, but after all the controversy — a supercut of him using the N word and calling a theater full of Black people “Planet of the Apes”; credence given to anti-vax types; and more — around the show, I was surprised to see chef / restaurateur Daniel Holzman promoting his new FoodIQ book on there this week. Skipping around, there’s some funny cooking chit chat; support for pro-gun, pro-Trump coffee brand Black Rifle; and around 02:12:00, a long “let’s google that” conversation where Rogan keeps floating the idea that hot sauce was invented in tropical countries to make it safe to eat tainted food. Holzman tries shutting that down several times, but if you want a sense of how Rogan’s “I’m just trying to learn things” shtick applies to food, it goes a little like this…

Rogan at 02:15:00: “Let’s just go google ‘hot peppers kill bacteria’, like spicy peppers, because I think that is what I had heard first, and I think Bourdain might have been the one who told me that.”

Maybe he’s right! Then again, maybe not? Maybe appearing on Rogan’s show will sell tons of books and the rest of food media will shrug it off and/or are not worth worrying about anyway. Then again, maybe not? Lotta potential nuance here. Do your own research, folks!

And Last and Least: For Design Fans – This may be the first ever Design Fans item without photos, but I need you to close your eyes, have someone else read this excerpt from Oliver Shah’s Sunday Times profile of London restaurateur Richard Caring to you, and imagine: “He points out where the public bar and restaurant will be, where the private members will hide, where a giant Damien Hirst sculpture of winged lovers embracing on a unicorn will float. The millionaire artist… is making four such pieces for Bacchanalia. The ceilings will be covered in Sistine Chapel-style frescoes. Caring has been buying ancient statues from Christie’s and Sotheby’s to decorate the place — ‘2,000-plus years old’.”

“When we buy real art, I don’t count that in the cost,” Caring says. “As long as you don’t buy it stupidly, you can always get your money back.”

Words to live by.

March 1st:

The Brief, Wondrous Life of LAT Food – According to art director Kay Scanlon’s Instagram stories (also shared by critic Bill Addison), this week’s print edition of the LA Times Food section was “the last stand alone issue. Food and Saturday are merging into a new section called Weekend — debuting next Saturday.” This was… not unexpected. The top of the online Food page has been stuck in early December for the last three months; the hero of the video block starts with Jenn Harris getting excited about us “coming up to the end of the year, which means some people might be preparing for dry January…”; and I have, uh, not noticed resources being deployed to improve things elsewhere.

I reached out to acting editor Alice Short for comment, but haven’t heard back yet, and will reach out to more people this week.

When LAT Food first reintroduced its standalone print section in 2019, the NYT’s Kim Severson called the move: “A rare bright spot in a season of layoffs and consolidation in American journalism.” It was also a bright spot for restaurants and food types that benefit from expanded, (somewhat) serious coverage. But in late 2020, editor Peter Meehan resigned after a series of MeToo / toxic-workplace allegations, staff reshuffled, and within a year critic Patricia Escárcega left while accusing the paper of wage disparity issues (and maybe some of her coworkers of complicity?). Since then it’s felt like a bit of a rudderless — no permanent lead editor since Meehan left! — downhill run, so here’s hoping whatever happens next is some version of better.

The NFTs – Adam Reiner, who once called Tom Colicchio irresponsible for “promoting worthless NFT pizza art,” was tapped by Eater to write about… Tom Colicchio’s NFT pizza art. His piece is a roundup of sorts of NFT projects in the food world, including some I hadn’t noticed yet. For example: Andrew Friedman apparently put out some NFT-marked bottles of his “Industry Spirits” well liquor brand this year. “Ruth McCartney, a digital media entrepreneur, and David Skinner, the chef of the 12-seat restaurant Eculent outside Houston, created Gourmet NFT to take chefs ‘from the butcher block to the blockchain’ by offering them a place to sell individual recipes directly to consumers.” And — “Following the suggestion of two American interns in the restaurant’s marketing department,” per a cited NYT piece — the team at Bros in Italy are doing an NFT of the infamous “lick the chef’s tongue” dish that sent them into viral bad review territory a few months ago.

Good luck, all! My best advice for those of you looking at NFTs: “You’ve got to trust your instincts and let go of regret. You’ve got to bet on yourself now, star. Cause that’s your best bet.” Came up with that myself.

The Critics – Speaking of bad reviews, in Grub Street yesterday, critic Adam Platt knocked James Kent and Jeff Katz’s Saga restaurant down a floor or two mostly by complaining in various ways that the restaurant didn’t offer “much that a jaded tasting-menu veteran hadn’t seen before.” There wasn’t much in that review that a jaded review veteran hadn’t read before either — notes of Ryan Sutton on TAK Room and Tejal Rao on Napa — and I didn’t think much about it until I read writer Kirsty Bosley’s viral piece last week in the UK’s Birmingham Mail: “I'm common as muck and spent £150 in a Michelin star restaurant to see if it was worth it.”

The meringue stuck in my mind:

Platt on Saga: “‘We like to think of our menu as the story of how the chef got to where he is today,’ our server intoned as we took delivery of a palate-brightening creation made with a little dome of a meringuelike substance filled with yuzu foam and served with a collection of carefully tweezed microgreens in a glass bowl.”

Bosley on Adam’s in Birmingham: “A wooden box was brought to the table first with a pretty red beetroot meringue inside and some kind of little rice cracker thing on top. Precisely two mouthfuls of food. Here we go, I thought. Little dishes, big money. God, I loved them. The meringue disappeared on my tongue and gave way to goats cheese and I made a loud 'MMMM' sound in the general direction of the people sitting next to me. Wow.”

I don’t have a larger point here. Platt warns dedicated seekers of the new about the “dutifully reproduced” price-tag tastes of “stolid Wall Street burghers.” Bosley reminds some of us that the old can still be new, and the old can still be fantastic.

And so we beat on, boats against the current, etcetera etcetera.

March 4th:

The Aid of War – Not going to run through all the various ways bars and restaurants are pouring vodka out, raising money, or being held guilty by name association, but do want to highlight something I think is new in this Ukraine mess: Veselka, the Ukranian diner in NYC that has been packed lately, is publicly raising funds for not only civilians, but also combatants. Per Ryan Sutton in Eater NY: “Flyers [with QR codes on the tables] direct patrons to sites where they can support the Ukrainian army, helping supply them with lethal aid… One of the QR codes, for the non-profit Razom, leads to a link that lets folks transfer money to help Ukrainians procure ammunition. Other links are for helping citizens buy military-grade vests, helmets, and tactical medical backpacks.”

Trying to remember this happening in any other recent conflict and coming up blank?

I also saw that World Central Kitchen CEO Nate Mook tweeted pictures of armed men in Ukrainian uniforms holding bags of food with the caption: “In Kyiv, WCK restaurant partner Mafia has been cooking meals for shelters, hospitals & medical battalion.” I assume WCK as a humanitarian organization is not directly supporting combat troops alongside medical battalions, but they obviously can’t control what the restaurants they are working with are doing either…

Fair enough! I have a tiny lil’ hunch this is not the first time an American restaurant has given money to foreign combatants, and it’s definitely not the first time an aid group has had to work with people who might not adhere to the same humanitarian neutrality standards they do. But… It’s not nothing either. Not to be too dramatic, but… the US restaurant industry has entered the war?

Beard (Edits) Season – “A Chicago chef was left off the list of James Beard Award semifinalists that was released last week due to a clerical error. Jason Vincent of Giant was added to the outstanding chef category on the James Beard Foundation’s website yesterday, six days after the list of nominations was originally released.” Eater Chicago’s Aimee Levitt says, “A spokeswoman for the foundation confirmed the addition in an email, saying, ‘That is all the information we have to share at this juncture.’” (That phrase is a serious contender to replace the JBF’s “transparency” values statement lately.)

NB: Some other names were also taken out of contention due to last minute restaurant closures and role changes, including Peter Prime of Cane in DC, “Luis Young of Penrose Room in Colorado Springs and Ben Welch of Botanica in [St. Louis].” Details on those via Stephanie Carter in Eater DC.

Top Chef Season – The big show returned this week, and so did discussions of last season’s winner, Gabe Erales. Somehow, host Tom Colicchio seemed almost caught off guard by that cloud in a written interview with Daily Beast journalist Matt Wilstein. There is a lot that people will pick on here (variations on “That’s in the past,” “He’s a great chef and he won so whatever,” and “We’re not talking rape here,” will be fan favorites), but my problem is that Tom doesn’t seem to care at all. He doesn’t make a case for or against Erales keeping the title because he — the face of the number one chef show in America — says he hasn’t even bothered to spend the $1 USD I just paid to read the details of his winner’s case on Austin Statesman dot com. It’s all very politician-running-away-from-shouted-questions with “Sorry, I haven’t read the report that everyone is talking about everywhere.”

It goes like this, Tom: According to his own admissions to the Statesman (July, 2021!), Erales had a consensual sexual relationship with a member of his staff. Then he went to film your show (and won). When he came back, he says the physical stuff stopped, but he “continued communicating with her in an unprofessional manner.” He also cut that staff member’s hours due to what he called poor performance. He was fired for this before your show aired. He told the Statesman, “After I returned from ‘Top Chef,’ I made some business decisions as a manager that affected this employee and were found to be discriminatory and I realized that those were bad decisions.”

Maybe that’s not bad enough to strip him of his title or whatever! Fine! But at least have the guts to read the facts and defend your argument. Need to borrow a buck?

The End of an Era – Headline on AL.com: “James Beard Award-winning pastry chef Dolester Miles, an Alabama treasure, retires.” Details in an appropriately long bio/goodbye by Bob Carlton: “Dolester Miles was one of the first people Frank Stitt hired when the celebrated Birmingham chef opened Highlands Bar and Grill, his French restaurant with a Southern soul, in 1982…. Now, after nearly 40 years —working alongside Stitt and his wife, Pardis, in their four Birmingham restaurants Highlands, Chez Fonfon, Bottegga and Bottega Café — the self-taught pastry chef… quietly retired at the end of December.”

The Media – On Twitter yesterday, Washington DC’s Laura Hayes wrote, “Today is my last day [at Washington City Paper] after 5.5 years… I'm headed to a new career adventure I hope to announce soon.” The replies to the original tweet and the quote tweets around it speak volumes, heaping praise from food media and DC industry types alike. As someone who reads restaurant news from time to time, I can tell you DC food media, the alt-weekly restaurant beat writ-national, and my weekly reading lists are all lesser today. Ugh.

And Last but not Least – Since I know you’ve been following this story closely, an update on CityBeat from Vince Grzegorek in Cincinnati this week: “Frank Capri, a former mobster turned government witness turned developer who scammed The Banks with a Toby Keith's I Love This Bar & Grill-branded restaurant, was sentenced last week to five years in federal prison after pleading guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and tax evasion.” Reminder from the Enquirer’s Randy Tucker: “Frank Capri… was a former soldier in New York's Lucchese Crime Family who was released from prison in 1999 after agreeing to testify against fellow mobsters, according to a years-long investigation by The Arizona Republic. His real name was Frank Gioia Jr.”

March 8th: