Playing With Fire At Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce's Steakhouse

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — As celebrity restaurant mascots, athletes offer a tidy sense of vertical integration: Why not supply the very calories they need to expend on the field? I’m surprised there are so few successful models. We have all mostly forgotten (or agreed not to talk about) George Brett’s restaurant in Kansas City, Brett Favre’s Wisconsin steakhouse, or those 31 Papa John’s franchises Peyton Manning coincidentally shed two days before the NFL dropped the pizza chain as a sponsor.

Still, tables have been reliably booked at 1587 Prime—a mashup of Patrick Mahomes’s and Travis Kelce’s jersey numbers, along with a word that vaguely connotes “beef”—since it opened in Kansas City in August. I left an eight-year gig as a KC restaurant critic in 2023, but the mania surrounding the opening was enough to summon me out of retirement. Like a washed-up former detective, I couldn’t resist stumbling half-drunk into my old precinct for one last job.

In some respects, a flashy celebrity steakhouse means the same thing everywhere. But it means something else in Kansas City, a cowtown whose economic engine was its stockyards, once the second-largest in the country, and which has struggled for years to cultivate a high-end dining scene. We have some great restaurants, but fundamentally, we’re a city that loathes to dress for dinner. (I felt a swell of civic pride when I learned Travis proposed to Taylor Swift in shorts.) I wondered how Noble 33—the Miami-based fine-dining restaurant group tasked with executing 15 and 87’s vision—would fare here.

In a pure business sense, they seem to be faring just fine. On a recent visit, a server told me that a group of Taylor Swift fans had waited six hours for bar seats, hoping they might catch a glimpse of the singer housing a truffle grilled cheese. Taylor didn’t show. I wish the restaurant had something else to offer them.

If nothing else, 1587 Prime looks nice. The 238-seat, two-story restaurant inside the Loews Kansas City Hotel is riddled with luxury tropes. Everything is bathed in a charmed, golden light. The stairs are marble, the tables are marble, and the servers all wear smart white coats and black ties. The leather-backed menus are enormous—perilous. Manipulating them at a small table covered with expensive glassware made me feel like a horse on roller skates.

Music is ostensibly a theme. Every night, local musicians perform short sets of Motown, jazz, and soul hits, and the performers are universally talented. They’re also chastely miked. The live backing band is never loud enough to compete with diners’ conversation, and while the singers roam around the dining room, they seem trained in the art of extremely brief eye contact that asks nothing of you in return.

The same can’t be said of the patrons. Every time I looked around the room, diners looked back with the defiant stares of people who are used to being watched. The restaurant seems to be drawing in its target clients: people who fly private. On my first visit, our server—a very friendly woman named Debbie—told us she had two tables that had flown in just for dinner.

“There’s this thing I learned about,” she said. “Did you know they have an Uber Jet?”

I did not. I sensed that Debbie and I had both learned this against our will.

To be fair, one of the reasons I kept looking around the room was that everyone’s drinks were on fire. This was, I learned, The Alchemy ($22), a cocktail the restaurant created for Taylor Swift, a woman who has never had to use Uber Jet.

I ordered one, too, and a dedicated server brought out a martini glass with some steel wool tangled around the stem. (Something else to know about 1587 Prime: there are at least two employees whose main job appears to be setting things on fire.)

“How many tables order this every night?” I asked.

“Almost all of them,” she said, with just a hint of resignation.

She lit the drink. The steel wool pulsed with a warm, luxurious shimmer before almost immediately fizzling into a cold pile (yes, this is a metaphor). “The stem might be a little hot,” she warned, pawing the nest away from the glass. The drink tasted like a Cosmo someone had strained through a French Vanilla Yankee Candle.

The Alchemy is in a section of cocktails titled “The Players,” named for the steakhouse’s famous guests. For Mahomes fans, there’s the “Showtime” ($19), a rum and coconut cocktail made with a “Coors Light syrup” that I tragically could not taste. I preferred Kelce’s “Big Yeti” ($24), a nocino-enhanced old fashioned with bitter chocolate notes.

There is a fourth cocktail in the section, named after Brittany Mahomes. I will not be tricked into commenting on it.

The drinks were designed by beverage director Juan Carlos Santana, who’s led menu design at other Noble 33 haunts. This is the only way I can explain why a steakhouse cocktail menu features a “Noble Margarita” ($18), or why the house martini ($23) is laced with fino sherry and fennel-infused Italicus (a sweet, sunny bergamot liqueur). It’s a lovely, nuanced cocktail, and it seems to have been designed in a lab to piss off martini drinkers.

If you’re after a more traditional martini—say, gin and vermouth—you can order the martini “your way” for an extra $10.

“Isn’t this a service most bars offer for free?” my husband asked.

Sure. But most bars don’t come with a “Martini Cart Experience.” The first part of the Experience is using a checklist and a golf pencil to select your ideal spirits, vermouths, and enhancements, whether that’s truffle brine (an additional $5), caviar-stuffed olives (an extra $12) or an accompanying “caviar bump” ($21).

The second part of the Experience is waiting for the cart. The restaurant only has space for one cart per floor, which can create backlogs when multiple tables order martinis. On my first visit, my table waited a modest 12 minutes before the cart became available.

The Experience concluded with a bartender scanning my checklist, building the martini, shaking it (you read that correctly), and straining it into a glass that had been chilled by a light-up contraption resembling a Simon. With the upcharge for the truffle brine, the martini was $38. (...)

Perhaps my mistake was ordering it with a “tableside flambé,” which you can add to any steak here for an extra $27. After conferring with Debbie about whether this was a good idea, she dispatched a second cart with a second fire-oriented employee.

While he worked, I peppered him with questions. Did he man the flambé cart every night? Yes, by choice. “I’ve never worked in a kitchen,” he said. “I just really like fire.” Had he ever singed his shirtsleeves on the cart? “I’m going to tell you guys a little secret,” he replied. He leaned over the table and brushed some hair away from his forehead. Most of his eyebrows were missing.

by Liz Cook, Defector |  Read more:

Images: uncredited

Olive Penguins

Image: markk

[ed. Made these appetizers for Christmas one year. Recipe here.]

Feast Your Eyes on Japan’s Fake Food

Japanese people like to say that they “eat with their eyes,” relishing the colors, shapes, and textures of a dish before it ever hits the tongue. The phrase applies all the more when the dish in question isn’t meant to be eaten at all. Last year, I was one of two hundred thousand people to visit “Looks Delicious!,” an exhibition organized by the cultural center Japan House London showcasing dozens upon dozens of shokuhin sampuru—mesmerizingly lifelike handmade food replicas that appear in the windows and display cases of restaurants, kiosks, and bars across Japan. Shokuhin sampuru are a roughly ninety-million-dollar industry, and a beloved part of Japanese pop culture. A few decades ago, there was a show on Japanese television in which shokuhin sampuru artisans competed to make the most convincing replicas of dishes, a sort of inverse of “Is It Cake?”

But, according to Japan House, “Looks Delicious!” marks the first time that a cultural institution has dedicated a show exclusively to food replicas. The exhibition originated last year at London’s Japan House and became its most popular show ever—perhaps in part because shokuhin sampuru feel especially pertinent in a political-cultural environment that so often confounds the real and the fake. In September, the show travelled to the Los Angeles branch of Japan House, on Hollywood Boulevard, where it will run until the end of January. A sidewalk full of stars has got nothing, in my opinion, on a stencil used to apply dark-meat detail to the muscle near a mackerel’s spine.

Shokuhin sampuru can be wondrously intricate: iridescent slivers of shrimp; striated sirloins with fatty crusts; bouncy poached eggs on the brink of first ooze; cross-sections of cabbage with the labyrinthine swirls of an elevation map; a banana split with two scoops of chocolate ice cream, their granularity evoking just a whisper of freezer burn. So it is a bit surprising that “Looks Delicious!” begins with, of all things, a humble sack of yellow onions. Simon Wright, the director of programming at Japan House London, told me, during a tour of the gallery, that a different kind of exhibit might have begun with “a whole gantry of sushi,” but that he preferred the alliums for their exuberant plainness. “Remember those strings of plastic onions that might have hung in a restaurant in the nineteen-eighties?” he said. “These are nothing like them.” (...)

According to Yasunobu Nose, a Japanese journalist who has written extensively about shokuhin sampuru, food replicas first appeared in Japan in the nineteen-twenties and thirties, when three men started simultaneously producing them in three different cities. This coincidence, Nose explains, was a result of urbanization, which brought workers to big cities, where they began to buy more of their meals outside the home. As early as the Edo period, Japanese people “decided what to eat by looking at real food,” Nose said in a recent lecture at Japan House London. While researching shokuhin sampuru, he found a nineteenth-century genre painting depicting a street festival where merchants displayed actual dishes of sushi and tempura outside their stalls. Shokuhin sampuru were a pragmatic innovation, allowing venders to follow the same long-standing custom without wasting their actual food.

Early shokuhin sampuru were relatively rough replicas molded out of wax; some pioneering artisans were more accustomed to, say, sculpting ear canals for otologists and solar systems for science classes. Even in rudimentary form, they freed customers from having to badger employees with questions or take their chances ordering a bowl of ramen, not knowing whether it would come with two slices of pork or three. Food replicas eased embarrassment, prevented disappointment, and encouraged experimentation, just as they do today. “The Japanese customer loves to know what they’re getting,” the food writer Yukari Sakamoto told me. “When I’m meeting up with my family in Tokyo, we talk and talk and look at the plastic food displays until something jumps out at us.”

The first business dedicated to the manufacture and sale of shokuhin sampuru was founded in 1932 in Osaka by Iwasaki Takizō, one of the craft’s original three practitioners. A native of Gujō Hachiman, a town in the central prefecture of Gifu, he became enthralled by wax during his boyhood. Legend has it that he got the idea for food replicas after watching a candle melt into cold water, its drippings hardening into the shape of blooming flowers. Today, the Iwasaki Group is responsible for about seventy per cent of food replicas sold in Japan...

“Looks Delicious!” focusses on the period beginning in the nineteen-twenties, when Western food began to make inroads in Japan, and restaurateurs—particularly in Tokyo department stores—used replicas to communicate efficiently to prospective clients what, exactly, “spaghetti” or “ham sandwich” entailed. Later, shokuhin sampuru also came to be associated with kissaten—cozy, smoke-filled cafés featuring European décor and menu items like buttered toast and strawberry shortcake. “These food replicas have this very retro, Shōwa period, nineteen-fifties-and-sixties vibe,” Wright said. If they remained somewhat crude in this era—they couldn’t be tilted, for example, lest the wax soften and start to droop in the sun—their popularity didn’t suffer. By 1958, the Iwasaki Group was exporting a passable rib eye to the United States, to be used as a promotional item by a beer company.

Japan House is funded by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, so it’s perhaps unsurprising that the exhibition’s organizers hit upon a clever way to emphasize the diversity of food replicas and promote tourism at the same time. An entire section is dedicated to regional cuisines—a dish for each of the country’s forty-seven prefectures. There is kiritanpo nabe from the mountains of Akita, a hot-pot dish featuring mashed rice wrapped around a cedar stick and baked, and a fish-and-fiddlehead-fern ohaw, a soup from the Ainu people, who live mainly in Hokkaido. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the mouthwatering simulacrum of sudachi-sōmen—wheat-flour noodles in chicken broth, topped with a light-green citrus fruit that grows in Tokushima. (...)

However persuasive they might be as facsimiles, shokuhin sampuru are subjective interpretations, seeking not only to replicate dishes but to intensify the feelings associated with the real thing. Nose told me, “It’s like augmented reality created by skilled artisans. I think this is the magic of replica food.” A replica of red-bean paste, for example, might be grainier than actual red-bean paste, because people tend to associate red-bean paste with graininess. A kiwi might be fuller and greener than usual, because the person who made it likes her fruit especially ripe. Liquids are among the most difficult foodstuffs to render, and leafy greens, raw meats, and emulsions are where real artistry is unleashed. One of the ultimate tests of virtuosity for a shokuhin sampuru maker is said to be whipped cream.

by Lauren Collins, New Yorker |  Read more:

Images: via; and Masuda Yoshirо̄/Courtesy Japan House

[ed. For many more examples, see also: Photos show hyper-realistic plastic food that is a $90 million industry in Japan (MYSA).]

Damage Control

$12 billion bailout for farmers.

On President Trump’s proclaimed “Liberation Day” in April, when he announced the tariffs that have upended global trade, he vowed that “jobs and factories will come roaring back into our country.” The imposition of taxes on imports, the president promised, “will pry open foreign markets and break down foreign trade barriers,” leading to lower prices for Americans.

So far it has not worked out that way, forcing Mr. Trump to move to contain the economic and political damage.

At the White House on Monday, the president announced $12 billion in bailout money for America’s farmers who have been battered in large part by his trade policies.

Tariffs continue to put upward pressure on prices, putting the Trump administration on the defensive over deep public concern about the cost of living. On Tuesday, the president will go to Pennsylvania for the first of what the White House calls a series of speeches addressing the “affordability” problem, which last week he dismissed as “the greatest con job” ever conceived by Democrats.

China, the world’s second-largest economy and the United States’ main economic and technological competitor, released figures on Monday showing that it continues to run a record trade surplus with the rest of the world, even as its overall trade and surplus with the U.S. narrows. That suggests Beijing is quickly learning how to thrive even in a world in which the United States becomes a tougher place to do business.

And there is scant evidence to date of any wholesale return to American towns and cities of the manufacturing jobs lost to decades of automation and globalization.

Mr. Trump insists that his signature decision to impose the highest tariffs on American imports since 1930 is working, or will soon. He continues to blame his predecessor, Joseph R. Biden Jr., for every economic woe, though the argument is getting thinner and thinner as he approaches, in just six weeks, his first anniversary in office.

He finds himself in roughly the place Mr. Biden did in early 2024: Telling the American people that they are doing great, when many don’t feel that way. He has dismissed talk of high prices at grocery stores, insisting they are coming down. But inflation edged upward in September, to about a 3 percent annual increase, almost exactly where it was when his predecessor left office.

Manufacturing jobs have continued to decline gradually this year, with losses of roughly 50,000 since January. (Such numbers contributed to the dismissal in July of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, after Mr. Trump announced that downward revisions to the official jobs reports were “rigged.”)

Not surprisingly, Mr. Trump tried on Monday to portray the $12 billion in emergency relief for farmers as a victory, another piece of evidence — at least to him — that his decision to impose the highest tariffs on American imports since 1930 are working, or will soon. (...)

The numbers don’t quite add up: The U.S. has collected about $250 billion in tariff revenue this year — a bit shy of the $2.66 trillion in federal individual income taxes in the 2025 fiscal year.

The president has promised that tariff revenue will pay down the national debt, now at $38.45 trillion. Over the summer, he told lawmakers that other deals he is striking — some in return for lowering tariffs — would reduce some drug prices by 1,500 percent, a piece of mathematical gymnastics that left some in his audience mystified.

The numeric magic continued on Monday, when Mr. Trump said he was using some of those tariff revenues as a “bridge payment,” to tide American farmers over Chinese until purchases resume, a commitment Mr. Trump says he extracted from President Xi Jinping when they met in late October.

The repeated use of the word “bridge” by the president and his top economic aides seemed intended to signal to Americans that they just needed to hold on, and the promised benefits from tariff plan would pay off.

“This money would not be possible without tariffs,” he told a small group of farmers and rice refiners who were brought into the White House for the event. “The tariffs are taking in, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars, and we’re giving some up to the farmers because they were mistreated by other countries, for maybe the right reasons, maybe wrong reasons.”

He was skipping by the fact that the imposition of the tariffs, primarily on China, led to a Chinese boycott of American farm goods. And now, to stem the bleeding for a core constituency, he was boasting that he was using tariffs receipts to compensate them. (Most of the payments will come through the Agriculture Department’s Farmer Bridge Assistance program, and are not directly funded by tariff income.) (...)

“The farmers problem is not entirely government-grown, but there is a big trade policy aspect to it,’’ said Scott Lincicome, director of general economics at the Cato Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank that has objected to Mr. Trump’s moves toward state-directed capitalism.

“Prices are depressed because the Chinese boycotted our farm goods much of the year,” he noted. “But fertilizer, machinery, those costs have remained elevated, and subject to tariffs. You’ve heard Caterpillar and John Deere complain,” he said, referring to two of the biggest manufacturers of farm equipment, which Mr. Trump said on Monday he would also help by paying them tariff revenues. (...)

Mr. Lincicome said that the tariffs have also introduced a new level of “unprecedented, crippling and truly insane complexity” to operating businesses. It has only gotten more confusing as Mr. Trump has slashed some tariffs — on imported beef, for example — to mitigate supermarket prices.

by David Sanger, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: Bob Brawdy/Tri-City Herald

[ed. Just making shit up as they go along, Band-Aids for self-inflicted foot wounds. These bridge subsidies are apparently in addition to what farmers receive annually through the Farm Bill (roughly 13.5 percent of net farm income) and, since January 2025, another $30 billion in "Ad Hoc" assistance (because something, something... Biden's fault). See also: Federal farm subsidies: What the data says (USA Facts).]

‘The English Person With a Chinese Stomach’: How Fuchsia Dunlop Became a Sichuan Food Hero

Every autumn in the mid-00s, when I lived in China, my friend Scarlett Li would invite me to Shanghai to eat hairy crab. Named for the spiky fur on their legs and claws, the crabs are said to have the best flavour during the ninth month of the lunar calendar. They’re steamed and served whole, with a dip of rice vinegar spiked with ginger. The most prized specimens come from Yangcheng Lake near Suzhou, which is not far from Scarlett’s home town of Wuxi. She had moved to Hong Kong as a child, attended high school and college in Australia, and returned to China to pursue a career as an entrepreneur. Despite her years abroad, she remained Chinese through and through – and eating hairy crab with her, I became Chinese, too.

Beginning in the Tang dynasty in the seventh century, crabs were harvested from the lakes and estuaries of the Yangtze delta and sent as tribute to the imperial court. Twelfth-century Hangzhou had specialised crab markets and dedicated crab restaurants. “I have lusted after crabs all my life,” wrote the 17th-century playwright Li Yu. “From the first day of the crab season until the last day they are sold, I … do not let a single evening pass without eating them …. Dear crab, dear crab, you and I, are we to be lifelong companions?”

A hairy crab festival in Huai’an, Jiangsu province, in October. Photograph: VCG/Getty

In Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food, Fuchsia Dunlop traces the history of this remarkable cuisine through 30 dishes, from slow-braised pork belly to steamed rice. (There are 10 mentions of hairy crab – not to be confused with crab that’s roasted, baked, shredded, stuffed into soup dumplings or steamed buns, or marinated in liquor and served raw in a dish called drunken crab, which gets its own chapter.) Dunlop, who is British, explores the staggering ingenuity and range of a cuisine that she feels has not won the respect it deserves in the world of fine dining: “Only the Chinese have placed [cooking] at the very core of their identity. For the ancient Chinese, the transformation of raw ingredients through cooking marked the boundary not only between humans and their savage ancestors, but between the people of the civilised world (that is, China and its antecedent states) and the barbarians who lived around its edges.”

The result is a gastronomy that is unparalleled for its diversity, sophistication, subtlety and “sheer deliciousness”. Many supposedly modern ideas about eating, Dunlop points out, have been accepted in China for centuries. Consuming the freshest meat, fish and produce, local and in season, has been important since the earliest dynasties. “Certainly to have a fresh fish and to cause it to become unfresh is a terrible act,” wrote Yuan Mei, an 18th-century gourmet and poet. Educated gentlemen through the ages have searched obsessively for the freshest bamboo shoots, the finest vinegar, or the perfect bowl of congee. (It tastes best, according to one connoisseur, when made with rainwater in early spring.) Ingredients should be cooked in small quantities using refined methods that reveal their benwei, or “root flavours”.

The passage of seasons was marked by the fruits and vegetables available in the markets, starting with apricots and cherries in early summer, followed by peaches and melons, then chestnuts, grapes and oranges at the mid-autumn festival and goose pears and quinces at the onset of winter. Everyone knew that the best handmade tofu came from Xiba in Sichuan, just as Nanjing was the place for salted duck, Pixian for chilli bean paste, and the hills around Hangzhou for the most delicate leaves of dragon well green tea. “Concern for the provenance and terroir of ingredients, so important to modern western gourmets, was not the invention of the French or Californians, but has been a preoccupation in China for more than 2,000 years,” Dunlop writes. The Chinese also pioneered imitation meat, free-range chickens, molecular gastronomy, sushi, tofu, soy sauce, ramen and restaurants, which were fashionable gathering places in 12th-century Kaifeng, six centuries before they first appeared in Paris.

Pleasure in eating has always been paired with the need for restraint, and classical texts warned against overindulgence. “Even if there is plenty of meat, [a gentleman] should not eat more meat than rice,” counselled Confucius in the Analects. The ideal has always been to achieve moderation and balance – yin and yang, heating and cooling ingredients, main dishes and rice – in order to nourish the body while living in harmony with nature. (...)

The seductive flavours of China’s local specialities have defined Dunlop’s career. Educated at the University of Cambridge, she first went to live in China in 1994, on a one-year scholarship at Sichuan University in Chengdu to study the government’s policy toward ethnic minorities. She was fortunate to have been sent to a place with one of China’s most distinctive cuisines and found herself taking notes on the food. She quit her studies and enrolled at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine as one of its first foreign students. Over the past three decades she has built a career explaining Chinese cooking to western readers, initially focusing on Sichuan and then expanding to other regions.

More surprisingly, Dunlop has gained a large following by explaining Chinese food to the Chinese. Her memoir Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper sold about 200,000 copies when it came out in China in 2018. Invitation to a Banquet has sold 50,000 copies since its publication there last year, and two of her cookbooks have also done well. Among Chinese food lovers and chefs, Dunlop is praised for her deep understanding of the country’s culinary history. She’s known, like a celebrity, by her first name: “Fu Xia” in Chinese.

How exactly did a waiguoren – a Cambridge-educated white woman who grew up 5,000 miles away – become accepted as an authority on matters so important to the Chinese? Amid China’s rapid transition to a modern industrialised nation, traditional ways of eating and living are disappearing. It has fallen to Dunlop, an outsider, to study the history, to sift through the tradition, and to taste the dishes as if for the first time. Along the way, she has become the voice of a more authentic past. “It kind of shames us, because it’s our own culture,” He Yujia, her Chinese translator, told me. “She helps us rediscover what we’ve neglected for too long.” (...)

Of course, Dunlop’s foreignness also sets her apart. In the extensive coverage of her work and life in the Chinese media, she is “the Cambridge graduate who came to China to cook”, “the English person with a Chinese stomach”, “the foreigner who understands Chinese food best”. “She lends legitimacy to Chinese culture and Chinese cooking at a time when Chinese people really need that affirmation,” Tzui Chuang, a Taiwanese-American food writer, told me.

One of Dunlop’s goals is to rescue Chinese food from its reputation in the west as “popular, but … cheap, low-status and junky”. As she explains in Invitation to a Banquet, the earliest Chinese restaurateurs abroad – beginning with those who went to California during the Gold Rush in the 1840s – were uneducated labourers with no culinary training. The dishes that they made, like deep-fried wontons and sweet-and-sour everything, were nothing like the sophisticated cuisine back home. (...)

In the three decades since Dunlop first went to China, the country’s food system has also been transformed. Western fast food restaurants arrived, followed by supermarket chains and megamarkets such as Carrefour and Walmart, all of which led to increased consumption of western-style processed and packaged foods, saturated fats and sugary beverages. “Just like much of the US, it was becoming easier for Chinese urban consumers to buy out-of-season fruit from thousands of miles away than it was to get fresh produce from the farm just outside town,” writes Thomas David DuBois in China in Seven Banquets, a history of Chinese food that gives a good picture of contemporary developments.

A generation ago most Chinese people knew how to cook; in some parts of the country, including Sichuan, it was common for men to be the primary cooks in the family. But rising living standards and a hyper-competitive work culture have changed that. Many Chinese in their 20s and 30s don’t know how to cook or are too busy to do so. According to recent surveys, more than half the population now eats most of its meals outside the home or relies on food delivery services, which have become ubiquitous over the past decade.

Many Chinese are losing touch with the tradition of healthy eating that Dunlop so earnestly celebrates. Consumption of whole grains, legumes and vegetables is in steep decline. According to a 2021 article in the journal Public Health Nutrition, the Chinese now get 30% of their calories from animal products and 29% from industrially processed foods. In 1990, the figures were 9.5% and 1.5%, respectively. Obesity has increased fivefold; the Chinese suffer increasingly from the chronic ailments, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, that afflict so many millions in the developed world.

by Leslie T. Chang, The Guardian |  Read more:

Image: VGC/Getty Images/Lai Wu

[ed. An expert's expert. If you don't have any of her cookbooks you really should find a few (they'd make great Christmas gifts).]

Here Come China's Food and Drink Chains

Get ready, America: Here come China’s food and drink chains (NYT/ST)

The economic relationship between the United States and China is as fraught as it has been in recent memory, but that has not stopped a wave of Chinese food and beverage chains from moving aggressively into the United States for the first time.

Chinese tea shops in New York and Los Angeles are offering consumers drinks topped with a milk or cheese foam. Fried chicken sandwich joints are trying to lure diners in California with affordable fast food. Restaurant and drink brands, some with thousands of stores in China, are taking root in American cities to escape punishing competition at home.

Heytea, a tea chain originating in Jiangmen, a city in southern China, has opened three dozen stores nationwide since 2023, including a flagship operation in Times Square in New York. Two other rival tea brands, Chagee and Naisnow, opened their first U.S. stores this year. Luckin Coffee, a chain with three outlets for every one Starbucks in China, opened several spots across Manhattan.

Wallace, one of China’s largest fast-food chains with more than 20,000 stores selling fried chicken and hamburgers, landed in Walnut, California, for its first shop. Haidilao, China’s largest hot-pot chain, is redoubling its efforts in the United States after entering the market more than a decade ago.

The American expansion comes at a challenging moment for China’s food and beverage industry. The Chinese economy is no longer growing at a breakneck pace, hampered by a long-running real estate crisis and sluggish consumer spending. To survive, restaurant chains are undercutting one another on prices, inciting an unsustainable, profit-killing race to the bottom. 

by Daisuke Wakabayashi and Joy Dong, NYT/ST |  Read more:

Image: Ava Pellor/The New York Times

[ed. Not to mention Japan's plans to give 7-11's a complete workover.]

Loco Moco

Loco Moco

This classic Hawaiian dish is similar to Japanese hambagu, a ground beef patty topped with a ketchup-based sauce, but loco moco is heartier, served atop a pile of white rice, smothered with caramelized onion gravy and topped with a fried egg. People in Hawaii enjoy it for breakfast, lunch, dinner or any time in between. This version is adapted from “Aloha Kitchen: Recipes From Hawai‘i,” by Alana Kysar, a cookbook of Hawaiian classics. - recipe:

[ed. Never thought I'd see Loco Moco in the NY Times food section. What next? Spam musubi?]

Tequila Wars: 100 Percent Should Mean 100 Percent

[ed. Costco, Kendall Jenner, Diego Corp (Don Julio, Casamigos, etc.) others accused of selling adulterated tequila.]

Mexico City— At an October 16 press conference, Remberto Galván Cabrera announced that four additional tequila brands have failed the purity test. According to Galván, these major brands are masquerading as premium 100% agave tequila, but are actually adulterated with industrial cane alcohol. He has the lab tests to prove it. And no, he’s not talking about Don Julio, Casamigos, Cincoro, or 818, which have been slapped with class action lawsuits for allegedly selling adulterated tequila in the US.

If you’ve been following this unfolding drama, you may remember that Galván is a spokesperson for agave farmers (currently Agaveros de la Agroindustria del Tequila) who have been protesting industry corruption and unfair practices for over a year.

 

In September, Galván lodged a formal complaint with the government, demanding a criminal investigation of the CRT, the organization that regulates the tequila industry. The CRT is tasked with ensuring that all tequila meets legal standards, but Galván alleges that the organization is instead profiting from authorizing the sale of adulterated tequila. Galván traveled to the neighboring state of Guanajuato to request the investigation. His home state of Jalisco is the stronghold of the CRT, which influences local politics.

“The CRT certifies a product as 100% agave when it isn’t,” Galván stated, “With these tests, we prove it. The organization acts as a monopoly that favors industrialists, marginalizes small producers, and puts public health at risk.”

The CRT is a nonprofit “interprofessional organization” that supposedly represents all players in the tequila industry–including agave farmers. In October of 2024, a coalition of agaveros challenged this claim. The price of agave had dropped from 32 pesos a kilo (in 2018) to just one peso a kilo, and the farmers had a litany of complaints. They alleged that the drop in prices wasn’t just the same old boom and bust cycle that had plagued agave farmers for years. At a protest outside of CRT headquarters in Zapopan, Jalisco, agaveros sounded the alarm, alleging that the CRT was colluding with major tequila companies to drive down agave prices and squeeze out small farmers. 

Curious to know more about the source of this unrest, I sought out Remberto Galván Cabrera. He was loquacious, passionate, and hellbent to expose the alleged corruption. Much of what he said seemed plausible. The idea of corporations colluding to screw over farmers? Sure. The agaveros’ accusation that a regulatory body (the CRT) was corrupt? Certainly possible. His allegation that giant corporations were breaking international laws to adulterate their supposedly premium tequilas? That was harder to swallow. I couldn’t understand why they would take such a giant risk when it would be relatively easy to prove that a tequila was corrupted. Galván assured me there was evidence, but he wasn’t ready to release it. Fast forward about a year…

Since we first broke the story of the allegations in January of 2025, the drama has escalated. Galván was kidnapped and beaten. His phone and paperwork were stolen. Two leaders in the movement, Julián Rodríguez Parra and Salvador Ibarra Landeros, were arrested and jailed. I received veiled threats. The agaveros continued to stage protests.

Casamigos, Don Julio, Cincoro, and 818 accused of selling fake tequila

Although the protesting agaveros were making a lot of noise, the story wasn’t picked up by major news sources until May 5, 2025, when we reported that a class action lawsuit had been filed in New York against liquor giant Diageo. The lawsuit alleges that two Diageo tequilas, Casamigos and Don Julio, were adulterated with industrial alcohol. Diageo refuted the allegations stating, “All Casamigos and Don Julio tequilas labelled as ‘100% agave’ are made from 100% blue weber agave. We will vigorously defend the quality and integrity of our tequilas in court, and against anyone who is spreading misinformation and lies about our products.”

On July 4, another class action lawsuit was filed in California, opening the field of plaintiffs to anyone in the US who had bought Don Julio or Casamigos products. Since then, additional tequila brands have been slapped with lawsuits, including Kendall Jenner’s 818 tequila. In a case filed in Florida, the plaintiffs accuse 818 of knowingly selling adulterated tequila.

According to the September 23 filing, “Defendants actively concealed and misrepresented the true nature of how their Products were manufactured and composition of their Products. Indeed, Defendants concealed and misrepresented that they had in fact utilized sugars other than those obtained from the tequilana weber blue variety of agave to enhance their tequila, despite the Products being labeled as 100% agave azul.” (...)

So how bad is the adulterated “tequila”?

“The four samples we analyzed were adulterated with cheap cane alcohol,” Galván says. “Two samples weren’t even recognized as mixto tequila, meaning they have 33% agave sugars or less. The other two barely reached 51% agave.” He notes that one sample also had unsafe levels of methanol–a factor the CRT supposedly monitors.

We contacted the CRT for comment but have not yet received a reply. They have declined our previous request.

The numbers Galván lists are consistent with the test results cited in the California class action lawsuit, which was filed on July 4 by Baron & Budd in conjunction with Hagens Berman, who were responsible for the first class action lawsuit in New York.

According to the legal team, tests revealed that Casamigos Blanco contains approximately 33% agave-derived alcohol. Supposedly, Don Julio Blanco is 42% agave, while their pricey 1942 Añejo contains just 33% agave. As the complaint summarizes, “These findings directly contradict the prominent ‘100% Agave’ labels on Diageo Premium tequila products and confirm that Diageo’s representations are materially false and misleading.”

by Felisa Rogers, Mezcalitas |  Read more:

Image: via

[ed. See also: Costco implicated in adulterated tequila scandal; and, Tequila test results revealed, death threats, and other breaking news (Mezcalitas):]

***

Since we last reported on the tequila adulteration scandal, A LOT has happened. To make sense of it, I’ve created a timeline of recent revelations, followed by my takeaways and a chilling message from the man who has risked everything to bring this story to light. (...)

My takeaways…

At this point, it’s challenging to track all these law suits, law firms, and formal complaints. Meanwhile, we wonder why this story isn’t receiving more attention in the mainstream press. (...)

We continued to cover the protests and negotiations, but the allegations of adulterated tequila didn’t gain traction until May, when we reported that a major law firm was bringing a class action lawsuit against Diageo, the parent company of Casamigos and Don Julio, for allegedly selling adulterated tequila masquerading as a 100% agave premium product. Our story was picked up by Reuters, trade publications, and other outlets. The scandal has since snowballed into more lawsuits, outraged declarations of innocence, and a whole lot of speculation.

But to me, the agaveros are still at the heart of this drama. In a nutshell: this is a story about giant corporations allegedly colluding with a regulatory agency to improve their profit margins. By allegedly adulterating tequila with industrial alcohol, these players are devaluing the price of agave. This is unfair to both the agaveros and the legitimate distillers who are still making real tequila with care and at much greater cost.

It’s also a tale of courage in the face of enormous danger. Since beginning this crusade, Remberto Galván has been abducted and beaten. Two other agavero leaders, Julián Rodríguez and Salvador Ibarra, were arrested for protesting outside of the Sauza distillery and held in jail for 72 days. We are seriously concerned for the safety of everyone who continues to speak out on this issue.

Galván says that he and his associates have received threatening anonymous phone calls. According to Galván, he was told that if doesn’t back down, his body parts will be strewn around his home.

But the alleged intimidation goes beyond death threats. According to Galván, his own distillery, La Alborada, was targeted. He says a friend and colleague was pressured to plant adulterated tequila on the premises.

This appears to be a theme. Galván, a crusader against adulterated tequila, may be charged with adulterating tequila. Julián Rodríguez, an advocate for the rights of farmers, was charged with extortion and intimidation of Sauza for engaging in a peaceful protest outside the entrance of their distillery.

Galván fears for his life. He asked us to put this in the public record.

Chasing the Tomato

When Panera Bread began shrinking its sandwiches and skimping on salads, it started shedding customers.

Now, to win them back, the chain plans to reinvest in the business and undo many of those same cost-cutting measures, it said Tuesday.

Once the No. 1 fast-casual brand in the U.S., Panera has dipped to No. 3, ceding the top spots to Chipotle Mexican Grill and Panda Express. Last year, its sales fell 5% to $6.1 billion, according to Technomic estimates. For years, the chain’s traffic has been shrinking, according to CEO Paul Carbone, who took the reins earlier this year. Controversy after the chain’s foray into energy drinks didn’t help matters, either. (...)

Entering the value wars

Phase one of Panera’s plan is to improve the quality of its food, reversing cost-cutting measures imposed in the face of high inflation, according to Carbone.

“We squeezed food costs. We squeezed labor,” he said. [ed. Translation: we enshitified our product and screwed employees.] 

Some of those changes happened while Carbone was chief financial officer. He now calls himself a “reformed CFO” — albeit one who still listens to earnings conference calls.

“It’s really about death by a thousand paper cuts, it truly is,” Carbone said about the chain’s downturn.

Take Panera’s salads, for example. In the summer of 2024, Panera began using a mix of half romaine, half iceberg lettuce to make its salads, saving the chain money compared with when it was using romaine alone. This summer, it reverted back to entirely romaine salads.

“You know what guests told us? No one likes iceberg, and no one gets that and says, ‘Oh my God, that white salad, it looks so appetizing,’” Carbone said.

And then there’s the cherry tomato. Carbone said Panera is one of the few restaurant chains that doesn’t slice the bite-sized tomatoes in half, a decision made to save on labor costs.

“We make the guest chase the cherry tomato around the bowl,” he said.

And when a salad comes with an avocado, customers have to cut the halved fruit themselves, rather than it coming presliced. The chain will start slicing the cherry tomatoes and avocados early next year.

Plus, Panera’s salads typically have five ingredients, while those of competitors like Sweetgreen feature as many as eight.

But it wasn’t just salads that were affected by the cost-cutting measures.

“In some instances, we shrunk portions, so guests would walk into our cafe to buy a sandwich that has gone up significantly in price, with lower-quality ingredients, in a smaller size,” Carbone said.

The menu refresh will also include new items. Last month, the chain announced that it is testing new “fresca” and “energy refresher” drinks.

Panera previously offered highly caffeinated energy drinks, but it discontinued the line, which included Charged Lemonade, following two wrongful death lawsuits and related negative publicity. Panera denied wrongdoing and settled the lawsuits earlier this year.

When it comes to value, Panera is planning on leaning into a barbell menu strategy, offering customers options on both the low- and high-price end. The approach has worked particularly well for casual-dining chains like Chili’s, but Panera doesn’t have the same appetizer offerings as a full-service restaurant.

“We haven’t cracked the code yet,” Carbone said. “We’re doing a lot of testing.”

by Amelia Lucas, CNBC |  Read more:

Image: Joe Raedle|Getty Images
[ed. Never eaten there and can confidently predict never will.]

Honeycrisp Apples Are Popular Worldwide. Some Washington Growers Hate Them

Ever since Eve bit the forbidden fruit, apples have held a certain mystique.

They say that one a day keeps the doctor away. Billions per year keep Washington farms hopping. And “if each person ate 2.5 more pounds of apples” per year, said fourth-generation farmer Kait Thornton, “you could save the apple industry” in our state.

In Washington, more than 5 billion pounds of apples were produced this fall by an industry that “generates over $8 billion in economic impact for the state of Washington and supports almost 70,000 jobs,” per the Washington State Tree Fruit Association. Some 1,200 commercial apple growers in the Evergreen State produce about 70% of the country’s apples — and 4% of the world’s crop.

 

The industry has grown steadily in the last decade. We lead the nation in fresh apple production. And yet, Washington farmers are nervous.

And it’s all our fault.

Yes, us. Apple eaters are fickle, always reaching for the latest and greatest fruit.

Apple production, as with many commodity crops, follows the trends and tastes of consumers. A little over 25 years ago, Red Delicious was Washington’s top variety of apple — a perfect fruit for farmers, it was standardized in size and flavor, an easy grower in our climate; it’s an apple that transports and stores beautifully.

Today, the classic, giant, deep-red apple makes up around 12% of the state’s annual harvest — and we export the bulk of them, because American consumers have fallen for different apples.

“Once you standardize something, people miss novelty,” says Jon Devaney, president of the tree fruit association.

Consumer tastes and expectations have veered away from the creamy softness of the Red and Golden Delicious varieties. The Honeycrisp entered the market decades ago, as people sought a juicier, more crisp and tart apple. The Minnesota invention was formally introduced in 1991 — and now Honeycrisp is a perennial fan favorite among apple lovers.

They made up 15% of this year’s Washington crop, tied for our state’s second most-produced apple.

But Honeycrisps are a real problem child for Washington growers. (...)

At the beginning of the 2025 apple harvest, Thornton posted a TikTok with her dad, Geoff, bemoaning that popular, sweet, tart apple, saying he “hated Honeycrisp.”

“They’re like the mean girl at a dance,” Geoff said of Honeycrisp apples in the video, which has been viewed nearly 2 million times.

Honeycrisp is second to Galas, Washington’s No. 1 apple at 18% of total production, and is tied with Granny Smith for No. 2, followed by Red Delicious, Cosmic Crisp, Fuji and Cripps Pink. (...)

Geoff has seen many things change in his time farming. He knows that apple varietals rise and fall in popularity as consumer tastes change. But he’s going public with a plea for apple lovers this year. Eat something other than Honeycrisp. Please.

“We wanted an apple that would increase consumption,” Geoff said, “and bless Honeycrisp’s heart, because it did that. The nation fell in love with Honeycrisp. But it’s really hard to grow. It gives you the promise of reward, but then you try too hard and you’re bitterly disappointed.”

He said it’s one of the most high-maintenance apples out there.

“They’re always like, ‘What can you do for me?’” Geoff said. “A little extra nutrient spray, special water irrigation program; we’ll have a lot one year and we won’t have any the next.”

All apples for the fresh market are picked by hand, but the skin on a Honeycrisp is thin, meaning each stem must also be clipped by hand just after picking, so they don’t poke holes in other apples in a bin. They’re also prone to calcium deficiency, leading to spots, a bitter pit and mold.

These apples thrive in spots like Minnesota and Michigan, where they were developed, so you might say that farmers have been fighting an uphill battle since the beginning.

“A really good Honeycrisp crop would be packing 60%, throwing away 40%,” Geoff said. “Cosmic Crisp, you might pack 85 or even 90%. It’s really a much more grower-friendly apple variety.”

Now, throwing away doesn’t mean 40% of Honeycrisp apples are left on the orchard floor. Those apples are sold to a secondary market for juice, puree or cider. (...)

Geoff saw the writing on the wall with Honeycrisp a few years ago. He has made changes, investing in other apple varieties that are still up and coming, like the SugarBee apple and Cosmic Crisp. Those varieties also have the distinction of being Washington-produced, meaning they’re naturally better suited for the Tonasket climate.

“I’m putting my last gasps of money into new varieties, the Happi Pear, and the best apple I’ve ever raised in my 39-year career: the SugarBee,” Geoff said.

Devaney of the tree fruit association knows it’s all a gamble.

“You can spend upwards of $70,000 per acre putting in the trees, setting up a trellis, irrigation, waiting three to five years, and then when you’re selling that fruit, consumers eat it and like it,” he said. “Multiply by a couple hundred acres, it’s easy to bet the farm on a variety.”

by Jackie Varriano, Seattle Times |  Read more:

Image: Kevin Clark/The Seattle Times

[ed. Not a big apple eater, but I do like a good Cosmic Crisp. Read the comments section for more diverse and passionate opinions. See also: Yakima Valley drought forces WA farmers to rip out apple trees (ST).]

Most Expensive Coffee in the World

via:

[ed. Bat Poop Coffee? See also: World's most expensive coffee goes on sale in Dubai at $1,000 a cup. Selling for nearly $1,000 a cup, a cafe in Dubai is offering the world's most expensive coffee, brewed from Panamanian beans sold at a premium price. via.]

SNAP 2025

Starving People Over Politics

I do want to take some time today to talk about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps), because over the weekend the Trump administration essentially decided to turn the program off.

During an appropriations lapse, most of the government’s discretionary programs shut down, but programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that are funded on an ongoing basis rather than through annual appropriations continue.

SNAP is one such program, which is why it wasn’t impacted when appropriations originally lapsed. However, administering the program requires a modest amount of spending over and above the expenditure on the benefits, and the appropriations for that administration ran out at the end of October.

The White House could — but chose not to — tap an emergency fund that exists to keep the program running.

There’s going to be litigation as to whether Trump truly has discretion here or is just breaking the law. But SNAP benefits won’t be paid this month unless judges intervene. And while the non-payment is in a sense because of the shutdown, it was not a forced move. The White House believes that cutting off SNAP payments will increase pressure on Democrats to cave, because they believe that Democrats care a lot about the safety net and the lives of poor people.

An interesting quirk of American politics is that lower-income states tend to be more conservative so, in a sense, the economic hit of sharply curtailed low-end consumption falls harder on red America. (...)

So the politics of firing this gun may not play out exactly how Republicans hope.

That said, what I actually want to talk about today is the substance of SNAP. It’s hard, journalistically, to cover static facts about the world, but SNAP is a big important program that makes a real difference in people’s lives. Trump shutting it down is a good time to talk about that, and also a good time to mention GiveDirectly’s program where you can give money to Americans directly impacted by this situation.

SNAP is a really big deal

SNAP is a large program, but most people don’t think about it very much, to the extent that one of the most common reactions I saw to news of looming cuts was incredulity that nearly 12 percent of the population could really be receiving food assistance benefits. And a lot of that spiraled into conspiratorial thinking about massive underestimates of the immigrant population or benefits fraud.

But the poverty rate in the United States is either 10.6 or 12.9 percent, depending on which measure you use, so the scale of food assistance shouldn’t be surprising. And the demographics of SNAP are similar to other American anti-poverty programs: the biggest groups of enrollees are children, the elderly, and the disabled, and the program skews significantly toward single mothers and their kids rather than two-parent households.

In general, I think people tend to underrate both the fact that the United States is a very rich country — not just in the sense of billionaires or the top 1 percent, but that our median living standards are much higher than in Europe or Asia — and also that it’s a really hard place to be poor. The prosperity of the country tends to make things a little expensive here, because you’re either hiring the labor of residents of a rich country or bidding against the residents of a rich country for scarce goods.

If you look at living standards in the poorest 10 percent of the population, the bottom decile of Americans is doing worse than the bottom decile of Canadians or Australians or residents of northern Europe.

Reasonable people can disagree as to what to make of that, but it’s one of the most important structural facts of American life.

Somewhat flexible help for the poor

On average, SNAP recipients receive $187 per month, but poorer families get more and less-poor ones get less. It’s not a particularly generous program. But relative to the rest of the American safety net, it’s a flexible program in that it takes a fairly expansive view of what counts as groceries. When I was a kid and recipients had to bring actual food stamps to the grocery store to get their benefits, their use of the program was quite obvious to anyone behind them in the checkout line. But in the modern world, benefits are administered via an Electronic Benefits Transfer card that looks and functions like a debit card or a credit card, so it’s easy to miss — perhaps one reason people seemed to be surprised by the scope of the program.

by Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring |  Read more:

Image: Hispanolistic

[ed. Poor people being used as political pawns again. Starting with burdensome new Medicaid application, work and reporting requirements; suspended H-2A worker programs which provided visiting workers for essential agricultural and dairy support jobs (that Americans won't do); ICE arresting anyone that looks poor and brown, and now this - just outright starving them. See also: Trump’s deportations are causing farm labor issues... with no viable, long-term solution (Investigate Midwest); and Wages of Citizenship (PW):]

***

"The Trump Administration’s crusade to transform the US immigration system has included sweeping changes to increase the state’s capacity to locate and remove noncitizen residents. The administration has empowered immigration agents to enter formerly “sensitive” spaces like schools and churches, suspended due process for legal noncitizens, and established immigration jails outside national borders. It made a deal with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to use once off-limits tax data to locate up to seven million undocumented workers. Dramatic deportation operations are now underway across the country, with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) boasting 113,000 arrests and “north of” 100,000 deportations since Trump took office in January. The numbers include a rise in “collateral” arrests and deportations and are likely to rise after Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) March 25 repeal of work authorization for 530,000 legal migrants of Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Venezuela, who have thirty days—until April 24—to depart before they too will be targeted for arrests and deportations.

Draconian methods were to be expected. Less clear is whether the promised crackdowns threaten the uneasy alliance between the federal government and employers in agriculture, construction, and food and hospitality industries. Despite the “war on terror” redefining the outer limits of executive power to surveil and detain foreign nationals, the workplace has over the past two decades remained largely insulated. The resilience of this arrangement reflects a clear hegemonic interest in cheap and docile labor, which allows for both lower prices and higher profits; a critical supply of health and childcare workers; a vital source of future labor; and close to $100 billion annually in state, local, and federal tax revenues. This is the perspective of US employers, expressed by the notion of “sanctuary businesses,” in which the legal segmentation of the labor market has propelled business growth."

Soybean Socialism

They’re Small, Yellow and Round — and Show How Trump’s Tariffs Don’t Work

Once again, President Trump says he’s preparing an emergency bailout for struggling farmers. And once again, it’s because of an emergency he created.

China has stopped buying U.S. soybeans to protest Mr. Trump’s tariffs on imports. In response, Mr. Trump plans to send billions of dollars of tariff revenue to U.S. soybean farmers who no longer have buyers for their crops. At the same time, Argentina has taken advantage of Mr. Trump’s tariffs to sell more of its own soybeans to China — yet Mr. Trump is planning to bail out Argentina, too.

This may seem nonsensical, especially since Mr. Trump already shoveled at least $28 billion to farmers hurt by his first trade war in 2018. But it actually makes perfect sense. It’s what happens when Mr. Trump’s zero-sum philosophy of trade — which is that there are always winners and losers, and he should get to choose the winners — collides with Washington’s sycophantic approach to agriculture, which ensures that farmers always win and taxpayers always lose. In the end, Mr. Trump’s allies, including President Javier Milei of Argentina and the politically influential agricultural community, will get paid, and you will pay. (...)

In theory, Mr. Trump’s tariffs on foreign products ranging from toys to cars to furniture are supposed to encourage manufacturers to move operations from abroad to the United States. They haven’t had that effect, because the tariffs have jacked up the price of steel and other raw materials that U.S. manufacturers still need to import, triggered retaliatory tariffs from China and other countries and created a volatile trade environment that makes investing in America risky. At the same time, higher tariffs mean higher prices for U.S. consumers, even though Mr. Trump insists that only foreigners absorb the costs. (...)

Of course, farmers have been among Mr. Trump’s most loyal supporters, and these days they’re distraught that rather than make agriculture great again, the president has chased away their biggest soybean buyer. They’re especially irate that Mr. Trump pledged to rescue Argentina the same day Mr. Milei suspended its export tax on soybeans, making it more attractive for China to leave U.S. farmers in the lurch. Mr. Trump even admitted that the $20 billion Argentine bailout won’t help America much, that it’s a favor for an embattled political ally who’s “MAGA all the way.”

But American farmers were distraught about his last trade war, too, until he regained their trust with truckloads of cash. They say that this time they don’t want handouts, just open markets and a level playing field, but in the end they’ll accept the handouts while less powerful business owners victimized by tariffs will get nothing. Mr. Trump initially promised to use his tariff revenue to pay down the national debt to benefit all Americans, but he’ll take care of farmers first.

In fact, “Farmers First” is the motto of Mr. Trump’s Department of Agriculture, and the upcoming bailout won’t be even his first effort this year to redirect money from taxpayers to soybean growers. His Environmental Protection Agency has proposed to mandate two billion additional gallons of biodiesel, a huge giveaway to soy growers. His “big, beautiful bill” also included lucrative subsidies for soy-based biodiesel, which drives deforestation abroad and makes food more expensive but could provide a convenient market for unwanted grain.

Democrats have been airing ads blaming Mr. Trump’s tariffs for the pain in soybean country, and they’ve started attacking the Argentina bailout as well. But most of them aren’t complaining about his imminent farm bailout, and his recent biofuel boondoggles have bipartisan support. Mr. Trump’s incessant pandering to the farmer-industrial complex is one of the most conventional Beltway instincts he has. And it has worked for him politically; even now that crop prices are plunging and soybeans have nowhere to go, rural America remains the heart of his base.

I’ve argued that Democrats can’t out-agri-pander Mr. Trump in rural America, and now that the president has posted a meme of himself dumping on urban America, there’s never been a better time to stop trying. Mr. Trump has committed to a destructive mix of tariffs, bailouts, biofuels mandates and immigration crackdowns that will make consumers pay more for food and saddle taxpayers with more debt. It’s a bizarre combination of crony capitalism and agricultural socialism. It’s all the worst elements of big government.

by Michael Grunwald, NY Times |  Read more:
Image: Antonio Giovanni Pinna
[ed. One of my pet peeves. Almost 40 years of subsidies, with most of the money going to Big Ag (which is busy squeezing and consolidating small farms out of sight). See also: Take a Hard Look at One Agency Truly Wasting Taxpayer Dollars (NYT):]

There’s one bloated federal government agency that routinely hands out money to millionaires, billionaires, insurance companies and even members of Congress. The handouts are supposed to be a safety net for certain rural business owners during tough years, but thousands of them have received the safety-net payments for 39 consecutive years...

Even though only 1 percent of Americans farm, the U.S.D.A. employs five times as many people as the Environmental Protection Agency and occupies nearly four times as many offices as the Social Security Administration. (...)

But the real problem with the U.S.D.A. is that its subsidy programs redistribute well over $20 billion a year from taxpayers to predominantly well-off farmers. Many of those same farmers also benefit from subsidized and guaranteed loans with few strings attached, price supports and import quotas that boost food prices, lavish ad hoc aid packages after weather disasters and market downturns as well as mandates to spur production of unsustainable biofuels. A little reform to this kind of welfare could go a long way toward reassuring skeptics that the administration’s efficiency crusade isn’t only about defunding its opponents and enriching its supporters.

Microplastics Are Everywhere

You can do one simple thing to avoid them.

If you are concerned about microplastics, the world starts to look like a minefield. The tiny particles can slough off polyester clothing and swirl around in the air inside your home; they can scrape off of food packaging into your take-out food.

But as scientists zero in on the sources of microplastics — and how they get into human bodies — one factor stands out.

Microplastics, studies increasingly show, are released from exposure to heat.

“Heat probably plays the most crucial role in generating these micro- and nanoplastics,” said Kazi Albab Hussain, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln.

Pour coffee into a plastic foam cup, and pieces of the cup will leach out into the coffee itself. Brew tea, and millions of microplastics and even tinier nanoplastics will spill from the tea bag into your cup. Wash your polyester clothing on high heat, and the textiles can start to break apart, sending microplastics spinning through the water supply.

In one recent study by researchers at the University of Birmingham in England, scientists analyzed 31 beverages for sale on the British market — from fruit juices and sodas to coffee and tea. They looked at particles bigger than 10 micrometers in diameter, or roughly one-fifth the width of a human hair. While all the drinks had at least a dozen microplastic particles in them on average, by far the highest numbers were in hot drinks. Hot tea, for example, had an average of 60 particles per liter, while iced tea had 31 particles. Hot coffee had 43 particles per liter, while iced coffee had closer to 37.

These particles, according to Mohamed Abdallah, a professor of geography and emerging contaminants at the university and one of the authors of the study, are coming from a range of sources — the plastic lid on a to-go cup of coffee, the small bits of plastic lining a tea bag. But when hot water is added to the mix, the rate of microplastic release increases.

“Heat makes it easier for microplastics to leach out from packaging materials,” Abdallah said.

The effect was even stronger in plastics that are older and degraded. Hot coffee prepared in an eight-year-old home coffee machine with plastic components had twice as many microplastics as coffee prepared in a machine that was only six months old.

Other research has found the same results with even smaller nanoplastics, defined as plastic particles less than one micrometer in diameter.

Scientists at the University of Nebraska, including Hussain, analyzed small plastic jars and tubs used for storing baby food and found that the containers could release more than 2 billion nanoplastics per square centimeter when heated in the microwave — significantly more than when stored at room temperature or in a refrigerator.

The same effect has been shown in studies looking at how laundry produces microplastics: Higher washing temperatures, scientists have found, lead to more tiny plastics released from synthetic clothing.

Heat, Hussain explained, is simply bad for plastic, especially plastic used to store food and drinks.

by Shannon Osaka, Washington Post |  Read more:

Image: Yaroslav Litun/iStock

Monsters From the Deep

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA ~ Rebecca R. Helm

***

"From the darkness of the deep, the mother rose slowly, her great body pulsing with effort, while the calf clung close to her side. The faint shimmer of the surface light caught on something twisting in her jaws—long pale arms, still trembling, a giant calamari dragged from the black abyss.

The calf pressed its head against the mother’s flank, curious, its small eye turning toward the strange, sprawling catch. Around them, the other whales gathered, a circle of giants, each click and creak of their voices carrying through the water like an ancient council.

The mother released a cloud of ink the squid had left behind, now dissipating in ghostly ribbons. She let the prey dangle for a moment before tearing a piece free with a practiced shake of her head. The calf tried to imitate, nudging the slack arms of the squid, but only managed to tangle its mouth in the trailing suckers. The adults rumbled with what could only be described as laughter.

High above, a shaft of sunlight pierced the water, illuminating the drifting arms of the squid like banners in the deep. The feast had begun, but it was also a lesson—the calf’s first glimpse of the abyss’s hidden monsters, and of the power its mother carried up from the dark world below."

via: here and here

The Life and Death of the American Foodie

When food culture became pop culture, a new national persona was born. We regret to inform you, it’s probably you.

When did you become such an adventurous eater?” my mom often asks me, after I’ve squealed about some meal involving jamón ibérico or numbing spices. The answer is, I don’t know, but I can think of moments throughout my life where food erupted as more than a mere meal: My cousin and his Ivy League rowing team hand-making pumpkin ravioli for me at Thanksgiving. Going to the pre-Amazon Whole Foods and giddily deciding to buy bison bacon for breakfast sandwiches assembled in a dorm kitchen. Eating paneer for the first time in India. Slurping a raw oyster in New Orleans.

What made me even want to try a raw oyster in 2004, despite everything about an oyster telling me NO, was an entire culture emerging promising me I’d be better for it. Food, I was beginning to understand from TV and magazines and whatever blogs existed then, was important. It could be an expression of culture or creativity or cachet, folk art or surrealism or science, but it was something to pay attention to. Mostly, I gleaned that to reject foodieism was to give up on a new and powerful form of social currency. I would, then, become a foodie.

To be a foodie in the mid-aughts meant it wasn’t enough to enjoy French wines and Michelin-starred restaurants. The pursuit of the “best” food, with the broadest definition possible, became a defining trait: a pastry deserving of a two-hour wait, an international trip worth taking just for a bowl of noodles. Knowing the name of a restaurant’s chef was good, but knowing the last four places he’d worked at was better — like knowing the specs of Prince’s guitars. This knowledge was meant to be shared. Foodies traded in Yelp reviews and Chowhound posts, offering tips on the most authentic tortillas and treatises on ramps. Ultimately, we foodies were fans, gleefully devoted to our subculture.

Which inevitably leads to some problems, when, say, the celebrities the subculture has put on a pedestal are revealed to be less-than-honorable actors, or when values like authenticity and craft are inevitably challenged. What it’s historically meant to be a foodie, a fan, has shifted and cracked and been reborn.

And ultimately, it has died. Or at least the term has. To be called a “foodie” now is the equivalent of being hit with an “Okay, boomer.” But while the slang may have changed, the ideals the foodie embodied have been absorbed into all aspects of American culture. There may be different words now, or no words at all, but the story of American food over the past 20 years is one of a speedrun of cultural importance. At this point, who isn’t a foodie? (...)

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How did we get to chefs-holding-squeeze-bottles as entertainment? The 1984 Cable Communications Policy Act deregulated the industry, and by 1992, more than 60 percent of American households had a cable subscription. Food Network launched in 1993, and compared to Julia Child or Joyce Chen drawing adoring viewers on public broadcasting programs, the channel was all killer, no filler, with shows for every mood. By the early 2000s, you could geek out with Alton Brown on Good Eats, experience Italian sensuality with Molto Mario or Everyday Italian, fantasize about a richer life with Barefoot Contessa, or have fun in your busy suburban kitchen with 30 Minute Meals. Anthony Bourdain’s A Cook’s Tour gave viewers an initial taste of his particular brand of smart-alecky wonder, and there were even competition shows, like the Japanese import Iron Chef.

The premiere of 2005’s The Next Food Network Star, which later gave us Guy Fieri, baron of the big bite, was the network’s first admission that we were ready to think of food shows in terms of entertainment, not just instruction and education. But Food Network was still a food network. The mid-aughts brought the revelation that food programming didn’t have to live just there, but could be popular primetime television — when that was an actual time and not just a saying.

Then came Top Chef, inspired by the success of Bravo’s other reality competition series, Project Runway. There is no overstating Top Chef’s lasting influence on food entertainment, but off the bat it did one thing that further cemented foodieism as a bona fide subculture: Its air of professionalism gave people a vocabulary. “The real pushback from the network was but the viewers can’t taste the food,” says Lauren Zalaznick, president of Bravo at the time. But just like the experts on Project Runway could explain good draping to someone who didn’t know how to sew, Top Chef “committed to telling the story of the food in such a way that it would become attainable no matter where you were,” she says.

This gave viewers a shared language to speak about food in their own lives. Now, people who would never taste these dishes had a visual and linguistic reference for molecular gastronomy, and could speculate about Marcel Vigneron’s foams. If you didn’t know what a scallop was, you learned, as Top Chef was awash in them. Yes, you could hear Tom Colicchio critique a classic beurre blanc, but also poke, al pastor, and laksa, and now that language was yours too. And you could hear chefs speak about their own influences and inspirations, learning why exactly they thought to pair watermelon and gnocchi.

The food scene then “was more bifurcated,” says Evan Kleiman, chef and longtime host of KCRW’s Good Food. “There were super-high-end restaurants that were expensive, maybe exclusive, and for the most part represented European cuisines. And then what was called ‘ethnic food’ was often relegated to casual, family-run kind of spots.” Top Chef may have been entertainment for the upwardly mobile foodie, but in 2005, Bourdain’s No Reservations premiered on the Travel Channel, similarly emphasizing storytelling and narrative. In his hands, the best meals often didn’t even require a plate. His was a romantic appreciation of the authentic, the hole-in-the-wall, the kind of stuff that would never be served in a dining room. It set off an entire generation of (often less respectful, less considered) foodie adventurism.

“No Reservations is what got me interested in the culture of eating,” says Elazar Sontag, currently the restaurant editor at Bon Appétit. Because it was about food as culture, not as profession. But there was programming for it all. Also in 2005, Hell’s Kitchen premiered on Fox, with an amped-up recreation of a dinner service in each night’s challenge. “Hell’s Kitchen’s high-octane, insane, intense environment of a restaurant kitchen is actually what made me think, when I was maybe 12 or 13, that I want to work in restaurants,” says Sontag.

All these shows were first and foremost about gathering knowledge, whether it was what, indeed, a gastrique was, or the history of boat noodles in Thailand. It didn’t matter if you’d ever been there. The point was that you knew. “Food was becoming a different kind of cultural currency,” says Sontag. “I didn’t clock that shift happening at the time, but it’s very much continued.”

Language is meant to be spoken; knowledge is meant to be shared. Now that everyone knew there were multiple styles of ramen, there was no better place to flex about it than with a new tool: the social internet. Online, “talking about restaurants and going to restaurants became something that people could have a shared identity about,” says Rosner. “There was this perfect storm of a national explosion of gastronomic vocabulary and a platform on which everybody could show off how much they knew, learn from each other, and engage in this discovery together.” Your opinion about your corner bagel shop suddenly had a much wider relevance.

by Jaya Saxena, Eater | Read more:
Image: Julia Duffosé