Interesting Bars, A cool website where you can search for interesting bars in a city. I suppose it’s still being populated as mid-sized cities aren’t represented.
Category: Food
Food, restaurants, meals, drinks, cooking, places to eat
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Sushi’s rise in the USA
Sushi’s popularity continues to grow.
Once a small niche of the seafood business, sushi is now the industry’s growth leader.
Most of that growth is not happening in $300-per-head omakase restaurants (though those are proliferating). It is happening in gas stations and big-box stores, bowling alleys and stadiums, U.S. Army commissaries and amusement parks.
Retail sushi, also called “deli sushi” because of its usual location in supermarkets, is one of the fastest-growing segments in supermarkets overall, according to Circana, a market research firm. In 2024, retail sushi was a $2.8 billion business, up 7 percent from 2023
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Americans drinking less
Alcohol consumption in the United States trending downward.
A record high percentage of U.S. adults, 53%, now say moderate drinking is bad for their health, up from 28% in 2015. The uptick in doubt about alcohol’s benefits is largely driven by young adults — the age group that is most likely to believe drinking “one or two drinks a day” can cause health hazards — but older adults are also now increasingly likely to think moderate drinking carries risks.
As concerns about health impacts rise, fewer Americans are reporting that they drink. The survey finds that 54% of U.S. adults say they drink alcoholic beverages such as liquor, wine or beer. That’s lower than at any other point in the past three decades.
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Middle class restaurants disappearing
Once rapidly growing commercial marvels, casual dining chains — sit-down restaurants where middle-class families can walk in without a reservation, order from another human and share a meal — have been in decline for most of the 21st century. Last year, TGI Fridays and Red Lobster both filed for bankruptcy. Outback and Applebee’s have closed dozens of locations. Pizza Hut locations with actual dining rooms are vanishingly rare, with hundreds closing since 2019.
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Drinking all 102 official IBA cocktails
The International Bartender Association maintains a list of official cocktails, intending to represent different styles and flavors across the world. Adam Aaronson set out on a quest to drink all of them.
A formative moment early in the quest came at Uncle Charlie’s Piano Lounge in Midtown with Ming and Alina. A divey gay bar with no menu? Sounded like a perfect opportunity to check off some drinks! I scanned through my list to find something simple to try and order, went up to a mustachioed bartender, and asked, “could you do a caipirinha?” He replied, “nah, we don’t have cachaça”—a reality check—and I said, “alright, I’ll just do uhhh an Aperol spritz” (one of my old reliables).
After crushing my spritz, I went back to the same bartender. Still determined to check some boxes, I asked for a mint julep. “I’m afraid we don’t have mint,” he laughed, “you fancy boy!” Unwilling to settle for another spritz, I scurried back to Ming and Alina and asked them what to do. Alina suggested, “why don’t you just show him the list and see what he can make?”
So that’s exactly what I did. Back at the bar, I briefly explained my mission to the bartender, handed him my phone, and he scrolled through the list. “Oh, I can do a few of these,” he said, “You’re cool with any of them?” “Yeah, whatever you can make,” I replied. Soon enough, I had a lemon drop martini in hand. (Alina tried mine and then ordered one for herself, but the bartender asked her, “Is that for your friend or you? If it’s for your friend I’ll make him something new!”)
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The DC pizza tracker
Domino’s has their fancy pizza tracker, allowing you to see where your order is in the process. In Washington D.C., pizzeria’s can track national security when the Pentagon orders large quantities of pizzas, especially outside of regular times.
On Saturday, June 21, at 7:13 p.m. EST – shortly before President Donald Trump announced via Truth Social of the U.S. bunker-buster attack, Pentagon Pizza Report tracked a “HIGH activity [of sales] at the closest Papa Johns to the Pentagon.”
@PenPizzaReport’s account is dedicated to “open-source tracking of pizza spot activity around the Pentagon (and other places).” The X handle went live last August — months before the 2024 election — and it already has over 203,000 followers.
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Chefs sprinkle in some ChatGPT
Chefs have started using ChatGPT as a tool to think up flavors, learn obscure cooking techniques outside of their repertoire, keep track of seasonal ingredients, and concoct plating designs. One of those chefs is Grant Achatz, of Alinea.
Since Mr. Achatz’s first serious experiments with ChatGPT, about a year ago, it has become his favorite kitchen tool, something he used to say about Google. Its answers to his questions about paleontology and Argentine cuisine helped him create a dish inspired by Patagonian fossils at his flagship restaurant, Alinea.
I had the opportunity to dine at Alinea last April, and this dish was served. The presentation appeared as a miniature archealogical dig, complete with tools, and while interesting, wasn’t our favorite dish
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Discontinued food
There’s an entire BlueSky account dedicated to discontinued food.
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Critic asked to leave French Laundry
It sounds like the setup for an SNL skit, big time chef (Thomas Keller) confronts a food critic (MacKenzie Chung Fegan) off the clock who just wanted a night out with friends. The critic is asked to leave, but instead partakes in an hour plus conversation about food criticism and the fine dining.
Keller does not know what I want from him, he says, or what I am doing at his restaurant. I’m not here to write a review, I tell him honestly. My predecessor, Soleil Ho, weighed in 2½ years ago, and it’s not customary to reassess so soon after. But I eat at restaurants I’m not planning on reviewing all the time, and my credibility demands that I visit one of the most celebrated and enduringly popular restaurants in the country — helmed by one of the most powerful chefs in the world.