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| Danny Meyer, Young Guns, Fat Clubs, and More | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dear reader, this is Amanda, the Eater Editor-in-Chief, with all the stories and random food-related internet ephemera that piqued my interest, on and off of Eater, this week. Enjoy! This week one of my favorite podcasts (Freakonomics) got together with one of the country's most influential restaurateurs (Danny Meyer) to talk about how his no tipping experiment has been going at The Modern. Apparently (according to Meyer at least) it's going well! Aside from increased profits, job applications for the restaurant's kitchen rose 270 percent, this in the middle of a back of house staffing crisis. Front of house applications also increased, Meyer says, and turnover is down. Minneapolis now has a water bar and Worcester, MA has a bacon-themed restaurant  Every spring, we begin our hunt for the next big names in the food world, names, ideally that you've never heard of before but you will know about in the months and years to come. Crowned every June, each class of Eater Young Guns represents the best and brightest in the industry. And we're taking public nominations now. Forget fast casual. The good folks at Burger King are following the lead of Taco Bell and are supposedly doubling down on their identity as a fast food chain. After unsuccessful attempts to rebrand with newer, "healthier," and weirder items, they're sticking to burgers and (now) hot dogs. There's a debate raging in the wine world right now regarding whether or not there should be an official label and specifications for natural wine. Says one natural winemaker who is not so keen the idea, "The other guys should put on their label, 'poison.'"  This is a thoughtful (and mercifully short) piece in which a writer at the Southern Foodways Alliance — a group that regularly shines a light on wonderful mom and pop businesses across the American South — questions if it's actually a good thing to shine a light on mom and pop businesses across the American South, since it can result in hype and appropriation by the wrong hands. But she concludes, "We document the stories and people behind the food so ... that when others start to sing the praises of Nashville hot chicken or New Orleans banh mi, there’s hope they’ll get the lyrics right."This is just a great headline and I still can't believe people will wait so long for free pancakes at IHOP.  Which is great segue into this piece exploring the repercussions for owners when their silly foodstuffs go viral. Rainbow bagels, gimmicky milkshakes, "cruffins" — these items find a life of their own on social media and then sometimes cripple the restaurants that so desperately want to cash in. Here's NPR on long forgotten fat men's clubs: "The fat men's clubs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were spectacular celebrations of the wealth and chubbiness of a bygone era. At once sociological curiosity and anthropological artifact, these clubs were a vestige of perhaps the last time society found corpulence to be worthy of celebration." And here, now, without more delay, are the best Eater stories from this week: ADVENTURES IN DRINKING AMERICA'S ESSENTIAL RESTAURANTS FEATURES |
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