For almost two years now, we've been dropping into your inboxes on Fridays around noon ET to let you know everything we're most excited about from the past week. We share some highlights from TASTE, but we also share some of the articles, recipes, podcast episodes, YouTube clips, and TV shows that have made us laugh, helped us cook better, and inspired us lately.
This year, there have been thoughtful conversations about restaurant culture, shiny new takes on old recipes, and plenty of articles that just made us stop in our tracks. Now, on the last day of the year, we wanted to share some of these greatest hits from around the internet. And if you haven't already checked them out, we've also put together some of our favorite TASTE stories, interviews, and recipes from the year in review. See you in 2022!
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Earlier this year, New York Times senior editor Genevieve Ko made the case for following the damn recipe. She also has some great advice about picking a recipe, too.
Ben Mims, a cooking columnist at the Los Angeles Times, writes about the ever-evolving language of recipes, and why it can be helpful every now and again for a magazine or newspaper to rethink their recipe rules.
Writing in "Dirt," Sasha Cordingley unpacks a newish form of YouTube food video that strips away music, voice-over, and distraction to capture cooking in the raw. In "The Voyeurism of Korean Food YouTube," Cordingley mentions the swelling popularity of the faceless Yummyboy (and a sea of copycats that may or may not be the same creator). We went down a rabbit hole this week watching fried chicken videos, including this one and this one. Enjoy your own deep dives.
The Restaurant Manifesto writes frankly, and in detail, about how food media needs to do better. "Even a global pandemic that's killed over a half a million Americans cannot stop food media FOMO," writes Adam Reiner about the many critics flocking to Eleven Madison Park's vegan reboot, and other crimes in the restaurant reviewing arena. It's worth a read.
"Haute cuisine increasingly resembles a confidence trick: chefs adhere to the judgments of Michelin because they believe they know best, and customers follow despite food that confounds pleasure at every turn." Bingo. Jonathan Nunn, writing in Mr Porter, takes on Michelin rankings and how they reward creativity but "often a demented, desperate version of it."
Writing in the New York Times, Julia Moskin drops a major story about systemic problems at the world-acclaimed Willows Inn, located on Lummi, a tiny island near the San Juan archipelago of Washington state. The chef Blaine Wetzel is accused of multiple infractions: "faking of 'island' ingredients, physical intimidation and verbal abuse . . . including racist, sexist and homophobic slurs; and sexual harassment of female employees by male kitchen staff members."
Birria is booming around the country, and writing in the New York Times, Tejal Rao looks at how the regional Mexican stew is now a social-media star in Los Angeles and beyond.
"Bourdain's power was in being a normal dude, always shocked at his circumstances and leveling with people." Alicia Kennedy's "On TV" is less about reviewing the new Stanley Tucci show and more about missing Uncle Tony.
For Bon Appétit, Maggie Hennessy writes an honest review of her own last year of eating. The verdict? Slightly repetitive, with somewhat uneven drink pairings, but at least it's filling.
For the San Francisco Chronicle, Soleil Ho writes about the expectations of expertise and authenticity that are projected onto restaurant critics of color.
Goldbelly, an e-commerce platform, has helped restaurants around the country financially survive COVID-19 by giving them a way to ship their most famous dishes hundreds of miles away. As food businesses reopen, will the novelty of this practice wear off?
Inspired by Jonathan Gold's iconic 2012 LA Weekly article, '60 Korean Dishes Every Angeleno Should Know', Vittles has released their own version but for London: 60 South Asian Dishes Every Londoner Should Know. This is worth your time. And more from Vittles founder Jonathan Nunn on TASTE in early 2022.
In her "Eat Voraciously" newsletter, G. Daniela Galarza writes about the ubiquity and flexibility of egg drop soup. "They have clever names, like stracciatella (from the Italian, stracci, for "rags") and kakitamajiru (which comes from the Japanese words rake + egg + soup)." She lands on a green one for spring.
Way back in January, Netflix dropped the most incredible two-part series called Korean Pork Belly Rhapsody. Samgyupsal is a food from the gods, and this series is a message that god really does exist. No, really, this is good.
Writer and editor Khushbu Shah, comedian Ariel Dumas, and chef Pierre Thiam join The Splendid Table for an episode that centers on the theme of trying new things.
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