Greetings from New York City, where the tourists have returned, the rats are hungry, and the city has resumed a level of normal that feels, well, like old times…ish. The same can be said for Chicago, which I visited last week for the first time in a minute to attend the James Beard Awards (congrats to all the winners, including my dude Meherwan Irani and the whole Chai Pani crew). I ate a lot of amazing tavern pizza with Steve Dolinsky and got to spend some serious time eating tacos with the legend José R. Ralat, Texas Monthly taco editor and author of one of my favorite books of the past few years, American Tacos: A History and Guide. Read my tribute to this incredible work.
At 9:30 the morning after the James Beard Media Awards (where he took home one of the bald guy medals), José convened a group of food writers to visit a few places on his literal spreadsheet. He carried a printout that was soon speckled with pork fat while we ate piles of steamed tacos de canasta, filled with spicy chicharrón and potato, at Tacos de Canasta "Rossy" on West Armitage, and later visited La Chaparrita for the crispy tripas. To say these crispy (both deep-fried and heated on a griddle for maximal crunch) beef intestines changed the way I viewed meat-centric tacos is an understatement. They were the best. Chicago Tribune restaurant critic Nick Kindelsperger agrees, placing them atop his robust and supremely reported rankings last month.
And speaking of reporting on the world of meat and heat, this week on TASTE, Rachel Wharton published a thrilling story about chorizo in the Americas. It's a tough food to define, and the versions that sway between fresh and fermented, cased and crumbled, can cause some debate. Rachel speaks with a bunch of experts and lands on a conclusion that is worth your time. Check it out—and are you hungry for a taco this weekend, too?
Food & Wine recently released a really well-selected list of game changers in the hospitality industry, including Sahra Nguyen, founder of Nguyen Coffee Supply, Jenny Dorsey of Studio ATAO, and the Ghetto Gastro crew. Check it out.
Last year we caught up with Lucas Sin, a New York chef who's approaching Chinese American food with reverence, love, and a good dose of ranch dressing. Get to know Lucas.
We love Alex Edelman and his one-man show, Just For Us, which is running through the end of July at the Greenwich House Theater in NYC. We really love Alex's Grub Street Diet, which made me think about Golden Unicorn for the first time in years. Also, yes to Her Name Is Han. Great picks, Alex.
"For the past six years, at 8 a.m. sharp, Andreas Anastasis has walked to Anna Wintour's Greenwich Village townhouse, where for about 20 minutes every weekday he maintains upkeep." The man behind fashion's most famous bob.
I can never not read a profile of Stewart Brand (there have been many of them), the Bay Area networker, publisher, booster, and impresario who, toward the end of the 1960s, launched the countercultural handbook the Whole Earth Catalog and, almost two decades later, founded the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link.
This week on the TASTE Podcast, we wanted to reach out to Jonathan Kung to talk a little bit about TikTok, but also to get to know his history with Chinese home cooking and with working and living in one of America's great food cities: Detroit.
We also caught up with Nicole Enayati, who is one of our favorite voices in food media. Nicole is a senior culinary producer at Mythical Kitchen. She's also cohost of the A Hot Dog Is a Sandwich podcast.
The six-part Sex Pistols biopic Pistol, directed by the god Danny Boyle, is by no means perfect, but it's worth checking out big time for Anson Boon's performance as John Lydon. Boon is certainly a name to remember.
NTS has a great Sarah Records retrospective. Get to know one of the UK's legendary labels, in the style of a lighter, poppier Creation Records.
Follow along with our cooking (and let us know about your cooking) on Instagram. You can follow us at @taste and see what the editors are up to at @mattrodbard and @elorasharon.
If you like this newsletter, please forward it to a friend. If you aren't subscribed to this newsletter, you can sign up right here.
No comments:
Post a Comment