Articles Library
New York City Experienced Worst Decline in Restaurant Jobs since 9/11 After $15 Minimum Wage Win
The Big Apple’s fast-food industry, The New York Times recently reported, has long served as a laboratory for progressive politicians and the nation’s labor machine. But new economic research suggests their latest experiment is not going as planned. Data show that following the labor movement’s “Fight for $15” victory, which imposed steep annual increases in mandatory wages for workers,…
THE 2019 JAMES BEARD AWARD SEMIFINALISTS
We’re thrilled to announce our 2019 Restaurant and Chef Award semifinalists! Read on for the semifinalists in all categories, from Best New Restaurant to Outstanding Chef. We’ll announce the final Restaurant and Chef Award nominees, as well as the nominees for our Media and Restaurant Design Awards, in Houston on Wednesday, March 27. The nominee announcement…
The Boston restaurant where robots have replaced the chefs
The debate about whether cooking is more art or science is a never-ending one. But at Spyce, the latest culinary experiment in automation, that debate feels pretty well settled. Started by a group of 20-something robotics engineers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology who partnered with Michelin-starred chef Daniel Boulud, the new restaurant in downtown Boston…
Microbiome Research Will Accelerate The Blue Biotechnology Industry
Humans have relied on the ocean for millennia as a source of food and materials for tools. Now, we rely on the ocean as a source of genes that we can harness to increase food stocks and use as medicine for cancer and other diseases. The blue biotechnology industry uses marine organisms to find compounds of interest…
Massive Loss Of Thousands Of Hives Afflicts Orchard Growers And Beekeepers
Almond bloom comes nearly all at once in California — a flush of delicate pale blooms that unfold around Valentine’s Day. And beekeeper Bret Adee is hustling to get his hives ready, working through them on a Central Valley ranch before placing them in orchards. He deftly tap-taps open a hive. “We’re gonna open this…
Meet the executives who have made Netflix food TV
Sometime around 2002, when I was 13 or 14, I was a pudgy and awkward kid growing up in western Massachusetts. I remember being with my Mom, staring at the TV. I think she was making dinner, as was the woman on screen. She had a raspy voice, one that struck me even then as…
WHY A GRAPE TURNS INTO A FIREBALL IN A MICROWAVE
THE INTERNET IS full of videos of thoughtful people setting things on fire. Here’s a perennial favorite: Cleave a grape in half, leaving a little skin connecting the two hemispheres. Blitz it in the microwave for five seconds. For one glorious moment, the grape halves will produce a fireball unfit for domestic life. Physicist Stephen Bosi tried the experiment back…
USDA rules that ‘pink slime’ can officially be called ground beef
Lean Finely Textured Beef, dubbed ‘pink slime’, has been officially classified as ‘ground beef’ by the USDA. On December 21, 2018, the US Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service reclassified the the controversial pink slime as simply ground beef. Pink slime is a food additive made from beef trimmings exposed to ammonia gas…
ANNOUNCING THE 2019 James Beard Foundation AMERICA’S CLASSICS WINNERS
Today we’re pleased to announce the five recipients of our 2019 America’s Classics Awards. For the past week, we’ve been announcing the honorees day by day with the help of influencers from across the country (check out our Instagram page to see the videos). The awards are given to regional establishments, often family-owned, that are cherished for…
The Murky Ethics of the Ugly-Produce Business
Do you know what baby carrots actually are? For me, the baby-carrot jig was up a couple years ago. I’m not sure what I’d believed about them previously: Were they actual babies? Were they a “baby” breed of small adult carrots? I certainly hadn’t understood them to be carrot nuggets, whittled out of big, ugly…
Food Halls Are the New Meal Ticket for Bricks-and-Mortar Restaurants Dining spots are using the food hall model to curb rent costs and expand their footprints
When the team behind the Italian restaurant dell’anima, a mainstay in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village neighborhood for more than a decade, faced a sizable rent increase last year, they decided it was no longer feasible to keep the establishment going at the location. And given the high cost of Manhattan real estate, they knew there wasn’t…
Future Farming Hub Is Creating a One-Stop-Shop Vertical Farming System for ‘Anyone’
For a company less than one year old, Liberty Produce has already taken some big strides along its path to make vertical farming a more scalable, economically feasible reality. Specifically, the UK-based agtech company hopes to not just grow food, but also create an end-to-end, automated vertical farm system that, according to founder Zeina Chapman,…