Articles

What’s the big idea? Current industrialized food systems were optimized for a single goal – growing the maximum amount of food for the least amount of money. But when room and supplies are limited – like during space travel – you need to optimize for a different set of goals to meet the needs of… 

A new forecast projects that one in three U.S. restaurants may close permanently this year, showing how the Covid-19 pandemic is decimating an industry that employs millions of Americans. As many as 231,000 of the nation’s roughly 660,000 eateries will likely shut down this year, according to an estimate from restaurant consultancy Aaron Allen &… 

Early in 2019, a year before the world shut its borders completely, Jorge A. knew he had to get out of Guatemala. The land was turning against him. For five years, it almost never rained. Then it did rain, and Jorge rushed his last seeds into the ground. The corn sprouted into healthy green stalks,… 

Saturday night at Eden, a restaurant in Chicago’s West Loop neighborhood, felt almost normal. Its roughly 80 tables were full—albeit spaced apart—as customers dined on tagliatelle with pork, lamb shank, cocktails and bottles of wine. “We sold out of everything,” co-owner Jodi Fyfe said. “The whole evening was just beyond beautiful.” It was Eden’s last… 

BY BRIAN KATEMAN It’s been over 25 years since food packaging started displaying its nutritional contents. It’s since become second nature to check the calorie, sugar, salt, and fat content of food or drinks before buying them. But this isn’t enough for consumers anymore. There’s rising demand for another type of food label as people… 

The 835-page report lays the scientific groundwork for the five years of federal nutrition advice. Here’s what you need to know. The Department of Agriculture (USDA) on Wednesday published a consequential nutrition report that will form the basis of the next five years of federal dietary guidance. Authored by an advisory committee made up of… 

Steak from “old” cows is something of a national obsession in Spain. What Spaniards know is that even more than time spent in the dry-aging locker, great steaks come from time spent on the hoof. The country’s Rubia Gallega cattle can live for more than a decade munching grass, packing on muscle and developing layers of buttery golden… 

  By Leslie Patton and Kate Krader When Chicago restaurant owner Manish Mallick does the math, the outlook isn’t pretty: Sales are 10% of what they were, while costs continue to pile up, from credit card fees and city permits to masks and thermometers. The owner of ROOH Chicago, an Indian restaurant nominated for the… 

The american restaurant as you knew it died on March 19. That’s the day Governor Gavin Newsom issued a stay-in order to the citizens of California, the first in a 50-state cascade that brought to an end one of the most momentous and successful runs in the industry’s history. Sure, some of the restaurants you know… 

BY Chris Young This newly-patented ‘instant ice cream’ is an impressive feat of physics and engineering that is also greener. There’s always been a fine line between physics and magic; whether it’s demonstrations of the Bernoulli principle, Lichtenberg burning, or the Magnus Effect, masters of physics have often possessed the aura of a magician. Two… 

BackBack in 2011, shortly after taking ownership of the 100-year-old Nom Wah Tea Parlor, Wilson Tang wanted to sell jars of branded chile oil. But his first batch did not meet the labeling requirements for bottled products according to the Department of Health, and he shelved the idea in order to focus on the restaurant’s… 

By Gabrielle Hamilton On the night before I laid off all 30 of my employees, I dreamed that my two children had perished, buried alive in dirt, while I dug in the wrong place, just five feet away from where they were actually smothered. I turned and spotted the royal blue heel of my youngest’s…