In case you weren't seeing the name Josh enough
Plus GrubGate, menus, and a cute picture of a baby
As someone who has written about food pretty extensively, I know it’s many things: It’s cultural language, it’s big business, it’s identity. It’s way more than all of those! But at its most fundamental level, food is a collection of fats, minerals, and proteins that we convert into cells, pooping and peeing out what we don’t need.
When you have a baby, that last part really hits you. Sometimes literally.
Snack Cart petered out about May of last year when a big new project entered my life. I’ve been seeing first hand the extremely practical side of food. Did you know babies don’t know how to chew? I didn’t. You have to like… teach them? It’s wild.
My son is about 9 months old. I’m slowly regaining sleep, sanity, and spare time. I’ve missed writing Snack Cart and being a part of your life very, very much, so we’re back! I started this newsletter to force myself to read all the food-related tabs I opened every week, and I’m looking forward to getting back to that. I’ll start with general stuff and then branch back out into cities.
Tbqh, I’m looking forward to ingesting any culture that doesn't involve Taking Cara Babies.
A quick programming note
I will be joining other writers I like in moving off Substack. I didn’t want to use that swap as an excuse to postpone actually writing, so I’ll get to it in the next few weeks. Since there are no paying subscribers, this should be a pretty smooth transition for you. There is a chance the archives break, but I’ll do the best I can with that.
I have been doing email and newsletters for a while (this is Snack Cart’s fourth platform!), so I’m pretty open to arguments that digital tools can just be tools. But I’m tired of Substack’s leadership acting unserious and petty. The tooling remains fine but there’s still some basic features from Mailchimp that I miss and it’s clear the company isn’t as interested in being a newsletter tool as they are at being a social network.
I think a lot of tech leadership would do better to just be rich and successful, vs. trying to be rich, successful, famous, and “serious”.
The food
Did enough memes about Josh wine summon me, like an unspeakable Eldritch horror? Hard to say, really. But if you are wondering why a wine that was open on the table at your friend’s Christmas party is all over the Internet, you are not alone! I can’t embed all the memes (another reason to leave Substack) but I can give some context. Ali Fracis at Bon Appétit traces the rise of the meme and talks to smart cultural critics about how things like this happen. Karla Walsh at Food & Wine talks to the team at Josh Cellers, who seem to be enjoying the whole thing. Luke Winkie at Slate talks to wine critics, who have generally positive things to say. Pretty good though definitely geared for the American palate? That’s Josh!
This video of Paul Hollywood & Prue Leith rating American snack foods will bring you a lot of joy. Their British snobbery over American chocolate is tiresome and they under-rate Cheez-its, but their final matchup and winner is spot on.
As with any catch-up post, you are going to get some things that aren’t current. I really loved this Virgina Sole-Smith guide to how to handle awkward conversations around food and weight over the holidays. It’s got great advice for how to not be an asshole, how to deal with someone being an asshole to you, and how to help someone who someone else is being an asshole to. The winter holidays are behind us, but this is relevant all year long.
Marian Bull writes about her relationship with doing dishes, the part of cooking we talk about even less than pooping. I’ve long realized that we don’t really learn a lot of these basic life tasks, we figure them out on our own or from parents who also figured it out on their own. I only learned four months ago that you don’t need to fill the laundry machine soap to “full” for each load of laundry. There is a lot of talk about adding media literacy education to school but maybe we bring back home economics?
“In a bizarre micro-scandal that some have dubbed ‘GrubGate,’ a former GOP congresswoman who is running for her old seat in South Texas is being accused of routinely stealing photos of Mexican food from other social media accounts and passing them off as her own cooking.”
Two of my favorite writers considered the diner, a New York totem perfect for considering. In a beautiful essay, John Paul Brammer describes how diners produce a sense of belonging no matter who you are. Helen Rosner, in her new restaurant newsletter/column for The New Yorker, visits Old John’s, a 70-year-old spot on the Upper West Side that has recently come under new ownership. Don’t worry, she assures readers, it’s still a diner.
One of my first CDs was a Jimmy Buffett live album (I’ve been prepping to be a Dad for a long time). I’ve since been a big fan and was very sad when he died this summer. I appreciated Jason Wilson’s look at the sad side of Buffett’s music (which I always loved) along with multiple margarita recipes. In other life news, I have a new job but it isn’t running the Times Square Margaritaville.
Barilla making a Spotify playlist of songs that last as long as it takes to properly cook different kinds of pasta is such a good idea it’s upsetting.
It’s quite easy to mock dry January, but this graphic essay by Alanna Okun and Aude White shows what it is at its best: a chance to spend some time aware of the role alcohol plays in your life. As someone who has had a difficult relationship with alcohol most of my adult life, I really appreciated this.
Expedite newsletter interviews the CEO of Wow Bao, one of the most successful “ghost kitchen” chains in America. He talks about how while there have been some high-profile stumbles, he’s still optimistic. I tend to agree, though I wonder if the opportunity is less in chains but more in smaller, chef-driven options.
Early in 2023, Dan Kois at Slate visited D.C. restaurant Charga Grill, which landed at the top of Washington Post restaurant critic Tim Carmen’s 2022 list of top D.C. area casual restaurants. Kois’ report of a restaurant going from almost closed to drowning in orders is great. Affable owner Asad Chaudry seems both amazed at his luck and exhausted trying to keep up. I checked and – thank God – the place is still open. This is a great story of the enduring power of local food critics.
Restaurant menus tell us more than just food trends, they reflect trends in design, society, and how we view labor. The New York Times dives deep, gathering 121 menus from around the country and analyzing them in a beautiful online presentation. A lot to enjoy here though that menu at the end would make me walk out. It’s actively rude to present that to your customers!
If you are still thinking about menus and the New York Times, get advice on how to decipher a menu from their food critics. My only menu rules are that if I see something that looks weird, I usually order it. I figure the chef must think it’s really good to put something that people are unlikely to order on the menu.
Douyin, which is Chinese Tik-Tok (To be more accurate, Tik-Tok is American Douyin) is expanding its food delivery footprint in China. The company is challenging larger players in the food delivery space. Seems relevant that here in the US, Tik Tok is leaning hard into e-commerce. I don’t think we are that far from one-click ordering of sheet pan feta pasta or corn ribs or whatever.
One thing that got me through late-night feedings was Kantaro: The Sweet Tooth Salaryman. It’s a deeply insane premise: A Tokyo publishing sales rep works really hard so that he can finish early and try different desserts and write about them on his blog. It also has a deeply insane execution that involves dance numbers and his head turning into fruit… often. I was three episodes in before I realized all of the restaurants he visits are real places, so it’s also a travel show kinda? It’s a hoot.
Out of Context J. Gold of the Week
“A television in the restaurant blasts Spanish-language news to the carnivores, except when there are merengue music videos that look like something MTV might have shown in 1982.” - link
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