Food

Plus, introducing the Secretary of Swagger.

Plus, don't let the kids run social if you're a serious organization.

Plus, make light bulbs great again!

In this latest episode, the Substandard reflects on Stanley Kubrick and the 50th anniversary of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sonny and JVL wade into the James Gunn tweet controversy. Vic is celebrating Civilization and its contents. Plus ladder golf and Carmine’s portions!

Plus, introducing TWS Access!

Any assessment of Anthony Bourdain’s life, his suicide notwithstanding, is likely to be tinged with jealousy. We suppose someone had to get paid to be a world traveler and bon vivant, but did Bourdain have to be so good at it? At a minimum, few people have a constitution that can alternately…

Victorino Matus: From toast to fancy guac, the green fruit’s moment is ripe at last.

Victorino Matus chows down.

In this twee episode of the Substandard, our hosts discuss Isle of Dogs and the Wes Anderson oeuvre. Sonny gives us rankings. JVL goes back to the minors. Vic orients his kids with Chinese food. Plus "Gene" unleashed!

Few goods reflect a culture’s welfare, tastes, and very zeitgeist like food. Black-and-white images of hungry Londoners gripping loaves of bread define our perception of England in the mid-1800s. (They gripped Dickens’s, at least.) In times of decadence, spoiled Americans order an appetizer of peas…

Ranking the best national chains. Tom Sietsema, the Washington Post's food critic, spent some time at D.C.-area chain restaurants. His rankings are as critical as they are for D.C.'s finest food purveyors. Biggest loser? Buffalo Wild Wings. Biggest winner? Cracker Barrel. Sonny Bunch's favorite,…

We might as well go ahead and admit it: There are moments when it seems as though The Scrapbook and the New York Times inhabit different universes. This happens with increasing frequency—and not just when we confront those blast-furnace editorials or the rank opinionizing in its news columns. The…

Sir, we have to land over there so I can use the bathroom. A non-stop flight from New York to Seattle had to divert to Billings, Montana because its toilets were full, the Billings Gazette reports:

On March 20, 1974, a new French restaurant opened on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. It was called Le Cirque (The Circus), and it soon became the hottest ticket in town. It was partly known for its lavish meals—where Daniel Boulud and David Bouley, among others, earned their fame as chefs. But Le…

As a dutiful reader of the New York Times, The Scrapbook has for several years been aware of a new trend in the culinary arts. The trend: the preparation and consumption of insects.

For the vast edifice of baloney that is social psychology, there’s been good news and bad news lately. The good news is that Richard Thaler won the Nobel Prize. Thaler is the foremost evangelist for behavioral economics—the parasitic discipline that uses the findings of social psychology to…

The Scrapbook has a smartphone, but we are sorely tempted to go back to a flip phone. Or maybe something with a dial. Smartphones were supposed to make everything easier, but we’re not so sure.

The Scrapbook has a smartphone, but we are sorely tempted to go back to a flip phone. Or maybe something with a dial. Smartphones were supposed to make everything easier, but we’re not so sure.

Samuel Johnson, about to tuck into a pork roast, is supposed to have said that the only thing that would make the food before him better is if he were a Jew. Stendhal, I years ago heard, said that the only thing wrong with ice cream was that it wasn’t illegal. The question both these men raise is…

Last week, Amazon acquired Whole Foods Market in a merger valued at $13.7 billion. And while consumers are already seeing lower prices at the organic chain (often referred to as Whole Paycheck), there’s much concern over the deal’s impact on jobs. As a Bloomberg headline put it, “Amazon Robots…

One thing that everyone ought to be able to agree on about the Olive Garden and its 844 chain-Italian restaurants is that the food there is pretty cheap (“value-oriented” is the favored way of describing the cuisine). Another thing that almost everyone ought to be able to agree on is that is that…

Just whose side is the Washington Post on: that of the little guy or the small plate? The paper approvingly cited an economic study last week that found minimum wage hikes in the San Francisco Bay area were more likely to shutter average restaurants than those favored by foodies. Eateries with…

Just whose side is the Washington Post on: that of the little guy or the small plate? The paper approvingly cited an economic study last week that found minimum wage hikes in the San Francisco Bay area were more likely to shutter average restaurants than those favored by foodies. Eateries with…

Last Saturday night my husband I accomplished what few have ever accomplished: We got a table in a little over a half-hour at Bad Saint, the craved-after Washington, D.C., restaurant which doesn't take reservations and where the scenesters start lining up for dinner out on the sidewalk as early as…

Joseph. W. Rogers, the founder of Waffle House, has died at 97. In 2014, Geoffrey Norman paid tribute to the famous restaurant chain in these pages. We reproduce his piece below:

The Boston Globe reports:

The Obama administration on June 2 convened the White House Forum on Antibiotic Stewardship, “to bring together key human and animal health constituencies involved in antibiotic stewardship.” The White House billed this meeting—to which more than 150 companies were invited—as furthering previous…

President Obama has used memos to change immigration law. But now he's using his presidential pen for a different reason -- to express a preference for antibiotic free meat and poultry.

Victorino Matus reviews The Dorito Effect in the Wall Street Journal:

President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, spent the first night of the new year at Vintage Cave, an upscale restaurant in Hawaii.

Jeanna Smialek and Shobhana Chandra at Bloomberg report that:

The administration has found at least one fight it is willing to make right to the end. Whatever that end should be. The first lady is rallying supporters to:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD Casual Podcast, with Terry Eastland reading his casual "Fry, Fry Again."

First Lady Michelle Obama plays a sideline reporter in a video with NFL star-turned White House chef Richard Sherman in a video promoting healthy eating:

In Chicago this morning, President Obama made sure to let everyone know that he'll was paying for his breakfast with Illinois governor Pat Quinn. "I don't take free food," Obama said at the food counter. 

Just a day after House Republicans introduced legislation to roll back some Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulations on school meal programs, the USDA announced some flexibility would be granted to some schools for the coming school year when implementing the new policies:

Yesterday, on the last day of Passover, protesters surrounded the doors of Zabar’s—the iconic Upper West Side grocer famous for its knishes and lox—to demand the store stop selling the carbonated beverage maker SodaStream. The roughly 40 protesters, carrying guitars and signs decrying “Apartheid…

The government is putting its (big) foot down.  No more junk food in schools.  As Danica Lo of Epicurious writes:

First Lady Michelle Obama wants to make changes to the Nutrition Facts label. It is all "part of an effort to help families make healthier choices," according to the White House.

First Lady Michelle Obama joined Jimmy Fallon and Will Ferrell, who were both dressed in drag, for a sketch last night on the Tonight Show.

The team plays badly.  The coach coaches badly.  The owner owners badly.  The fight song is revolting and the name is an offense against the laws of political correctness.  But other than that …

It is the pièce de résistance in feast that includes, in my family’s case: smoked turkey with oyster stuffing, Smithfield ham, Brussels sprouts, green beans, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, and various other basics. For desert there will be pies: pecan, apple, pumpkin, shoo fly, and coconut cream.…

President Obama stopped by Martha's Table food pantry in Washington, D.C. and put on a green apron:

An Allentown, Pennsylvania TV station reports that, because of Obamacare, one mother is forced to choose between a "new health plan or putting food on the table":

Good news for foodies.  Not that they really need any these days but ... still.  As Lauren Salkeld reports on the Epicurious blog, Epilog

We all scream for ice cream.

The Grocery Manufacturers Association is hosting a Washington, D.C. summit tomorrow, July 10, inviting over 300 companies to discuss the labeling of genetically modified foods. The meeting is in response to attempts on a state by state basis to require labeling of foods with genetically modified…

The hot dog is in decline in America, writes Paul Lukas at Bloomberg, and one thinks, "What isn't?" What institution, anyway.  If everything were not in decline, then what would there be for journalists to write about (see Andrew Ferguson  on George Packer and Haynes Johnson) and what would…

At the Radisson Blu in Dakar, Senegal, President Obama tried to get reporters to write about issues he believes are important. "[M]illet and maize and fertilizer doesn’t always make for sexy copy, but I very much hope that all the press who were in attendance today generate a story about this,"…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Thursday published the results of a study on the effects of nutrition labeling on fast-food menus from 2005 to 2011.  Researchers were interested in the impact of locally instituted regulations by various states and municipalities, including New York…

Two U.S. senators want to build a "special Catfish Office" at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to Senator John McCain. The "Catfish Office" would cost $15 million a year. 

If you have been worrying that you consume too much salt, then you might want to give that one a rest.  As Gina Kolata reports in the New York Times:

A restaurant where President Obama took winners of his 2012 campaign’s “Dinner with Barack” contest was forced to close this week because it was cited for failing to comply with Washington, D.C.’s health and sanitation regulations.

In a speech today at George Washington University, First Lady Michelle Obama laid out her dream for a healthier-eating America. The vision, she said, requires greater "product placement."

Or, maybe it is.  In which case you should really cheer up.  Getting all sulky and down in the dumps isn't going to starting adding days, weeks, months, and years to the Mayan calendar which runs out of tomorrows on the day after tomorrow (December 21, in case you are counting).  

The FDA is raising hackles over the equivalent of an espresso shot in a bottle: the popular 5-Hour Energy drink that has billions of dollars in sales over the past decade.

Hostess Brands has been driven into bankruptcy. The company, according to the Wall Street Journal, was done in by:

The Nanny State has decided to make it possible for kids to eat their vegetables.  Indeed, to make it hard for them not to eat their vegetables. The kids, unsurprisingly, are saying, ‘We say it's spinach and we say the hell with it.’ So one school proposes to monitor the school cafeteria garbage…

The Clam Castle, a tiny out­post along Boston Post Road on the way to Hammonasset Beach in Connecticut, serves up a menu I find irresistible: fried whole clams, clam fritters, clam strip rolls, fried shrimp, fried sea scallops, and fried cod. It reminds me of the seafood restaurant in The Simpsons,…

Vice President Joe Biden, who has been out on the campaign trail in Ohio, visited Hogfather's Old Fashioned BBQ in Washington, Pennsylvania on his way to the Pittsburgh airport.

[Y]ou know what he wanted? Hot dogs! You know what they make those things out of, Chet? You know? Lips and a—holes!

Vienna

Cafe Hawelka, Vienna

The National Center for Public Policy Research hosted a “lunch-in” today at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. The target of the protest? “[F]ederal school nutrition guidelines that allegedly forced at least one student to forgo her mother’s home-packed lunch in favor of chicken nuggets,” a press…

In-N-Out Burger officially arrived in Texas last week, and the overwhelming response it received has drawn attention from fans everywhere. The chain, which prides itself in its fresh, never-frozen ingredients, has established a meat-distribution center in the state and is opening stores in Frisco…

Victorino Matus writes in the Washington Post:

When I finally accepted the fact that I was to be an unmarried man of 47, the first call that came offering to introduce me to a woman was from my then friend, Taki Theodoracopulos (politics has since parted us). I didn’t know that it was to be the only such call I would ever receive in more than…

Is some food, in one of the leading cant phrases of our day, sexist? Food cannot of course take political positions, but some food, let us agree, has a greater masculine than feminine appeal, and probably always will. Try as I might, I cannot imagine the Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher…

Today, the Senate is likely to vote on the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010 (S510). But the bill is little more than an enormous grant of money and power to the Food and Drug Administration and a lot of reporting burdens imposed on the private sector. Those who favor a smaller, leaner…