Eating
Story Stream
Where to Eat in 2025 January 09, 2025
Let’s get out of here.Let’s go somewhere we don’t know yet. Let’s eat something new to us. Let’s trade our familiar concerns for unfamiliar flavors and experiences. These are the basic desires that compel travelers to restaurants around the world and...
The End of Fun in the NBA January 03, 2025
The big power forwards and centers, wide as canyons in the shoulders and waist, used to bludgeon each other in the post like elephant seals. That was basketball once — Charles Barkley backing down defenders like a bulldozer, Shaquille O'Neal shatteri...
The Year of Spicy Literary Fiction January 03, 2025
A woman gifted a pear that she proceeds to eat as though it is a lover, her arms dripping, “wet all around her mouth.” A pleasure bot with her libido keyed to its highest setting, driven to lick her owner’s shoes and writhe with unconsummated lust un...
An Outrageous Novel About U.S. Politics January 02, 2025
It was a congressional aide, of all people, who clued me in to “The Public Burning,” Robert Coover’s magnificent novel about American politics, which is even more relevant today than when first published, to puzzlement and acclaim, in 1977. We were e...
My Life on the Road as a Competitive Eater of Giant Food July 19, 2024
I’m staring down at my second 12-egg omelet of the day, a behemoth the size of a small child. It’s August 2008, and I’m at Beth’s Cafe in Seattle, a glorious dive that constitutes one of the final stops on a south-to-north cross-country drive that be...
1982 and the Fate of Filmgoing July 18, 2024
A trail of Reese’s Pieces. The decapitation of a giant snake. The noble face of Mr. Spock, his skin peeling off like bark from a tree. Police cars that hover above the streets. Skeletons in a swimming pool. Blood in a petri dish, which squeaks and le...
Africa and the History of Civilization July 18, 2024
In his Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1837), Georg Hegel declared that Africa is “no historical part of the World” and that “what we properly understand by Africa, is the Unhistorical, Undeveloped Spirit, still involved in the conditions of m...
Kendrick Lamar’s Freedom Summer July 17, 2024
I was at a barbecue on the Fourth of July, eating burgers and drinking rum punch, watching store-bought fireworks belch and sizzle overhead, when Kendrick Lamar released the music video for his song “Not Like Us.” Lamar likes this kind of drama—dropp...
Ozempic Meets Its Match July 16, 2024
“Honestly, I’m always thinking ’bout my weight,” sings British pop star of the moment Charli XCX on “Rewind,” a song from her chart-dominating album of summer, Brat. And, really, aren’t we all? It appears so—at least according to this year’s buzziest...
How Trump Turns Postmodernist ‘Truth’ Against Itself July 09, 2024
In a rally following the Biden-Trump presidential debate last week, Jill Biden famously and patronizingly gave her husband this backhanded compliment: “Joe, you did such a great job; you answered every question.”She spoke in the same tone she might u...
The Abject Misery of the UK July 05, 2024
British people hate happiness. You will not understand this country or its politics unless you first understand the deep vein of misery that runs through absolutely everything we do. We wallow in it. It’s why we eat that slop; it’s why we live in suc...
How to Eat 48 Hot Dogs in 10 Minutes July 05, 2024
For some of us, the Fourth of July means family barbecues and stuffing our dogs into Thundershirts before the fireworks begin. For others, it means taking the train to Coney Island to stand outside in hundred-degree heat and watch professional athlet...
The Modern Discourse Novel July 04, 2024
In ‘The Dandy School’, written in 1827, William Hazlitt complained about the trend for society novels, which were written merely to inform the public about how to be a gentleman. If you came into money, Hazlitt wrote, these novels could tell you how ...
Chefs Make Us Eat Their Inner Lives July 04, 2024
I am a restaurant critic, and in 2018, I ate at what had just been named the best restaurant in the world. Osteria Francescana, in Modena, is run by the famous chef Massimo Bottura, and to dine there feels like eating his internal life. His memory of...
