Restaurant
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The Decline and Fall of Hooters July 15, 2024
Hooters has all the trappings of a great institution: good food, low prices, attractive women. The sudden closure of more than 40 branches of the chain in the US is perhaps one of the surest signs that America in 2024 occupies a different universe to...
Lena Dunham’s Change of Pace July 11, 2024
On a recent sun-dappled afternoon, I met the thirty-eight-year-old writer, director, and actress Lena Dunham at a brasserie called Soutine, in London, not far from her home in North London. “This place is like my out-of-house office,” Dunham said, as...
Cooking Pie with Flannery O’Connor July 10, 2024
Flannery O’Connor’s favorite meal at the Sanford House restaurant in Milledgeville, Georgia, where she lunched regularly with her mother, was fried shrimp and peppermint chiffon pie. O’Connor, after a diagnosis of lupus brought her home to Milledgevi...
On Scott Howard-Cooper's 'Kingdom on Fire' July 08, 2024
In his excellent 2022 book Unreasonable Hospitality, restaurateur Will Guidara recalled his extraordinary attention to detail while operating Eleven Madison Park on its path to best restaurant in the world. As he explained it, “We trained the people ...
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...
Juliet Escoria Isn’t Afraid of the Dark July 01, 2024
Juliet Escoria isn’t afraid of writing monstrous characters. One story in her new collection, You Are the Snake, is about a bipolar woman and abuse survivor who goes on to abuse her own child. In another, a restaurant cashier wishes for her co-worker...
Meet Me at the Melting Pot? February 28, 2024
If you have been to the Melting Pot before, it was likely on a date. Maybe it was a first date, where dipping bread cubes and apple chunks into a pot of burbling cheese, cooked right at your table, offered a welcome distraction from the awkwardness o...
Gloria Steinem Is Still In the Fight February 19, 2024
Gloria and I finish dinner at a table in the back of the restaurant. A Parisian-style bistro she frequents on the Upper East Side, it’s close to her home. She can walk there.We stand up to leave and Gloria leads the way. She’s wearing black pants, a ...
