Food & Drink

It’s a tough time to be in the business of burrito-making. The price of beef is on the rise. A farm supplying Taco Bell’s shredded lettuce was linked to the spread of cyclospora – a parasite whose laxative effects have been, for at least two people in Michigan, fatal. The latest salmonella outbreak, traced to jalapeños from Mexico, has driven Chipotle and Qdoba to announce recalls. And now, a $20 burrito has become a symbol of GOP infighting. It’s tainted, through and through. The argument began when Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for Turning Point USA, wrote on X: “One of our TPUSA college students gave me his take on affordability: ‘A burrito shouldn’t cost $20.

Geoffrey Madan (1895-1947) was an English aesthete of the first water. Although he fought and was wounded in the Great War, his main passions were quiet: wine, old silver, and books, especially books. Madan was an accomplished classicist – he procured a schoolwide holiday while at Eton for his account of the establishment written in Herodotean Greek. He published no books. He did compile a large collection of aphorisms, mostly in English but many in other languages. A selection of these were published in 1981 by Oxford under the title Geoffrey Madan’s Notebooks. In one of the handful of entries Madan himself contributed to this chrestomathy, he described the collection as “an anthology of the forgotten sayings of great men, and the great sayings of forgotten men.

Di Vino Rosso is one of the few political watering holes in Columbia, South Carolina. It’s popular in its own right thanks to a Michelin recommendation last year and the kinds of bartenders who convince you they’re pouring drinks out of friendship, not economic necessity. It's frequented by state senators, congressional staffers of the 2nd and 6th districts, and their benefactors. It’s where you take a cohort of soon to depart home-office interns to feel special. It has Instagram-forward warm lighting; it feels like you’re n+1 drinks deep as you cross the threshold. It’s nominally Italian and devoid of Italians.

The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, never knew of Anthony Bourdain, I’d guess, but he understood his type well. Bourdain, who died in 2018, was an oversocialized leftist. A man who, to avoid a deep sense of guilt and worthlessness, overidentified with the system and presented conformity with its values as a kind of rebellion. That might sound complicated, but it’s really not. “Generally speaking,” Kaczynski once wrote, “the goals of today’s leftists are NOT in conflict with the accepted morality. On the contrary, the left takes an accepted moral principle, adopts it as its own and then accuses mainstream society of violating that principle.

As someone born and raised in the American South, I’ve never understood why people consider barbecue a summertime food. If you do it right, barbecue is cooked outdoors over a wood fire. It’s frequently eaten outdoors, too, whether at a friend’s backyard gathering or at barbecue joints with picnic tables outside. Barbecue isn’t exactly the lightest food, with all the well-marbled brisket and thick slabs of ribs – not to mention hearty sides such as mac ’n’ cheese. Just thinking about eating a big barbecue platter on an August afternoon makes me want to lie down in a cool room to nap. Still, in the minds of magazine editors and television producers, at least, “barbecue season” starts with Memorial Day and runs through Labor Day.

I have always wondered whether The Compleat Angler, Izaak Walton’s piscine classic, would have enjoyed its wide and longstanding recognition absent the antique spelling “compleat.” I somehow suspect that a book titled The Complete Angler would not have made the same impression, especially on modern readers. First published in 1653, the book went through many editions in Walton’s life and after. It is a charming, leisurely guide, “not unworthy,” as its original title page observed, “the peruſal of moſt Anglers.” (Those long “s”es add a little something, don’t you agree?) It is said that Walton, a staunch anti-Cromwellian, good fellow, was particularly fond of the saying “Study to be quiet.

There’s something special about raising a glass with people you’ve built history with. For us, Dos Hombres has always been about friendship, craftsmanship and creating moments that bring people together. As America turns 250, we’ll be toasting to the freedom to build something of your own, the people who’ve been with you from the beginning and the simple joy of slowing down long enough to appreciate it all. Ingredients for one serving 1 oz Dos Hombres Blanco Tequila 60ml cranberry juice 1 oz Cranberry Juice (sweetened) 1/2 oz Aperol 1/2 oz Fresh Lime Juice Add all the ingredients into a mixing pitcher with ice. Shake well and strain into a large rocks glass rimmed with salt and chili powder.

If you’ve ever lived in Marseille – where the habit of exaggeration is imbibed with mothers’ milk – you’ve heard about the sardine that blocked the port. But that’s nothing compared to the pistachio that took over the world. In late 2023, Dubai chocolate, a new kind of chocolate bar filled with pistachio cream, tahini and crunchy, toasted phyllo pastry, went viral. Chocolate brands, bakeries and purveyors of fine foods were quick to jump on the trend. Coffee chains began offering pistachio chocolate drinks (iced Dubai-chocolate matcha, anyone?) and delectable pistachio bomboloni – soft donuts filled with pistachio cream – came back on the menu in Italian restaurants.

Some years ago, I edited and provided an introduction and notes for an edition of Walter Bagehot’s book Physics and Politics (1872). The book has nothing to do with physics in the modern sense of the word (though an argument could be made that it does bear on the original meaning of the Greek word physis, nature. Rather, its elaborate subtitle sheds light on the book’s content: “Thoughts on the Application of the Principles of ‘Natural Selection’ and ‘Inheritance’ to Political Society.” Bagehot was writing a scant dozen years after the publication of On the Origin of Species.

We’re almost to the end of May, which means National Barbecue Month will soon be drawing to a close. I hope you’ve been celebrating appropriately. You did know that May is National Barbecue Month, right? And that May 16 was National Barbecue Day? I, for one, can never forget, for each year my email is flooded with pitches from PR reps convinced I have completely run out of things to write about. “With it being National Barbecue Month,” one begins, “I wanted to check in and see if you have any roundups planned of must-try barbecue spots in Little Rock.”  Another generously offers, “In honor of National Barbecue Month, we’re sharing this coveted BBQ Shrimp & Grits recipe from Nashville’s [restaurant name redacted].

We have only fragments of The Satyricon by Titus Petronius (AD 27–66). The centerpiece of the narrative that survives is the so-called “Cena Trimalchionis,” the banquet of Trimalchio in which a dazzling array of exotic foods and rare wines are paraded before a handful of gratefully stupefied guests. While the host of this feast was the aforementioned Trimalchio, the narrator was a young buck called Encolpius. He is appropriately amazed by the delicacies and potations that appear one after the next before him. The Satyricon is a work of satire (Menippean satire for those keeping track). The antics recounted are recited partly tongue in cheek. Everything is turned up to eleven. The point is parody.