Not Another Comfort Food Roundup

Welcome to Best Food Blog, a writer-run publication about eating by journalists Ali Francis, Anikah Shaokat, Anna Hezel, and Antara Sinha. You can check out everything we’ve published so far here.

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In our group chat after the election, my friend and colleague Anna Hezel texted us, “I feel like food media is going to be so annoying about the election results. Comfort food galleries, and what have you.” We collectively groaned in recognition. 

Perfectly chipper. Pointedly apolitical. Frustratingly hollow. We’ve been assigned them by editors. We’ve been the ones to write them. We’ve even been the ones scheduling them to flood Instagram feeds at just the right time to avoid any lapse in “click-throughs,” “impressions,” “time spent,” and the many other race-to-the-bottom, impossible metrics of the attention economy. 

Of the large and looming anxieties, rage, and undeniable grief of the election, a colorful carousel promising a balm in the form of project baking is an admittedly small grievance. And hey, maybe you want to bake a layer cake at a time like this. But it also feels emblematic of the many ways legacy food media has failed us in covering politics with any seriousness and nuance. 

In a space where the only goal is to make people feel good about dinner tonight, it’s easy to fall back on the lazy argument that tackling all the messy, infuriating realities of how food gets to your table isn’t “on brand.”

Delivering shallow platitudes of how “food brings us together,” and “food is love,” and “food is comfort” — and perhaps the most nefarious, the throwaway “food is political” — without naming and holding accountable the forces that put all of that in jeopardy is a cop-out. Not acknowledging the real harm and pain a candidate can inflict on food policy, and not educating audiences on it, is a disservice.

It’s not that writers and editors lack conviction. It’s that the food media ecosystem itself discourages anything that challenges their readers. In a space where the only goal is to make people feel good about dinner tonight, it’s easy to fall back on the lazy argument that tackling all the messy, infuriating realities of how food gets to your table isn’t “on brand.”

At the end of the day though, I’m reminding myself to affix my anger to hardheaded CEOs who have let journalism become hostage to bogus, forever-fluctuating benchmarks set by fascist tech giants. And not the overworked, underpaid SEO editor who just wants to get to the holidays without the threat of yet another round of layoffs.  —Antara Sinha 

The Very Fancy Mozz Sticks Are Everywhere

In a pre-election episode of FOH (a service-industry podcast I enjoy because it’s a little gossipy and mean but also has a political conscience), the hosts predict how this year’s presidential election results will change restaurant culture. They point out how the first Trump presidency deteriorated New York restaurant menus into a pile of bloomin’ onions and mozzarella sticks, and they ask the question, “How much further down can we go from the $95 baked potato at the Nines?” Some of their predictions: slop from a trough and Wonder bread sandwiches with butter and salami.

At Grub Street, Alan Sytsma called this recent shift towards childhood comfort food “haute nostalgia for anyone who grew up in the suburbs.” FOH blames the trend on liberals getting sad while listening to NPR. One could also call this the influence of a president who has spent more than $30,000 on McDonald’s orders in the last two years. Either way, waiting for hours to eat a potato or spending $20 on some pizza rolls at Corner Bar isn’t just costly (you can buy a box of good ol’ Totino’s for two bucks). It’s also a pretty shallow way of looking at the world. —Anna Hezel

The Trumpification of Your Grocery Bill

Everything about the election felt like watching a horror movie at 0.25x speed. But, for all of his carnage, Trump did something actually smart. He hammered messages of economic salvation during a moment when 75% of Americans said they were “very concerned” about the inflated price of groceries. 

But evocative, emotional messaging is where it ends, as we’ve learned in election cycles past. In reality, his plan to deport millions of undocumented workers would rip the backbone out of our food system — the immigrants who plant, harvest, and process most of what ends up on our plates. Slap on Trump’s promised import fees and we could face a tariff war that shortchanges the American farmers who rely on freely-traded exports and further pinches the majority of us who are already struggling under layoffs and routine cost of living hikes. 

Some skeptics on Reddit have bleakly predicted that the agriculture industry will turn to forced prison labor to fill the workforce gap, while others say this is all a deliberate move to drive family farms out of business so big food can continue its diet of mass consolidation. Buckle up for the inevitable flood of deadpan lifestyle pieces about stretching your dollar with these “37 budget-friendly bean recipes.” —Ali Francis

Why Do All Gift Guides Feel the Same?

In my many years in food media, I’ve seen firsthand the weight gift guides and their consequent revenue have on a publication’s Q4 performance. (Let’s pour one out for all the commerce writer homies out there.) But I cannot help but see these guides as echoes in a chamber that is, as Harry and Randa at Good Hang describe in their hilarious gift guide newsletter, a “giant Soviet Style Darwinian taste war.” 

These listicles by legacy publications are all competing for affiliate dollars, promising a path to uniqueness via fancy electric kettles and quirky baking dishes. Yet they’re nearly identical in format and often in content, too. That giant bucket of Maldon salt always finds its way onto multiple lists (this year, it’s on Food and Wine and The Strategist). And lest we forget the big ticket items: those trendy, ostentatious products price-tagged with too many digits — like the Rocco beverage fridge from the actor Eric Wareheim going for $1,345 after a generous $250 discount. It seems, though, that even the outlets themselves can no longer ignore this monotony. 

We're spinning in a paradoxical vortex in which publications are reporting on inflated grocery prices and, as my colleague Antara explains above, serving up shallow platitudes of comfort cooking while simultaneously expecting people to shell out cash on gratuitous expenditures. As someone unencumbered by the obligations of holiday gift exchange (Christmas is just another day off in our Muslim-Jewish household), I am certainly not the target demographic. But who actually is? —Anikah Shaokat

Some Nice Things: 

• Party Games: I had some pals over for dinner on Friday night and we did something unexpected. Something a little bit daring. Something…I was a tad stoned. Sitting around the dessert cheese board, we each curated a bite for the others designed to spark joy. Notable mention goes to the caramel-y, four-year-aged gouda my friend Annie perched atop a disc of creamy milk chocolate. —Ali
• Stinky Food: As if egg salad isn’t already a shock to the olfactory system, I recently made some with the chingri shutki (fermented dried shrimp) I smuggled back from my hometown, Chittagong in Bangladesh. It’s a polarizing combo and the umami overdrive might be too much for some. But to me, it’s perfect. —Anikah
• Movie Theater Dinner: Buoyed by AMC-Stubs-membership-evangelizing friends, this month has been about dinners in the dark that an unsupervised toddler would be giddy for. An ice cream sandwich demolished before previews were over (Anora). Buncha Crunch bartered for a handful of popcorn (A Real Pain). An offer to “help” eat half the pack of a friend’s AirHeads (All We Imagine As Light). Movie theater etiquette is at an all-time low, but leaving with fingers slick from butter and lips made gritty by sour candy is an irrefutable tradition. —Antara
• Fruit Brûlé: Joy of Cooking recently launched a new podcast, and I was a lucky early guest. Chatting about what to do with extra sour cream, John Becker (Irma Rombauer’s great-grandson) told us about a charmingly retro JoC recipe called “Fruit Brûlé.” You pile some fruit (mixed berries, cubed pineapple, whatever) into a baking dish, slather it with a cup or so of sour cream, top that with a cup of brown sugar, and then broil it for a couple minutes. How dear is that?? —Anna