Ice Age hunter-gatherers, foraging the bone-chilling, unforgiving steppes of what today is Russia, somehow completed a remarkable construction project: a 40-foot-wide, circular structure made from the skulls, skeletons and tusks of more than 60 woolly mammoths. The reason remains a mystery to archaeologists. “The sheer number of bones that our Paleolithic ancestors had sourced from…
The white-tablecloth restaurants and the dive bars are closed. The ample buffets that feed America’s tech work force and Las Vegas gamblers have been shut down, along with millions of school cafeterias. On Monday, McDonald’s joined other fast-food companies and closed its restaurants except for delivery and drive-through. Almost overnight, Americans have had to rethink…
The restaurants of New York City have gone dark. But what of the not-quite-restaurants: the in-betweens with just a few wobbly chairs, the lunch counters that hedge bets by selling groceries alongside hot food, the tiny spots whose very grasp at existence is a daily improvisation? On Monday, Mirna Elisabeth Marroquin and Lorenzo Garcia were…
HOUSTON — It was Chris Shepherd’s day. Officially, it was Chris Shepherd Southern Smoke Day, as proclaimed by Sylvester Turner, the mayor of Houston, at a presentation inside Mr. Shepherd’s Texas-style gastro pub, the Hay Merchant. On this sweltering October afternoon, Mr. Shepherd had just presided over Southern Smoke, a charity food festival that doubles…
Coffee has been cool for years now. Coffee liqueur, not so much. Your relative might have a bottle of Tia Maria on hand around the holidays, and Kahlúa is indispensable should you hold a “Big Lebowski”-themed party. (The main character, the Dude, favors White Russians.) But to discerning drinkers, such liqueurs have a reputation as…
PARIS — Xavier Denamur is used to bustling between the five popular bistros he owns in the Marais neighborhood of central Paris, managing a team of nearly 70 waiters and chefs and keeping tabs on the phalanx of patrons who crowd his tables, elbow-to-elbow, year round. But on Monday, Mr. Denamur, 57, was scrambling to…
LONDON — I am routinely asked to explain how a certain dish came about: What was the process that made me combine this particular set of ingredients in that particular way? The truth is, more often than not, I don’t have an answer. I simply don’t know. The temptation in such cases is to try…
In short order, the world has changed, and so has the thinking about public gatherings. Parties have been postponed. Restaurants have closed, and we have had to reconsider such commonplace activities as gathering with our friends. Under orders to socially distance ourselves, isolate and even self-quarantine, communal activities cannot be taken for granted. And what’s…
After leaving Ovenly, the bakery she helped to found, Erin Patinkin teamed up with Cara Nicoletti, a butcher, and Ariel Hauptman, who was at Greyston Bakery, to create Seemore Meats & Veggies, a food company with a line of vegetable-forward sausages as its first product. These are not 100 percent plant-based meat substitutes; vegetables like…
Brassica Mustard — a homegrown Calgary, Alberta, company that started as a way to give mustards to friends and family — began selling the condiment commercially in 2001. Now, for the first time, its excellent whole-grain mustards have become available in the United States. In addition to plain mustard, there are flavors that lend interesting…