I was in a foul mood after the disruption of traffic created by Fiesta DC led me to slouch through the neighborhood in my girlfriend’s car for over half an hour. Seriously, Metro Police: if you’re going to reroute traffic patterns, at least make very, very clear where we can and can’t drive. The wages [...]

The proposed New York City salt ban is the sort of thing that makes me massage the bridge of my nose and breathe deeply so as not to lose my cool. There is a marginal health benefit, at absolute best, to restricting salt from restaurant cooking. What really drives overconsumption of sodium is processed and prepared [...]

My first job in journalism was opening mail for the listings section of the immortal Manhattan weekly New York Press when I was 19. By the grace of Russ Smith, Lisa Kearns, John Strausbaugh, Lisa LeeKing and especially Andrey Slivka and Daria Vaisman, I eventually graduated to factchecker and got to write for the paper. The caliber [...]

There’s a war going down between my brothers tonight. But I want this war, going down, going down tonight. Because this is a war over dill, and you should not eat dill. Making the case for dill: Ezra Klein. Anti-dill: Matthew Yglesias and Kriston Capps. Especially Kriston Capps. Sadly, Yglesias neglects to bring one of [...]

I have to say I get tired of arguments like this one from Nancy Scola at Tapped: But were Monsanto to disappear, problems in the American agricultural system wouldn’t necessarily follow. The American agricultural landscape is only a distant cousin of what it was only a few decades ago. What we’re left gawking at now [...]

Possibly the best essay I’ve read all year: Sam McPheeters traces his old drummer/friend Brooks Headley’s post-punk rock second act as a premier pastry chef at, among other places, Komi, Galileo and Del Posto. So wonderfully written I don’t actually want to excerpt anything. Read the whole thing. I get credit for not headlining this [...]

The harmony of the Internet Food Association was interrupted last year by Thanksgiving discord, as Yglesias and I took the proper anti-turkey position and Miller good-naturedly but mistakenly defended tradition. Choire Sicha’s instructions for barbecuing a turkey — reminiscent as they are of Kriston Capps’ penchant for smoking the bird — are almost enough to [...]

Top Chef 6: Vegas

this is a bridge too far, Obama

what to eat as an endless war moves toward an ambiguous conclusion