Explaining America’s weirdly complicated food inspection system

The only difference, usually, between a cheese pizza and a pepperoni pizza is the pepperoni. Yet in the United States of America, two completely different government agencies are responsible for regulating and inspecting each. A frozen pepperoni pizza, because it contains meat, will go through three separate USDA inspections: At the slaughterhouse, at the pepperoni-making facility, and at the pizza factory. Meanwhile, a frozen cheese pizza usually only needs approval from the FDA once: when the pizza manufacturer adds a nutritional label.

Almost everything Americans eat — including the food on restaurant menus across the country — has been vetted by one of two government agencies. The Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN), which is a part of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a division of the U.S. Department of Health, regulates drugs, dietary supplements, and ensures, according to government language, that the foods people eat in the U.S. “are safe, wholesome, sanitary and properly labeled.” The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), meanwhile, works to support the American agricultural economy and “provide a safe, sufficient, and nutritious food supply for the American people.”

Needless to say, there are several confusing divisions between the two agencies. The USDA mainly oversees meat, poultry, and eggs — but under its umbrella also falls the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, which establishes Dietary Guidelines, and the Food and Nutrition Service, which administers SNAP benefits (aka food stamps). The FDA, meanwhile, is responsible for regulating — and slapping a nutrition facts label — on all processed foods created and sold in the U.S.

Though many Americans may think the USDA is the main inspection arm of the U.S. government — due to its more visible logo on meats and organic certifications — it’s actually the FDA that regulates about 78 percent of the U.S. food supply, including dairy, seafood, produce, packaged foods, bottled water, and eggs. (The USDA’s meat grades come out of its marketing branch, which is part of the reason why those blue stamps feature the USDA logo so prominently. The FDA’s logo doesn’t appear on the millions of nutrition labels it approves each year.)

The FDA does not itself inspect restaurants, but in addition to green-lighting the packaged food available for purchase in America, its Food Code is what city and state Departments of Health use when inspecting local businesses. The Code is meant to keep food at safe temperatures and conditions so as to prevent foodborne illness and the spread of disease.

Incoming president Donald Trump has not yet announced who he will tap to lead the FDA, though experts predict it will be a “more traditional” candidate. That’s in contrast to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom he has announced will lead the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). HHS oversees the FDA, meaning that whoever Trump chooses will report to Kennedy, who has a number of controversial food policy positions, including advocating for the consumption of raw milk. Trump has also not yet announced who will head the USDA, though a short list of candidates includes former California lieutenant governor Abel Maldonado, who, according to E&E News by Politico, is the son of immigrant farmworkers and currently owns a winery. Ray Starling, a former USDA official, is also reportedly under consideration for the post.

Whoever Trump selects to these positions will have a significant impact on how everyone eats. During the first Trump administration, his appointees loosened inspection requirements at pork plants and chicken egg production facilities, which caused alarm among food safety experts. His presidency had significant impacts on agriculture, farm labor, and school lunch programs, and it’s likely that this second term will be equally impactful.

If all this sounds confusing, that’s because it is. Here’s a brief breakdown of the two agencies’ purviews, organized by type of food.

Meat

The USDA’s internal Food Safety and Inspection Service regulates almost all of the meat we eat, including beef, pork, goat, and lamb (and poultry, see below). Safety inspections are mandatory, but the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service also offers producers the option to grade meat. This extra service, which comes with a fee, is why consumers will see meat cuts labeled “USDA Prime” or “USDA Choice” at the grocery store. Diners will note these distinctions, used to indicate quality, on many steakhouse menus.

The FDA, meanwhile, regulates “meat from exotic animals,” which includes venison and other hunted game like wild boar. The USDA is also responsible for inspecting sausages, but the FDA inspects sausage casings (because, as FoodSafetyNews writes, “they have no nutritional value as meat.”)

Poultry

Domesticated chicken, turkey, duck, and goose is inspected by the USDA; the USDA also inspects canned chicken products.

Fish

The FDA regulates fish, shellfish, and all seafood — except farmed catfish, the production of which is inspected by the USDA.

Eggs

Representatives from the USDA and FDA acknowledge that laws surrounding the regulation of eggs are murky and vary from product to product. In general, the USDA inspects egg products, like packaged egg whites and powdered eggs used in food processing, while the FDA regulates whole eggs in their shells. (Again, USDA-graded eggs are a part of the branch’s marketing arm, and do not reflect inspection for safety.) Egg substitutes and replacements (which do not contain any egg product) are regulated by the FDA.

Dairy

The FDA regulates packaged milk and dairy in the U.S., including yogurt, sour cream, cheese, and ice cream that does not contain eggs. The FDA has specific rules for different kinds of cheeses, including how much moisture and milk fat they must contain, and what aging times are required for cheeses made from raw, or unpasteurized, milk.

Produce

Raw fruits and vegetables fall under the regulation of the USDA, but once they’re processed — into applesauce or bottled juice or dried fruit chips — they become the FDA’s problem.

Packaged Foods

The production of packaged foods like Cheez-Its, Starburst, Lucky Charms, grab-and-go salads, frozen pizza, and jars of peanut butter and jelly are all subject to FDA inspection and regulation.

It’s when meat shows up on packaged sandwiches and pizza that interesting exceptions to USDA/FDA rules emerge. Open-faced meat sandwiches, where the ratio of meat to bread and other ingredients is more than half, are regulated by the USDA. But closed sandwiches, which have two slices of bread, are regulated by the FDA because the ratio of meat to other ingredients is less than 50 percent.

George Motz wants every hamburger to come with high-quality ingredients a history lesson

It’s quite possible that no one knows hamburgers better than George Motz, the founder of New York City’s luncheonette-style Hamburger America and self-proclaimed burger scholar. Even before opening his love letter to burgers in New York City, Motz was infatuated: He directed a documentary about burgers in America in 2004; hosted a television series on the Travel Channel called Burger Land; and has written two books about the history of burgers in the United States. Simply put, his fantasy of owning his own burger joint has been a long time coming.

The burgers at Hamburger America, however, are not meant to be flashy or loaded with toppings. You will not find fried eggs, slices of avocado, or crumbled blue cheese here. Instead, Motz wants his burgers to serve as a history lesson, showcasing what burgers were really like when they were first invented between the late 1800s and early 1900s.

There are only three burgers on the menu. Motz’s fried onion burger is a tribute to Oklahoma, and features onions cooked in the burger’s rendered beef fat and a slice of American cheese. “Beforer there was ketchup and mustard and everything else, onions were the first condiment,” Motz explains as showers shaved onions over the sizzling beef. “It’s almost like candy.”

The second burger, a classic smash burger, is inspired by burger slingers of the Midwest who would set up shop outside of factories and speedily make as many burgers as possible. “The smash method only came about for speed,” Motz says. The smash burger, “smashed all the way,” as Motz says, is topped with diced onion, mustard, and two dill pickle chips. As the burger is frying, Motz stacks the potato buns over the melting cheese and meat to ensure the beefy steam can rise and soften, and flavor, the buns.

The last burger on Motz’s menu is constantly rotating. Using his knowledge of burger regionality throughout the U.S., Motz selects a new burger each month and tries to recreate it as closely as possible to the original. The burger can be anything — a steamed cheeseburger beloved in New England; a loaded burger from Dallas, Texas; or, the Doodleburger from New Haven, Connecticut, which features white American cheese, a single slice of tomato, onions, and a side of red relish.

“It’s been my life mission to make sure that people appreciate the American hamburger on a much more complex, deeper level,” Motz says. “There’s a lot more to the origin stories of these burgers.”

Watch the latest episode of Icons: Burgers to learn more about the making of these historical burgers.

Everything you need to know about unpasteurized milk, a distinctly dangerous food trend

With the announcement that incoming president Donald Trump has selected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, few topics in food policy have been hotter than raw milk. It’s believed that if his nomination were confirmed Kennedy, an anti-vaccine conspiracy theory enthusiast, would work to make raw milk more accessible to people who want to consume it. That’s hugely concerning news for public health officials, who argue that wider availability of raw milk would make many people very sick.

Most people just buy their milk at the grocery store, where they can (currently) be assured that their milk has been pasteurized to kill harmful bacteria like e. coli and salmonella, all according to Food and Drug Administration standards. In October, though, Kennedy posted to X that with Trump’s election, the “FDA’s war on public health is about to end.” “That includes its aggressive suppression of psychedelics, peptides, stem cells, raw milk, hyperbaric therapies, chelating compounds...,” he wrote. “If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.”

Even if Donald Trump chooses someone else to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, raw milk will likely continue to be a topic of discussion in the coming months. Searches for “raw milk” have spiked on Google, as have sales of the product across the country, even before Trump announced Kennedy as his pick. But what exactly is raw milk, and why do so many people want to drink it? Here’s everything you need to know.

What, exactly, is raw milk?

Raw milk is milk that comes directly from a cow, and has not been subject to the process of pasteurization, which involves heating milk to a specific temperature that can kill any bacteria that might be in the milk, including salmonella, campylobacter, and e. coli. The pasteurization process doesn’t impact the quality of the milk, but raw milk proponents believe that the process could destroy beneficial probiotics and enzymes in the milk. Evidence does not support those assertions, and it’s more likely that the “probiotics” in raw milk are just those aforementioned bacteria, which can cause serious illness in even healthy people. According to the Centers for Disease Control, symptoms associated with foodborne illness caused by contaminated raw milk include diarrhea, stomach cramping, vomiting, and “more severe outcomes like Guillain-Barré syndrome or hemolytic uremic syndrome.”

Why was raw milk banned?

Raw milk isn’t technically banned, it’s just heavily regulated. Starting in the 1910s, states and municipalities began requiring pasteurization of milk that was sold in grocery stores and other retail outlets because people were getting sick from consuming the bacteria in raw milk. Many of those people were infants, some of whom died after developing serious illnesses, like tuberculosis and diarrhea, from bacteria in their milk. At the time, it was a public health crisis. New York City became the first to require pasteurization for milk sold to consumers in 1910, but it wasn’t until 1977 that the USDA required pasteurization for “Grade A” milk, which is the only liquid milk that can be sold legally. (Grade B milk can be used for other milk-based products, like dried milk and cheese.)

In 1987, the USDA made it illegal to sell raw milk across state lines, in an attempt to “largely eliminate the risk of getting sick from one of the most important staples of the American diet.”

If raw milk is regulated, how are people still getting it?

Despite the scientific consensus on pasteurization, many states allow dairy farmers to sell the product directly to consumers from their farms. In Texas, the state issues “raw for retail” licenses to milk producers, which requires quarterly pathogen testing and maintains a public list of producers licensed to sell raw milk to consumers. California has similar permitting rules, and requires that raw milk sold to consumers is packaged with a label that includes the following warning: “Raw (unpasteurized) milk and raw milk dairy products may contain disease-causing microorganisms. Persons at highest risk of disease from these organisms include newborns and infants; the elderly; pregnant women; those taking corticosteroids, antibiotics or antacids; and those having chronic illnesses or other conditions that weaken their immunity.”

Are people still getting sick from drinking raw milk?

Yes. Even as proponents like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. insist that raw milk is healthier for consumption than pasteurized milk, hundreds of people have gotten sick from consuming it in recent years. In June, a salmonella outbreak at Raw Farm in Fresno, California left 171 people across four states ill, with symptoms that included “near-constant” diarrhea and fatigue. Washington’s Cozy Vale Creamery has been implicated in at least three different e. coli outbreaks connected to raw milk in 2024, and similar outbreaks have occurred in Idaho, Pennsylvania, and New York this year.

Okay, so why do so many people want to drink raw milk?

Many of the people who want to drink raw milk simply don’t believe the USDA’s claims about how dangerous it can be. The Weston A. Price Foundation, an organization that advocates for raw milk, calls pasteurization a “shame,” not a life-saving scientific innovation. They describe raw milk as an “inherently safe food,” and argue that the USDA’s claims about its dangers are rooted in “bad science.” Most proponents of raw milk are highly skeptical of the FDA and the USDA for a variety of reasons. Some believe that they’re paid off by “big dairy” to keep raw milk away from the public. Others simply don’t believe that the federal government should tell them what to do.

Should I drink raw milk?

Once again, no.

They’re easy to clean, easy on the eyes, and they safeguard your furniture too.

As a nesting enthusiast who made it through most of my adult life with a collection of passed-down and thrifted furniture, protecting wood surfaces has never really been my top concern. But now that I’m in my 40th year on Earth — and the owner of a brand new coffee table — I’m happy to say that while some parts of my personality have mellowed, others have been sharpened to a fine point, chief among them being my instinct to make sure there’s a coaster under every glass.

Now, I’m following my party guests around, coasters in hand, just daring them to set down a sweaty glass for more than a second, lest I tank the value of my newly acquired table. It follows, then, that I would spend hours of my time exhaustively researching coasters that not only fulfilled their duty to the wooden tabletop but provided the perfect adornment to my well-curated tablescape too. My goal was to find coasters that protected surfaces, released easily from the glass, were easy to clean, and looked fabulous. I discovered stellar examples in materials that ranged from felt to terracotta to tumbled marble. The cute, stylish, and practical coasters I found combine form and function to keep your coffee table or any surface ring-free while looking absolutely charming.

But green bean casserole is fine. These are the rules of flying with a Thanksgiving feast.

Now that Thanksgiving is just days away, people across the country are already planning their turkey day spread. That may be especially true for the more than 79 million Americans gearing up to travel to visit family this year, many of whom have food in tow.

In addition to figuring out how to make your Thanksgiving food fit into a suitcase and keep it at food-safe temperatures in transit, plenty of folks across the country are also trying to figure out which foods they can — and can’t — bring on an airplane. “We know that when people are traveling, especially for Thanksgiving, they oftentimes want to contribute something to the holiday table,” Lisa Farbstein, a spokesperson for the Transportation Security Administration, told Eater. “We encourage people to really think about how they’re planning to transport these items.”

According to Farbstein, it’s possible to take pretty much anything that you might find on a Thanksgiving table on an airplane. What you do have to figure out, though, is whether or not the item is allowed in carry-on luggage.

What foods does TSA consider a liquid versus a solid?

As you’ve undoubtedly heard a disembodied voice at the airport say one thousand times over the loudspeaker, the TSA’s guidelines stipulate that liquids, gels, aerosols, and creams can only be carried onto a plane in one single quart-sized plastic bag, in containers that are smaller than 3.4 ounces. Considering the size of most Thanksgiving feasts, those logistics just aren’t workable for turkey and dressing. But it’s still theoretically possible to transport an entire turkey and all the fixins as long as it’s packed safely inside your checked bags.

What exactly constitutes a liquid, though? Farbstein uses a handy (and jingle-ready) rhyme to help figure out how to pack: “If you can spill it, spread it, spray it, pump it, or pour it, and it’s larger than 3.4 ounces, it has to go into your checked bags,” she says. “Anything that’s liquid, gel-like, or spreadable isn’t allowed in carry-on luggage.”

Notably, items that are liquid but have frozen completely solid, like a pint container full of turkey stock or jug of apple cider, are considered to be solids by the TSA, and can be packed in carry-on bags. So are baked goods, like pies and cakes, and even slightly sloshy common Thanksgiving sides like mac and cheese or green bean casserole. Fresh vegetables are also okay to bring through security in carry-ons, as are chocolates and spices, though some states (like California) may have restrictions on what fruits can and can’t enter their borders.

Here’s where things get complicated: cranberry sauce. Even though the texture is mostly solid — especially those classic cans — it’s still considered a liquid for the purposes of making it through a TSA checkpoint, even if it’s still totally sealed. The same goes for gravy, and other canned goods like candied yams or fruit cocktail, as well as homemade jams and preserves.

“Keep in mind: You can still bring all these things,” Farbstein says. “We’re just saying please, please pack it the right way. If you show up at a checkpoint with a prohibited item, you’re not going to be allowed to take it through.”

How can I get through security faster if I have carry-on food with me?

Even if you do perfectly parse out TSA’s guidelines and pack your Thanksgiving bounty appropriately, it’s possible that certain items could still trigger an alarm when being examined by an officer. As such, you should plan to arrive at the airport early if you’re traveling with food, and don’t be surprised if your food storage containers of sweet potato casserole are swabbed down to ensure that they don’t contain any traces of explosives.

When it comes time to fly home, these rules also apply to the leftover pie and stuffing you’re planning to smuggle back from grandma’s house. If the dishes require refrigeration, you’ll want to make sure that you’ve got an ice pack that’s still frozen completely solid to make sure that your food doesn’t spoil in transit.

“Even in checked baggage, food items regularly trigger alarms and when the agent goes to open it, it’s rancid,” she says. “You definitely want to make sure you have a nice, solid, non-melted ice pack.”

To minimize time spent in the security screening line, Farbstein suggests removing food items from your luggage and placing them directly into the bin that slides through the X-ray machine. (Bring a plastic trash bag to line the bottom of the bin before placing containers inside.) In addition to packing correctly, these tips can help reduce the likelihood that a TSA officer will ask you open up your bag for a lengthy search.

Can I bring other Thanksgiving items, like cookware, on the plane?

If, for whatever reason, you need to travel with cookware, items like baking dishes and nonstick skillets of any size can be carried on planes, but hefty cast-iron skillets are not allowed in the cabin. “No tools over 7 inches are allowed, and that includes cast-iron skillets,” Farbstein says. “Somebody could conk somebody else on the head with it, and then it becomes a bludgeoning instrument.” That rule also applies to rolling pins over 7 inches, which must be packed in checked luggage.

Few things are worse than being told you have to throw something valuable or, worse yet, delicious away at an airport security checkpoint, and being prepared for what TSA will and won’t allow will help avoid both losing your precious bowl of Nana’s cranberry sauce and holding up yourself and your fellow travelers in line.

“We know that people want to travel with food, and we want to make sure that nothing that you’re bringing through that could cause a catastrophic incident on the plane,” Farbstein says. “It’s going to be more crowded than usual, so do yourself a favor. Get there early.”

Steak frites and great wine on the Left Bank, Roman-style flash-grilled artichoke with figs from a French Tunisian chef, a Michelin-starred tasting menu on the Champs-Élysées, and more of Paris’s best

Paris has changed a lot since Eater started rounding up its essential restaurants in 2016. The city’s entrenched food pyramid — a top tier of haute-cuisine restaurants representing the peak of Gallic gastronomy, followed by dressed-up bourgeois French restaurants, and finally a broad base of bistros and brasseries — has flattened out. Today, you can find outstanding contemporary French cooking at a variety of simple, friendly restaurants with reasonable prices all over Paris.

As the French capital’s dining scene has become more casual, cosmopolitan, and inventive, vegetarian and vegan options, such as the acclaimed Faubourg Daimant, have proliferated. Across the board, menus are tending toward seafood and vegetables, with meat playing a supporting role to local, seasonal, organic produce from sustainable producers.

Even as they embrace the new, many Parisians remain rooted in rock-of-ages French comfort food, which is available at a wave of traditional bistros, like the very popular Bistrot des Tournelles in the Marais, and thriving stalwarts like Le Petit Vendôme. Tasting menus also remain popular. “[Tasting menus] help to cut down on food waste and allow for some spontaneous creativity and playfulness,” says Manon Fleury, the chef at Datil. Fleury is also part of a class of talented female chefs who have taken Paris by storm, including Eugénie Béziat at Espadon at the Hotel Ritz and Soda Thiam at Janine.

Paris has never been a more exciting city for food-lovers than it is today.

Updated, November 2024:

Parisians continue their new love affair with traditional French comfort food, which is why Le Cornichon replaces the still very good Magma. Kitchens that tell a personal story remain popular, too, so Oktobre makes way for Aldehyde, where chef Youssef Marzouk recounts his French Tunisian heritage with a menu of inventive dishes. Asian ingredients and techniques also continue to have a major impact on modern French cooking, as seen at the very popular Le Dandelion that replaces Le 6 Paul Bert.

Eater updates this list quarterly to make sure it reflects the ever-changing Paris dining scene. The guide is organized by arrondissement, spiraling out from the 1st.

Alexander Lobrano is a well-known Paris restaurant expert and author of Hungry for Paris, Hungry for France, and his gastronomic coming-of-age story My Place at the Table: A Recipe for a Delicious Life in Paris. He writes often for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and other publications, and is a writer-at-large for Airmail News.

Wonder wants to fix food delivery — so it just acquired Grubhub

On November 13, Wonder, the company that describes itself as “a new kind of food hall,” announced its acquisition of the established food ordering and delivery platform Grubhub. The acquisition brings Wonder one step closer to its goal of becoming the “super app for meal time” by allowing the company to offer Grubhub’s restaurant partners in its app alongside its existing offerings; Wonder will also become available through Grubhub.

The company also announced $250 million in new investments “‘to further its mission and growth,” and that’s on top of the $700 million in capital it announced in March. In a year full of failing chains and struggling food-delivery startups, Grubhub among them, Wonder is emerging as a winner — and it’s barely gotten started.

If the company has its way, Wonder will be unavoidable in the coming years, at least in the Northeastern United States. As of this writing, it has 30 open locations and another 18 set to open early 2025, with most of those in New York City and steady expansion into Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. That trajectory follows the plans that CEO and founder Marc Lore detailed earlier this year: to expand from 11 locations in March 2024 to 35 by the end of year to 90 by the end of 2025. That surge is especially shocking considering that Wonder only started opening physical locations in 2023. As it grows, here’s what you need to know.

Who’s behind Wonder?

The e-commerce entrepreneur Marc Lore, who ran e-commerce at Walmart from 2016 to 2021, founded Wonder in 2018. Before that, Lore was a co-founder of Jet.com, which Walmart acquired for approximately $3 billion in 2016. Lore was also the co-founder of Quidsi, which ran e-commerce sites including Diapers.com and Wag.com until it was acquired by Amazon in 2010. Lore’s current level of involvement in Wonder is relatively recent: While at Walmart, he initially acted in more of an advisory role, leaving his brother Chad Lore to run the company, before coming on as CEO of the Wonder Group, Wonder’s parent company, in 2021. Wonder also has investment from companies including Bain Capital Ventures, Amex Ventures, and Nestlé.

How does Wonder work?

What Wonder promises is the ability to order “from multiple restaurants at once.” Instead of a food hall in which every vendor has its own kitchen, each cooking one menu, one physical Wonder location offers the menus of multiple “restaurants” from one kitchen. Some of this food comes from existing brands like the Brooklyn pizza restaurant Di Fara. Others exist only in Wonder, including chef-partnered concepts like Yasas by Michael Symon and Walnut Lane by Jonathan Waxman. According to the trade publication Restaurant Business, the company pays its chef and restaurant partners a fee and stock in the company, which allows Wonder to then use their brands and recipes without royalties. These chefs work with Wonder to make the dishes suitable for large-scale delivery. As of March 2024, Wonder offered “as many as 500 items available for order at a given Wonder, across 28 distinct menus,” according to the New York Times.

In this way, Wonder is a part of the rise of virtual restaurants. But unlike the situation with many ghost kitchens — in which the fact that the food is coming from a ghost kitchen, or a known restaurant operating under a new virtual brand, is unclear to the consumer — Wonder is making its singular location and shared kitchen its selling point.

How is Wonder different from other delivery platforms?

Unless customers are dining in — which is an option at Wonder, though not its priority — these meals are then delivered by Wonder couriers. As Lore told Business Insider last year, Wonder’s benefit over its competitors is that “[w]e’re vertically integrated. We do everything. It’s our app. It’s our delivery, and it’s our cooking. We own the rights to those brands.” (Of course, with the Grubhub acquisition, Wonder will now also be available via Grubhub; the company hasn’t specified if or how it’ll take over delivery.)

As Kristen Hawley wrote for Eater in April, what sets Wonder apart is its control of “the entire experience, from recipe to fulfillment, and the company has spent $60 million so far on intellectual property — recipes and restaurant concepts — from its partner chefs.” Hawley also noted Wonder’s “savvy curatorial eye,” explaining that as with the early days of Caviar, when it touted take-out access to higher-end restaurants than other food-ordering platforms, the company offers “proximity” to more elevated experiences.

Wonder hasn’t always worked this way, however. Its initial model involved driving Mercedes Sprinter vans to customers’ homes. The food was partially cooked in a Wonder kitchen facility and then finished on-location in the vans, which were outfitted with rapid-cook ovens. As the Wall Street Journal reported in 2022, the Wonder vans became contentious in the neighborhoods where the program was piloted, with some residents complining about the vans being noisy and blocking driveways. In January of 2023, Wonder shut down its van program. Lore told Business Insider that the company could scale faster and with better profit margins by shifting to fixed locations.

How does Wonder make its food?

The basic setup of the van model hasn’t been fully phased out. As the Times explained earlier this year in a profile of Lore, Wonder’s food is prepared and often par-cooked in a commissary kitchen. (Wonder currently has one central kitchen in New Jersey and has plans to open another in Pennsylvania as it adds locations.) At that point, it’s distributed to its restaurants, which finish the food with — in Lore’s terminology — “lightly trained labor” using only a hot water bath, a rapid-cook oven, or a fryer. Because the kitchens don’t have gas stoves or the need for exhaust systems, Wonder kitchens can be built quickly and affordably, the Times notes.

Given that slow delivery is one of the problems Wonder is trying to solve, Lore has stated that efficiency in both preparing food and getting it to customers is a big goal now and moving forward. Currently, Wonder reportedly delivers food in around 30 minutes.

Is Wonder good?

Wonder seems to be about as good as any food hall, which is to say, hit or miss. When Eater NY restaurant critic Robert Sietsema reviewed the Chelsea location’s food in May, he found the pizza to be a solid Di Fara pie, though it lacked the signature basil finish; other options, like the Tejas Barbecue brisket sandwich and Yasas by Michael Symon pepper and feta sandwich missed the mark. Most of what Sietsema tried earned around a B. Grub Street critic Matthew Schneier had similar overall takeaways but a better experience with the brisket sandwich.

Where will Wonder go from here?

According to the Wall Street Journal, buying Grubhub not only provides Wonder with a new source of revenue, but also gives the company access to Grubhub’s delivery drivers and delivery technology. Per the November 13 press release, Wonder sees the partnership as helping its goal of “re-envisioning the future of food delivery” and making “great food more accessible.”

A timeline of major Wonder moments:

• 2020: Wonder begins piloting its van program in parts of Westfield, New Jersey. By 2021, it had expanded to serve the entire town.
• December 2021: Marc Lore steps in as CEO.
• January 2023: Wonder pivots away from van delivery in favor of fixed locations.
• February 2023: Wonder opens its first NYC location in the Upper West Side.
• November 2023: Wonder completes its acquisition of the meal kit company Blue Apron, allowing users of the Wonder app to order Blue Apron kits in addition to Wonder meals. Wonder takes over Blue Apron delivery.
• February 2024: Wonder opens its first location inside a Walmart store.
• April 2024: Wonder acquires Relay, a NY-based delivery company.
• March 2023: Wonder raises $700 million to fund its growth plans.
• October 2024: Wonder opens its first location inside a Cumberland Farms convenience store. Tony Hoggett, who previously ran the grocery program at Amazon, joins Wonder.
• November 2024: Wonder announces its acquisition of Grubhub.

Moromi’s artisanal soy sauce is worth its hefty price tag

When I started visiting Mystic, Connecticut, one of the main things that stood out to me was the fantastic restaurant scene. I was surprised by the number of award-winning chefs in such a small town. On top of that, many of them mentioned the name Moromi as an ingredient on their menus.; they were using the Japanese-style shoyu in sauces, marinades, and even on pizza.

In fact, I was picking up a pizza at Nana’s Mystic, a local organic bakery and pizza shop, when I first saw Moromi products on a store shelf. I was instantly intrigued. Founded by a married couple (a chemist and an author), and award-winning chef James Wayman in Mystic, the company makes its soy sauce in small batches. I soon learned that Moromi and Nana’s are owned by the same chef and that the bakery — along with Wayman’s name’s other restaurant, River Bar — use the products to add both flavor and umami to their sourdough pizza and baked goods.

Shoyu, the Japanese term for soy sauce, is made from fermented soybeans, wheat, water, and salt. Although it sounds simple, the combination creates complex flavors. Moromi’s soy sauce is made using traditional fermentation techniques, including koji (which is rice that’s inoculated with mold and then mixed with soy and fermented).

I brought a bottle of Moromi during that first visit to Mystic, and it’s been a star player in many of my home-cooked meals ever since.

Right out of the gate, I used the rich, almost briny sauce as I would any other soy sauce. When I added a couple of splashes to some quick veggie fried rice, it gave the dish a depth of flavor I’ve never found with any grocery store brand soy sauce — which made it well worth its $20 price tag

We love lettuce wraps at my house and adding Moromi to a marinade of honey, hoisin, ginger, and garlic turned an inexpensive cut of pork into a fall-apart, rich meal.

In my kitchen, I often use soy instead of Worcestershire sauce (it started as a substitution, but now it’s a preference), and used Moromi when making a really simple steak Diane with a relatively inexpensive tenderloin cut. After searing the steaks, I added a mix of Moromi, tomato paste, Dijon mustard, and beef broth to deglaze the pan and stirred in a few splashes of cream. The rich, fermented soy elevated the simple sauce into something that had my family making the approving noises that every cook wants to hear.

Moromi makes an excellent dipping sauce as well. I’ve used it with dumplings, takeout sushi, chicken skewers, and more bites than I can remember. While I started with the basic soy sauce, its makers are always experimenting with different styles and currently have limited-edition sauces like maitake soy (made with hand foraged mushrooms) and chicken of the woods soy (these mushrooms were blended into the sauce that was then aged a year). The mushrooms impart a sweet earthiness to the sauce.

Is Moromi fancy? Yes. Is it more expensive than your standard supermarket soy sauce? Also yes. But given its ability to make everything that comes out of my kitchen taste more expensive than it is, I’d say that’s real value.

Tanya Edwards is a freelance writer based in coastal New England. Her work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Refinery29, CNN, Better Homes & Gardens, Food Network and more.

Whether you’re channeling a hunting lodge, a seaside cottage, or full chaotic maximalism, here are our favorite tablescape looks for your specific flavor of festive.

Putting together a tablescape can teach you a lot about yourself: how you define your personal aesthetic, how much you’re willing to spend on candle holders, the relative importance of napkin rings to your chosen lifestyle. Putting together a tablescape can also be overwhelming: there are a lot of home goods sites out here on the internet, and each one contains, like some demonic Russian nesting doll, a seemingly infinite array of options for accessorizing your place settings. Who am I?, you might find yourself asking as a hundred equally winsome placemats blur before your eyes. Who do I want to be? What have I done?

The great thing about home entertaining, though, is that it simultaneously allows you to be yourself and embrace a lifestyle that isn’t necessarily your own. What is a dinner party if not an exercise in aspirational living? As someone who has spent many hours throwing dinner parties and even more hours trolling home design sites, I have done a lot of aspirational living, and, as such, have a lot of thoughts about table decor. With that in mind, I’ve curated a guide to four different themed tablescapes. Because even if you don’t own a seaside cottage or rustic hunting lodge, you deserve to be able to eat like you do.

It’s Autumn in a Hunting Lodge Somewhere WASP-y and Cold

The mood: Tradition meets rustic elegance, with a charcuterie board on the side

A Winter Seaside Cottage

The mood: Rocky shores, churning surf, and the reflection of candlelight on sea glass

The Kitchen in The Family Stone

The mood: Modern country farmhouse with a soupçon of bric a brac

The Happy Maximalist

The mood: Bright colors and bold prints to keep the seasonal gloom at bay