In a TikTok video with over 82,000 likes, the person behind the camera zooms into the shelves at a Pennsylvania coffee shop, three rows stacked with an array of Torani syrups in flavors like blueberry, brown-sugar cinnamon, English toffee, and salted caramel. “I just know my latte isn’t going to be good,” the caption reads. Across social media, similar sentiments appear. “If I see these at a cafe, I’m walking out immediately,” says one tweet, co-signed by many commenters. In a multipart video series, another creator documents her journey of replacing all of her Torani syrups with ones from small businesses instead. Last year, the niche food newsletter Unsnackable published what was described as a “Torani tirade.”

It’s not just a Torani problem, though the brand — by virtue of its market dominance — tends to get the most flack on social media. While some people seem to prefer competitor Monin, it, too, draws backlash over allegations of tasting “like chemicals.” The problem, for some drinkers of dessert-like specialty beverages, is premade syrups across the board. 

For a certain sect of consumers, they’ve become a coffee shop red flag, a sign that a so-called “specialty” establishment asking them to fork over $8 plus tip for a latte is unfairly cutting corners when it comes to quality or craft. For these consumers, mass-market syrups now symbolize exactly that: They’re synonymous with coffee chains and corporations, the kind of impersonal institutions that many people are trying to get away from when they patronize a small business. The flip side: For independently owned coffee shops across the country, house-made syrup now represents a major opportunity.

When Carrie and Dennis Medina first envisioned their coffee shop, Room Service, in Ventura, California, they thought they would take an approach similar to the one at Sightglass Coffee, where they’d both gotten their start. “Very purist, with no syrups, no specialty drinks,” Dennis says. They imagined eight kinds of pour-over coffee and an emphasis on single-origin beans, since the couple also runs a roastery. “We said we’re never gonna do cream tops; we’re never gonna do these crazy drinks,” Carrie says. But in the first week alone, every customer was asking for them. 

Now, Room Service offers 10 to 12 different syrups at any given time (and six different cream tops), all of them made in-house. It offers drinks such as a cinnamon roll latte topped with a cinnamon roll, and a honey cornbread latte with an ube cream top. “I hear that question all the time,” Dennis says. “‘Hey, do you guys make your syrups in-house?’” To him, a shop that isn’t trying to do at least the basics — like vanilla — in-house is “falling behind what the times are pushing for.” 

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The demand for syrups and other embellishments is so intense that the Medinas have brought on a full-time prep person who works exclusively on “all these things that we do in-house that make us special,” Carrie says. Room Service’s PSL, for example, starts with kabocha squash. It’s roasted, blended with spices such as cloves and cinnamon, and cooked into syrup, a process that takes two days. Echoing a sentiment that seems common among coffee shop owners right now, Carrie describes their current approach as “not necessarily the coffee shop we wanted, but it’s more like the coffee shop we have to be.” And if the market demands syrups and cream tops, then the Medinas wanted to ensure that the intention and emphasis on quality that they applied to their coffee beans also carried over. 

In 2025, Michael Smith opened Trust Coffee Co. in Bay Village, Ohio, taking over, remodeling, and rebranding an older coffee shop. He, like the Medinas, imagined a more “pour-over, third-wave” style establishment. “But I’ve been a business owner for a long time,” says Smith, who also runs a restaurant and a catering business. “I’ve realized over the years that your customers tell you more about who you are than who you actually think you are.” His customers, it turned out, wanted seasonal syrups in niche flavors like maple rosemary, caramelized banana, and strawberry rhubarb. 

The purist is no longer coffee’s north star; the maximalist is. 

We live in the era of what the New York Times has dubbed “hyperflavor,” in which familiar foods are deemed newly interesting by the addition of complex new flavor profiles: The concept of miso in a peanut butter or chocolate chip cookie is no longer truly novel, but banal. Naturally, coffee drinks have followed the same trend. Where a studied self-seriousness once applied primarily to pour-over coffee meant to be drunk black, the tide has turned that precision and craft toward the previously derided, sometimes frivolous category of the sweet-treat coffee drink. How specialty shops now approach these creations feels more akin to how a pastry chef might assemble a dessert, or how a bartender might build a complex cocktail. The purist is no longer coffee’s north star; the maximalist is. 

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Syrups like Monin, which the shop’s previous iteration used, “serve a purpose in the industry,” Smith says, but he wanted more control over the menu. The two full-time pastry chefs from Smith’s other businesses oversee the shop’s syrups. “It’s become such a huge thing,” he says: Every time Trust’s social media manager posts a new syrup, the line is out the door for a week. “It sets us apart,” he explains.

When Sabrina Kaylor opened the first location of Bizarre Coffee in Canton, Georgia in 2020, the shop used bottled syrups. She hadn’t worked in coffee prior, and she said that approach felt like the norm at the time. “It allowed us to hone our craft and learn what we were doing,” she says. Over time, Kaylor — who’s quite active on the company’s official social media platforms — noticed that the tenor of the conversation was changing: In the immediate post-COVID years, people were making more things at home and there was more pride to be gained in “scratch-made.” With her business becoming known for lattes in flavors such as blueberry, banana, and guava, Kaylor decided to shift toward more house-made syrups. Previously, her customers didn’t ask about their sourcing, but now, they ask all the time.

As much as there is a sense of valor in the entirely from-scratch approach, Kaylor retains some skepticism about the current torrent of Torani and Monin backlash. Today, 90 percent of Bizarre’s drinks use house-made syrups, though one of its best-selling drinks still relies on the bottled stuff; Bizarre’s menu is extensive and making everything in-house would be a significant investment of labor. On the part of coffee shops, “I think a lot of [the house-made syrup conversation] is marketing, quite honestly,” Kaylor says. As for the bandwagoning that is all the anti-Torani memes, “I think it’s part of consumer behavior,” she says. And that, she acknowledges, can be really “discouraging” for small business owners.

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In a sense, that’s what the premade-versus-house-made-syrup conversation boils down to: the stand between small businesses and big ones. For more consumers, the economic and social conditions of the current moment have inspired increased skepticism toward the influence of corporations and private equity in the food and beverage world.

The Minnesota coffee shop Little Joy has become famous across social media for posting the recipes of its signature drinks in detailed DIY videos. It has since launched a membership program through which other coffee shop owners can purchase its recipes, scaled up for commercial usage; gain access to training videos; and sell its drinks without even needing to attribute them to Little Joy, though the ones that would like to can pin their use of Little Joy’s recipes to a Drink Finder map.

Yes, these might just be recipes for syrups and foams, but in an interview with Eater’s industry newsletter Pre Shift earlier this year, Little Joy owner Cody Larson described the system as a way to build solidarity among independent businesses. “The big coffee chains, they’re never gonna do house-made syrups, so I think that’s where independent shops can get a leg up,” he said. “Ultimately, the chains are our competition… If independent shops can, in any way possible, raise the bar across the board, that’s good for all independent shops, including us.”

It’s hard to look at the drinks coming out of specialty coffee shops today — fluffy with foam, flavored to emulate nuanced desserts like princess cake and tiramisu— and not think of the Starbucks Frappuccino. The combination of app-ordering and social media “hack” culture have mainstreamed super-elaborate beverage requests, allowing Starbucks and coffee chains like it to become purveyors of highly complicated customizable beverages, mainstreaming the mindset of the aforementioned “hyperflavor.”

When it comes to why consumers have moved away from the single-origin pour-over approach at shops like his, “my guess is that these are a lot of people who used to be Starbucks loyalists and they’re looking for something that’s more local,” Smith says. “It’s a trend across everything where people want local, and we’re able to provide what Starbucks did, but in a more high-quality, more local way.”

Intentionality is what people are gravitating towards, especially as prices rise. If consumers are spending so much on a drink that’s undeniably a luxury, then they want to know that every part of that drink has been made carefully. And if they’re going to make the trip to a new, independent shop, they want to know that the offerings there aren’t the ones they can get anywhere, made with easily attainable, big-brand flavorings. For small coffee shops, the key to success could be as simple as syrup.

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You’ve probably heard of the Potato Potato Potato dish at Somssi, the newest restaurant from Na:eun Hospitality. The triple-layered potato dish is the most labor-intensive dish on the menu but has also become the most popular order, with the kitchen going through up to 100 pounds of potatoes each week. The whimsical, caviar-topped dish really encapsulates what the restaurant is trying to achieve: “We should have serious food, serious hospitality, but we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously,” says managing partner Ahris Kim. Here’s how the Somssi kitchen preps to create the newly famous potato and plenty of other dishes before a night of service.

Yukon gold potatoes are put through a ricer to become a cream and butter-heavy puree that is set in molds in the freezer. After being toasted in breadcrumbs, the logs of potato are wrapped in russet potato ribbons before being fried up to order.

Next is the ox tongue, which is brined for just over 16 hours before being slow-cooked in herbs, aromatics, and beef tallow for four hours. Huge cuts of tongue are carefully scored so they will get a great sear when they hit the grill. It’s served on a romesco sauce with just a bit of wasabi on the side.

Finally, pork loin is coated in ground shrimp for a creative schnitzel that is reminiscent of shrimp toast. The schnitzel is topped with a sweet-and-sour plum sauce that balances out the thick, crispy fried exterior. Scallop crudo is made up of pressed scallops surrounded with a strawberry sauce and topped off with gooseberries and peppers.

Watch the team at Somssi create creative dishes like a triple-potato bite and a show-stopping grilled tongue dish in this episode of Mise En Place.

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Now Open is a yearlong series celebrating some of 2026’s most exciting new restaurants. Throughout the year, we’ll check in with teams in Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C., to hear what it’s really like behind the scenes of a buzzy opening. Then, we’ll host exclusive meals at these restaurants as part of Dinner Party, presented by Capital One. Read along for challenges, candid reflections, and advice from the proprietors behind some of the country’s hottest new openings.

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Giovanni Cervantes and Tania Apolinar spent the last five years slinging tacos at breakneck pace to keep up with the lines at Taqueria Ramírez and Carnitas Ramírez and rowdy World Cup crowds at Socceria. Now the duo is slowing things down a bit for their first full-service restaurant El Camarón Peludo, a playful wine and seafood spot in the West Village where guests linger over mariscos.

At the tiny, walk-in-only restaurant, the menu fuses Mexican seafood dishes with Spanish influences and excellent wine from around the world. For the project, Cervantes and Apolinar teamed up with chef Carlos Barrera, a Mexico City-born chef who has worked in Michelin-starred restaurants in Spain and hosted dozens of popular pop-ups around NYC. When I sat down with Cervantes and Apolinar, I planned to pick their brains about how and why they manage four wildly popular (and very different) New York City restaurants. Then I learned how much El Camarón Peludo was the result of fate: If it weren’t for space constraints, a tapas-fueled trip, and a social media superfan, the duo may have had an entirely different restaurant on their hands.

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Pre Shift: Where did the idea for El Camarón Peludo come from?

Tania Apolinar: When we were looking at [the space], we considered making it a taqueria, but because of the [long shape of the restaurant], it wouldn’t have worked for that concept. We knew we wanted to do something different, focused on seafood and wine.

Giovanni Cervantes: I was in conversation with Carlos about this idea to serve mariscos in New York when we saw the space. We didn’t know [at the time], but we were setting up the basis of the menu because we were talking about what we like and what we miss a lot [from Mexico]. We also talked about [our past trips] to Europe. We were really interested in how to match [the style of European tapas and wine bars] with what we do, which is the Mexican approach.

How did you connect with Barrera for the project?

Cervantes: Carlos was one of the first clients that we ever had in Taqueria Ramírez. We met basically through that and through Instagram. He was always commenting a lot…

Apolinar: And giving us the flame.

Cervantes: Exactly. Sending the flame emoji. Then soon enough, we find out that we were neighbors because he lives in Greenpoint, so we started seeing each other more often.

Apolinar: Then we did a pop-up with him serving his famous Trompo Negro, which is like al pastor with [a smoky black spice paste that is widely used in Yucatán and surrounding regions], and that was the first time we actually connected in a working setup. We’re really aligned and happy with the partnership. 

Can you tell me about how you balance Mexican and Spanish influences on the menu?

Cervantes: When we found the space, we knew it was the perfect setup to try something different. Then we made a trip to Europe and a trip to Mexico. After we came back from Europe, I think I was feeling very “Europeanized.” I remember having a conversation with Tanya and Carlos about making it even more Spanish, and both of them were like, “What?” And I’m glad they [pushed back], because we definitely found the right balance. 

Apolinar: We’re talking about Mexican and Spanish, but in the end, it’s about the seafood and the freshness, the product that we really want to stand out. That’s why [we serve a] very simple gambas a la plancha, and the carpaccio has that approach as well, but then other more Mexican classics [like tostadas topped with tuna or aguachile] have more sauces and all of that.

Cervantes: And it’s not just the food. The influence that we took from different parts of Europe is the setup, the vibe, the size of the plates, the type of space. We want the space to feel cozy and friendly.

How is the service different from your other spots?

Cervantes: At Taqueria Ramírez and Carnitas Ramírez, it’s all about efficiency. Making it right, as fast as you can, and getting people in and out of the place. It’s nonstop volume. The consistency is awesome over there, and that’s [how we] measure that we’re making it right. Here it’s different. It’s more about the experience of the space and the music and the wine. [Our staff are] with these people for an hour or two, so you try to make it personal in a way. It feels different when you have that much time to see how people are enjoying the experience and transporting people to that world through what we’re doing. That’s comforting to me.

Now that you have four different restaurants around the city, how do you balance your time between them?

Cervantes: For Taqueria Ramírez, the very first one, we can sleep very well because almost everybody on the staff has been there since we opened. I’m just mentioning that because it’s all about building the right team because you can only be in one place at a time. Then at Carnitas, our partners [Yvon de Tassigny and Kari Boden] are really great and the plan was for them to be the day to day operators from the beginning. So right now we’re between El Cameron Peludo and Socceria because they’re the new babies and there’s a lot of work to do there.

Tania: It’s tiring, but at the end of the day, I’ve been enjoying it a lot. It’s nonstop but it feels rewarding to see the point of view of customers and make people feel happy and connect to them.

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Recently I spent a few days exploring Prince Edward Island, a place that embraces its local foodways with gusto. There’s a complex history here, with roots in Indigenous Mi’kmaq, Acadian, Irish, Scottish, and other cultures. And if one thing unites these histories, it’s the island’s abundance of seafood and produce, which have helped earn it the nickname Canada’s Food Island. How can you not want to visit Canada’s Food Island?

On a stretch of land only about 140 miles long, you can eat oysters pulled out of nearby waters, potatoes grown on local farms, dig into a juicy burger made with PEI beef, and lick ice cream made with milk from the cows you pass along those famous red-dirt roads. That’s a lot of good eating packed into a place you can drive across in an afternoon.

I had to structure my visit, therefore, around where to dine, but also include a bucket-list visit to Green Gables Heritage Place. (I am a complete freak for L.M. Montgomery’s novel Anne of Green Gables, set on PEI around the turn of the last century.) I also had to schedule time at the PEI International Shellfish Festival, which promised endless trays of freshly shucked oysters and clams, hot buttered lobster rolls, steaming bowls of mussels, and plenty of entertainment, from shucking competitions and cooking demos to live music and dancing.

My husband and I rented a car and stationed ourselves in Charlottetown, the island’s main hub. Prince Edward Island is situated in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, just a hop away from Nova Scotia. You’re never far from the ocean here, and on a sunny day, the air seems to sparkle. The island is known for its red-sand cliffs and beaches, rolling landscapes, fishing harbors, and lighthouses. If you’ve read Anne of Green Gables, you’ll know just how pretty PEI is.

We landed late Thursday afternoon, ready to hit the ground running. With just shy of three days, I had carefully mapped out the places I wanted to visit, using Charlottetown as my base. 

Day 1

Drinks and snacks: Slaymaker & Nichols

Charlottetown isn’t big, and most things here are walkable within 20 minutes or so. First stop in PEI: Slaymaker & Nichols, a gastropub and inn with the feel of an old-fashioned supper club. It takes its name from the 19th-century circus that once performed on the site. They take cocktail making seriously here. The summery feel of the day prompted me to try the watermelon mule, with hibiscus-infused vodka and chunks of pickled watermelon. I liked it, especially alongside the creamy lobster dip with tomatoes and harissa, and the buttery shrimp pil pil, with lots of tasty little spears of asparagus.

More drinks: Reddins

I was saving myself for my first lobster roll, which we grabbed up the street in an unremarkable spot. It was pretty mediocre, so I won’t go on about it. But after eating, we stopped into Reddins, a speakeasy that channels PEI’s Prohibition history in a dark, intimate third-floor bar with vintage furniture, good jazz, and whimsical cocktails. Our excellent bartender, AB, told us the space had once been a pharmacy where folks came during Prohibition to get their “medicine” — drugstores could legally dispense alcohol by prescription. We tried a few of the signature cocktails, and the one that stood out was the Pink Canary, with vodka, rose, lychee, citrus, and rosé bubbles, served in a small bathtub. Yup, you heard that right. It was sweet and awfully fun to sip. 

Tip: You need a secret password to get in when you buzz from downstairs. You can get it online, or just do as we did and ask the hostess next door for help.

Day 2

Breakfast: Receiver Coffee

In the pouring rain, we made our way to nearby Victoria Row for breakfast at local roaster Receiver Coffee. Fuel for the day included strong coffee, a particularly good cup of Earl Grey cream tea, and the Ham Slam, a big fluffy cheddar biscuit layered with a runny fried egg, Black Forest ham, Swiss, and Dijon mayo.

Lunch and more: Landmark Oyster House, Island Chocolates

We swung by the shellfish festival (more on that later) but the rain wasn’t welcoming, so we got back in the car and drove out to tiny and charming Victoria-by-the-Sea. When I say tiny, I mean it: The town is half a square mile, with a population under 200. Despite the town’s size, Landmark Oyster House, set there in an old general store with pretty green shingles and a steep gabled roof, thrives.

Our friendly waiter (everyone is abundantly friendly on PEI) suggested Raspberry Point oysters to start. They hit the spot: medium-sized, briny, and sweet, served with lemon wedges and freshly grated horseradish, which is now how I think every oyster should be eaten. We also tried the scallop dog, with buttery sweet scallops, bacon jam, red pepper aioli, and pickled shallots nestled in a toasted bun. It came alongside a very good, eggy potato salad. 

After seeing the cheery lighthouse and visiting a couple of little gift shops, we popped into Island Chocolates, a family-run shop and café where bars and truffles are hand-crafted, often using local ingredients like haskap, a berry that tastes somewhere between a blueberry and raspberry. That fruity haskap truffle had a nice thick shell of milk chocolate.  

Sun out? Check. We spent the afternoon at the festival and got a substantial fix of oysters and clams. The lobster rolls here were stuffed with unadorned lobster meat, then melted butter from a gigantic vat was ladled over the top.

Dinner: North Shore Canteen

For dinner, both our bartender and waiter at Slaymaker recommended North Shore Canteen in French River, a local haunt for sure. (A slew of chefs from the shellfish festival were two tables down from us.) The menu, which changes with the current haul, hit on the day’s best ingredients: halibut, striped bass, the aforementioned shellfish, beef, and potatoes. We opted for a very generous portion of local beef tartare, amazingly tasty with capers, roasted garlic, and freshly grated Parmesan, served with Covered Bridge potato chips. We wanted to try more PEI beef and opted for a juicy hanger steak with chimichurri and black garlic, which showcased it well. Dessert was a must: parsnip cake drizzled with caramel sauce for the win.

Day 3

It was time for me to check Green Gables off my bucket list. This is an article about where to eat, so suffice it to say that if you’re a fan, this is 100 percent worth a visit to see the house, wander the Haunted Wood and Lover’s Lane, and taste some nonalcoholic raspberry cordial (IYKYK).

All that walking made me hungry, which was good because this was a much anticipated two-lunch day.

Lunch x 2: Blue Mussel Café and Richard’s Fresh Seafood

First stop: Blue Mussel Café, a bright and very welcoming, beloved PEI restaurant set just back from the water in Rustico Harbor. I think it’s obvious what to order, and for good reason: These are excellent mussels — plump, fresh, and brought to the table piled high in a large stainless steel bowl. You can have them prepared with rosemary and lemon or beer and wine. I’d rate them equally, but I did like the hit of rosemary. Melted butter comes in a small ramekin on the side; I used it to dip each mussel, and my husband poured it all over the top. I didn’t have it, but the other signature, seafood chowder, looked popular. It’s made with haddock, salmon, scallops, mussels, and PEI potatoes, and served with a giant biscuit. Noted for my next visit.

We hightailed it to our next meal because I had yet to have the perfect lobster roll. Richard’s Fresh Seafood in Covehead Wharf delivered. This is one of the island’s longest-running fish shacks, where you can savor fish and chips and beer on the deck overlooking the fishing boats, or camp out on the nearby beach under the lighthouse with a lobster roll. no mistake: This is the quintessential lobster roll. It was an exercise in abundance, packed with sweet lobster meat that managed to be chunky and fine, bound with lemon and chive mayo and tiny bits of onion, all stuffed in a buttery toasted bun. It came with crunchy coleslaw, crispy fries, and a paper cup of ketchup. There are other menu items, but this lobster roll alone is worth the trip to PEI.

Dinner: Rustico Cannery

For our final dinner, we drove back toward North Rustico Harbor to Rustico Cannery, which opened this past spring. The airy, modern space has giant windows and a big deck that takes in super sunset views.

I needed greens, and Rustico delivered. We had crisp romaine hearts with a creamy, spicy charred jalapeño dressing, lardons, Parmesan, and sourdough crunchies. My husband hit the jackpot with his dinner: panko crusted, pan-fried haddock with pickled beet remoulade, jalapeño relish, confit potatoes, and coleslaw.

Ice Cream: Cows Creamery

I’d be remiss if I didn’t include our multiple visits to Cows Creamery, the island’s local ice cream shop, which — conveniently — has locations across PEI. It sources the milk for the ice cream from small, local dairy farms and the results are winning!  A few standouts were Coffee Cowrunch (English toffee and Oreo), Cownadian Maple (a triple hit of maple ice cream, maple swirl, and maple cookie chunks; when in Rome), and Messie Bessie, chocolate ice cream with Oreo, toffee, and Cow Chips — the thick, ruffled local potato chips covered with rich milk or dark chocolate that are for sale by the bag all over the island.

A final note: Many places are seasonal, so check if they’re open if you’re visiting in cooler months.

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A version of this post originally appeared in Eater Today, which spotlights the freshest news and stories from across the food world every day. Subscribe now.

These days, Bushwick is perhaps best known for its graffiti art, ecuavolley, and queer bars; the Brooklyn neighborhood is famous for its family-owned taquerias, American-Italian pastry shops, and the hallowed grounds of the Girls episode where Shoshanna accidentally does meth and runs around pantsless at a warehouse rave. Situate yourself at the heart of its largest park, Maria Hernandez, and you’ll see a kaleidoscopic blend of ravers, Latino families, and the baklava guy.

Starting this week, it’s also home to a $200 cup of coffee. 

Bushwick’s Sey Coffee recently announced that it would be touring a rare Panamanian geisha from Finca Sophia, a coffee farm in Panama’s Chiriquí highlands. Sey scooped up the geisha at auction for $44,275, which comes to $6,325 per kilogram, or roughly $200 per cup. The geisha is billed as extraordinarily aromatic, floral, and juicy; Doug Cohen, Sey’s director of brand strategy, advises enjoying it with a clean palate, completely black, and taking your time with it. “As the coffee cools, different aspects of its character become apparent, and that evolution is part of the experience,” he says. 

Even among fourth-wave coffee shops where prices continue to climb higher, Sey’s $200 cup is an outlier. “Coffee as a premium product is relatively new,” says Cohen. “For so long, coffee has been treated as a commodity, and its value has been constrained by that perception.” He says that both before and right after COVID, folks were becoming more curious about coffee, and educating themselves on platforms like Youtube, Discord, and online forums about how to appreciate it and “understand just how high the ceiling of quality can be.” The arrival of the $200 cup of coffee from a cafe in a neighborhood at the epicenter of conversations about both culinary innovation and gentrification feels ripe for closer examination.

So, how did this coffee end up at this price? “We have been purchasing coffee from Finca Sophia for several years,” Cohen says. “This release really grew out of that existing relationship.” When Finca’s general manager told Cohen that the farm’s yields were down by approximately 95 percent, Cohen says a bigger question was raised: “What does it mean to be a good partner when the people you have built relationships with are facing a difficult year?” Buying up the geisha beans felt like a way to both support Sey’s producer, and further develop what Cohen calls “elevated coffee experiences.” 

In the 2010s, the artisanal coffeehouse wave washed over the country, and especially Brooklyn, with hipster gusto. Sey Coffee was an integral part of that boom. Initially called Lofted Coffee, it operated out of its founders’ Bushwick loft until it rebranded to Sey in 2017, and expanded operations to its present Bushwick location on Grattan Street. That space has become something of a local icon since; Sprudge called its aesthetic “shoebox crossed with an airplane hangar”; the minimal-industrial, cream-hued interiors hit a very Axel Vervoordt-with-a-cyber-sigil-tattoo note (positive). The shop’s cachet has drawn coffee lovers, artists, yuppies, and artist-yuppies; customers have snacked on the gluten-free pastries from L’imprimerie (and now, post-L’imprimerie closure, pastries from Smør), and often post up with their dogs thanks to the semi-indoor-outdoor layout. 

Sey is hoping to elevate the coffee shop model to something more premium, with a stated focus on ethics and sustainability. Thus far, it’s earned acclaim for those efforts. Food & Wine named it the best coffee shop in New York and received positive media attention for opting out of tipping, choosing instead to pay its staff up to more than 80 percent above the NYC hourly minimum wage; full-time baristas can make up to $31 per hour in addition to receiving benefits and a share of the cafe’s revenue. 

Increasingly, coffee is getting the same treatment as high-end dining and tasting experiences. There’s the omakase-style menu at NYC’s Driftaway Coffee, or San Francisco’s Komakase coffee tasting room, both of which steer coffee away from quick consumption and toward a world of degustation that appears to have more in common with pricier wine and spirit tastings. The expansion of “espresso house” chain Watch House stateside is also an indicator: The London-based specialty roaster expanded to a fourth location in New York City this summer, raising eyebrows for its $32 cup of coffee while also reportedly scouting for more locations in Austin, Chicago, and Miami. 

The emerging demand may be just much about luxury as it is about craft. I can’t help but wonder if the $200 cup of coffee is happening in Bushwick because the Girls-era Bushwickian has grown up and wants more exclusive experiences. Is this what happens when, as culture writer Raven Smith said on his new BBC podcast last week, the indie outgrows its sleaze? “For us, this is not about pushing prices higher for the sake of it,” Cohen says. “It is about challenging how we assign value to coffee in the first place. What is an extraordinary coffee actually worth?” 

As much as we may lament climbing prices for specialty coffee and espresso, why wouldn’t this happen to the category when so many other aspects of food and beverage — from cocktails to sushi to bread — are following the same trajectory? Higher consumer costs notwithstanding, the marketing of specialty beans does steer U.S. coffee culture away from its productivity-focused consumption and the work-optimized “coffee break.”

“Why do we accept that certain wines can command thousands of dollars, yet question whether coffee can have comparable value?” Cohen asks. It’s a fair question, albeit one that I’d answer with another: Once we acknowledge that coffee should command a higher price, who still gets to drink it? 

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There was a time, not too long ago, when a purse shaped like a baguette felt like a thrilling — even subversive — novelty. Now, we hardly bat an eye when we see that Moschino has made a trompe l’oeil celery purse, or that Big Bud Press is making a hot-dog-and-pretzel-print jumpsuit in collaboration with a Los Angeles bar. How did we get here? And has it all become a little too much? 

Fashion has long found inspiration from the culinary world, but the influx of food-fueled prints, graphics, and trompe l’oeil accessories that picked up steam during the pandemic have now reached a cultural tipping point. 

Today, there are truly countless examples of these food motifs and edible, wearable trompe l’oeil creations, at all price points. Loewe’s summer collection featured a $4,150 lambskin tomato clutch, while Walmart’s included a line of rotisserie chicken bag-like purses and charms starting at $5.97. As with many trends, this trajectory started in high fashion and worked its way down to mass-market ubiquity. In 2020, a chocolate chip cookie went down one of New York Fashion Week’s most buzzed-about fall runways. It protruded from a black purse by the designer Puppets and Puppets, a design that quickly went viral for its whimsical inclusion of a classic dessert on a high-end handbag. 

The then-emerging brand made food a central theme of its vision: Its cake-topped aviator caps, Ferrero Rocher heels, and beeswax-sculpted cheese hats — hyperrealistic, absurdist food designs capable of achieving instant social media virality. Prior to working in fashion, Puppets designer Carly Mark was working as an artist whose pieces revolved around candies and snacks. As she told Business of Fashion in 2023, the Puppets universe felt like the ideal pairing given what she considers food and fashion’s motivators: pleasure and money. 

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During the pandemic, the much-duped “strawberry dress” took over TikTok, and Tombolo Company found a hit on its hands with its vongole shirt, which debuted in 2019, but found peak popularity in 2021. The shirt appeared in Vogue in 2020, and InsideHook called it an “obvious bedfellow to day-drinks, rooftops and weekenders” — in other words, a status symbol. Katie Kimmel’s T-shirts made chicken-parm enthusiasm akin to being a devout sports fan, and in 2022, this very publication called “seafood kitsch” the look of the summer, as items like Rachel Antonoff’s super-popular seafood-tower dress flew off the digital shelves. 

Why was food so primed to become a motif in clothing at this point in culture? One could make the argument that it has roots in the millennial optimism years: Earlier in the 2000s and 2010s, the concept of “foodies” was new. Brands printed tongue-in-cheek food- and coffee-related motifs and slogans (a fervent love of avocados comes to mind) on hipster apparel, as the idea that “you are what you eat” developed growing fervor. That period was a key stepping stone in the evolution toward the far more elaborate and pervasive marketability of food-as-identity we see today. Content creator Cole Poska, who is a partner and creative director at Beyond Studios, tells Eater that “food brands have something most brands would kill for: decades of nostalgia, iconic identities, and consumers who are borderline obsessed with them.” Poska’s own Instagram often reimagines restaurant merch just for fun; his designs for Cheesecake Factory apparel went viral, such as a hat that resembles the iconic brown bread. He points out that people will defend their favorite fast-food order like it’s a family member, and with the kind of loyalty that’s hard to manufacture. The same could be said about their martini order, or favorite taco spot; it’s all a way of telling others who we are through what we like.

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But the fatigue is undoubtedly here. In 2024, Bon Appétit asked “Why Does Every Dress Have Pasta and Cocktail Shrimp on It?” And as the novelty factor of a shrimp-print dress has worn off, the next question might be: Will there be any true longevity for these food-as-fashion moments? Our feeds overflow with products that are hurriedly designed for flash-in-the-pan viral trends and quickly destined for a landfill; arguably more so if the object in question prioritizes shock value and gimmicks over function and brand identity. 

This is undoubtedly all related to the accelerated speed of trend cycles and shortened consumer attention spans. However, as Leah Asmelash wrote last year for CNN, the rising costs of food also casts an increasingly sinister shadow over food-themed fashion. In 2026, a $425 cardigan emblazoned with oysters has waning originality compared to a few years ago; it falls into banality at best and the Hunger Games at worst; its wearer indicating that they’re financially comfortable and, more importantly, well-fed. In that light, beyond its role in identity, food has become more of a status symbol than ever. A sweater touting one’s love of caviar is shorthand for their access to and appreciation of luxury, culinary and otherwise. But sporting the mass-market Temu version? It’s more akin to wearing a faux Gucci belt.  

“Food brands have something most brands would kill for: decades of nostalgia, iconic identities, and consumers who are borderline obsessed with them.”

Cole Poska

If it’s possible to escape the sense of accelerated-trend-cycle disposability, it may have to be through a more subtle approach than, say, a bag that looks like a giant stick of butter. Sam Salad is the co-founder of Meals, a Los Angeles-based, workwear-inspired apparel company that, by its own description, “bakes ‘food culture’ into apparel, blurring the lines between the clothes we eat and the food we wear.” Utility is at the forefront of Meals, which offers a classic chef pant with a slightly fuller cut, in both basic colors and subdued aesthetic homages to blue cheese and watermelon. When Meals launched in 2019, Salad was selling premium denim along Venice’s Abbot Kinney Boulevard, a hotbed of Instagrammy food culture and trendy restaurants like Gjelina that helped inspire his own brand. “Design today has to translate across languages and platforms,” Salad tells Eater. 

Food is hardly a new bedfellow for fashion designers, even if today’s hyper-fast trend cycle has kicked it into overdrive. “Food is totally universal,” Salad says. “Issey Miyake once merchandised their pleats collection as little omakase sets.”  He cites that collection among other fashion-meets-food moments that he considers successful, such as the iconic Salvador Dalí- and Elsa Schiaparelli-designed lobster dress. At the time of its 1937 creation, the dress was a scandal: It assumed a conformity-defying sartorial stance and was fittingly worn by Wallace Simpson. Today, its highly devolved spawn are available on Shein for $13. 

As it stands, one clear way out of corny, food motif purgatory is for brands — fashion or food — to focus less on quantity and more on storytelling and quality. “We do a few things really well, and that’s enough,” Salad says, “Like In-N-Out [Burger].” 

Poska’s philosophy is similar. “I’d rather make one thing people talk about for a year than 20 things people forget about tomorrow,” he says. “The first person to make a candle look like a stick of butter is a genius. The hundredth person is just making a candle.”

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When Yelp was first launched in 2004, it flopped. The company’s initial model of an email-based referral service failed to take off until its creators realized users were taking the platform into their own hands; in lieu of sending one another recommendations via email chain, they began using a “hidden” link at the bottom of the startup’s website to write unsolicited reviews of everything from doctors to restaurants. Yelp 2.0 launched in 2005, and gave those reviews a more visible place to live online — one that emboldened users to feel more authentic stewardship, by way of direct authorship, over hyping up the businesses they enjoyed (or didn’t). The startup bought a whopping 20-million-business database, and amplified a world of reviews outside of the restaurant- critic echo chamber. It was a fresh democratization of information, which was itself one of the more optimistic legacies of the Y2K internet. 

It’s been over 20 years since Yelp was founded. At its best, the platform still feels like a place where the voices of hungry, curious diners can share their personal experiences and offer recommendations and tips; at its worst, it feels like a bloated repository for reviews filled with misdirected anger, unreasonable expectations, or else completely fake customer reviews. Initially, unsubstantiated and unreliable reviews were more often written by a person — either someone from the business itself, or paid by the business; now, a fake review can be penned by a paid influencer, a detailed generative AI prompt, or purchased from third-party agencies that will produce fake bot reviews in bulk.

Fake reviews were perhaps inevitable. Bot-driven comments became ubiquitous during an overripe moment in the untamed internet’s lifespan. But how does a restaurant shamed for gamifying its reviews — even if it was, presumably, out of desperation in a tough economic landscape — regain customers’ broken trust? 

… The offending restaurant’s foot traffic went down by 8 percent, and dipped even lower around the holidays, a time when would-be diners rely even more on Yelp.

In 2026’s AI-addled digital ecosystem, researchers are starting to understand even more about how paid-for, planted reviews impact the restaurants behind them, and whether trying to gamify platforms to achieve high ratings is worth it at all for businesses. A recently published working paper on the consequences of restaurants flagged by Yelp for fake (planted, incentivized) reviews found that since 2023, more than 4,900 businesses have been flagged with Yelp’s “Consumer Alert” banner, which exists on the penalized business’ page for a 90-day period and lets Yelp users know that the business has been caught peddling fake reviews. In 2020, the fast-casual chain Burgerim was found guilty of planting fake reviews, and received over 200 digital warning banners across its various locations’ Yelp pages.

The impacts of that digital pillory extend far beyond its 90-day duration. Yi Cao is an assistant professor of accounting at George Mason University, and the co-author of the paper; almost immediately, Cao noticed the offending restaurant’s foot traffic went down by 8 percent, and dipped even lower around the holidays, a time when would-be diners rely even more on Yelp. Cao’s team cross-analyzed the business’ performance on Yelp with real-life foot traffic reports (from global location data firm SafeGraph) and credit card transaction data (courtesy of Consumer Edge), and discovered that most of the penalized restaurants struggled to recover to pre-alert traffic even after a year and a half. The stink of chicanery lingered. 

While Cao says his team doesn’t know every signal that Yelp uses to identify fake reviews, they do know that it relies “substantially on reports from consumers and business owners,” and that “they also have an algorithm running in the background to screen reviews for AI-generated language — which is a sign of possible review inflation.” At this point, the cost of planting a good review is only getting steeper as the technology capable of detecting it improves. “This is a classical theory of a trade-off between the benefits of manipulating reputation and the risks of getting caught,” Cao explains, “When the risk is relatively low, the business owners decide the incremental benefits are worth the risk.”

Yelp’s real restaurant reviews don’t necessarily need to be etched in stone, but as AI-penned reviews become less detectable and more sophisticated, what diners want now, more than ever, is a human touch and a sense of authenticity.

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From Barcelona’s towering churches and bustling avenues to the sun-drenched beaches and idyllic plazas, it’s obvious why this city captures visitors’ hearts. You can also eat incredibly well here, and often for not very much money — though Barcelona loves a tasting menu and the World’s 50 Best Restaurant list awarded Disfrutar the No. 1 spot last year. Despite Barcelona’s famed cuisine, it’s also easy to have a downright disappointing meal if you settle for any old paella-slinging bar along Les Rambles (known in Spanish as La Rambla) or La Barceloneta. (Tip: If a restaurant has to pay someone to stand outside and hassle pedestrians, the food isn’t worth it.)

Start with some classic tapas and paella (both great but neither entirely Catalan) and be sure to seek out local gems like bittersweet vermouth, seasonal seafood, and homestyle Catalan cuisine. But after writing and revising this list for nearly a decade, I have to insist you don’t overlook the city’s burgeoning global cuisines; save room for Calabrese paninis, Northeast Asian sharing plates with natural wines, towering fried chicken sandwiches, South Indian fish stews, and nose-to-tail yakitori.

We update this list quarterly to make sure it reflects the ever-changing Barcelona dining scene. Our write-ups include insider tips from our experienced writers and editors, as well as a rough range of pricing for each destination — ranging from $ for quick, inexpensive meals with dishes largely under $10 (or the equivalent in euros), to $$$$ for places where entrees exceed $30.

New to the map in October 2026: Lluritu, a Mediterranean marisquería with three locations across the city; a parallel universe of Catalan culinary history in a former water bottling plant at Franca; and the trendy modern Catalan cuisine of Manda Huevos.

Sam Zucker is a freelance writer, photographer, filmmaker, travel Instagrammer, and gastronomic tour guide in Barcelona. He has contributed to Monocle, National Geographic’s “48 Hours” guides, Culture Trip, and Vice Travel, among others.

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The hottest new spot in Washington, D.C. focuses on the traditional heat-packed cooking methods of northern Thailand, while still using local ingredients from around the DMV. Alfie’s, from chefs Justin Ahn and Alex McCoy, started as a pop-up in Petworth in 2017 before traveling around the world, serving diners in New York and London. This year, the restaurant put down permanent roots in a Georgetown alleyway. The co-owners led us through a day in the new kitchen, preparing everything from hand-cut green papaya in som tam salad to the limited-quantity Thai steak frites with a massaman curry peppercorn sauce.

In the video, the kitchen team breaks down rib-eye steaks for their take on a steak au poivre, which they only make five of each night. The steaks are carefully seared for each order, with the au poivre massaman curry sauce is finished in the pan with the leftover beef fat. Classic “bar fries” are served up with the massive 26-ounce rib-eye.

Elsewhere in the kitchen, another chef carves green papayas. The irregular slices of papaya get tossed in a funky, spicy dressing for each order. Ko calls it the “most labor intensive dish on the line;” each order is carefully mixed with fresh tomatoes, peanuts, and a palm syrup and tamarind-heavy dressing. A rich pork belly curry is simmering in the background. Gaeng hung lay (a traditional northern Thai curry) cooks down large pieces of pork belly to get that fatty layer, with pickled garlic and pineapple balancing out the rich flavors of curry paste, tamarind, and fish sauce.

Right before service, the chefs begin prepping herbs and sticky rice that has been soaking overnight and is quickly steamed for that malleable, glutinous texture. McCoy talks about how being a chef is more of a lifestyle than a job, but there’s immense payoff when you get to see diners enjoy your hard work every night. He hopes that Alfie’s will become a place where “you can just forget where you are, have a good time, and just lose yourself in the experience and the food.”

Watch the kitchen team at Aflie’s cook classic Thai dishes and fusion plates like curry steak frites in this episode of Now Open.

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This excerpt was originally published in Pre Shift, our newsletter for the hospitality industry. Subscribe for more first-person accounts, advice, and interviews.

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When Chanita Chayaluk decided to open her restaurant and wine bar Taan, she hoped “to showcase Thai food in Chicago in a different light,” she says. “The first [wave of] immigration of Thai people in Chicago was in the 1970s, and a lot of [Thai] food here still feels like it’s from that time.” In September, she opened with a menu including miang, a Northern Thai dish made with fermented tea leaves, and a whole, deep-fried fish in a fish-sauce caramel. 

Another quirk of operating in Chicago? “We’re still pretty ‘Midwest nice,’” says Chayaluk. “We try to overaccommodate and appease the masses.” In the early days of service, guests made frequent requests for substitutions or accommodations due to preferences and dietary restrictions. “It would slow down service and speed, and that was not just affecting us, but the guest experience in many ways,” she says. With a small kitchen and staff, it was hard to keep up. “It just felt like we were Chipotle.” When a guest asked for green curry mussels “but without the mussels,” it was a turning point. 

Chayaluk implemented a limited substitution policy at Taan, stating on Instagram that ingredients like fish sauce and shrimp paste are “the fabric that defines our cuisine,” and therefore, could not be removed from any dishes that include it. 

A decade or so ago, substitution culture was generally frowned upon and derided. Recently, though, some restaurants report it bubbling back up—and in full force. There’s a swirl of factors that got us here: Lunch slop bowl spots primed customers to expect a detailed level of customization with their orders. Unreasonable Hospitality pushed an intensified “customer is always right” mentality. And influencers entering the food-review space have made criticism of anything—including a restaurant choosing not to honor certain dietary preferences—ripe for an immediate, viral takedown. Couple all of that with the fact that it is hard to keep a restaurant afloat these days, and you’ve got several operators giving in, whether to specific requests, or to altering their menus altogether (see also: the great de-spicification of menus.)

At the same time, restaurants like Taan and New York’s Ha’s Snack Bar—which proudly announces in its Instagram bio that everything contains fish sauce—are standing their ground.

For Lom Wong in Phoenix, Arizona, substitution and modification requests have ramped up after receiving national attention. Chef Yotaka “Sunny” Martin was recognized by the James Beard Awards last year, and the restaurant was named a Michelin Bib Gourmand in August. “[After the award,] we had more guests than we were used to picking things apart. They were asking us to modify dishes or not understanding our service style and why we weren’t coursing things in a European fashion,” says chef and co-owner Alex Martin. “[There is a] European distinction of what an award-winning restaurant looks like, so people equated that recognition with a white-tablecloth restaurant. We were just like, ‘Well, that’s not who we’ve ever been, and it’s never what our restaurant will ever be.’”

Like Taan, Lom Wong took to social media to set expectations, including that the restaurant would not “make substitutions simply to make a dish more familiar,” and that certain dishes might differ from Western expectations of them; beef might have gristle, fishes will be whole, and both choices are fully intentional. “Sunny is our guiding light of cultural context,” says Martin. “[She advises, considering if] changing something about a dish compromises the integrity of the dish.” For example, the mango salad can be ordered with the shrimp on the side, but the restaurant won’t remove beef or shrimp paste from dishes that necessitate them. 

Chayaluk takes a similar approach at Taan; there is always a vegan, gluten-free option (currently a fried rice) that she describes as a “catchall” for those who can’t have other items on the menu. “We make sure that that dish is also really, really good and substantial; it’s not just an appetizer,” she says. “It’s not an afterthought.” 

Staff at both restaurants are encouraged to uphold the boundaries, which both Chayaluk and Martin say are as much in place for protecting their staff’s peace as they are for ensuring quality control for guests. While there has been some backlash, the expectation-setting at the start of the meal (and before, thanks to the social media posts) has for the most part been taken well. “The way we explain [our policy] to guests is kindly saying we respect your preferences, but they’re your preferences,” says Martin, “and steering them toward dishes on the menu that might already align with those.”

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This review contains spoilers for the film You Can See Everything.

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A version of this post originally appeared in Eater Today, which spotlights the freshest news and stories from across the food world every day. Subscribe now.

I saw You Can See Everything — the new documentary about disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, co-directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim — on Thursday, and I still feel like my brain is trying to punch its way out of a bag, or like I’ve just awakened from an Inception-esque dream within a dream. It’s difficult to describe the winding, twisting, nearly three-hour film to someone unfamiliar with its many layers of context, from Fielder’s Dadaist, boundaryless approach to his subjects to Holmes’s hypnotic affect, which is either highly effective gaslighting or blinding, self-deluded earnestness. (Which is it? I still don’t know.)

What happens when you take two unreliable narrators — make that three, if you include Holmes’s partner, Billy Evans, whose on-camera persona morphs from protective, naive tech bro to unscrupulous grifter — put them in a jar, and shake them? The result is that the more questions are asked, the further the truth drifts out of reach. It’s like staring at a Magic Eye image, slightly crossing your eyes, desperate to make out the hidden 3D subject but never quite managing to see it. Eventually, you start worrying your eyes might get stuck that way.

The discourse surrounding the film is already abundant, but we’re here to talk about the eggs.

If you’re familiar with the hallmarks of Fielderian programming, you know that Fielder is prone to hyperfixating on seemingly mundane details that later return to completely upend viewers’ expectations. In You Can See Everything, one such detail is observed in an exchange between Holmes and Evans as they make eggs. How much can be gleaned from watching someone make breakfast? A lot, apparently.

In the first half of the film, Fielder is fully embedded in the rental home of Holmes and Evans, who have invited the filmmakers to document the final weeks before Holmes reports to federal prison. (How and why they agreed to this arrangement is incomprehensible if they knew anything about Fielder’s work.) During this time, the narrative takes a surprisingly sympathetic turn for Holmes, who seems intent on convincing the filmmakers — and Fielder specifically — that she is actually a sweet, misunderstood victim of circumstance, not a Machiavellian con woman who defrauded investors. Frankly, aspects of this claim feel convincing at times. Viewers are invited to witness her ostensibly less guarded moments, including a scene in which she makes breakfast with Evans. As Fielder interviews her, Holmes somewhat unenthusiastically and limply beats a bowl of eggs with a fork. The camera lingers on her feeble whisking technique. Then, after a few seconds, another set of hands enters the frame: those of Evans. Without a word, he takes the bowl and fork from Holmes and begins whipping the eggs with considerably greater fervor.

Now, backseat driving in the kitchen is hardly uncommon among couples, though it feels like a fast track to bickering. (Evans tells Fielder that he and Holmes “never fight”; Holmes is also emphatic that she’s never lied in her life. Again, unreliable narrators.) What’s less common — or at least generally considered pretty rude and aggressive — is grabbing something out of your partner’s hands mid-task to take over. Fielder points this out, asking Evans why he felt the need to grab the eggs; Holmes explains that Evans doesn’t like the way she mixes them and thinks he can do it better. 

It’s a tiny interaction, but a remarkably revealing one. Evans feels comfortable taking control of something Holmes is doing, without so much as asking, and seems largely unaware of how his behavior might come across on camera. Holmes, meanwhile, appears accustomed to the intrusion, offering an explanation rather than an objection. (Granted, unlike sustained and unblinking eye contact, beating eggs does not appear to be one of Ms. Holmes’s strong suits. Typically, one does so vigorously to aerate them and make them fluffier for an omelet or scramble.)

But with this being Elizabeth Holmes, we must also ask: Could it be a case of weaponized incompetence? Is it possible that, not wanting the task of beating the eggs, she intentionally does so insufficiently to make Evans take over? Is she being controlled, or is she getting someone else to do her work for her? Or is this evidence of her “different” way of thinking, that she truly doesn’t know the “right” way to beat them? 

In interviews in the film, Holmes portrays the Theranos years as a period during which she was manipulated by her former boyfriend and business partner, Sunny Balwani, and maintains that her intentions were ultimately good for humanity, regardless of the consequences for investors and patients who received unreliable test results. Whether she actually believes this account of events, or simply knows how to sell it, remains one of the film’s central mysteries — as does the extent to which her romantic relationships lead her to take the fall for the actions of bad worse men.

These questions reverberate in the second half of the film, when — with Holmes now in prison — we learn some unsettling things about Evans. He has power of attorney over Holmes, and has been using her X account to post odd, profanity-laced remarks that seem entirely incongruent with her own manner of speaking. Suddenly, the eggs scene looks like an early indication that Evans is far more domineering than the protective-partner persona he’s been presenting. His ostensible vigilance toward Holmes may be genuine on some level, but it’s difficult to reconcile with his willingness to license her image for billboards promoting another (bizarre-seeming) entrepreneur’s Theranos obsession, or his apparent acceptance of the possibility that her AI-generated likeness could be used to create pornography or other content antithetical to her interests. 

And yet, even as Evans emerges as an increasingly unsavory character, Holmes remains inscrutable. Does she know what he’s doing? Does she approve? Is he exploiting her circumstances, or are they working toward a shared objective — reputational, monetary, or otherwise? The film offers kaleidoscopic evidence for competing interpretations, including that even if Holmes is being dominated, she may be content with that dynamic. 

What’s extraordinary about Fielder and Oppenheim’s documentary is its optical-illusion-like layers of “truth.” Despite the film’s many harrowing close-ups of microexpressions, there is what Holmes and Evans say, then there is what they do, or have done, or plan to do (launch a Theranos 2.0 called Haemanthus, apparently). There is also Fielder’s own history as a provocateur, a faux-earnest magician who will go to virtually any lengths to actualize a concept, and who seems remarkably capable of keeping a stone-cold straight face through any scenario. 

We know enough about Fielder to question his sincerity, too. There are several moments in the film where I — and the several friends I went to see the film with — wondered if there was palpable sexual chemistry between him and Holmes, and whether Fielder would act on it. If he did, we couldn’t agree on whether it would be genuine or an act of performance art, or whether he has any barriers between those things. 

The film’s most revealing moments are the ones that feel off-script for everyone involved: a fleeting facial expression, an odd word choice in an otherwise emphatic statement, a series of gestures exchanged over a bowl of scrambled eggs. The subjects, who have invited themselves to be watched, have few moments when they seem to forget that; those instances are when we ostensibly have the clearest insight into their reality. Frankly, it’s still murky, and that seems to be both the point and the irony in the film’s title.

You Can See Everything elevates Nathan Fielder’s reputation far beyond simply a master of cringe humor; there is, here, a glimmer of genius. This story feels almost fateful in its ability to showcase his gifts, illuminating the bottomless strangeness, the infinite complexities, of how humans interact with one another. Even when an idea is big, it’s the little things that matter the most. And in a documentary that promises you can see everything, we learn that it’s up to us to look closely — and even then, what we see might look different in another light.

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In the suburbs of Chicago where they both grew up, it was just pizza, according to Brittany and Brennan Grosvenor, the couple behind Proof in Portland, Oregon. Ordering came down to the question of “thin-crust, deep-dish, or double-dough,” Brittany recalls of her family’s Friday night tradition. The Grosvernors sell the former at Proof, though the language of “thin crust” has given way to the more nationally familiar phrasing of “tavern-style,” the pizza trend that has swept from coast to coast in recent years. 

Outsiders might associate Chicago with its famous, tourist-beckoning deep-dish pizza, but Brittany says that’s just not reflective of reality, citing deep dish as a much less frequent treat than the Midwestern, thin-crust style that’s gaining popularity. “The pizza you get every week, or if you go to a kid’s birthday party, it’s always tavern-style,” she says.

“Tavern-style” pizza — which is prevalent  across the Midwest, with Chicago, Milwaukee, Minnesota, and St. Louis touting similar pies — is known for its thin, cracker-like crust, cut into a lattice instead of triangular slices. Depending on the region and the pizza shop where one’s nostalgia lies, the sauce might lean sweet or spicy. Lightness and crispness, though, is the style’s unique sell. Writing for Esquire in 2023, Omar Mamoon called the variant, which was then still on the rise, “a foil” to famously thick Detroit-style pizza, which had its big moment in the late 2010s. 

The beauty of the tavern-style pie is its shareability. A pizza yields more slices when cut into a grid than into triangles, explains Bradley Shorten, who’s behind both Kim’s Uncle Pizza in his hometown Chicago suburb of Westmont, Illinois, and the recently opened La Merna in Washington, D.C. Pizza cut into little squares makes for great drinking food, especially since it fits on a cocktail napkin. What makes a good pie, according to Shorten, is that every square has a little of every ingredient; the toppings go to the edge. And while the four, small corner slices might not be the “best” ones, Shorten says, they’re the ones “everybody goes for,” especially if they’re from Chicago.

Over the past few years, as “taverns” have become growing fixations for a cadre of restaurateurs, the “party cut” pizza and tavern-style pizza spots have also become ubiquitous, with openings like Keepers in New York city; One Trick Pony in Forth Worth, Texas; Tillie’s Tavern Pizza in Wheat Ridge, Colorado; and Zarella and Dimmi Dimmi Corner Italian in Chicago, where the style has always been abundant. For some Chicagoans, these openings across the country are an opportunity to correct the record about their city’s pizza culture, and for other Midwesterners to claim their stake in the region’s pizza, too.

When Mike Fadem opened the second location of his popular NYC pizzeria Ops — known for its wood-fired Neapolitan-esque pies with leopard-spotted crusts and pliant dough — he wanted to offer something new. Fadem is from St. Louis, where the city’s namesake pizza is super-thin. Despite his love for it, “it’s maybe not the best version of tavern pizza,” Fadem admits, noting the iteration’s many critics, some of whom take issue with its use of the gooey processed cheese called provel. The trajectory of tavern-style pizza has been like a game of telephone, he explains: St. Louis pizza is derived from thin-crust Chicago pizza, which itself came from Neapolitan pizza. Divergence has accompanied each jump.

One of Fadem’s employees at Ops, meanwhile, is from New Jersey, which claims its own thin-crust, tavern- or bar-style pizza tradition. (The bar pies of the Boston area also have their own devoted following.) Accordingly, “I had this interest in ‘can we make an Ops version of this?’” Fadem says. With Ops known for sourdough, Fadem also wanted to highlight the rich flavor of whole grains. And he wanted it to be really crispy, a quality he says draws in New Yorkers. Fadem’s take is on the menu as the regionally agnostic “tavernetta.” Though St. Louis and New Jersey served as initial inspiration, the best pizza from his research was actually in Milwaukee. The Tavernetta hasn’t displaced the other pies at the restaurant; it’s ordered in addition to them, with most groups getting at least one.

In June, Los Angeles cocktail spot Bar Next Door celebrated its third anniversary by adding food to its menu. Previously, the bar had allowed customers to bring in pies from Prince Street Pizza next door since Prince Street co-owner Lawrence Longo is a partner in it. “But, you know, after having a slice, sometimes you get a little full and you’re like, I want to go to bed,” says owner and bar director Brynn Smith. “That’s the whole goal for us: for people to stay a little longer, drink more. We thought the tavern-style pizza would be perfect.” The fact that the pizzas — they’re technically listed on the menu as “bar pies,” to better go with the establishment’s name — are exclusive to the bar just adds another reason to go out, Smith says.

The idea of the tavern as a social and convivial space is inseparable from the tavern-style pizza. Shorten’s goal with La Merna — which he runs with his wife Meg Schmitt, who grew up in St. Louis — was the feel of a Chicago dive bar or a Wisconsin supper club: a place with wood-paneled walls and checkered floors, where people could slide into a red leather booth for pitchers of beer and pizza and hang out for a while. As my colleague Francky Knapp wrote last year, the rising appeal of the “tavern” vibe across restaurants nationwide is rooted in the sense of providing somewhere homey and lived-in. At taverns, diners are beckoned to sprawl out and stay awhile; to free themselves of pretense and to tap into something welcoming in its familiarity. This, for so many people, is exemplified by the archetype of hometown pizza shop, which is forever tethered in our cultural imaginations to the trappings of a previous, simpler era.

It’s for this reason that, in Oregon, the Grosvenors have started serving their take on Bosco sticks, the stuffed breadsticks of Midwestern cafeterias, and Italian beef with giardiniera. While they could find certain Midwestern hits around Portland, it sometimes frustrated them that they couldn’t find everything in one place. According to Brennan Grosvenor, “We’re just trying to embody the feeling: If you went into a tavern in Chicago, what could you order there?”

from Eater https://ift.tt/mhJ7o6I