Author: Jawdah Hannad Basara

When the bill arrives, a line that wasn’t negotiated, wasn’t requested, and is getting bigger is printed neatly near the bottom: a discretionary service charge of 12.5%, or, more frequently these days, 15%. The tipping culture in the UK is being subtly eradicated by this trend, not by outlawing tips but by substituting something that merely looks like a tip. In Britain, tipping was never as customary as it is in the United States. As etiquette experts like to say, a tip was a bonus rather than a right. You never, ever tipped in a pub, rounded up the taxi…

A dessert that doesn’t go away has a subtly remarkable quality. Before disappearing into the back of a recipe binder, most recipes have their moment—a season, a trend cycle, or a fleeting appearance at enough dinner tables. That is not the recipe for the Pampered Chef fruit pizza. Decade after decade, it appears on kitchen counters before the Fourth of July crowd arrives, on folding tables at summer parties, and on Instagram reels created by people who learned it at their mother’s Pampered Chef party sometime in the 1990s. It’s an almost embarrassingly easy recipe. Before anything else happens, a…

There are recipes for mac and cheese, and then there are those that subtly take over a family’s routine and never go away. The baked version from The Chunky Chef definitely belongs in the second group. It has received almost 8,000 ratings since it went up in late 2019, and its unyielding rating of 4.88 out of 5 indicates that people aren’t just cooking it once. The layering is what sets this recipe apart from the many others that are similar. Pasta is typically poured into a dish, covered with cheese, and placed in the oven by home cooks. By…

Ranch tends to incite defensiveness. Someone in the room will cross their arms if you mention that you are altering the recipe. After all, Americans have been debating this condiment—bottled, powdered, drizzled, and dunked—for decades. Therefore, a reasonable person might have raised an eyebrow when Greek yogurt and cottage cheese began to appear in the same sentence as ranch dressing. And yet. Here we are. In meal prep circles, the popular recipe—blended cottage cheese, a tablespoon of ranch seasoning, and a scoop of plain Greek yogurt—has become something of a quiet phenomenon. It appears creamy. It has a ranch flavor.…

An assembled burger that has been refrigerated overnight has a certain melancholy. The lettuce appears resigned to its fate, the bun has absorbed the condiments, and the patty, which was once something to look forward to, is now sitting in a cold, congealed state that feels almost accusing. The natural tendency of most people is to microwave everything and deal with the fallout. This seems to be very concerning to chefs. Disassembly is the first rule, and perhaps the most crucial. The burger must be disassembled before it comes into contact with heat. Bun, toppings, and patty—all kept apart. ButcherBox’s…

Some families create actors in the same way that some kitchens make bread—almost instinctively, as though the surroundings require it. That’s precisely what the Katz family is like. Joel Grey, an Oscar-winning actor and Tony Award-winning Cabaret emcee, wed actress Jo Wilder. The moment their daughter Jennifer Grey entered a dance floor across from Patrick Swayze, she became a cultural icon. James Katz, their son, went on to become a chef. And if you think about it long enough, it seems like the most intriguing choice anyone in that household has ever made. As Joel Grey’s son, I grew up…

A certain type of chef doesn’t have to yell. Among them is Andrew Sargent. The Fort Worth native, who is thirty years old, has already won a Netflix competition that millions of people watched, worked in two of the most demanding fine dining kitchens in North America, and discreetly signed a lease on his first restaurant in one of Manhattan’s most competitive dining hallways. It wasn’t a coincidence. It seems like this was always the plan, but it was carried out more quickly than most people anticipated, based on his trajectory over the past year. When Netflix debuted the first…

Early on in MasterChef: Global Gauntlet, around the second episode, it becomes clear how ambitious the whole thing is. Gordon Ramsay is pacing the kitchen floor like a man who genuinely doesn’t understand why someone would under-season a broth. There are twenty home cooks, four regions of the world, and one trophy. The American MasterChef franchise’s 16th season is attempting something the show hasn’t really done before: it’s asking its contestants to prepare meals for a larger audience in addition to themselves. Their way of life. Their ancestry. Their region of the globe. Contestants are divided into four regional teams…

In Britain, there are some establishments that serve more than just food. Among them is Devon’s Gidleigh Park, which is tucked away on the outskirts of Dartmoor. And it meant Michael Caines for more than 20 years. For many diners of a particular generation, his name became so closely linked to the property that you couldn’t mention one without thinking of the other. In 1994, he was a young, aspirational chef who had just returned from training in some of the most prestigious kitchens in France. What transpired next was the kind of story that journalists strive for and find…

A man who drives a food truck to a parking lot at five o’clock in the evening, sets up his stall, and begins brewing chai has a subtle stubbornness—not handcrafted tea. Not a cup of twelve-pound chai. Just the right kind of tea, warm and flavorful, that makes people think of places they’ve been or miss. It’s important to pay attention to what Jerin Raju has been doing in Worcester. Teaon by Chef Jerin is open from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. from Croft Road Carpark in Worcester, postcode WR1 3NZ. By any standard measure, it’s not a glamorous setup.…