🚽NYC’s flushes roared
Restaurants brace for a rebuilding year, and Black culinary pioneers get their overdue spotlight—plus spicy kitchen secrets revealed today.
Good morning. Earlier this week, Vice reported that New York City logged the equivalent of 761,719 toilet flushes in the 15 minutes after Bad Bunny finished his Super Bowl halftime show. Water use dipped while he performed, meaning hundreds of thousands of people collectively decided it could wait. The second he left the stage, the city’s plumbing staged a comeback with one of the most unified releases in modern infrastructure history.
Consider this newsletter the opposite of that moment. No need to brace, queue, or schedule plumbing logistics — just food thoughts delivered without triggering a municipal surge.
In the food world
🤔Tech eating independent restaurants
Last week tech-backed food hall delivery app Wonder announced it acquired NYC’s Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken. The original location isn’t going anywhere, but its fried chicken is about to start commuting—joining Wonder’s 90-plus locations across the Northeast, with nine more stops planned in Massachusetts. The acquisition signals a new playbook for food tech: instead of building original concepts, buy beloved independents and distribute them at scale.
🍔Wendy's is closing 350 stores
The company announced it would close 300-358 locations by mid-2026 — about 5-6% of its entire US footprint. Q4 2025 US same-store sales fell 11.3%. Global same-store sales were down 10%, worse than the 8.5% analysts projected. Interim CEO Ken Cook labeled 2026 “a rebuilding year,” which is corporate for “let’s start with the exits.” Franchisees are now being asked to decide which stores are worth keeping.
🏚️Eating-in tonight
According to QSR Magazine, the U.S. may be entering its “let’s just eat at home” era. A new survey from Popmenu found 68% of diners plan to cut back on eating out in 2026, citing inflation and general wallet anxiety. In response, restaurants are rolling out deals, limited-time menu drops, and polished tech—making a case that cooking and dishwashing are hobbies no one asked for.
Jambalaya to Jack Daniels
February is cold, but Black History Month reminds us where the real warmth lives: in kitchens that turned necessity into genius. Some of the best food on earth exists because someone, somewhere, refused to let limited ingredients limit the outcome. This month, we celebrate those individuals who proved flavor doesn’t follow rules—it follows imagination, instinct, and the confidence to go back for seconds.
Nathan Green: Jasper Newton Daniel (a.k.a. “Jack Daniel“) enslaved Nathan “Nearest” Green to work on his distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee, where he practiced a new technique (charcoal mellowing) to filter bourbon. While we struggle to brew an acceptable cup of coffee, the result of that technique has more than 13 million cases being sold annually, making Nathan Green the first master distiller of the famous Tennessee whiskey.
James Hemings: French food is associated with Michelin Stars, beautiful presentation and sophisticated techniques. However, in what is the second biggest culture shock to Americans, after paid public toilets in Europe, is that the pioneer of French food in the US was James Hemings - a slave in the ownership of Thomas Jefferson. Hemings is credited in bringing dishes like french fries, mac and cheese, creme brûlée and French meringues to the US.
Alfred L Cralle: Every time you indulge in that perfect scoop of ice cream sitting on top of the chocolate dipped waffle cone, remember Alfred L Cralle, inventor of the most fundamental equipment - the ice cream scoop. While working as a porter at a hotel in Philadelphia, he patented his invention while watching people struggle to get the ice cream into cones.
Frederick McKinley Jones: Friday nights and frozen TV dinners would not be thing if
you have a lifeit weren’t for Frederick McKinley Jones. A skilled electrician and mechanic, he’s known for the refrigerated system he invented - Thermo King. It allowed for fresh and frozen foods from around the world to be transported and sold in stores.George Crum: George Crum can be credited with the perfect pairing to frozen dinners and TV - chips! Invented in 1853 when a picky customer asked Crum for the equivalent of extra guac on a burrito bowl — extra-thin French fries. A frustrated Crum, sliced the potato as thinly as possible, fried it in grease and sent them out not knowing that he had invented the staple snack for every occasion.
Quiz: What’s Your Grocery Store Personality?
Answer instinctively. No overthinking. This is not a budgeting exercise.
Cooking tips
Bloom spices in oil or butter instead of adding them directly to the pot. Stir for 30-60 seconds before adding anything else. It extracts more flavor than adding them directly to a water-based dish.
Keep butter as cold as possible when making pastry or biscuits. Flakiness comes from cold butter pieces melting in the oven and creating steam pockets.
Save at least a full cup of pasta water before draining, and use it. Pasta water can emulsify fat and liquid together, making the sauce stick to the pasta better instead of pooling at the bottom.
Did you know?
Most coffee tastes best between 4–15 minutes after brewing. Before that, it’s still aggressively releasing volatile aromatics. After that, oxidation starts flattening complexity.
Every vanilla latte, candle, and birthday cake traces back to a 12-year-old enslaved boy named Edmond Albius on Réunion, who figured out how to make vanilla grow outside Mexico using a hand pollination technique.
Saffron costs more than gold by weight — Each crocus flower produces exactly three stigmas, and it takes roughly 75,000 flowers to yield one pound of saffron.
Also simmering
How the supermarket’s cheapest fish became Gen Z’s latest obsession — Sardines went wellness-coded and the attention already drove prices up on the budget crowd that started it.
Sourdough starters: How flour choice shapes microbial communities — New research shows switching flour types shifts starter bacteria and flavor profile, without changing any technique.
Weird food laws that still exist — In Ohio, eating a doughnut while walking backward is technically against the law.
While this simmers…
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