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Welcome to Open Tab, a weekly roundup of news, gossip, and stories that have stayed open in my tabs all week. Last week we covered the pasta sauce company that wants to record your conversations.<\/em><\/p>\n This week I was pleased to read a lovely Grub Street<\/em> piece by Ella Quittner<\/strong> about Jacques P\u00e9pin, now 90, who makes the world\u2019s greatest chicken. I particularly liked when P\u00e9pin told Quittner, author of the incredible cookbook Obsessed with the Best,<\/em> that everyone\u2019s \u201cdefinition of the best of anything is \u2018to a certain extent a narcissistic reflection of your taste.\u2019\u201d Gagged me a bit, to be honest.<\/p>\n Oysterman Graham Platner<\/strong> will likely be the Democratic challenger to Susan Collins in Maine\u2019s upcoming US Senate race after governor Janet Mills dropped out this week. When I profiled Platner late last year, I found it fascinating to see how food\u2014and his work as an oysterman\u2014play a huge part in his politics.<\/p>\n Also this week: Noma<\/strong>\u2019s reservation books are certainly not empty, there\u2019s pizza drama<\/strong> on the feed, we review Goop Kitchen<\/strong>‘\u2019s NYC offering, and we\u2019re curious: Would you take product recs from an AI podcast<\/strong>?<\/p>\n Perhaps you remember the Noma scandal that rocked the food world and ended with Ren\u00e9 Redzepi\u2019s stepping away from the LA residency? After the outcry, sponsors dropped, reservations were canceled, and the general sentiment was \u201cscrew those guys! I\u2019ll never eat deer penis there ever again!\u201d<\/p>\n And yet here we are. The reservation books at Noma aren\u2019t empty. Tom Sietsema, former food critic at The Washington Post<\/em>, ate at the Noma pop-up last month and declared the food \u201cperfect-adjacent.\u201d Now Los Angeles Times<\/em> editor Daniel Hernandez, too, has reported on his meal at Noma LA, even as the paper\u2019s critics declined to dine there. Certainly, they\u2019re not alone. Elon Musk has eaten there, as have some notable other rich people.<\/p>\n As another LA scandal restaurant, Sqirl, enters its redemption era post Moldy Jam\u2013gate, perhaps we must ask ourselves: Can a restaurant ever actually be canceled? Should they be?<\/p>\n New York City is home to some of the best pizza in the world, but this week the pizza power players were fighting. It started with a post from New York Eats Here<\/em>,<\/em> a local digital outlet that bills itself as \u201cFood Culture Not Porn,\u201d which claims \u201cInfatuation<\/em> didn\u2019t find the best pizza in America. It found the one that paid to be found.\u201d Recursive wording aside, it\u2019s a bold accusation: that The Infatuation<\/em>\u2019s reviews are bought and paid for by restaurants.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t long before heavy-hitting pizza spots began weighing in. \u201cI\u2019m on multiple lists on The Infatuation<\/em> and never paid anyone a fucking dime for anything press related, ever,\u201d wrote the Chrissy\u2019s account. \u201cChris when ppl can\u2019t do any better they just talk shit lol \u2026,\u201d replied the L\u2019industrie account. The Infatuation,<\/em> a restaurant recommendation website, itself weighed in with a friendly yet firm reminder that it doesn\u2019t accept free meals. The issue, as a longer post explains, seems to be that The Infatuation<\/em> is owned by bank JPMorgan Chase, and, as such, must be used to create value for cardholders, which inherently means that it\u2019ll only feature restaurants attractive to cardholders, which, in turn, means only big-name spots make it. \u201cThe bodega slice shop in East Tremont that\u2019s been open since 1991 is not on the list,\u201d the piece reads.<\/p>\n<\/div>\nWould you dine at Noma post-scandal?<\/h2>\n
Trouble in pizza paradise<\/h2>\n