Food & drink

Food & drink

Last year was difficult for Los Angeles chefs and restaurateurs. Many entered 2025 hoping for reprieve from previous setbacks and pitfalls: years of inflation, diminished business due to local entertainment-industry strikes and fewer productions, COVID-era back rent coming due, increases in the cost of labor and rent. But 2025 proved to be even more disastrous, compounding existing issues. It started with wildfires across the region, which destroyed thousands of Southern California homes, restaurants, bars and other businesses.

When you want something light, refreshing, and packed with nutrients, you might be craving a visit to a salad bar. It gives you the chance to customize your plate, choosing from a variety of fresh fruit and vegetables. And a lot of salad bars offer more than just greens, often featuring pasta, rice, cold cuts, eggs, and more. In fact, at many restaurants, you could easily eat a whole satisfying and delicious meal straight from the salad bar.

You've probably heard it while scrolling: Yo chef, can I get a wagyu chopped cheese? The line has become a familiar hook in videos filmed inside Prospect Park Deli, a neighborhood staple that, over the past year, has turned into one of Brooklyn's most recognizable deli backdrops online. It's literally this month, makes it a year, Yazen says of when the deli first started creating content.

"Kyma is loud and celebratory, but there was a vacuum between the formality of Milos or Avra, and the joie de vivre of Kyma," maintained Christou, who actually began his career at the first Milos in Montreal, and was the general manager when it premiered in New York. "We also want to make sure that stylistically, Selene speaks to the art haven that's Soho."

A nice frozen pie, cake, or eclair can be quite the time and money saver. And while you do want a tasty finale for any occasion when you are hosting, the dinner itself is generally the main event and what you want to spend the majority of your time on. So, I was happy to see that Favorite Day had quite a large selection of frozen desserts available at my local store.

Cooking television show America's Test Kitchen has agreed to purchase recipe site Food52, which said it was forced to file bankruptcy after its lender unexpectedly swept cash from its bank accounts. The offer from America's Test Kitchen is worth $6.5 million and will gives Food52 a path out of Chapter 11 under new ownership. The stalking horse bid is subject to better offers should any materialize in the coming weeks.

After weeks of excess, it's not surprising that our palates begin to feel a little jaded. The thought of another roast dinner makes me yawn, so something with spice feels exciting. Biryani, with its layered complexity of flavour and texture, has always been the ultimate celebratory centrepiece for guests to congregate around, and it needs little accompaniment bar a bowl of cooling raita. This meat-free version made with tender paneer koftas is light and fresh, yet still warming and packed with flavour.

As a dietitian and devoted follower of the Mediterranean diet, my love for Costco runs deep. An eating pattern rooted in fresh, whole foods, and a warehouse store famous for its bulk buys may seem like an odd pairing, but hear me out. The Mediterranean diet is all about nutrient-dense staples like olive oil, nuts, whole grains, legumes, fresh produce, lean proteins, and other heart-healthy fats.

Farm Table, part of the Seven Lakes landscape restaurant and hotel complex in Kyiv suburb, is a waterside dining space built around a single-source kitchen and a commitment to local ingredients. The menu centered on fish from the property's own lakes and seasonal farm-grown produce reflects a philosophy of "honest taste" that is deeply rooted in Ukrainian culinary traditions.

New bags-matte-ified and designed to look like wood planks (like a potato crate)-will hold the chips with revamped ingredient lists. Lay's promises that the baked, kettle-cooked, and original chips won't taste different, they just won't have any synthetic colors or flavors: The redesign will also incorporate a new logo that looks like the sun, photos of potatoes on the bag, and the phrase "Made with real potatoes."

New Year's Eve itself is often referred to as Le réveillon de la Saint-Sylevstre - the eve of Saint Sylvester's Day (which is on January 1st) - or simply ' Le Saint-Sylvestre'. Don't worry, you won't need to know anything about the life of the obscure 4th century saint himself - although if you want to, here's a brief explanation.

So many features on Northern California hotels and inns topped our list this year, we decided to give them their own place to shine (8 Northern California Hotels + Inns We Loved in 2025). Many of our other most-loved stories celebrated the great outdoors, from the hip new pool club and upscale camping resort The River Electric in Guerneville to the newest California National Monument, Cotoni-Coast.

Since moving to Castelfranco Veneto this year, I've made the 45-minute train ride to Venice at least two or three times a month, sometimes just for a single bite: chef Daniele Zennaro's wafer of baccalà mantecato at Algiubagiò. I've been to the restaurant six times now and have never left without ordering it. Once, when a friend was running late for dinner, I snuck in a small plate of two wafers and an Americano before she arrived.

There's something magical about a really well-done buffet, and we're not even talking about the chance to pile all your favorites on a single plate. It's also a great way to try new dishes without making a commitment to ordering something off a regular menu that you might not love, and we're fans of anything that leads us to new foods.

Mazarine opened quietly at the start of December. Located on Hanover Square, in the same building as the new Mandarin Oriental (but unconnected to the hotel), the restaurant sits in the more understated end of the Mayfair design scale, with gentle curving walls and ceilings and a sleek neutral colour palette. It's cosy and quietly fancy without being overly flash.

The One Group Hospitality, which acquired international teppanyaki chain Benihana last year, has announced plans to open 10 new restaurants throughout the greater San Francisco Bay Area. The hospitality group secured development rights for the restaurants with "an experienced operator," according to a news release, with plans to open two Benihana locations in 2026. Three more future Benihana franchise locations and five Benihana Express (Benihana's new fast-casual concept) locations are slated to open over the next seven years.

Ten years of feeding people we love. Ten years of regulars who became family, neighbors who became friends, and first-timers who somehow always found their way back. Ten years of memories made over babka, hot chicken, wings, beer, trivia, late nights, early mornings, and everything in between.

Finger food needn't be fancy, so New Year is a good opportunity to clear the decks. The only real rule is to keep things to just one bite no one wants to be manoeuvring a fork, after all. People just want a big hug of comfort food with a decadent twist, says Max Bergius, founder of Secret Smokehouse in east London.

Adam and Joanne Gallagher from the food recipe blog, Inspired Taste, has been documenting a lot of really painful and shameful tactics Google is using for its AI responses to some recipes. Adam calls its Google's AI Frankenstein recipes, where it pulls parts of the recipes from recipe bloggers, says it is the brand's recipe, but changes it enough where the recipe is not real and tastes horrible.

This candy is one of the many bottle-shaped gummies made by BonBon. It's a turquoise color with sour sugar coated on the exterior. Since the name had "sour" in it, I was bracing myself for something extremely mouth-puckering. To my surprise, it didn't taste sour at all. Instead, it had an oddly bitter taste that I couldn't quite put my finger on.

But can food actually be addictive? Now some neuroscientists and food behavior researchers are trying to understand if foodparticularly ultraprocessed foodscan be addictive in the same way as other known substances, such as cigarettes, alcohol and cocaine. For foods to be potentially addictive, they're created in a way that is most palatable and most delicious, says Alex DiFeliceantonio, an appetitive neuroscientist at Virginia Tech. When you look at the food environment, those tend to be ultraprocessed.

Chef Rock Harper closed Hill Prince on H Street and reopened it this fall as Hush Harbor, DC's first phone-free bar. To ensure everyone's actually unplugged, the bar uses Yondr pouches-the same ones that have become popular from schools to comedy shows-which allow you to carry your phone with you but not look at it. "All we're doing is giving people a little nudge to be supremely present and intentional about this hospitality experience," says Harper.

"Just trust us!" Red Robin states in a description of its Shortbread Chocolate Soufflé Cake on its official website, proceeding to claim the dish features "a rich and buttery shortbread cookie topped with a chocolate soufflé cake, hot fudge, whipped cream, [and] topped with powdered sugar." Sounds pretty darn tasty, but sadly, what arrived at our table was flavorless and disappointing.