My boyfriend has a very peculiar habit of making (and eating) peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in his sleep. It was a little alarming at first, but I’ve grown used to it, particularly since he began making sleep sandwiches for me. This is all to say we go through peanut butter quite quickly, and I recently opened my…

We talk a lot about texture to describe foods we love, or those we can’t stand. Mouthfeel is such a big consideration that Merriam-Webster has apparently consented to its use as a single word. But what about handfeel? It’s a term most often applied to textiles, and it does not have an entry in the dictionary, but it…

Every day, teenagers give me a new reason to be grateful that social media was in its infancy when I was their age. Back in my day, if kids wanted to rub soy sauce on their balls and eat all the detergent, they’d do it to amuse each other in private, not in front of an audience of millions. But now, kids who spend a…

The 87-year-old Spanish potato chip purveyor Cesar Bonilla likely could not have anticipated that his company, Bonilla a la Vista, would require additional staff to keep up with a spike in demand after nearly a century in business. But now, thanks to everyone’s favorite South Korean export, the chips are more popular…

Fashion stylists have recently discovered the decorative potential of food. It’s true that Dutch still life painters discovered this 400 years ago, but everything is cyclical. Back then, excess was meant to be a commentary on mortality and a warning to the rich and powerful of the world that all is vanity (or, later…

Update, February 24, 2020: Awards season might be over, but that doesn’t mean Joaquin Phoenix is slowing down in his mission to convince the world to go vegan. Not even 24 hours after chastising the Academy Awards audience for allowing newborn calves to be stolen from their mothers just so we can all enjoy milk in our…

The Costco hot dog is a treat that evokes memories of makeshift concession stands at high school gyms during basketball games where the teens are too busy flirting with each other to ring up your order, or the tents at a charity picnic charging three tickets for a combo meal (“No, the tickets aren’t sold here, hon,…

Samin Nosrat of Salt Fat Acid Heat, both the book and the Netflix miniseries, sat down with Helen Rosner of The New Yorker for a long chat about food, identity, fame, daytime veganism, bean pots, culinary tourism, and, yes, the importance of fart jokes in cookbooks.

In Chicago, the food hall phenomenon is in full swing—we’ve even seen one high-profile fancy food hall close after five months, perhaps because of the competing food hall that moved in on the same block. Other cities are dealing with a similar boom, which looks a lot like a bubble on its way to bursting. This week,…

Shrimp and grits can be a magical experience. Creamy, buttery, unctuous, and cheesy, it is one of the great culinary exports of the American South.

I remember the year I ate half of the entire black cake by myself. It had been an annual tradition for my mother’s coworker, who was also from Jamaica, to gift us the dessert to share with the rest of our family over the holidays. At 14, I certainly had the good judgment to know that eating half a cake wasn’t the…

Japan has brought the world some truly delicious treats, but one of the best of all has to be meron pan (melon bread). We know it tastes good, but how was it invented? And why is it called that?

As the work week draws to a close, so does The Takeout’s first ever Biscuit Week, and oh, what a week it was. I baked and taste tested well over 100 biscuits in preparation for the festivities. Aimee spent an hour scaring her new dog half to death by loudly beating dough with a heavy rolling pin. We laughed! We cried!…