Civil Eats

There has been a lot of talk lately about what will do us in. For the moment, at least, it is all a foregone conclusion: America is on an inevitable decent toward complete destruction or (if we are lucky) total irrelevance. Batten down the hatches and learn Chinese because we won’t be around to see the next World Cup.

It is probably all ridiculous, of course, and certainly premature, but who who can completely shun this sublime game? To draw a picture of the world we know with its boundaries reassigned is so humorous that we pay attention to lunatics like Igor Panarin, the Russian professor whose map of America has become an internet staple. (If you haven’t seen it, now is the time – it is inexplicably fun.)

If our recent troubles have made a parlor game out of predicting the end, so to do they explain our nostalgia for the America that no longer exists. Read More

I sat down with Annie Hauck-Lawson and Jonathan Deutsch over pancakes at the NYC icon Tom’s Restaurant in Brooklyn to discuss their delicious new book, Gastropolis: Food and New York City. Read More