Welcome to Open Tab, a weekly roundup of the news, gossip, and stories that have stayed open in my tabs all week. Last week we covered World Cup tourists’ love affair with American cuisine.
Welcome back to Open Tab, my little screwworms. This week I indulged in the best of New York City’s late-night dining. First, Vaselka for pierogies and the largest omelet ever made followed by a gooey almond cake at Superiority Burger topped with labneh gelato and devilishly tart sour cherry jam. This week’s tiny recommendation: Go to a second location for dessert.
The Bear’s fifth and final season debuts this week, but the cooler story is the zine the culinary production team made as a wrap gift. It’s interesting to think back to how restaurant and dining culture has changed over the four years The Bear has been on the air. It’s the show that introduced us to the cult of the dirtbag chef, and that made some chefs confront their own kitchen trauma, though that conversation is still very much happening today.
We’ve lost another battle in the reservation culture war. Hard to book is a new website built by product designer Isaac Ng to track the hardest reservations to nab in New York. (Think Eleven Madison Park, Atomix, Ramen by Ra, and more.) The real secret to many of these spots is to simply walk in when they open, put your name down, and grab a drink nearby while you wait. Perhaps reservationmaxxing is enjoyable for some people?
Also this week: Michelin awards three stars to a Mexican restaurant for the first time ever, gay bars in San Francisco are scanning patrons’ faces, the latest on Sean Evans and Keke Palmer’s very public love story, and, ahead of Fourth of July, we’re diving deep on how food becomes American.
This week, Michelin doled out stars to restaurants across California. It was an auspicious night for two of the state’s restaurants, Enclos in Sonoma and Californios in San Francisco, which were both awarded three stars, joining just seven other restaurants in the state with the same distinction.
But the stars have special significance for Californios, which is somehow the first Mexican restaurant ever in the world to receive a three-star rating. Michelin-recommended restaurants in Mexico top out at two stars, and it seems incredible that it’s taken more than a century for Mexican cooking to be recognized by the guide in this way.
Several gay bars in San Francisco’s Castro District, including Mix and Toad Hall, are reportedly using a technology from a company called Patronscan called Guard+ to scan the faces of people entering the bar. The technology is purportedly meant to detect the use of fake IDs, but to do that, it collects personal data, including names, addresses, genders, and even how patrons behave. The news has inspired backlash online, and digital rights group Fight for the Future has started a petition to remove the tech from SF bars.
The scans and information are shared on “flag networks” or local databases, which, reportedly, include at least nine Castro venues—though Patronscan is used in more than 700 cities around the world. In a statement released Tuesday, Patronscan wrote that its machines “do not save or share your home address on our Flag Network.” But, as reporter Cydney Hayes of Gazetteer San Francisco points out, the company’s privacy policy states it may collect many of your identifying details, including your address.
