Finding Sweetness at the End of the World
Nordic restaurants and wine, Etsy chefs, Doomsday preppers stockpiling candy, Brat summer, A history of restaurant discovery, An album and wine pairing, and more!
Hello everyone!
Thank you for reading another edition of this newsletter <3
Pride Month is sadly over, as always we had an amazing month. Booked and busy! It was so nice to celebrate Pride in a location so unlike Washington D.C. where Pride events have turned more to benefiting large corporations and provide less attention to the actual community. I found a lot of internal pride this year being a part of a real change where it’s so badly needed.
Lots to get into this newsletter, so without further ado
This week:
Nordic by Nature
Nordic Wines
Restaurant Discovery
Could Your Next Meal Come From Etsy?
Finding Sweetness at the End of the World
Brat Summer
An Album and Wine Pairing
Nordic by Nature:
I watched a documentary about the Michelin Star restaurant KOKS on the Faroe Islands called ‘Nordic by Nature: Michelin Stars II. It was a fascinating (and at times harrowing) look at the traditional Faroese lifestyle, cooking, and this tiny restaurant.
The shots of the island were simply stunning.
I didn’t agree with all of the head chef’s views on sustainable meat consumption and continuing traditions. But I do think the local sustainability of the Faroe Islands and the connection between gathering/hunting for the ingredients to then cooking them is something we have become detached from in modern society.
One thing I know for sure is the Faroe Islands will definitely be on my travel bucket list.
Nordic Wines:
The documentary didn’t focus much on wine, but watching it made me think back to an article I read in January about the rise of Nordic Wine.
Nordic countries certainly don’t jump to mind when you think of the world’s finest wine-producing regions. Sadly, climate change has much to answer for this new wine market. As environments, climates, and temperatures change, many places where it was previously impossible/extremely difficult to produce wine, now can.
“If temperatures continue rising at their current rate, it’s predicted that Denmark’s climate will be more like Northern France’s in 50 years’ time”. Wine growers and producers are casting their bets, with many French chateaus beginning to buy land in Denmark to safeguard their production.
These countries are also beginning to define their own wine identity and flavors.
In Sweden, Rålund, is a blueberry wine from Idunn, a winery in Northern Sweden. A wine “still quite unknown, even by people living in the Nordics. In contrast to [grape] wine that has built its reputation for centuries, fruit wine and blueberry wine as a quality product is still quite new” Tina Johansson, head sommelier at Ekstedt, a Michelin star brasserie in Stockholm explains in Observer. Despite the fact that “Swedes have been naturally fermenting “sun wine” out of blueberries since at least the 16th century”.
From Observer “New Nordic Beverage (who makes the aforementioned Rålund expression) has helped lead the way. Its home in Northern Sweden is renowned for tart and small fruit, which provides a high ratio of peel to juice during the squeeze. That means a high degree of tannins in the resulting wine, with ample structure to match. “In a blind tasting, most people think they are drinking a pinot noir, when they are, in fact, drinking 100 percent blueberry wine,” Stockholm-based journalist and gourmand Caroline Thörnholm tells Observer. “So it’s taken on the nickname ‘forest pinot noir.’”
Since the beginning of the Stars du Nord (a festival aimed at building out the Nordic culinary community), people have been demanding local wines and the festival has come to pave the way for local drops.
Dan Dunn sees it already finding a receptive audience in the United States. “These whites are not your grandmother’s tepid chardonnays… Nordic white wines come at you with all the subtlety of a Viking’s axe, bursting with complex floral and herbaceous notes that’ll have your nose thinking it’s spring, even as your toes lose feeling. These are hearty grapes bred to withstand the cold and darkness.”
Restaurant Discovery:
Speaking of new restaurants, I read an interesting newsletter about the history of restaurant discovery.
From word of mouth, write-ups in papers, and guidebooks, to social media- how we discover new restaurants (and in turn which restaurants become successful) has changed.
In their history of dining discovery The Supersonic reveals that it goes as far back as 12th-century China.
Chinese Plates
Most historians trace dining back to 12th century China, where restaurants catered to the tastes of traveling tradesmen. According to historical evidence, guests were greeted by "a selection of pre-plated 'demonstration' dishes representing hundreds of delectable options.”The Guide Book
France enters the culinary conversation a few decades before the Revolution with bouillon restaurants (an etymological play off "restaurer," meaning to restore oneself, something bouillon was believed to do). Soon enough, their menus evolved and more indulgent fare was served (wine, chicken etc.), and by 1805 we got our first culinary guidebook – "Almanach Des Gourmands.” Nearly a century later, the Michelin Man took over with his eponymous guide, and by 1926 his star system was introduced to the equation. Other guidebooks in other countries followed.The Critic
Perhaps the first restaurant review to appear in a newspaper ran in The New York Times on January 1, 1859. The spot reviewed? Delmonico's, believed to be America's first official restaurant. The paper's first official critic, however, wasn't recognized until 1963, when Craig Claiborne was anointed with the title. At roughly the same time, culinary magazines like Gourmet, and later Bon Appétit and Food & Wine devoted glossy pages to restaurants. By 1981, Esquire kicked off its annual “Best New Restaurants” list.Billboards
Travel and restaurants have long been synonymous, and the automobile only further solidified this relationship (see Michelin Guide). Enter billboards in the early 20th century, many of which promoted roadside diners. By the 1960s, the Interstate system saw more and more billboards for chain restaurants.
Crowd Curation
In 1979, Zagat—extolled enough above—brought crowd curation into the restaurant discovery mix, as founders Tim and Nina Zagat surveyed their friends for their takes on New York City restaurants. As cities expanded, so did the guidebook’s reviewers, believed to be some 250,000 by 2005. The evolution—or democratization or degradation, as the snobbier among us might argue—of this crowdsourced method has continued with sites like Yelp and apps like Beli.
Foodtainment TV
Julia Child entered our households in 1962 with her first cooking show, Emeril Lagasse and Iron Chef followed decades later, but it was truly Anthony Bourdain who made us want to embark on pilgrimages to the hole-in-the-wall joints he patronized. Collectively, we've never looked back.
The Internet, its bloggers, the apps, and their algorithms
And here we are, in what feels like the perpetual present. Blogs like Eater and Grubstreet disrupted the culinary reporting game, Instagram gave everyone a platform to become a food pornographer, and today TikTok—with its ring lights and viral pastas—has given us the influencer/critic.
The Supersonic wrote this article to promote their new feature on their app Blackbird.
Blackbird’s new “For You” Discovery feature looks like your standard TikTok or reels discovery page with vertical videos of each restaurant. They claim that “as useful as it is to read about a restaurant and its cuisine, nothing conveys the experience better than videos capturing the essence of a spot.” The app promotes restaurants popular on Blackbird, restaurants near other places you’ve previously checked in, restaurants it thinks you will like based on the type of restaurants you’ve frequented before. Like all algorithms, it will become more personalised the longer you interact with it.
Relying on social media and “For You” pages for new restaurants poses the same problem it poses for most recommendations. The algorithm pushes, privileges, and promotes certain content. As with music and books this creates a cycle of homogenization where content/art/products become homogenized. Emerging chefs/restaurants often experience pressure to make food, or create an environment and aesthetic that will thrive on TikTok’s algorithm. This which often means creating dishes and restaurants that lend themselves to a trending aesthetic, virality, and standardization.
Funnily enough, I find myself thinking back to the infamous Anthony Bourdain quote:
Could your next meal come from Etsy?
You learn something new every day, today I learned that you can buy and sell food on Etsy and that it’s a flourishing marketplace.
“An actual grandmother anonymously peddling comfort foods might seem at odds with today’s food world of flashy pop-ups and quasi-celebrity TikTokers making trending reels. But in the quieter, less shiny corners of the internet, a delicious movement has been steadily simmering away. Home cooks across the country are turning to Etsy, not to build personal brands or sell cookbooks but because they genuinely love cooking for others (and hope to earn some extra cash in the process).”
You can buy almost anything, the most popular though are comfort foods. Homesick for something, a bad cook, in need of something fast, or craving homemade cooking that’s not your own. There is something oddly nice and I dare I say old-school (as much as the internet can be) and intimate about this.
In an article for Taste one customer who has bought food from Etsy described it like getting a homemade meal from a relative “You kind of feel like you’re getting a package from your aunt or something”.
The cooks speak of something similar “A lot of the folks we mail food to talk about the nostalgia and memories it brings back.” Customers and sellers both speak of a friendship and relationship that comes from these intimate exchanges.
“Penny Spina, the baker behind Lakegirlbakes in Wayne, New York, even named a batch of cookies after a regular customer. Frank, who is 74 and in an eclectic rock band in California, consistently ordered her old-fashioned chocolate-and-vanilla checkerboard cookies. “He sends me some of his music,” she tells me, so Spina renamed them “Frank’s Checkerboard Cookies.”
This isn’t to say there aren’t downsides though. Perhaps the smallest issue is putting trust in a stranger on the internet. Larger scale issues include expensive shipping and storage that is bad for the environment.
The delight of discovering an abundance of home-cooked treats on a platform not traditionally associated with food is sort of like realizing the hotel you’re staying in actually has a killer pool. And in a world that feels increasingly fractured, shopping from an every-grandma is a beacon of genuine care and connection.
Finding Sweetness at the End of the World:
This week in Cakezine, Amy Rose Spiegel took us inside the minds of the survivalists stockpiling Three Musketeers bars. I have to admit, it didn’t occur to me that doomsday preppers are still thinking about dessert. As a long time sweet-tooth, something about this speaks to me. I think I’d be in luck, the sheer amount of sugar (and god knows what else) in sour candy has got to mean it’ll last the apocalypse.
Here are a few quotes from the piece to give you an idea of just what sweets and novelties people are prepping.
“Rather than hoarding the dried beans and protein sludges I picture when I think of end-times cuisine, Livengood makes sure his munitions are aligned with his family’s prelapsarian tastes.”
“The most seasoned survivalists, especially, have these extravagances. “The nice thing about being a prepper for several years is that I have most of the necessities stocked up, so I have the luxury of prepping ‘non-essential’ items—creature com- forts,” Elizabeth Villa, a forty-five-year-old prepper in Wisconsin, tells me via email. “I dry-can hot chocolate powder. I prep a lot of hard candy, like Jolly Ranchers.”
“When times are hard, the smallest pleasures can hopefully keep people mentally prepared to survive.” That’s noble—and strategic. In times of societal collapse, delicacies and distractions can be traded for gasoline or tampons.”
With a Three Musketeers bar, Livengood just might be able to offer a taste of the ultimate luxury after The End: time travel. Here is the world, as it was. Before.
Brat Summer:
In other news, I think we are about to see an influx of ‘Brat’-themed food this summer. Last summer everything was Barbie pink. This summer I expect it’ll be Brat-green.
For those who don’t know Brat is Charli xcx’s new album that has taken the internet by storm.
That’s all for this week folks! Have a good week!
Carlie xx