— More Star Wars-related products have arrived to empty your wallet: Kraft is now making macaroni and cheese with noodles shaped like Yoda and R2D2 (amongst other movie icons). Pair it with Death Star-shaped waffles for a delightfully nerdy — if altogether unhealthy — meal.
— Further proving that food really is the new rock: Hordes of female groupies are apparently stalking chefs in hopes of wooing them into bed. The New York Post claims such exploits are particularly common at mega-food fests like South Beach Food & Wine; they also speak to a NYC sushi chef who says he slept with an aggressive female fan, only to then get a bad Yelp review from her boyfriend. Whoops.
— Restaurants in Boston soon won't be able to hide from a bad health inspection: Beginning early next year, restaurants will receive a letter grade from health inspectors. Said grades will only be posted online at first, with eventual plans to have them displayed in restaurant windows a la New York, L.A., and other cities.
— The pranksters behind a recent fake hipster restaurant reveal that not everyone found the social media stunt funny: A couple people actually thought the boarded-up coffee shop was a real eatery. "Two of these people were noticeably confused (we were watching from across the street for about an hour) and voiced their anger on Instagram shortly afterwards, offended that we had made a mockery of their lifestyle," says Lura's co-creator. The restaurant's imaginary menu included items like "Le Skinny French Fries" that are "fried in coconut oil, served with vegan garlic aioli, and wrapped in authentic New York Times newspaper."
— Seattle just lost a cherished Mexican food truck, and apparently it's all Chipotle's fault. The owner of the Beloved Mexico truck attributes their decision to shut down at least in part to the recent arrival of Chipotle to the area, saying that the burrito slinger's presence has hurt the truck's sales.
— José Andrés' latest venture, the appropriately named J by José Andrés, is now open inside the W Mexico City hotel. It's the Spanish chef's first restaurant outside the United States, and diners can expect "Spain-meets-Mexico" cuisine.
— What do you buy the junk-food lover that has everything for Christmas? A custom package of Oreos, obviously. The sandwich cookie manufacturer has launched an e-commerce site that allows fans to customize boxes of the cookies with holiday-themed graphic prints and colors. Of course, such creativity will cost you: It's $15 for a package of three dozen cookies, or about three to four times what you'd pay for a normal box.
— Dogfish Head, one of the OGs on the American craft brewing scene, turns 20 this year. Munchies takes a look around the brewery and chats with founder Sam Calagione for an oral history of the company's exploits over the years, including the time it pushed the industry's bleeding edge by introducing a beer made with scrapple.
— And Sam Adams, another one of those American craft beer OGs, just released a super high-end brew that costs $200. The biennial Utopias concoction offers notes of molasses, vanilla, oak, and cocoa, and it packs a whopping 28 percent alcohol by volume. Sam Adams founder Jim Koch calls it "an otherworldly beer that's just as radical today as it was in 1992." With 28 percent abv, the beer might knock drinkers back to 1992.