Gladys Knight Gets Out of the Chicken-and-Waffles Business

• Spurred on by a lawsuit filed last summer and a recently failed health inspection, soul legend Gladys Knight is finally out of the fried chicken business: Gladys Knight's Chicken & Waffles, which debuted in 1997, has been officially renamed World Famous Chicken & Waffles. In August 2016, Knight sued her son Shanga Hankerson, who founded the restaurants, in order to have her name and likeness removed from the mini-chain after it ran into legal troubles in June of that year. (As Eater Atlanta reported, Hankerson was charged in an IRS raid for "stealing over $650,000 in both sales and withholding tax.") Hankerson is no longer affiliated with the brand, which now operates two locations in the Atlanta area.

• Frequent Top Chef contestant Katsuji Tanabe — who operates MexiKosher locations in New York and Los Angeles — is heading to Chicago to helm an entirely new concept. Eater Chicago reports Tanabe is the hired gun at Barrio, a “Mexican robata bar” that will fuse the food of Tanabe’s Japanese and Mexican heritages.

• Cronut King Dominique Ansel has many talents, and crime-fighting is now one of them. The James Beard Award-winning pastry chef regaled his Instagram followers with his experience chasing a thief five blocks through the streets of Manhattan after discovering the man had stolen eight DKAs, a signature pastry that’s an acronym for “Dominique’s Kouign Amann.” The culprit had already eaten two of them by the time Ansel and his crew caught up to him; presumably, the six remaining Kouign Amann did not return to the pastry case.

• New Yorkers really love their Chick-fil-A, as evidenced by the collective WTF moment when one of the chicken chain’s Midtown locations temporarily closed yesterday. A New York Post piece collects some of the reactions, which include straightforward sentiments like “What the f–k?!.”

• Table8, the three-year-old reservations app tailored to snagging last-minute reservations, will soon call it quits. Co-founder Pete Goettner tells the Chicago Tribune that the start-up failed to secure the needed funds to continue; February 28 will be its last day in operation.

• The 89th Academy Awards ceremony will be held next weekend, so Food 52 takes a look at the history of Oscar-recognized actors in food commercials.

• Not only does wine for cats exist, it is now a competitive market, with two start-ups jostling for get-your-cat-fake-drunk supremacy.