• The Today Show crew weighs in on the crucial “WTF is cheesecake” debate, calling Eater’s treatise on the issue “a very important opinion piece.” Of Today’s viewers, 61 percent agree that cheesecake is most definitely not cake: While co-hosts Al Roker and Carson Daly seem to consider the dish a middle ground between cake and pie, Matt Lauer simply prefers to think of it as “a little slice of heaven” and call it a day.
• New York Times columnist and meatloaf enthusiast Frank Bruni offers a counterpoint to the salient argument that Donald Trump’s steak-eating habits reveal more unsavory characteristics about the man himself. In his Saturday column, Bruni argues we the people should allow the president to order steak “as he wishes and slather it with whatever he pleases.“ “When did we turn into such food snobs here in America, land of the free and home of the Bloomin’ Onion?” Bruni asks. “We’re prigs these days about matters gastronomic.”
• Denny’s scored a major viral win last week with its take on the “zoom in” meme that conquered Twitter. The tweet is now “officially one of the most shared and liked items in the history of branded content on Twitter” — and all it took was some syrup and a healthy dose of existential dread.
• If the soft-serve at McDonald’s tastes marginally better these days, it’s because the machines themselves have gotten a facelift, after years of ire from McDonald’s fans.
• Patti LaBelle, R&B legend, has found a surprising second career as a celebrity chef.
• Shots fired by Los Angeles restaurant critic Jonathan Gold:
Walked into Katz's wearing a Langer's hat.
— jonathan gold (@thejgold) March 5, 2017