This post originally appeared on June 22, 2019, in Amanda Kludt’s newsletter “From the Editor,” a roundup of the most vital news and stories in the food world each week. Read the archives and subscribe now.

I was on the road in Cannes this week to attend the Cannes Lions festival, a week-long bacchanal (or ’festival of creativity’) for the advertising industry and those connected to it. It was a weird scene for me! There was some compelling programming, but the money on display was just bonkers. Attendees and paid celebs packed events on beaches comandeered by Spotify, Facebook, and Twitter and yachts comandeered by ad agencies. There were adbros as far as the eye could see, and the rosé flowed like water.

Good food was not really on the agenda, but I did find a couple of experiences to recommend. I shared an epic seafood tower, stuffed with langoustines, periwinkles, fat salty oysters, clams, and whelks out on the patio at Astoux et Brun. Served with bread with french butter and fries with mayo and a glass of rosé, it was exactly what I imagined Provençal eating to be.

Predictably I loved the farmer’s market.

And I loved La Guérite, a restaurant that’s a 10 minute ferry ride away from Cannes on the island of Île Sainte-Marguerite. Since most of the food I encountered in Cannes was catered, and this meal was for a 25-person lunch, I wasn’t expecting much. But it was simple and perfect — grilled fish and octopus, potatoes dauphinoise, burrata (the people down there love their Italian food), fish carpaccio, beautiful chocolate cake. The restaurant sprawls out across the beach, and as the lunch rush faded and the crowd worked deeper into their magnums of rosé, the scene turned clubby, with sparklers in bottles, a DJ, crowds waving napkins above their heads, etc. — elements that could be annoying in any normal restaurant but were wildly charming in the afternoon sun on the FRENCH RIVIERA NO BIG DEAL I SWEAR THIS WASN’T A BOONDOGGLE.

P.S.: My non food takeaway from the trip is we should all be following a speaker I saw there, Gabby Rivera, YA author and writer of Marvel’s America Chavez series. She has an incredible energy and outlook.

On Eater

• Intel: Turns out the World’s 50 Best list made a rule change disqualifiying former “number one” restaurants from being on the list again to assuage the egos of chefs who didn’t like to fall from the top slot; a duo that worked at the Fat Duck for a decade is opening a new spot in London; Uber Eats couriers in France are farming out their work to undocumented immigrants and taking a cut of the profits; Filipino chain Max’s continues to expand in the San Diego area; Texas became the last state to allow breweries to sell beer to go; two first-time restaurateurs are opening a 5,000-square-foot ode to shuttered Wisconsin supper club the Turk’s Inn in Brooklyn; New Orleans dessert chain Sucre closed all locations following harassment allegations against its co-founder; Amazon will open a tiny liquor store in SF; Impossible Burger continues to struggle to meet the explosive demand for its meatless patties; the Montreal iteration of the Time Out Market announced its vendors; OddFellows ice cream will expand to Boston; D.C. beer garden Dacha is a case study in how to do gratuity-included wrong; deep-fried cookie dough on a stick will make its debut at this year’s Minnesota State Fair; a Seattle nightlife impressario accused of multiple cases of sexual assault and harrassment keeps trying to open bars and the community isn’t having it; Dave Chang will open a Japanese-ish cocktail bar at the Seaport in New York this summer; souffle pancakes made it to Chicago; and historic and beloved LA bar Formosa Cafe is reopening (again) after a serious refresh.
• Big openings to know: Joshua Skene’s LA version of his SF restaurant Angler, where every chair comes with a blanket, and caviar comes wrapped in banana leaf and accompanied by a side of waffles; Jeremy Fox’s killer-looking American restaurant in a giant space in Santa Monica; and an exciting barbecue spot from the people behind Atlanta’s the General Muir.
• Review: Au Cheval in New York is not worth the wait.
• Trend: food inspired by the offerings at Japanese convenience stores.
• Why humble dough has become the dominant culinary symbol of this season of Billions.

This Week on the Podcast

This week on the Eater Upsell, Daniel goes to dinner with comic Josh Gondelman and they discuss their experience at dinner party-themed restaurant Niche Niche in New York.

Off Eater

• Casey Newton files a follow-up to his horrifying February piece about the working conditions and lives of Facebook moderators. I can barely listen to the moderators telling him what they’ve seen (murder, torture, hate), so I can’t imagine what it’s like to do their work every day. They are literally protecting users of Facebook and Instagram from mental trauma every day, and instead of be treated like civil servants or actual Facebook employees, they make contractor rates of $15/hour. [The Verge]
• How this Mexican muralist sees and paints Southwest Detroit. [Curbed]
• The wild history of New York’s favorite underground cocktail, the nutcracker. [NY Mag]
• Gun influencers are exactly what you think they are. [Vox]
• Jenna Wortham’s summer reading list. [MailChimp]
• RIP food journalist and writer Molly O’Neill. [NYT]
• An ode to chef Patrick Clark, a singular chef who died before his time. [F&W]