How My Fave Food Entrepreneur Gets It Done

This post originally appeared on September 29, 2018, 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.

If you are looking for a palate cleanser for this week, I think I have just the thing. A new ax-throwing bar!

Just kidding: It’s a podcast episode where three incredibly smart, driven, and accomplished women talk about how they’ve overcome challenges of business to become BOSS entrepreneurs: the first episode of Start to Sale, a new show from the CEOs behind Coolhaus (ice creams and ice cream sandwiches) and Ovenly (cookies). Their guest is Christina Tosi, who seems almost superhuman in her intellect, her moral compass, her ability to get shit done. I bet she even remembers to text people on their birthdays. She goes into the nitty-gritty of fundraising and business-building in a way I’ve never heard nor seen in my decade of following her, so this is a unique listen for anyone who cares about what goes on behind the scenes of a major food brand.

Future episodes will include the founders of Zingerman’s, Refinery29, Witchsy, and more. Not just women. Not just food. Listen and subscribe here.

Not into podcasts? This weekend I plan on staying off Twitter, watching the Cristina Martinez episode of Chef’s Table, and baking my face off so I can eat pie for breakfast every day next week because I’m hungry and angry (and someone in my office has an advance copy of the Sister Pie cookbook).

On Eater

• Intel: SF nonprofit La Cocina will open a food hall next year; a Sinaloan hot dog place opened in Boyle Heights in LA and it looks incredible; chefs at D.C.’s Himitsu took a beating to save a woman getting assaulted across the street from their restaurant; NYC literary hang Cafe Loup reopened; LA cocktail star Beau de Bois now directs the bar at Meadowood; Ted Cruz had to flee D.C.’s swanky Fiola after protestors swarmed his table; the Shinola Hotel in Detroit (and its Andrew Carmellini-run bar and restaurant spaces) will debut soon; ragtag pizzeria turned Bushwick mascot Roberta’s opened its second-ever (non-food-hall) location in a development in LA that houses an Aesop store, a Sweetgreen, and a SoulCycle; freezer brand Steak-umm exploited millennial angst to sell frozen cheesesteak filling; Brushstroke, a Japanese restaurant launched by David Bouley, will close due to a rent hike; new Montreal favorite Hvor is closing; Mike Solomonov and Steve Cook might have a new place in the works (in addition to the two upcoming Federal Donuts) in Philly.
• The billionaire behind some of LA’s biggest restaurant developments (and the problems that come with having so much power concentrated in so few places).
• The hottest trend in restaurant design: glass-enclosed pasta rooms.
• A chef’s quest to bring a North Korean noodle staple to the States.
• For my New England readers: How Grape Nuts became a cult-favorite ice cream flavor.
• The current state of the online-reservation wars.
• Reviews: Ryan Sutton loves the unrivaled view and is mostly bored by the food at Danny Meyer’s new Manhatta in New York; Bill Addison has a rave for the much-improved Kith and Kin in D.C.
• Buy: gold-handled kitchen scissors.
• Watch: Cliff tries (kind of successfully?) to recreate Tim Ho Wan’s famous pork buns.

Gary He/Eater NY

Off Eater

• A nominee for state Senate has centered her campaign on helping New York City food vendors. [GS]
• A day in the life of Dwayne Wade’s personal chef, who’s fed the NBA star for 16 years (and slowly got him to eat vegetables). [SBN]
• Jason Polan’s Taco Bell drawing club. [TNY]
• How Mayukh Sen, Nicole Taylor, and Amanda Cohen would change food media, the restaurant industry, and the Beard Foundation. [JBF]
• How to write about an uncooperative Bradley Cooper. [NYT]
• The former CEO of Panera and Au Bon Pain (his ”How I Built This” was really good, btw) is starting a $300 million restaurant investment fund. [Bloomberg]
• ”Some say a man shouldn’t pay a price for an act he committed as a teenager. But the woman pays the price for the rest of her life, and so do the people who love her.” — Padma Lakshmi [NYT]
• Now might be a good time to ask Danny Meyer for a loan. [Press Oracle]
• The agony on Robert Mueller’s face at the Genius Bar. [The Verge]

Take care, enjoy the weekend, and if you like this newsletter, please forward it to a friend.