At People & Food, our goal is to change where folks choose to eat. Away from the chains and VC-backed restaurants that most publications and influencers are covering, and towards the small eateries and mom-and-pop businesses that we all love and want to preserve.

Our list of pop-ups and events is curated with that mission in mind. If you see an event that deserves a mention and aligns with our mission, please drop us a line and we’d be happy to add it.

This will be a monthly column, and we’ll update it as we learn of more events. Thanks for your support. - Rob, Angela, Sangita and Alexa

It’s officially August in New York and our calendar is popping off with exciting openings, pop-ups, parties, and festivals! With so much going on, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with figuring out what to eat and who to meet.

That’s why we’ve compiled a curated list of food events for those who care just as much about the people and culture behind a dish as the food itself.

Malaysian-Inspired Detroit-Style Pizza

Experience Detroit pizza like never before, starring laksa-inspired coconut curry + sliced fish ball and roti canai-inspired coconut curry + potato. Grab a slice, grab a beer, and enjoy the concerts happening across the street at @culturelablic!

When: August 8, 2026, 2PM—6PM
Where: Rockaway Brewing Company (📍 46-01 5th St, Long Island City, NY 11101)
How to Attend: Just pull up.

A Pop-Up Taqueria with Nixtamalized Tortillas in the Capital District

We’ve mentioned Los Hermosos before in our round-up of authentic tortillerias in New York State. Now there’s an opportunity for you to try them out.

When: August 8, 2026, 5PM—7PM (or until sold out)
Where: Nine Pin Cider Works (📍 929 Broadway, Albany, NY 12207)
How to Attend: Check their Instagram for full details.

For Example: A Summer Bakery

When: August 9, 2026, 11AM—2PM
Where: Land To Sea (📍 402 Graham Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211 )
How to Attend: Just pull up.

A Pop-Up for Seafood Lovers

From Baja California, México to Lima, Peru. Coming soon to both sides of the East River.

When: August 9, 2026, 4 PM—sold out
Where: Lise & Vito (📍 126A Nassau Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11222)
How to Attend: Just pull up. More info and flyer here.

Get Your Filipino Flavor Fix

From Instagram: “We’re bringing fresh Filipino ensaymada pastries in flavors like mango, buko pandan, ube halaya, calamansi, macapuno—and that’s just the sweet side. Enjoy NYC’s best pandesal rolls, baked fresh.”

When: August 16, 2026, 1PM—5PM
Where: Kings County Brewers Collective (📍 381 Troutman St, Brooklyn, NY 11237)
How to Attend: Preorder here.

Vietnamese Tea Tasting in Chinatown

When: August 16, 2026, 2PM—4PM
Where: 📍 7th Floor, 27 E Broadway, New York, NY 10002
How to Attend: Just pull up.

Summer Tea in Prospect Park

From Instagram: “This year marks our 8th Summer Tea @prospect_park since 2019! 🍵🌿

In this time of change, arts and culture in our communities are where we continue to find inspiration and meaning.”

When: August 23, 2026, 11AM—3PM
Where: Prospect Park (📍 Brooklyn, NY)
How to Attend: Free to attend. RSVP required.

The Dusky Kitchen x Hana Makgeolli Dessert Pop-up

James Beard Award-winning author Abi Balingit is popping up at Hana Makgeolli with Filipino- x Korean-inspired takes on citrus olive oil cake, cantaloupe granita, and tiramisu (including makgeolli, of course).

When: August 23, 2026, 2PM—6:30PM
Where: Hana Makgeolli Brewery & Tasting Room (📍 201 Dupont St, Brooklyn, NY 11222 )
How to Attend: Reserve here.

An Evening with Dame Grace Young in Chinatown

Grace Young is a Chinatown advocate who has been featured on Rob’s channel. She’ll be joined by Grand Tea Imports — also featured by Rob — at Hop Lee… also featured by Rob. (Grace helped Rob produce his Chinatown series).

When: August 25, 2026, 6:30PM—8:30PM
Where: Hop Lee Restaurant (📍 16 Mott St, New York, NY 10013)
How to Attend: Buy tickets here.

Taste Burmese Food in Williamsburg

When: August 28, 2026, 4PM—7PM
Where: Land To Sea (📍 402 Graham Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11211 )
How to Attend: Just pull up.

Laotian Food in Greenpoint

From Instagram, “Southern and vietnamese cuisine share roots in innovation and making something amazing out of (almost) nothing. southern food is living proof of black history and labor; while the modern rendition of vietnamese cooking evolved seemingly through one guiding question: how can we make these foreign ways of cooking taste better than the “real deal?” with so many similarities, we’re excited to experiment with the fusion of these two vibrant traditions and share the results with you.”

When: August 26 & 27, time TBD
Where: Lise & Vito (📍 126A Nassau Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11222)
How to Attend: Look for details on IG.

Hồng Dao Dinner Club

From Instagram: “Southern and Vietnamese cuisine share roots in innovation and making something amazing out of (almost) nothing… we’re excited to experiment with the fusion of these two vibrant traditions and share the results with you!”

When: August 29, 2026, 6PM
Where: Greenpoint (📍 exact location is shared once a ticket is purchased)
How to Attend: Reserve your spot here.

NYC’s Next Big Cantonese Restaurant (Continues to) Pops Up

For the entire month of August, you can try Manhattan’s newest cha chaan teng from Chef Lucas Sin: Lok Kee. Lucas is a Hong Kong-born chef and outspoken champion of Cantonese cuisine; his upcoming book is literally called Cha Chaan Teng and pays homage to the comfort food from Hong Kong’s iconic diners.

Lok Kee is only popping up for dinner for right now, and taking reservations via DM.

When: Thursdays—Saturdays in August
Where: M Star Cafe (📍 19 Division St #1, New York, NY 10002).
How to Attend: DM @lokkee.nyc to reserve!

Here are the past events we covered. If you were subscribed to our newsletter, you would have heard about them before they happened 👀

ACHG Kitchen x Uncle’s Thai Food Ice Cream Party

When: August 1, 2026, 12PM—sold out
Where: FF&E (📍 109 Montrose Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11206)
How to Attend: Just pull up. More info and flyer here.

Back-to-Back Cultural Celebrations in Poughkeepsie

The Hudson Valley Caribbean Festival and the Oaxacan La Guelaguetza Festival are running on the same weekend in Poughkeepsie. Combine either festival with a tour of Oaxakeepsie — use Alexa’s guide here.

The Hudson Valley Caribbean Festival
When: August 1, 2026, 12PM—8PM
Where: Waryas Park (📍 Poughkeepsie, NY 12601)
How to Attend: Free tickets here!

La Guelaguetza Festival
When: August 2, 2026, 12PM—7PM
Where: Waryas Park (📍 Poughkeepsie, NY 12601)
How to Attend: You can just turn up. Full info here.

A Native American Frybread Pop-Up Debuts in Bushwick

From Reddit: “My name is Raini and I’m a member of the Lakota tribe. I realized theres been a gap in indigenous foods available so I decided to start my own frybread stand! Complete with toppings such as honey, powdered sugar, and three different types of jelly!”

When: August 2, 2026, 12PM—sold out
Where: Maria Hernandez Park (📍 Brooklyn, NY 11237)
How to Attend: Check their Instagram for full details.

Limited Chamorro Food Drops on the Border of Brooklyn and Queens

Our friends over at Taste Buds featured Pacific Fried last month. He specializes in Chamorro food (a foodway that Julian Mu stumbled upon in the Portland, Oregon episode of Martinez and Mu).

When: August 2, 2026, 6PM—8PM
Where: On the corner of Wyckoff Ave and Putnam Ave (📍 Brooklyn, NY 11385)
How to Attend: He is highly encouraging pre-orders. Instructions here.

A Danish Cookie Tin With Actual Food in it!

But it’s still not Danish cookies.

Join Sewing Tin for a “supper club experience that blends South Asian flavors with with modern cooking techniques, pushing the boundaries of contemporary cuisine while staying rooted in nostalgia.” Inspired by the iconic blue Danish butter cookies container that many immigrant families have adapted into a sewing tin.

When: August 2, 2026, 6:30 PM—10:30 PM
Where: Maxwell Tribeca (📍 135 Watts St, New York, NY 10013)
How to Attend: Book your tickets here.

A Study in Shellfish

Atelier Vivi, normally a culinary school for kids, is teaming up with Aqua Best, Chinatown’s family-run fishmonger known for sourcing straight from fishermen, to host their first tasting and cooking workshop for adults! Whip up mignonette from scratch, get a chowder simmering, and then let the expert from Aqua Best guide you through a fun tasting of oysters and clams.

When: August 4, 2026, 6:30PM—8:30PM
Where: Place des Fêtes (📍 212 Greene Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11238)
How to Attend: Reserve your spot here.

When I arrived at G’s Coffee Shop early on a Sunday morning, the diner was already packed. Located in Manhattan’s northernmost neighborhood, Inwood, the tiny shop has become surprisingly popular after topping seemingly every list of New York’s best breakfast burritos.

I squeezed inside to place my order before waiting on the sidewalk, listening for my name over the buzz of the chaotic crowd.

I grew up on the border of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juaréz, Chihuahua, where burritos are eaten for breakfast every day. But this was unlike any burrito I had grown up with: a behemoth, layered with egg, homefries (we don’t have those in Texas), cheddar cheese, avocado, and chorizo. It must have weighed at least a pound.

I took a bite. It couldn’t be further from what I’d known or expected, but the salsa—one of the make-or-break ingredients for me—was balanced, spicy, and familiar. The eggs were perfectly cooked, the homefries added just enough crunch, and the chorizo tied everything together.

The burrito didn’t taste like home, but the people behind the counter welcomed me like I’d been coming to G’s my whole life. That’s how they are with everyone that walks through the door.

The price of this celebrated, massive breakfast burrito? Just $10.50. If it were up to the Angel family, who have owned G's since 2005, the breakfast burrito would still cost $8.99. As I learned on many subsequent visits, they have always prioritized people over profits.

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Fresh corn masa ground on a volcanic stone. Mole from Oaxaca. Handmade memelas. Papel picado adorning the restaurants. All are familiar to me, but I’m not in Mexico—I’m in Poughkeepsie.

Poughkeepsie, in New York’s Hudson Valley, is an unexpected hub for Oaxacan food and culture. According to a 1995 report, migration began with just one Oaxacan man from the rural community of San Agustín. Now, with much of Poughkeepsie’s Mexican community tracing its roots to the southern state, the city’s Oaxacan identity is impossible to miss.

“The Oaxacan community has made meaningful contributions to the economic growth, culture, and strength of our city,” Poughkeepsie Mayor, Yvonne Flowers shared.

Those contributions become especially apparent to me as I walk along Main Street.

Just four minutes from the train station, I’m greeted at El Azteca by a giant skeleton in a sombrero. From there, my walk unfolds past family-owned Oaxacan restaurants, a super market stocked with all sorts of dried chiles and other Mexican staples, and storefronts displaying signs that read ENVÍA tu DINERO (“send your money”) in bold print. Those remittances reflect the close ties many residents maintain with family in Mexico—they ultimately reflect 10.3% of Oaxaca’s GDP.

All around me, bits of “Oaxakeepsie” are on full display, existing in a space beyond borders.

“I have spent 25 years here,” says Belen Martinez, owner of Cocina Oaxaqueña. “Both Poughkeepsie and Oaxaca are my home.”

Mariela Lavariega, co-owner of Tortillería Allison, expresses a similar sentiment. “Your roots are wherever God takes you, so I consider both places my home. Poughkeepsie is such a magical place with beautiful, supportive people. People come in with their traditional Oaxacan clothes and immediately they treat you as if they’ve known you for a long time. We welcome everyone with open arms.”

In each business I visit, I see stacked copies of La Voz, a bilingual newsletter produced by Bard College that highlights Hispanic news and culture across the Hudson Valley. While browsing an issue, I learn about Poughkeepsie’s annual Guelaguetza festival—a celebration of Oaxacan heritage featuring local businesses, music, dance, and traditional performances.

The word “Guelaguetza” comes from Zapotec, one of the widely spoken indigenous languages of Oaxaca, and refers to the reciprocal exchange of gifts and services—a reflection of the community-centered values that define the celebration. Originally a pre-Hispanic ceremony honoring Centeótl, the goddess of corn, the festival has evolved into Oaxaca’s most celebrated cultural event. Today, that tradition lives on in Poughkeepsie with the same fervor and pride.

“La Guelaguetza in Poughkeepsie is more than a festival, it’s the living expression of the Oaxacan diaspora in Poughkeepsie and the Hudson Valley,” La Voz’s managing editor, Mariel Fiori, shares. “You feel it in the music, the dances, and especially in the food, from the many Oaxacan restaurants along Main Street that carry these traditions year-round. The festival strengthens a sense of belonging and connection in the Hudson Valley, inviting everyone to become, even if just for a day, part of that shared cultural experience.”

This year’s Guelaguetza will occur on Sunday, August 2nd from 12-7PM at Waryas Park Promenade, Poughkeepsie, NY 12601.

Getting There

Poughkeepsie is approximately two hours from New York City by Metro-North or Amtrak. The businesses featured in this guide are located along Main Street, just a five-minute walk from the train station. The 2-mile route outlined here is walkable, though Uber and Lyft are also widely available.

What To Order

If you want a taste of Oaxaca, you’ll need to look beyond tacos, tortas, and quesadillas. The dishes below showcase culinary traditions that stretch back millennia and remain central to Oaxacan cooking today. Offerings you will find throughout the restaurants, with elements imported directly from Oaxaca include:

• Moles: rich, complex, savory-and-sweet sauces typically served over chicken alongside beans, rice and tortillas

• Memelas: decadent corn masa cakes topped with a layer of beans, Oaxaca cheese, and an optional protein

• Tlayudas: large, crisp corn tortillas imported directly from Oaxaca, layered with refried beans, asiento (pork lard), lettuce or cabbage, avocado, meat, Oaxaca cheese, and salsa

Stop #1 — Tortillería Allison

From the train station, work up an appetite by walking 16 minutes down Main Street to arrive at Tortillería Allison. The interior is adorned with papel picado, or decorative perforated paper, much like the streets of Oaxaca during celebrations. Warm earth tones and children’s cartoons playing on the television immediately put me at ease, reminding me of a family member’s living room.

Angeles (Mariela) Lavariega and Jesus Lavariega are the husband-and-wife team behind Tortillería Allison. After Mariela immigrated to the United States, she struggled to adapt to the food, and she and her father long dreamed of opening a true tortillería. When the pandemic hit, Mariela and Jesus lost their sources of income and, with three growing children to feed, faced serious financial uncertainty. During this period of uncertainty, Mariela revisited the dream she had shared with her father.

“When you try tortillas in the United States, it’s a completely different product than what you’re used to in Mexico,” Mariela explains as Jesus operates a traditional volcanic stone molino, or corn mill, producing high-quality tortillas from locally grown New York corn. “That’s what we want to do—we want to bring back the original, authentic flavor that people long for. The connection we provide to people’s homes and roots is something very beautiful.”

By bringing back tradition, the tortillas at Tortillería Allison have a deeper, more robust flavor that is reminiscent of roasted corn with subtle minerality from the alkaline cooking process. Rather than being an accessory to a dish, it becomes an essential component. The loss of that flavor has a long and complex history; you can read more about the businesses preserving the tradition of Mexican masa here.

Together, Mariela and Jesus brought that dream to life in 2021. They offer traditional Oaxacan staples like memelas and tlayudas. It’s ambitious to order both, but I do it anyway, further doubling down with one of every agua fresca: horchata with cactus fruit, tamarind, and hibiscus. Clearly I’m carried away by being somewhere that feels familiar.

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They call it Cascade Locks, but this town on the banks of the Columbia River used to be called Whiskey Flats. That’s the name on the sign of the local tavern, which is one of the few buildings on the main strip, along with a couple of breweries, a post office, and a fish market. The population? Less than 1,500.

“It’s hard to keep a secret in a little town like this,” Terrie Brigham tells me as we drive along Wa Na Pa Street. “But I kept a few. Back in the day.”

Terrie and her sister Kim are the owners of Brigham Fish Market here in Cascade Locks. Although fish have been sold in this area by Native fisherman for generations, it’s often been a side-hustle; Brigham is a rare Native-owned brick-and-mortar business. “Every fisherman that comes down here from summer to fall, that is their own business,” Terrie says. “They sell under the bridge—and we do the same thing when we’re down at the scaffold, out of coolers.”

We’re overlooking the swift-flowing Columbia now, looking at the scaffolds. “One thing that people need to know, these are property. This is my family’s property,” Terrie says. Looking towards the Bridge of the Gods in the distance, scaffolds dot each side of the banks. They hover above the water, some in better condition than others. During the season, native families perch here and fish on their scaffolds, as they’ve done here for millennia. Sometimes tourists try to fish off of them, which Terrie hasn’t always taken kindly to. “We built them. We’ve put the blood, sweat and tears into every one of them.”

Talking to Terrie, you get the sense that she’s used to defending her rights, her property, her culture. As if at any point, they could be lost. Back at the market, she points to pictures on the wall. “Those are pictures of Celilo,” she says. Celilo Falls was a major trading hub and gathering place for over 15,000 years. In Native languages it was called Wyam, which referred to the sound the rushing falls made. The sound faded in 1957. “When they put the Dalles Dam, it backed up all the water and it buried her."

She points to another picture, “That’s where the village was flooded to,'“ she says. “It’s still there, above the railroad tracks. It’s the oldest living inhabited village in North America.”

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There aren’t really palm trees on Staten Island.

But quietly, their sap runs the dessert world of the borough’s Sri Lankan community, one of the largest in the US.

More specifically, the king is kithul, the fishtail palm. Native to Sri Lanka, the trees tower over the island, with drooping bouquets of ochre, fruiting blossoms. During the spring, tree tappers climb the trunks, cut off the ends of the flowers, and collect the sweet, clear, resiny sap that oozes out over days. When boiled, the sap becomes a deep amber, butterscotchy treacle that is floral and funky at once.

Kithul treacle is not maple, honey, nor molasses, but its own flavor. The stuff is distinctly Sri Lankan, existing about 2000 years before sugarcane was introduced to the country by colonists. At the end of last year, the know-how of kithul tapping was named to UNESCO’s list of intangible cultural heritage.

Despite “having a place in the oldest records” of Sri Lanka, kithul has been deemed “in need of saving,” reports culture journalist Vidya Balachander for NPR. An aging population of tappers, youth emigration to more profitable industries, and monoculture-led deforestation have led to a decline in the cultivation of this labor-intensive tree.

“It’s hard to find here,” tells me Lokesh Kumaravel, a host at AA Lankan’s Cafe on Victory Boulevard, who grew up in Colombo, Sri Lanka. “And the kithul [treacle] we have here tastes so different from home.”

For Sri Lankans in Staten Island today, kithul treacle comes in glass bottles, which are imported to grocery stores like New York Lanka and JNY Lanka. From there, it’s stirred into bold cups of black Ceylon tea and transformed into sweets at restaurants across Victory Boulevard. If you’re eating in the borough, here are four desserts starring kithul treacle, keeping its heritage alive:

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The first thing I notice when I walk into Soccer Tavern is a framed newspaper clipping reading, “Norwegians in N.Y. Toast Big Cup Upset”. Apparently Norway has just pulled off a surprising 2-1 defeat against Brazil in the World Cup. I would’ve believed the article was from this past weekend, except that the sepia-hued clipping is dated June 24, 1998.

In the early 20th century, this part of Sunset Park and neighboring Bay Ridge was an enclave for Scandinavian immigrants, known colloquially as Little Norway. 8th Avenue was even nicknamed “Lapskaus Boulevard” after the hearty Norwegian beef and vegetable stew.

Looking around the neighborhood now, it’s hard to tell its layered history of immigration. Amidst the signs in Mandarin, the yelling in Cantonese, and the scent of Asian delicacies wafting from the street carts, Soccer Tavern – where the Norwegian flag still flies alongside stars and stripes and the Irish tricolor – rises like a rare time capsule from a bygone era.

Inside, the juxtaposition is just as stark. Beneath a ledge bowing under the weight of viking beer steins, an older Asian gentleman sits at a high-top with a plate of peanuts, a Guinness, a notepad, and four phones broadcasting different horse races in real time.

The middle-aged Irishman behind the bar pours Stella into a frosty glass while I inquire about the history of the establishment. “This bar was opened in 1932, during the Prohibition era. I believe back then it was opened by Norwegians. It became a soccer tavern in the 50s, but it’s been a bar continuously for almost a hundred years,” he explains.

I learn that his name is Brendan Farley and he is the owner of the bar. “The bar became Irish when the old owner, Colm Reilly, bought the place in 1973. He was from Longford, the same place that I came from in Ireland. I came to New York when I was 18 and he gave me a nice break,” Brendan recounts. “My first day was behind the bar was July 4th, 1986.”

Do you remember that first day?

I had never tended bar before and I was scared to death. I was like a deer in headlights.

I was very shy and for the first three or four weeks [Colm] said, “I don’t think you’re going to make it.” I begged him to give me another couple of weeks. A few months later, he was saying, “You’re the best bartender I ever had!”

I also married his daughter… That might’ve helped.

Have you been behind the bar since?

Yeah. I’m just a bartender, you know. A lot of people would come and go and not even know I own the place, and I like it like that. Plus, my kids help out, my wife helps out, you know, everybody pitches in. It’s a real family affair.

You must have seen the neighborhood change a lot over 40 years.

When I started in ‘86, I think there was only one Chinese restaurant on this block.

An Asian woman approaches the bar and orders a vodka cranberry. She walks back to the corner table where her group is fixated on the TV screen broadcasting the track at Presque Isle Downs. While the name suggests that soccer is the main attraction here, nearly half the screens in the bar are dedicated to horse races, which are particularly popular with the local Malaysian clientele.

The bar is seemingly bifurcated between those watching the horse races and those watching the World Cup. Amongst the football fans, I am introduced to several regulars. At the end of the bar sits Jimmy, a former bartender here for 15 years, with his cane hanging from the back of his chair. Next to him are David, a current bartender who is here on his day off, and Eddie, a distributor at the Fulton Fish Market, stopping by for a round before his night shift.

Each has a stack of cash on the bar before them, which grows with every order. Once in a while, they redeem a green and white chip for a free drink, the de facto rewards program revealing the most loyal customers. Eddie turns and gifts me a chip. “Can’t have my wife finding too many of these in my pocket,” he laughs.

Suddenly, the woman beside me hops off her stool, exclaiming, “My dumplings are here!”

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Four years ago, Pavlo Servetnyk was baking bread for Ukrainian soldiers. Now he’s handing me freshly-made mochi at his bubble gum pink cafe in the East Village.

The mochi here is anything but traditional. “For Japanese people, mochi is just dough,” Pavlo explains. “I try to combine two ideas: it’s French cuisine with the mousse inside, and outside is mochi dough.” But Pavlo’s culinary technique concerns me less than his background.

Behind the Instagrammable facade and eye-catching flavor combinations there is a question I haven’t yet gotten the answer to: How did a Ukrainian Master Chef who trained at Michelin-starred restaurants in Barcelona and Bangkok, who was targeted by the Russian army, end up making mochi here in New York City?

“It’s 2016 and I live in Ukraine, in a small city called Kherson,” Pavlo begins. As he speaks, he pulls down a small measuring bowl and places it on a scale. He meticulously measures out glutinous rice flour, granulated sugar, and water. The ingredients are whisked into a pale thin liquid that will unbelievably coagulate into mochi dough with heat and patience.

“I worked as a server at a restaurant and my first chef said to me, ‘A server never gets Michelin stars. You need to come work with me in the kitchen.’ I try just one day in the kitchen and I love it,” he says. “I won Master Chef after two years of kitchen skills, from regular cook to sous chef to chef position.”

In between brief rounds in the microwave, Pavlo gently folds the remaining liquid into the emerging dough with a spatula. As he scrapes the thickening dough off the walls of the bowl, he points out small flecks of white that indicate it needs more time. “Before the show I had never cooked pastries, but I understood if I want to win, I need to learn pastry. And now I make mochi.” He puts the mixture back into the microwave.

From his winnings on Master Chef, Pavlo was able to travel the world. First, he went to the three-Michelin-starred El Celler de Can Roca in Catalunya. Then he headed to Bangkok, to work at Gaggan, which was widely considered the best restaurant in Asia at the time.

How was your experience working at some of the best restaurants in the world?

My first internship at El Celler was an unbelievable dream. I had to learn one million rules, one million tools, one million techniques – everything new. And I still don’t care about nothing; if I need to wash the floor, I wash the floor. Many chefs start to respect me because they feel my passion and afterwards, Jean Roca wrote me a reference to Gaggan Anand.

That second internship was the worst internship experience in my life. Zero respect. Zero safety. And Gaggan’s mindset is like, “If you’re not an animal, it’s not your kitchen.” So I work six days per week, 16 hours each day. But I needed knowledge so I lived like that for three months. If something goes bad, I just try to switch something in my brain. Like okay, it happened, but I need to still be there and learn.

What’s the most important thing you learned there?

We had a special tradition once a week where two people made staff meal. In the restaurant, people came from many countries and everyone shared knowledge. One week, some guys from Japan taught us how to make mochi dough.

The microwave beeps again. The texture of the dough is completely different now, bouncing when poked and releasing a blast of steam with each sticky stir. Pavlo throws a pat of butter into the mixture and it melts immediately. Time is of the essence now; the dough has to cool enough to be mixed by hand, but not too much that the butter congeals.

“I go back to Ukraine and COVID starts,” he explains. Pavlo squeezes the dough and butter until they resemble cheese curds, then quickly draws his hands back, wincing at the heat. A mixer is out of the question – the dough would become too chewy. “I have some money left, and I opened a small bakery with my wife because I loved making bread... No one made the same bread quality like I made in that tiny city. It was an overnight success.

“After maybe six months, we opened three bakeries. We had a small production space. We delivered bread in three cities around my city, and 50 people work in my company. We start to be like a real company,” he says. “Then 24th of February, the war started.”

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“You basically don’t have time for this interview,” is what I realize, and then say out loud, standing inside of a small warehouse devoted to tofu in southeast Portland. Across from me, through a haze of soy milk steam, is a former professional baseball player wearing a blue rubber apron spattered with curd, grinding his teeth.

Jason Ogata still has the build of a designated hitter, and the tenacity and obsessiveness of a pro athlete. “I mean, yes,” is what he replies, and the conversation goes silent as he twists a valve and more steam obscures my camera. He is the newest owner of the oldest tofu shop in America, and I am in his way.

Ota Tofu has survived in Portland since 1911. I use the word survived, because many of the Japanese-owned businesses of the early 20th century in Portland did not. Their owners were placed in prison camps by the US government during World War 2; only 1/3rd of the Japanese community returned, finding their businesses sold or confiscated. The founders of Ota Tofu were brothers, and one died in the camps.

“Luckily the landlord during the war preserved this place and allowed them to come back to keep it going,” Jason says. He learned from the 3rd generation, Ko Ota, who sold him the business in 2019.

Interviewer: Did you have any agreement in with Mr. Ota about keeping things exactly like they were?

Jason: Nope. But I guess we had a mutual understanding.

On its face, tofu doesn’t seem like something that could change much. It’s been industrialized and scaled as an industry worth nearly $500m in revenue annually. But Jason has found obstacles to scaling while preserving the taste he grew up with. “I tried cutting costs and sourcing [the soybeans] from China,” he admits. “But it didn’t produce the kind of tofu taste we wanted.”

Besides the soybeans, the other ingredient at the heart of Jason’s tofu-making process is nigari, the coagulant that binds the soybean into curds. In Chinese tofu-making, gypsum is preferred. They are both among the oldest coagulants for tofu-making, but nigari contributes more umami to the taste, and more custardy-ness to the texture. “It doesn’t have a chemical after taste,” Jason tells me. “It really brings out the soybean flavor.”

“Because of [the nigari], we have to do a lot of hands-on techniques to press it into tofu,” Jason tells me. He has not stopped working since I walked in the door at 6 AM.

The process goes something like this: First, Jason hoists massive buckets of soaking soy-beans into drainage bins, then wheels them across the floor. He scoops them into a grinder, and this slurry flows into a pot where it cooks. It’s then strained through hemp. The larger clumps are strained again by Jason using a cheese cloth that he rocks back and forth. The pure soy milk is collected in a bucket below, while the clumps are dumped into a bag to be sold for animal feed. The nigari is added to the pure soy-milk; Jason mixes it, then watches it curd and determines whether it should be made into firmer or softer tofu. This mixture is then placed in metal bins lined with cheese-cloth and pressed by machine to remove moisture. Eventually, it’s unwrapped, placed in water, and cut by hand.

“I was starting work before 2 AM, to come start the process,” he admits. “Now I come in at like 3:45. So it’s like sleeping in.” He works 10-12 hours usually, between this factory and his newer one, before starting on office work. On the day of my interview, the factory I am in will produce 1,500 pounds of tofu, while the other factory is producing between 3,000 and 4,000 pounds.

“The other [factory]’s more automated, but it’s still pretty hands on.” Jason says. Still, the smaller factory provides value. “This allows us to pay attention to every part of every step of the process… We’ll probably make tofu here this way for as long as we can.”

Across Portland, you’ll find Ota Tofu’s name listed on a restaurant’s menu as a source of local pride. But outside of Portland, it’s still relatively unknown. “We put our brand on the grocery store shelves, and they don’t know it’s different,” Jason told me. Another challenge in the market is shelf-life. Mass-market tofu has a shelf-life of around 3 months, while Ota’s tofu has a shelf life of just 1 month. Jason launched a frozen tofu product to try to compete, it’s available on their website.

“Once they try it, they can taste the difference,” Jason says. He is rapidly scooping soybeans with a large bucket. “Then we have a customer for life.”

This is part 1 of my Portland, Oregon series. I filmed 5 more videos. Let me know if more write-ups like these are valuable to give more context to the videos I make, and thanks for your support. - Rob

There’s one thing that locals kept telling me about New Orleans: The best food isn’t in a restaurant. It’s in someone’s home.

I did stick around long enough to be invited into one. That’s how I ended up streetside at a Mardi Gras parade, in Uptown, being handed drinks by a man who at a certain point could only say the nonsense word “changalang.” But the foods he had on display weren’t the fabled gumbo, or crawfish étouffée, or fried chicken.

So maybe my New Orleans story shouldn’t start there, in that home. Maybe my story starts when I walked from Tremé to the Seventh Ward, then crossed under the I-10 into Marigny. Beneath the I-10 is a plaque that reminds you that this historic black neighborhood was torn in half by the freeway above it.

In the Seventh Ward I was told by a cultural ambassador of New Orleans that integration hastened the downfall of its thriving black neighborhoods. Vance Vaucresson’s family has been making hot sausage, also known as chourice, in the Seventh Ward since 1899. I ate it on a po’boy with extra pickles and Crystal. It tasted like home, even though this is actually Vaucresson’s third home. The original was on the other side of I-10, now called the Circle Food Store.

“This is the New Orleans Seventh Ward Creole version of Creole chourice,” Vance told me as he put together a batch, as always, in the center of the restaurant, in plain view of customers. “We as a family have been in this 3-block radius, from North Claiborne to North Johnson Street, servicing this community for 126 years.”

Maybe the story starts the first time I got called a Yankee, at Verti Marte. When I was told the difference between the South and the North is “family and God.”

“It’s a big part, those 2 go together in the South,” Verti Marte’s owner, Sam Hatfield, told me. But surely, we have family and God in the North? “I know you do,” he answered, coyly. But the implication was we don’t have it like they do in the South.

I witnessed that first-hand when I broke bread with a Vietnamese man named Thien Nguyen at Big EZ Seafood, who crossed himself before we ate 10 pounds of Crawfish. Sometimes I get asked what the English version of the phrase “bon appetit” is. At least in New Orleans, it seems to be the sign of the cross. Thien told me that growing up poor in California, crawfish were the only thing he was allowed to eat until he was full. New Orleans is his home now, and he ships them all across the country.

God. Family. Segregation. Immigration. Crawfish. I could depict New Orleans as collage. But in many ways its design is deliberate and formal, ideated by powerful figures who blockbusted and red-lined their city into the shape they wanted it to be. I could depict it as a tragedy. But then why the hell is everyone partying? I will list its restaurants; but the best food is in someone’s home.

I have only scratched the surface of New Orleans. There is a sense of history and joy and resilience, but I can’t speak about it like they can. I conducted 6 interviews that I hope represent the city well, but I know they can’t represent it fully.

If you are planning on visiting New Orleans, you can watch our Feasting on $50 episode where we find the best breakfast, lunch and dinner for under $50. I’ve listed our choices below, as well as many other restaurants I enjoyed during my 2 weeks there.

Please give it a like and sub, that would be super helpful:

Where to Eat in New Orleans (recommendations from a Yankee)

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Thanks for reading People & Food. Today we are running a story by Angela Xu (@BrooklynFoodLady) about Vân Vân, a specialty Vietnamese herb and spice purveyor in New York.

While the herbs they provide to restaurants are game-changing and essential to the business, Angela writes here that “their fledgling business originated from a more personal place of homesickness and hunger.”

Interested in writing for People & Food? Pitch me here. - Rob Martinez

The Vietnamese restaurant scene in New York City is having a moment. From the uber authentic dishes at Mắm, served atop low plastic tables and stools evoking Hanoi, to the Tết celebration at Saigon Social featuring dishes such as canh khổ qua (bittermelon soup) and bánh tét chiên (fried sticky rice), gone are the days of lamenting over a lack of incredible Vietnamese food.

The offerings have evolved beyond phở and bánh mì too. At Falansai, chef Eric Tran is creating elegant, innovative dishes at the intersection of his Vietnamese and Mexican roots. Meanwhile at Ha’s Snack Bar and the newly opened Bistrot Ha, traditionally French and Italian dishes are getting the “Ha’s treatment” with a pinch of Vietnamese herbs, a dash of spices, and a lot of fish sauce.

Underpinning this culinary renaissance is a need for fresh, flavorful ingredients, which have not historically been accessible in New York City. That is, until Vân Vân came along.

It may appear as if wife and husband duo, Thảo Bùi and Duy Võ, founded Vân Vân to meet the increasing demand for quality Vietnamese ingredients stateside. In reality, their fledgling business originated from a more personal place of homesickness and hunger.

Enter Ăn Xôi

Thảo Bùi was born and raised in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City). Growing up, some of her fondest memories took place around her grandmother’s table, gathered with her family to eat an enormous feast. However, she took the fresh, home-cooked meals she ate everyday for granted. It wasn’t until she immigrated to the U.S. that she realized how special the native ingredients of her motherland truly were.

When Thảo and Duy arrived in Queens in 2013, the couple made the bleak discovery that “New York didn’t really have good Vietnamese food”. Thảo realized that if she wanted to taste the delicious, home-style dishes of her childhood, she would have to learn to cook them for herself.

The COVID lockdowns provided the perfect opportunity for Thảo to learn her family’s recipes. The process could be daunting at times: during instructional video calls with her mother quantities were eyeballed and timing was vague. “You have to be more specific!” was a common refrain, repeated exasperatedly during that time.

As she dove deeper into the intricacies of Vietnamese home cooking, the pandemic project evolved into more than satisfying her homesick cravings. “I started understanding a lot of the nuances in Vietnamese cooking, and it made me a lot more appreciative of my food and my culture,” she shares.

“Through generations of migration and displacement, my family has kept our food traditions alive. Now that I live abroad and probably won’t go back to Vietnam to live permanently, I don’t want all of these recipes to die with me.”

Eager to share her newfound appreciation, Thảo founded a pop-up called Ăn Xôi, literally “eat sticky rice”, where she used sticky rice as a canvas to present the abundance of Vietnamese food to the world. However, she quickly had to put the passion project on pause when the undiagnosed neck pains she had been experiencing for over a year became debilitating.

Thảo’s doctor finally suggested an MRI to rule out a brain tumor. The scans revealed a massive tumor that was encroaching on her spine. Five days later, she was wheeled into the operating room for emergency surgery.

The road to recovery post-operation was slow, but Thảo was armed with a new lease on life. In an Instagram post from early 2022 she shared, “All of February went by in rehabilitation. Learning to stand up. To walk. To move my toes. What was once normal suddenly took a tremendous amount of efforts and sweats. I also thought a lot about Ăn Xôi. Maybe it was the time to do what brings me joy.”

As Thảo regained her physical mobility, she turned to Ăn Xôi as an outlet for her energy and a way to reclaim independence. However, with each trip to the grocery store, her frustration mounted over the lack of access to the herbs and spices required for Vietnamese cooking.

Suddenly, it clicked. “Growing up in Vietnam, we were surrounded by really, really good aromatics,” Thảo recounts. What if she introduced the ingredients that she grew up eating everyday to an American audience?

Thảo began consulting family members back home about where to go to find different ingredients. When sourcing from abroad proved nearly impossible, she flew back to Vietnam. Even then, sourcing ingredients continued to be a challenge. Despite speaking Vietnamese, people could tell from her accent that she wasn’t local, which made it hard for her to build relationships. Furthermore, many farmers didn’t care about ethical sourcing, and preferred selling large quantities to existing buyers over taking a risk with a new buyer. But she persisted.

After many months of building every aspect of their company from scratch, Thảo and Duy launched Vân Vân in 2023 with the goal of bringing the flavors of Vietnam to the North American pantry by specializing in single-origin, terroir-driven herbs and spices.

The Restaurants Hooked on Vân Vân

Helen Nguyen, chef and owner of Saigon Social, was an early champion of Vân Vân. She first met Thảo and Duy through Ăn Xôi, having run her own restaurant as a pop up for two years, and helped advise the couple on early sourcing trips to Vietnam.

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Thanks for reading People & Food. Today’s deeply-researched piece is written by Alexa Calderón, who spent a great deal of time tracking down every person in New York who makes masa from scratch—from street vendors and tamaleros to tortillerias and Michelin-starred restaurants. This is a living guide to the people who are preserving the tradition of nixtamalization in New York, amidst a larger story of why this renaissance is occurring in the first place.

In New York, it is rare, but not impossible, to find fresh corn masa.

New York has many tortilla factories, and many restaurants that make tortillas by hand. But there are only around a dozen molinos, or corn mills, that process raw corn kernels into fresh, nixtamalized masa—the nutrient-dense corn dough that is the backbone of Mexican cuisine. The difference between the two seems subtle, but yields a massive difference in flavor.

The process of transforming raw maize into masa is time-consuming, often taking up to three days. It begins with the centuries-old practice of nixtamalization, in which corn is boiled in an alkaline solution, increasing both its nutritional value and digestibility. Once nixtamalized, the corn is ground fine or coarse, depending on the desired outcome, using a molino, or mechanically powered mill. After this point, the dough can be rolled and flattened into tortillas, spread across corn husks for tamales, shaped into tetelas, and more.

Most tortillerías, both in the US and Mexico, produce tortillas using processed corn flour, meaning most people have only ever tried corn flour-based tortillas. With corn flour, nearly all of the flavor and nutritional value is lost.

When food tells only half of its story, there is a fundamental disconnect between what we eat and what we understand.

How Fresh Masa Became Rare - and Almost Extinct

Corn is more than the basis of masa, it is a connection to the ancestral.

Corn is the product of more than 9,000 years of human-led genetic domestication. Its ancestor, a wild grass called teosinte native to southwestern Mexico, was no larger than a pinky finger, with kernels so hard they resembled stones. Over millennia, maize evolved into a staple crop, supported by the aforementioned innovation of nixtamalization, a processing technique developed by Indigenous peoples. Eventually, it led to incredible maize diversity, with around 60 native varieties still existing today.

Though built up for centuries, this relationship has faced contemporary challenges, being systematically disrupted through market manipulation and financial interests. Through neoliberal reforms and the implementation of NAFTA, then later the USMCA, fresh corn masa is increasingly difficult to find.

The Battle Over Mexico’s Corn

1980s

In the late 80s, Maseca, a then-struggling corn-flour company, benefited from personal ties to Mexico’s then President, Carlos Salinas. His administration manipulated Mexico’s traditional tortilla program to favor corn flour over traditional producers.

Policy changes froze the amount of corn provided to artisanal tortillerías, incentivized small producers to adopt flour-based production through the purchase of Maseca’s equipment, and the government declared all growth in the market would be from corn flour. All of this accelerated the decline of fresh-masa tortillas, despite consumer preference for traditional flavor.

1994

Tortilla makers who refused to adopt Maseca’s flour-based production were punished through restricted access to quality corn, forcing many out of business. As Maseca’s market share grew, it captured a large portion of government subsidies, receiving $300 million by 1994.

2006

As of 2006, Maseca’s parent company, GRUMA, controls about 70 percent of Mexico’s corn-flour market. NAFTA-era reforms flooded Mexico with cheap U.S. corn, benefiting GRUMA while harming Mexican farmers, and the removal of tortilla price controls led to soaring consumer prices despite falling corn costs.

These policies didn’t just reshape Mexico’s tortilla economy, they determined what kinds of masa would be available in New York – and most of the US.

2023

In December 2023, Mexico’s then-president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, attempted to ban genetically modified (GM) corn for human consumption.

2024

By February 2024, the USMCA dispute panel sided with the US, undermining Mexico’s efforts to protect its corn, public health, and food sovereignty from GM corn.

2025

Mexico’s current president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has constitutionally banned the planting of GM corn seeds intended for human consumption. Native maize varieties are vulnerable to genetic contamination when they cross-pollinate with GM strains, and experts warn that some ancestral varieties may already have gone extinct due to illegal plantings and genetic drift. Much of the GM corn originates from the United States, where farmers gained competitive advantage over Mexican farmers after NAFTA was implemented in 1994.

The State of Masa in New York

Tasting a tortilla made from absolute scratch in New York is rare. So rare that we have found only 12 molinos in the entirety of New York state who are making their masa in-house.

Tortilleria Allison is one of only three places outside of the city that is milling its own corn and making fresh, nixtamalized masa from scratch. Their work has helped the locals in the Oaxacan enclave of Poughkeepsie feel an emotional connection to their home.

“A young man took half a pound of tortillas – since we sell them by the pound, he decided to take just half to try them because he wasn’t very sure…” Tortilleria Allison’s co-owner, Mariela Lavariega, explained.

“When his mother tried them, she started crying. She said the tortillas reminded her of the ones she used to buy back in her hometown, and she remembered her mother and her grandmother. She has been in the US for many years, and when she tasted the tortillas, those memories came back to her.”

Blanca Pilar, a street vendor in Brooklyn, has her own molino in her home, which she uses to process corn to make fresh tamales and atole. This gives her a distinct advantage in the competitive world of street vending, where Maseca is used as a shortcut in the already labor-intensive work of making tamales.

“Making tamales takes almost three days,” she told me. “One day is for cooking the corn so I can wash it and grind it in the mill, because if it’s still hot, the masa doesn’t come out right. I cook it one day, wash and grind it the next, then start making the tamales, and by the third day they’re ready to sell.”

Pilar is not alone in her pursuit of authentic flavor, or in taking extra steps to ensure her tamales live up to people’s memories of home. Fernando Lopez of Factory Tamal goes even further, refining his masa through a process called cernir – sifting it to remove clumps and achieve the proper texture.

“As far as New York City goes,” Lopez explains, “they sell tamales, but most people make them with Maseca, and almost no one – really, no one – was making tamales from scratch. So, based on the flavor from when I was a child, I set out to recreate and rebuild the tamales I ate growing up.” Lopez wasn’t comfortable selling his tamales until the recipe was perfected, and when it received the stamp of approval from strangers, he knew his mission had been accomplished.

“Every time they ate, they were reminded of their grandmother,” he told me. “They’d say, ‘Oh, wow – this is like what your mom used to make, right?’ And that filled me with even more pride and motivation to keep going.”

Supporting places that make masa from scratch means preserving ancient traditions diminished by free trade and globalization, while also honoring a food culture widely accepted in the U.S. without full consideration of its origins or the people behind it. Plus, it tastes better: “The flavor of my tamales is different from those made with Maseca,” Blanca said. “People come to me for the taste of the tamales – the flavor and even the texture. They tell me it reminds them of their hometown, their country, because they’re made from natural corn.”

While very few molinos exist in New York, masa availability is increasing thanks to wholesale distributors like Masienda and Tamoa. But one local business has been integral to onboarding restaurants like the 3 Michelin-Star Eleven Madison Park to the world of traditional nixtamalization: Sobre Masa.

From Oaxaca to Brooklyn

Sobre Masa began as a way for co-owners Zack Wangeman and Diana Montano to reconnect with their Oaxacan heritage. When the pandemic halted indoor dining, the business pivoted toward wholesale tortilla production – initially as a matter of financial survival. Five years later, both the restaurant and wholesale arms are flourishing. Today, Sobre Masa supplies fresh masa, tortillas, and even whole corn kernels to more than 35 clients across the city.

Beyond its own growth, Sobre Masa has become a model for others interested in working with traditional corn. When asked why more New York City restaurants don’t grind corn in-house, Zack’s answer is pragmatic: “Our tortilla factory has grown a lot because of how difficult it is. Labor is really expensive for restaurants, especially when you add nixtamalization and hand-pressing tortillas. Space is another issue – most kitchens are in basements... And the cost of heirloom corn is a barrier.”

He adds that Masienda’s minimum order of 20 bags raises a logistical question: “Where do people store that in New York City? That’s why we started selling corn, too.”

This year alone, Sobre Masa estimates it will bring in close to 100 tons of corn. What distinguishes their tortilla factory, however, is not just scale but flexibility. “If someone has a special event and wants us to mix in something like ramp purée, or if they prefer their tortilla chips a little thicker, we can do that,” Zack explains. “You can always call us if there’s an issue. I find that romantic – it’s how things used to work. You had a butcher, a produce guy. If something was coming into season, you’d call them. I like that we’re the tortilla people. You can call us for any corn question or corn need.”

Thanks to local molinos, more New York restaurants are receiving fresh, nixtamalized masa and tortillas. At the same time, the number of molinos across the city is steadily growing as existing businesses thrive. In their pursuit of flavor and heritage, these models offer inspiration.

For these select few, clear themes emerge: a commitment to preserving heirloom varieties, using all-natural ingredients, honoring Mexican culinary traditions, delivering the best possible flavor, and maintaining a deep sense of pride and care in their craft. Each is remarkable in its own way, and every one of them is worth seeking out.

For many tortilla makers, this work is more than food, it is a connection to identity, memory, and resistance. As Matt Diaz, co-owner of For All Things Good, a molino and cafe located in Bed-Stuy puts it, “We care where we put our money and like to know that it can get traced back to the farmers and families who have supported the corn industry and diversity for generations.”

A list of the 12 traditional molinos of New York

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In Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Restaurant Ix always smells like something has been roasted with purpose. On a winter afternoon, the room warms up fast with steam and spice. Chef Jorge Cardénas runs the kitchen, and the menu reads like an invitation to learn: Quichón, Pepián, Jocón, Estofado de Muerto, and more.

I meet Jorge after the lunch rush, expecting a quiet room, but I find the opposite. Friends are still catching up over big bowls, and the odd solo diner leans in close to their stew. I come here often for the soups and stews, a coffee, or the off-menu Dr. Jaguar, a hot drink of herbs and spices that helps with a cold or the flu. But today I am here for something more foundational than any single dish.

“The base just exists for minutes,” Jorge tells me. “You start with it, and it becomes a soup.” He is talking about recado, the mother base of Guatemalan stews. It can be a spice mix, a paste, or a thick slurry, but Jorge is clear about what it is not: It is not a sauce meant to be admired on its own.

“It doesn’t look sexy,” he says, smiling. “It’s not like guacamole.”

Recados are often divided into three groups: Rojo (Red), Verde (Green), Negro (Black). But when I bring this up, Jorge stops me. “We don’t put it in three colors,” he says. “It’s just different. We have like, I don’t know, 50, 80… like Mexican moles.”

The difference, he explains, is not the label, but what you do to the ingredients before they ever touch the pot. Even in a green recado, he might push ingredients toward darkness. Scallions can be roasted “until they are almost charcoal.” Tomatillos are never raw. “I like to scorch them until they are black.” The same direction can taste fresh and bright, or deep and smoky, depending on how hard you roast, toast, or burn.

In other words, a recado is not one of three master pastes waiting to be assigned. Jorge thinks dish by dish. Jocón has its recado, Pepián has its recado, Quichón has its recado. The rojo/verde/negro labels can be useful shorthand, but they do not capture how recados actually function in his kitchen.

Luckily, we can taste at least 5 of these recados right here in Brooklyn. To help me understand, Jorge lines up a tasting flight for me, five bowls arranged like a spectrum. Seeing them together makes the concept click. The recado exists just briefly—before it becomes a plated dish.

The 5 Recados of Ix:

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Hey, this is Rob Martinez. Thanks for considering People & Food as a publisher of your work, I appreciate it.

What is People & Food?

People & Food is—for now—a publication where 90% of subscribers have been referred from my video work. I hope it becomes, instead, a home for a diverse set of writers and readers who believe in championing small food businesses from around the world and the people who operate them. The mission is to change where folks choose to eat: away from the moneyed-up groups with PR companies and influencer dollars, and towards the mom-and-pops that instill pride in our communities.

Because of the strong association with my work, I encourage you to take a look at some of my more popular videos to get a sense of what folks expect of People & Food. I believe they expect the following:

• Deeper stories that others are not covering, like the whole lamb in New Paltz or the challenges a grocer faced while offering relief to SNAP recipients

• A focus on not just the newer spots, but the places that have been holding it down for years, like Brennan & Carr in Brooklyn and Gregory’s Gourmet Desserts in Oakland

• Direct quotes and insights from chefs, cooks, and restaurateurs. I am unlikely to publish a piece that doesn’t include interviews as part of the reporting.

• Useful observations about trends that others haven’t noticed. For example, I thought it was worth writing about black al pastor when it arrived in New York.

• Stories about not just chefs but artisans and experts in the food world, like my story about Aqua Best.

• Updates from the community. My network of chefs and business owners is open to you, and I will be working with them to develop recipes and share more of their stories.

In short, your pitch should be a good story about food that includes primary sources, ideally that others haven’t noticed yet. Our tagline is Food is Personal. Some keywords I use for my work are urgency, tension, pride, and usefulness.

We Pay Writers

Not as much as I would like, but please keep in mind I did not raise $2 million dollars. We pay from our subscription revenue, so please subscribe and share!

Here are some of the more pragmatic details on pitching:

• Our current rate is $.50/word (as of 01/01/26), and writers should also take quality photos. I am always happy to shoot photos myself if available and necessary.

• Please include your ideal headline in your pitch.

• Writers should not write about PR meals. Nothing against restaurants with PR, but I am looking for contributors who seek out their stories.

• Our audience is primarily based in New York. I am interested in stories from NYC, NJ, Philly and the surrounding areas.

• I am also open to weekly or monthly series.

• Please email all pitches to pitches@peopleandfood.com

Thanks again for your interest, I am looking forward to adding a lot of contributors to People & Food in 2026 and beyond!

- Rob Martinez

Before the year was even over, the 2025 “Best Restaurant” winners had been crowned in New York City. For NY Mag, it was Le Veau d’Or. For The Infatuation, Smithereens. At the Times, they included Kabawa, Smithereens, Ha’s Snack Bar, and Borgo on their list of 2025’s best restaurants in America.

My 2025 year in dining wasn’t so focused on the now. My most popular feature of the year saw me dining in a 45 year old Russian bath house in Gravesend, Brooklyn. I spent weeks in London and opted to only highlight immigrant-owned restaurants that have become staples in their communities, leading me to eat delicious Nigerian suya in Peckham, and Turkish tantuni in Enfield. In Chicagoland’s Little Palestine, I ate mansaf with my hands at one of its most iconic, time-tested establishments. In Queens’ Little Bangladesh, I ate microwaved brain with a plastic spoon from a local street vendor. In Poughkeepsie’s Little Oaxaca, I wanted to cry after eating a memelita made by the owner’s mom, who ran a restaurant in Oaxaca decades ago.

“It’s impossible to keep pace with the state of the world—this is why it’s best to focus on the things that never go out of style.” - Paul Thomas Anderson, discussing One Battle After Another with Esquire

But I’m not some fussy artist in a bubble of my own making. Just last week I had a matcha at 12 Chairs (wonderful). At some point I ate one of Kwame’s Patty Palace patties (awful). I got a banh mi from Bánh Anh Em (I took it to-go; not ideal). In London, I ate at Jonathan Nunn’s #1 restaurant, Planque (sensational). In Tokyo, I did a Michelin-star Omakase (miserable). In New Orleans, I rubbed elbows with a Rolex-wearing Houstonite and ate gumbo that was black as night in a packed dining room where they sell $1.50 martinis. They gifted me a green lanyard with a bell on it to wear around my neck like a fucking cow.

I tried my best to be current and on-trend. But in the end, many of the best meals I’ve had in 2025 weren’t from restaurants that opened in 2025.

Weighing all of this—Let’s get started on my list of not only best meals, but best individual bites. A lot of this will be in New York City and London, but there’ll be appearances from New Jersey, Chicago, Kyoto, South Korea, San Francisco, New Orleans, Italy, and the Hudson Valley as well.

Where I ate the most in New York City in 2025:

While it’s important to reward those who push the restaurant industry forward in terms of technique and hospitality, I do want to start by just telling you where I ate most often this year. These are the places that kept me going.

1. Mama Yoshi Mini Mart, Ridgewood Queens - Everything here is good, plain and simple. Once upon a time I featured the spam breakfast burrito, but I go just as often for the beef gyudon bowl, with a massive piece of katsu on the side to eat while I walk home.

2. Wayne & Sons, East Village Manhattan - Crunchy tacos. Margaritas. Sneaky-good salsas. Sadly the original location has closed down, after the city forced them to close their streatery—cutting their seating by more than half. I’m looking forward to their Williamsburg location opening in January, 2025.

3. Dolores, Bed-Stuy Brooklyn - Their cochinita pibil tacos are the best I’ve had in the city. But everything I’ve tried on the menu—from the tiny potato-stuffed fried tortillas called papadillas to the chile relleno taco to the exceptional gorditas with chicharrón prensado—has been impressive and thoughtful. And crucially, they make very good salsas.

4. Nhà Mình, Ridgewood Queens - I went here for banh mi and pho for quite a while and never felt really satisfied. Now I stop in for the lemongrass chicken bún. The rice noodles are stacked with deeply-charred chicken and pickled veg, and it’s the perfect vehicle to try all of Fred’s fresh and creative sauces (like the crab peanut one I had recently that was wild, or the coffee hoisin that’s been a staple for years).

5. Carnitas Ramirez, East Village Manhattan - Even though I may take Taqueria el Chato’s al Pastor as my #1 taco, Carnitas Ramirez may be #1 taqueria. I find all of the lard-soaked confit’d pig parts satisfying, and their salsa bar with pickled onions is a perfect compliment. I want to eat here all the time. Every time I see one of the owners, Gio, I apologize for not having found the time to feature this place properly.

HOT DOGS OF THE YEAR

This year saw me acting as a hot dog sherpa for Adam Richman and Brad Leone, so it’s only right I crown some winners.

1. Holydog, Middletown New York - My fascination with Holydog has continued long after my feature there. The Mexico City dog, with house-made jalapeños, is a new favorite. Read more here: Food is personal, papito.

2. Art’s Drive-In, Chicago Illinois - Their char dog is simple and perfect. It was an early choice in our Chicago Sausage episode.

3. Pierogi Boys, Ridgewood Queens - Their “Polish Boy” has a kabanosa sausage with slaw, barbecue sauce, spicy mustard and potato sticks. It’s a hefty and delicious snack.

Potato of the Year

I tried to leave the premises of Bake Street, in London, multiple times before owner Feroz Gajia could shove a jacket potato into my hands. I’d seen the videos of tuna mayo being heaped on split-open baked potatoes, and nothing appeals to me less. But Bake Street doesn’t make bullshit for social media, and Feroz is one of the most critical people I know when it comes to food. So I relented.

His potato is twice-baked, its insides mixed with saffron creamed corn that had been leftover from his collab with 2-Michelin Star Ikoyi. Named the “Hermanos Corn Special” on the menu, it’s sprinkled on top with cotija cheese and served with chipotle mayo. It’s Feroz’s take on elotes, in jacket potato form.

Like many of the other great dishes I’ve had at Bake Street—their Bajan-inspired fish cutter sandwich, Feroz’s seasonal take on the In-N-Out Burger, or their viral creme brulee cookies—this jacket potato seems to have emerged from the ether with no other goal than to be the most delicious thing it can be. It silenced the voice in my brain and left me smiling and shaking my head.

Creamed corn. Jacket potato. Elotes. Of course - that makes total sense.

Behind the paywall: The Most Interesting Restaurant of the Year, 19 Top Bites of 2025, and my top 5 Meals of 2025.

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The first time I ate at Mắm, a server vigorously stirred a pungent shrimp paste at my table until it turned from clear to opaque, explaining to me that this particular mắm tôm had been smuggled in from Vietnam via suitcase. I dipped fried tofu and blood sausage into the sauce, and tasted its iron-y, salty funk. I didn’t really get it.

But the most recent time I ate there, I was being handed glasses of wine from wine importer Steven Graf, while launching questions at Mắm’s co-owner and chef, Jerald Head. The food tasted good—really good—and it was the same exact dish I’d had last time. Did he change something about the food, or did that first experience change me?

“It’s you. You changed, man,” Jerald answered. Maybe I’d needed to rise to the challenge. The dish served with shrimp paste is called bún đậu đặc biệt, a towering pile of house-made tofu, rice sausage, pork belly, blood sausage, grilled intestines, and herbs. It’s a signature dish at Mắm, and Jerald knew it should be, despite the previous restaurant he worked at asking him not to put the dish on the menu.

“I remember the ownership being like: New York is not ready for this. I was like: I’m a white dude. I fucking love this, you know?”

Behind the paywall: The origins of Mắm, Jerald’s plans for the future, and what wines we brought to pair with the menu.

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“Chicago’s a sausage town,” is what chef Jonathan Zaragoza tells us as we sit in his living room, sampling salsa seca. “If you think about what Chicago is, we’re a sports town. What sports event do you go to and not have a hot dog, a polish, a brat?”

Jonathan is best-known as an accomplished chef and content creator—who we joking call the “Salsa 101 guy”—but I know him through his family’s beloved restaurant Birrieria Zaragoza. He not only grew up in Chicago, he’s been working in the Chicago restaurant industry for nearly 20 years.

To us, that makes him the perfect judge for a blindfolded ranking of Chicago’s best sausages on our Martinez & Mu Channel. If you haven’t watched the episode yet, there are some spoilers below.

“That tastes like Green Street, I’m not going to lie to you,” he tells me as he bites into a sausage, blind-folded. He’s right: It’s the cheddar-jalapeño smoked link from Green Street Smoked Meats. “That’s a jibarito,” he says while tasting another sausage. “The smell of the lettuce gave it away.”

“There it is,” he says while eating claypot rice. “That’s Chinese sausage.” We knew Jonathan would be a good guest judge; we didn’t expect him to be Daredevil for food.

After we wrap filming and the winner is revealed, I tell him his true calling: Forget Salsa 101. It’s time for Salchicha 101. “Oh no,” he says, laughing.

“That’s behind the paywall, homie.”

Below is a list of everywhere Julian and I ate in the Chicago episode of Food Duels. Behind the paywall, you can listen to us go behind-the-scenes on the episode (no salchicha 101, sorry). Consider subscribing to support the channel. ❤️

• 📍Art’s Drive In, 1333 W North Ave, Chicago, IL 60642 (Google Maps Link)

  • Julian’s first pick is also the very first Chicago Dog he has ever had.

  • He ordered the Char Dog with Fries: all-beef hot dog, poppy seed bun, yellow mustard, bright green sweet pickle relish, white onions, tomatoes, dill pickle spear, and pickled sport peppers.

• 📍 Doma Cafe, 946 N Orleans St, Chicago, IL 60610 (Google Maps Link)

  • Rob didn’t think his order of Eastern European beef sausages would beat Julian’s Chicago Dog in a Chicago episode. Julian didn’t either.

  • He ordered the Ćevapi: Grilled beef sausages in a flatbread, ajvar (roasted red pepper eggplant spread), kajmak (salted clotted cream), and white onions.

• 📍 Jibaritos y Más, 3400 W Fullerton Ave, Chicago, IL 60647 (Google Maps Link)

  • Rob: Often questions why his dish choices don’t win. Also Rob: Decides to send it and choose a Blood Sausage Jibarito.

  • The Jibarito is a sandwich originating from Chicago. Invented by Venezuelan cooks at a Puerto Rican restaurant called Borinquen, it’s a derivative of a patacón, where fried plantains are used to sandwich ingredients.

• 📍 Mart Anthony’s Italian Restaurant, 1200 W Hubbard St, Chicago, IL 60642 (Google Maps Link)

  • Three of Julian’s choices in this region were closed or sold out before he decided on Mart Anthony’s.

  • He ordered the Italian Sausage and Peppers. Later this was defeated by Rob’s choice at Green Street Smoked Meats.

• 📍 Novel Pizza Cafe, 1759 W 19th St, Chicago, IL 60608 (Google Maps Link)

  • Other than Kasama, this was probably the spot that Rob and Julian wanted to hit the most.

  • Julian ordered the Longanisa and Giardiniera tavern thin pizza.

• 📍 La Nonna, 3400 N Lawndale Ave, Chicago, IL 60618 (Google Maps Link)

  • Rob grabbed the Choripan, an Argentinian street food comprised of chorizo and bread with chimichurri.

  • Fun fact: Rob ate most of the sandwich before remembering to take his photo. It was easily beaten by Julian’s Lao sausage.

• 📍 Resi’s Bierstube, 2034 W Irving Park Rd, Chicago, IL 60618 (Google Maps Link)

  • This stop marked the first of many beers that Rob had in this episode - It’s one of the first places in America to carry many German pilsners.

  • He ordered The Thuringer: smoked pork and beef sausage in a bun. All of the sausages come from nearby Paulina Market.

• 📍 Jonny’s Claypot Rice, 1835 S Canal St #A, Chicago, IL 60616 (Google Maps Link)

  • This ended up being Julian’s back-up sausage that he was able to bring due to the advantage from winning the map.

  • He ordered the Chinese Sausage Claypot Rice: Cured, dried pork sausages with a crispy rice bottom.

• 📍 Tac Quick, 1011 W Irving Park Rd, Chicago, IL 60613 (Google Maps Link)

  • Rob went here, aged 20, based off of a recommendation from the Chowhound forum. He loves nostalgia.

  • I will put one thing the owner told me about this place behind a paywall… He did not want it public.

• 📍 Kimski, 954-960 W 31st St, Chicago, IL 60608 (Google Maps Link)

  • Julian knew he was coming here the second he saw this was a Korean Polish fusion hot dog.

  • He ordered the Maria’s Standard: Polish sausage, seasonal kimchi, soju mustard, and scallions on a brioche bun.

• 📍 The Duck Inn, 2701 S Eleanor St, Chicago, IL 60608 (Google Maps Link)

  • The very first proxy battle, where Rob sent Julian to try the Duck Dog to battle against Julian’s own pick.

  • Rob chose The Original Duck Fat Dog: Beef and duck fat sausage, relish, onion, tomato, mustard, pickled serrano peppers, dill pickle spear, all on a poppy seed bun.

  • We tell a funny story about this behind the paywall.

• 📍 Sunset Phở Caffe, 2856 N Clark St, Chicago, IL 60657 (Google Maps Link)

  • Julian found a Vietnamese and Croatian fusion restaurant. It turned out to be Rob’s favorite stop of the day.

  • Julian wanted Rob to order the pho with cevapcici, but after discussion about whether that was a sausage or a noodle dish, we went with the spring rolls with cevapcici.

• 📍 Green Street Smoked Meats, 112 N Green St, Chicago, IL 60607 (Google Maps Link)

  • Rob ordered the Cheddar Jalapeño Hot Link, which beat the Italian Sausages and Peppers in a showdown.

  • This ended up being the runner-up sausage.

• 📍 Lao Der, 3922 N Elston Ave, Chicago, IL 60618 (Google Maps Link)

  • The Sai Ua Moo is the best thing that Julian ate, which is fitting because it won the entire episode.

  • Ground Pork, lemongrass, galangal, lime leaves, garlic, onion, chili powder and turmeric sauce.

• 📍 Jim’s Original, 1250 S Union Ave, Chicago, IL 60607 (Google Maps Link)

  • This 24/7 stand opened in 1939 is a true Chicago Institution, even though it ended up losing its showdown to the Chinese Sausage Claypot Rice

  • Polish dog with yellow salad mustard, grilled sweet spanish onions, and a spicy grilled serrano on top (which you should probably not eat - it’s very spicy.)

  • Unsuccessfully tried to dethrone the claypot rice. Bummer.

Below, enjoy both the video and audio version of the Martinez & Mu Show.

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34 days into the longest government shutdown in history, as SNAP benefits began to lapse, Young Kim took to social media to confess: “Last night, I was very ashamed of myself…” He had been planning Thanksgiving promotion for his store, Jubilee Marketplace, as most grocers do in November.

But as Young saw his peers mobilize to collect and distribute food directly to their communities, he hit pause. When Christine Liu, co-founder of HEYDOH, reached out to Young to ask for fresh produce donations, he wondered, “What am I doing to help?”

“Nothing, until now,” he declared on the now-deleted video (reposted below).

Young Kim is not your average, anonymous grocery store CEO. In 2023, he went viral for selling $2.55 smash burgers at the newly-opened Jubilee Marketplace Greenpoint. In 2025, Pete Wells of the New York Times wrote him up for lowering the price of groceries in his store, often checking each SKU individually against local competitors. Now, he wants to take on the government shutdown and its subsequent SNAP freeze.

He did not anticipate how difficult that would be.

After sharing a video offering a 25% discount to SNAP recipients, friends at RiseBoro Farmers Markets alerted Young about the SNAP Equal Treatment Rule, which states that retailers “cannot treat SNAP-EBT customers differently than any other customer”. According to USDA guidelines, “This equal treatment provision prohibits both negative treatment (such as discriminatory practices) as well as preferential treatment (such as incentive programs).”

In effect, a 25% discount for those who have lost their benefits is strictly prohibited. In order to circumvent the rule, retailers must apply for a SNAP Incentive Waiver Request.

Young decided to remove the video to comply with the rule. “I understand that policies and rules and laws are made with a broader vision, but at the same time, I feel like this is a special circumstance where the funding has been reduced to 50% [from 100%]. So why can’t I help?” he laments. “The rules weren’t really detailed, and I just didn’t want the person using the SNAP-EBT to be penalized because of us.”

When Young initially announced his incentive program, he was heartened to see other retailers following suit. “We’re just in one neighborhood,” he explains. “Anything we do to help the community from our initial price reductions to this discount, if others could do it too, it’ll have this chain effect.” After removing his video and issuing a corrective statement, Young reached out to caution other businesses as well. “We should’ve researched more before we initiated this move, but the policy stuff was frustrating,” he reflects. “I had no idea that they would have a policy like this.”

However, Young is not letting that stop him from helping in any way he can. He established a food drive in Greenpoint with weekly donations to the Greenpoint Hunger Program, and has committed to matching every donated dried good with a fresh produce item. “Anytime there’s a big surge in demand like this, the food pantries might run out of supplies,” he said. “I’m hoping to help alleviate that.”

In addition, Young is investigating how he can contribute household items such as paper towels, which are not covered by SNAP benefits. Due to space constraints at the FiDi location of Jubilee, Young has committed to donating an equivalent dollar amount to local food pantries in Lower Manhattan.

Young originally planned to offer 50% off to SNAP recipients, but sheepishly admitted that with his grocery store still not being profitable, he couldn’t. Despite these obstacles, Young never wavered in his resolve to help his neighbors in need. “During my childhood, I received food assistance too, where the elementary school I went to offered free breakfast and free lunch… It really helped me and my family a lot,” he explains. “And anyway, we receive so much from the community as a business. I just want to do anything I can to give back.”

Angela Xu is a curious eater and food storyteller based in NYC. She founded Brooklyn Food Lady in order to share stories at the intersection of food, culture, and community with a focus on amplifying immigrant voices. Her passions include showcasing diverse cuisines, highlighting mom and pop eateries, and exploring the vibrant neighborhoods of New York City.

Rob’s Note: Young Kim has been a contributor to this Substack. He also appeared as a key subject in my Korea documentary. Angela Xu conducted her research and reported this piece independently, based on my initial suggestion for a story.

As I’m handed a slice of smoked salmon at Barney Greengrass, the gentleman behind the counter nods with eyes wide. “This is the spot,” he tells me. I let the fatty Nova Scotia salmon melt in my mouth, and shake my head. “It’s out of control,” he says. As they layer it on a bagel with cream cheese, capers, red onion and tomato, I feel confident that this is the best sandwich in New York City.

Spoiler: It isn’t. But in the end, it wasn’t up to me.

This was the first sandwich I tried on Food Duels, mine and Julian Mu’s new show that has us battling across cities to find the best foods in their category. But our choices aren’t gospel: Each food can be challenged, where its value will be decided by our Instagram community in real time, and our absolute favorite foods will be judged, by an expert guest in the city we’re in.

There is a lot more to the game, but, it’s easier if you just watch it.

Each week, we’ll be discussing the show and answering food questions here on Substack. This after show is behind the paywall for those who want to support the show, but below you’ll find all of the sandwiches we ate in episode 1 listed in order. Be warned: Spoilers for Food Duels episode 1 below.

Every Sandwich We Ate

• 📍 Margon, 136 W 46th St, New York, NY 10036 (Google Maps link)

  • Julian’s first pick is one he featured on his channel.

  • He ordered the Cubano: ham, pernil, pickle, cheese, and salami.

• 📍 Barney Greengrass, 541 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY 10024 (Google Maps link)

  • Rob’s first pick is at a spot he’s never been to. Classic.

  • He ordered a traditional lox sandwich: Nova scotia salmon, cream cheese, red onion, capers, tomato on a toasted sesame seed bagel.

• 📍 Mama’s TOO! Pizzeria West Village, 325 Bleecker St, New York, NY 10014 (Google Maps link)

  • Julian ordered the chicken parm with vodka sauce and pesto. Ended up being Rob’s favorite sandwich of the day.

• 📍 Ollin 2, 2108 2nd Ave, New York, NY 10029 (Google Maps link)

  • Rob ordered the cemita with carne enchilada, plus a jamaica. If you do go here, don’t skip the mole poblano, it’s insane.

  • This was the runner-up sandwich.

• 📍 Parisi Bakery, 198 Mott St, New York, NY 10012 (Google Maps link)

  • Julian ordered The Dennis with roasted peppers, which ended up winning the whole show. Although nowadays Julian prefers “The Big Italian” from Parisi.

• 📍 Taku Sando, 29 Greenpoint Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11222 (Google Maps link)

  • After Rob pivoted away from Radio Bakery, he picked up a tonkatsu sandwich from Taku Sando. Skip the wagyu one.

• 📍 Jubilee Marketplace FiDi, 99 John St, New York, NY 10038 (Google Maps link)

  • Julian stopped in to one of our favorite places for the Korean chopped cheese, with galbi-marinated ground beef.

• 📍 Carmenta’s, 50 Starr St, Brooklyn, NY 11221 (Google Maps link)

  • The Jose Special is a traditional meatball parm, but embellished with salsa verde and fried eggplant.

  • This was Rob’s #1 pick during the episode. Possibly the best sandwich in New York, despite what our judge chose.

• 📍 Ba Xuyen, 4222 8th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11232 (Google Maps link)

  • Our first repeat on M&M, featured in episode 1 of Feasting on $50.

  • Julian got the roast pork banh mi.

• 📍 Katz’s Delicatessan, 205 E Houston St, New York, NY 10002 (Google Maps link)

  • Rob tried to beat the Parisi sandwich with this, but to no avail.

  • Pastrami, sauerkraut, Russian dressing, swiss cheese on rye.

• 📍 Lowerline, 794 Washington Ave Apartment 8, Brooklyn, NY 11238 (Google Maps link)

  • A crazy pull from Julian. He got the roast beef po’ boy with debris gravy.

• 📍 Anthony’s Paninoteca, 3994 Amboy Rd, Staten Island, NY 10308 (Google Maps link)

  • Rob considers this Staten Island’s best sandwich shop.

  • After much deliberation, Rob went with the AGV: Chicken cutlet, prosciutto, giardiniera, hot capicola, fresh mozzarella.

• 📍 George’s Deli, 36-19 28th Ave, Astoria, NY 11103 (Google Maps link)

  • Julian got a chopped cheese, but he meant to get a birria torta at George’s Mexican Grill

Thanks so much for watching episode 1 of Food Duels. Paid subscribers can access the video and audio version of “The Martinez & Mu Show” below!

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There is, at the time of this writing, only one way to eat a Chinese whole roasted lamb in a yurt in the Hudson Valley. Here I’ve written a guide to the best practices for having this unique experience. You can see a video of what this feast looks like here.

Update as of 10/28/25: Y’all sold Jimmy out for the year. The form is currently down. I will update this when he opens up the form again.

Everyone asks me: How did you find this?

At the bottom of a list of recommendations I received in my DMs from a follower, it says this: “There is a yurt in Gardiner called bobo’s that does a full lamb too.”

That was enough for me.

I went down the rabbit hole. There are only 22 reviews for Bobo’s Farm on Google Maps. The listing is written in Chinese first, then English. The photos show groups of mostly Chinese people tearing apart lamb with gloved hands. The website links to a form for booking: It doesn’t list a price, a menu, or how many people you should bring.

Once I knew there were at least 10 of my friends interested, I submitted the form. The owner left me his number. His name is Jimmy, and the farm is named for his wife, Bobo. “She’s the real boss,” Jimmy tells me. “She’s a genius on cooking. I even wonder, ‘how does she know all of this?’”

Booking and Best Practices for the Feast (sold out until 2026)

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These were the words spoken to me by Jaime Palacios, better known as Chino, the owner of Holy Dog in Middletown, New York.

Born in China to Chilean parents, Jaime grew up between Mexico City and the jungles of Venezuela before moving to Brooklyn at age 24. He comes from a family of artists; his aunt is the artist Sylvia Palacios Whitman. He keeps a cluttered studio stacked with massive canvases behind his hot dog shack, but he tells me that food is the most important thing.

Rob: Are you an artist?

Jaime: Yes, all my life. That I didn’t choose. This nightmare? (He gestures to his restaurant.) I choose it by myself.

Rob: Why’d you start cooking?

Jaime: What do you mean “Why”? That is what we do. You see, that is how families say “I love you,” is with food. The nucleus of society is the family. The nucleus of the family is the table where we eat. Where we share values. When that is broken, society starts crumbling. Food is the most important thing, it’s why we do things.

Rob: Would you say food is more important than art?

Jaime: Food is art.

Then he laughs, and then he makes me the chicken sandwich that 2 locals had been waiting for since before he opened up that day.

Jaime opened the Mexican bar/restaurant Veracruz in Williamsburg in the 90s, and it still exists today. He placed every stone in the backyard himself, sourced from his neighbors on Bedford. After he and his partner were evicted (a story I probably can’t share here), he moved up to Middletown.

As to why he chose Middletown, he told me his friend threw a dart at a map of New York state, and it landed there.

The experience of visiting Holy Dog can’t be captured on film. There is always a line, and there are less than 10 seats inside. You order directly from Chino, and he’ll relay it to the one other member of staff to prep buns and condiments. The atmosphere is smoky from the amount of charred sugar burning on his griddle, left behind by the balsamic glaze he blasts his dogs with. Your order will be communicated back and forth between you, Chino, and the worker more than once. Often, Chino will hand you something to try: A piece of a “Girlfriend Treatment” (sausage, peppers, onions, chili, cheese, pico de gallo, and chipotle mayo), or a bacon chili cheese dog (bacon-wrapped and deep fried). On Wednesdays and Saturdays, there are sliders—but only if you know to ask for them.

Rob: I noticed there’s no system to order.

Jaime: No, no, no. No computers, no… We don’t have a TV, we don’t have WiFi, we don’t take orders over the phone.

Why? We like people. We like to talk to you, we like to cook for you, and you should like to see what I’m doing. Because if I don’t see you, who cares what I give you? Right? Because if you just receive it, then that’s it. The delivery guy’s gone, who are you going to complain to?

Food is personal, papito. You put it in your mouth.

Food is personal. It’s a profound and simple sentiment that has resonated with me for weeks now. The impersonal nature of food delivery, of ghost kitchens, of slop bowls, of AI, of the gig economy, of the man in the street, of the filming without consent, of the spitting out Hong Kong egg tarts in London, of the “come with me,” of the rating it one through ten, of the anonymous internet—It’s fucking killing me. And I need to counter it.

But not all that’s in my purview. I control this space, and the other spaces where I distribute videos. I have to make it personal, because it’s personal to me and it’s personal to the people I interview. John Czerw died and it hurt me. A restaurant owner texted me this week asking if I can help stabilize the business so he can give it a last shot. The owner of Lodi Pizza offered to take a loss if I couldn’t sell the t-shirts I printed featuring his business. “It’s a pride thing,” he told me at the time about his pizzeria. “It’s like you’re selling yourself through the pizza.”

Food is personal. It’s something to live up to. I’d like to be as accountable making videos on the internet as Chino is selling hot dogs. So I’m putting that as the tagline for this Substack. I am accountable for anything published here, or on my channels. There is no executive board, there are no investors, there is nobody replying on my behalf. It’s just me, some writers I trust, and y’all.

A big thank you is owed to Jaime “Chino” Palacios. Maybe I should head back for a part 2? Let me know in the comments. And subscribe for more stories about people and food.

📍 Holy Dog
44 W Main St, Middletown, NY 10940