The Year in Food 2008

What we ate, what the candidates ate, what the Olympians ate

Big Brother Recommends
the Garden Salad

Poor neighborhoods typically have few grocery stores where residents can buy fresh fruits and vegetables, and a disproportionate number of fast-food restaurants. Public health problems ensue. The LA City Council tried to legislate its way out of this mess in July, when it passed a moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in low-income neighborhoods. But that didn’t fix the problem of the lack of grocery stores, and even if the areas had been flooded with fresh produce, there’s no sign that people would be buying. “It’s our body, we choose what we put in it,” said one ruffled resident, as reported in a Reuters story on the ban. Largely unexamined: In a city where bacon-wrapped hot dogs are a beloved street food, slowing down the spread of Burger King may not be a comprehensive solution. —James Norton

In the Interests of Full Disclosure

In 2008, calorie declarations in chain restaurants, cloned food, and carbon footprints became need-to-know (or at least want-to-know) information for consumers. Truth in food labeling has been a point of American pride since the Food and Drugs Act of 1906. Whether some or all of these newfangled labels will become permanent fixtures is yet to be seen; there’s an ongoing wrestling match between consumer advocates and business interests. Knowing exactly how many calories your Big Mac has is just a big buzz kill—on that we can all agree. —James Norton

Campaign Gaffes:
The Liquid Edition

No matter what they chose, presidential candidates couldn’t get their drink orders right. Hillary Clinton’s whiskey- and beer-drinking stunt at Bronko’s Restaurant and Lounge in Crown Point, Indiana, was widely publicized and mocked by then-opponent Barack Obama: “Around election time, the candidates can’t do enough for you,” he said. “They’ll promise you anything … and even come around, with TV crews in tow, to throw back a shot and a beer.” The irony of trying to win over the American working class with a shot of Canadian whiskey (Crown Royal) was quickly pointed out across the Web. But Obama was also caught playing blue collar with his boozing in Pennsylvania when he tried the local brew Yuengling: “Trying a Pennsylvania beer, that’s what I’m talking about. Is it expensive though?” he was quoted as saying. “Wanna make sure it’s not some designer beer or something.” Oops, said the Union-Free Employer blog: “Yuengling has been the subject of a Teamsters boycott since the company went non-union last summer.” Bad handlers; no beers for you. —Roxanne Webber

Let Them Eat Moose

Alaskan populism goes hand-in–Polartec glove with killing your own moose and cookin’ it up, something Governor Sarah Palin apparently indulged in on numerous occasions, when she wasn’t pulling rank on her police chief, hiding her pregnancy, or shopping for designer clothes. Say what you will about her, one thing’s for sure: She single-handedly put the edible moose onto America’s radar screen, if not its menus, in 2008. —James Norton

“Passion Fruit Moussegate” Never Really Resonated

In light of what came later in the presidential campaign—Troopergate, Angry Preachergate, Neiman Marcusgate—the Cindy McCain recipe kerfluffle is a mere footnote. In early April, a John McCain website section called “Cindy’s Recipes” was revealed to be “Cindy’s Recipes Directly Appropriated from the Food Network with Minor Changes.” What does it say about a candidate that his wife’s home cooking is stolen wholesale from the Food Network? Not much, apparently; when people were polled about why they didn’t vote for McCain, passion fruit mousse didn’t come up a lot. —James Norton

Let My Peeps Go

Saving the chickens has never been so complicated. When Proposition 2 came on the ballot in California this year, it seemed like a no-brainer: It bans the state’s farmers from using “confining crates and cages for hens, pregnant pigs and veal calves that don’t allow the animals to turn around, lie down and extend their limbs,” according to the Los Angeles Times. And yet some small family farmers were against it, saying it would be bad for business and would result in nonlocal, inhumanely raised animals flooding the market. But when faced with the suffering of small farmers and the suffering of chickens, the people chose the chickens. Boosters pointed out that the law doesn’t take effect until 2015, offering plenty of time for farmers to adapt. Regardless, there’s one nonvoting constituency probably thrilled by the vote: animals currently packed into tiny crates. —James Norton

Slow Food, Big Event, Exploited Workers

Nearly 100,000 people gathered in San Francisco at summer’s end for the first big stateside rally of the international organization Slow Food. The group, which is based in Italy, champions locally farmed food, traditional cooking methods, and organic wholesomeness. The event was, essentially, a world’s fair for the taste buds, with pavilions dedicated to small-batch spirits, cheeses, beer, heirloom produce, honey, and pickles, to name just a handful. But not everybody had a great time: Some volunteers later reported being treated like the hired help—minus the paycheck.
—James Norton

Welcome to the Big City, Little Chickens

If you’ve always wanted to raise chickens in the city without the man (or PETA) getting on your ass, now is your time to shine. All year long we’ve been hearing about people growing their own food to save money and eat better, whether via a backyard orchard in Brooklyn or honey from the ’hood in Philly. But it looks like the underground urban chicken movement is what’s really starting to hatch. Although raising the birds is still illegal in many municipalities, in the past year, the cities of Fort Collins, Colorado; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and South Portland, Maine voted to let people raise chickens. In Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, and San Francisco, it was already legal. While chickens may not be the most emotionally rewarding pets, at least you get eggs for the money and time you put into them—and you can’t eat your cat if you get sick of it. —Roxanne Webber

Pollination Panic

As the world food system seemed to collapse around us this year, there was a glimmer of hope for the bees. Since 2006 honeybees have been disappearing at an alarming rate, pushing people into mass hysterics and bad headline-punning (“How to Bee Helpful,” “Silence of the Bees,” and various other references to the sting of defeat and minding one’s beeswax). No bees means no pollination, no pollination means no pollinated crops, and no pollinated crops means no food. A group of scientists from Beeologics believes that Israeli acute paralysis virus is the primary cause of Colony Collapse Disorder. The Israeli-U.S. team is testing an antiviral agent on a population of 100,000 hives. Bee optimistic.
—Michele Foley

The Year of Eating Flexibly

The term flexitarianism wasn’t invented in 2008, but it made a decent run at becoming Buzzword of the Year, with prominent mentions in Newsweek, USA Today, and U.S. News & World Report, among others. It means someone who is vegetarian most of the time, and is supposed to both help you be healthier and give the environment a break, because by now most of us know that the raising of livestock uses up a lot of resources and can cause pollution. But the very flexibility of the diet that makes it so appealing also makes it largely ineffective in achieving its vague ends. When there are no hard and fast rules, it’s easy to fudge. —James Norton

Life Gets Better for America’s Doomed Chickens

A standoff between Chipotle Mexican Grill and PETA over chicken slaughtering ended in March when the restaurant agreed to serve chickens that had been killed in a more humane fashion. Burger King, Wendy’s, and Safeway followed suit. All will give purchasing preference to suppliers that use controlled-atmosphere killing, a method that snuffs out tiny chicken lives with a combination of argon and nitrogen or CO₂. Basically, it puts the chickens to sleep, which is a lot better than other industry methods like electrocution, maceration, and, well, we’ll stop there. It should be noted that although life got better for chickens in 2008, the animals still have a tendency to carry tiny picket signs that read “Eet Mor Beefs.” —James Norton

Seafood Swims in Troubled Waters

As mankind’s energetic overfishing of pretty much everything continues, a number of particularly disturbing stories roiled seafood-lovers in 2008. On the East Coast, the Chesapeake Bay’s blue crab season melted down. On the West Coast, the California salmon season was canceled after fish numbers hit record lows. And sushi? Oy, what a debacle. Between the nonsustainable fishing and the mercury, it’s been a horror show. Is there good news? There sure is, if you love eating jellyfish.
—James Norton

We Have No Bananas Tomorrow

Whither the Cavendish? The ubiquitous plain old yellow banana has a far graver predator than Curious George. A few years ago, scientists discovered that the monocultural fruit is just one disease away from extinction. This year, Australian scientists successfully modified a banana plant to make it resistant to deadly Panama disease, a step that may bode well for the vulnerable species. That’s good news for more than the banana, because a Cavendish extinction would jeopardize the health of subsistence farmers in tropical regions as well as leave supermarket and farmers’ market shelves empty for years as substitute varieties were slowly brought up to mass production. “Strawberry-yuca smoothie” just doesn’t have the same ring. —James Norton

High-Fructose Corn Syrup Shatters Friendships, Destroys Marriages

High-fructose corn syrup, the demon that chases Michael Pollan in his sleep, isn't really all that bad, according to the Corn Refiners Association (CRA). Er, wait a second. The lobbying group ran a widely publicized pro-HFCS propaganda campaign in the late summer and fall of 2008, and millions of prediabetic obese children happily unwrapped another piece of the devil's candy. There was plenty of outrage—HFCS is higher in fructose than less processed sugars, and it slows down the body's natural tendency to burn fat. But is HFCS the Antichrist? That's difficult to say: Its impact isn't perfectly understood, and how much is too much isn't clear. The CRA says HFCS is just fine to eat "in moderation," but because subsidies encourage farmers to grow corn, HFCS is in most processed foods. And since when do we do anything in moderation? But the ads did get people talking—and shouting—at one another like few other topics. —James Norton

No Truffling Matter

No, seriously, this is bad news. Reuters reported this year that changing climate conditions are moving the best growing turf for truffles ever northward, echoing the effect that climate change is having on the growing regions for fine wine. As the range moves north, it’s expected that the harvest will decline, due to the truffle’s vulnerability to frost. The increased rarity of one of the world’s most fetishized and expensive foods came perfectly timed with a worldwide financial crisis, leaving Thomas Keller with nothing to cook, and no one to cook for. But in the meantime, our grandchildren can look forward to enjoying fine Yukon wine.
—James Norton

When Meat Goes (Really) Bad

When 143 million pounds of beef was recalled in February (an alarming undercover Humane Society video showed sick “downer” cows trudging and falling at the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company), Congress sped into action, concerned that the meat had been distributed to school cafeterias. The USDA agreed to tell the public, in the future, which retailers are carrying recalled meat. But the law only applies to meat that’s very, very bad—what’s known as a Class I recall, as opposed to meat that is just questionable. Guess what the meat was in the Westland/Hallmark recall? Questionable. Nothing gained, nothing accomplished.
—Nicholas Day

A Long, Haute Country Summer

Jelly jars, communal picnic tables, seasonal-local blah blah, and pork, pork, and more pork: The haute barnyard restaurant trend won’t quit. New York magazine’s Adam Platt coined the term a few years ago to describe the seasonal/local pioneers Craft and Peasant. But he noted how self-conscious the trend had gotten in an August review of Hundred Acres and Forge, where free-range chicken nuggets made a menu appearance. A competing term, monk chic, appeared in an Eater LA story about soon-to-open Los Angeles restaurant Libre. Get ready for “lots of slow cooked this and brick oven that … raw woods, beeswax candles, very natural.” Hair shirt gets you a seat near the sexy people. —Lessley Anderson

The Milky Way

Things started out good for milk. Momofuku’s Bakery & Milk Bar became the latest in a string of fancy New York milk bars. And the number of people interested in the health benefits of raw milk grew. But tainted milk was discovered in China, and dioxin-laced buffalo mozzarella in Italy. And after a Swiss chef announced he’d use human breast milk for 75 percent of his restaurant’s dairy needs, PETA wrote a letter asking Ben & Jerry’s to do the same. No plans for a Mother’s Cookies and Cream flavor have been announced.
—James Norton

Alert the Paparazzi

Like the cast of Gossip Girl or Angelina Jolie’s breasts, certain ingredients were everywhere this year. 2008’s list of “It” foods in cocktails, on menus, and adorning grocery store circulars was as follows: richer, thicker Greek yogurt; Green Goddess dressing; fried chicken; and probiotics. And quinoa. Everywhere quinoa. On the horizon: yacón root syrup. It’s going to be the new agave nectar. —James Norton

That’s How Crème Brûlée Rolls

Remember how much you used to love the ice cream man? Turns out a lot of people still do, judging by the success of chefs who took their Belgian waffles and tofu wraps on the road this year, giving the old roach coach a makeover. Fine-dining operations inside trucks opened up in Seattle, LA, San Francisco, and New York. Even Jerome Chang from Le Cirque got into the act. Truck-side dining makes perfect sense in a recession: Chefs save on overhead, and customers save too. Plus, the latter get to eat with their fingers and drink malt liquor out of a paper bag if they choose. —Michele Foley

All Pray to the Coffee God

We needed to be extra caffeinated in order to keep up with the pace of coffee news this year. New York saw beans from high-end roasters like Stumptown, Intelligentsia, Blue Bottle, and Ritual make their way to the city. And new serious coffee shops opened, like Abraço. Customers and wannabe coffee sommeliers learned how to detect notes of cassis and tobacco in single-origin brews through advanced “cupping” sessions, and more places offered double-digit-priced cups of coffee made with high-tech brewing equipment like the $20,000 Siphon. Starbucks, even though it acquired the company that makes the Clover (the must-have coffee maker before the Siphon hit the scene), could never hope to be this cool. Early this year, Chairman Howard Schultz announced that Starbucks would shutter 8 percent of its stores, and its stock price nosedived. And now that the stock market has generally tanked, it’ll take more than strong espresso to perk things up again. —Lessley Anderson

Alpine Elves Beat Out the Green Fairies

Some trends just have “novelty” written all over them. Case in point: Overtaking absinthe as the must-have liqueur of 2008, St-Germain was poured, displayed, and mixed at every notable bar by anyone audacious enough to call himself a mixologist. Fans like the elderflower liqueur because it’s subtle and complex, slightly sweet, and works well with just about any spirit, from champagne to gin. St-Germain derives its citrus-inflected flavor from the tiny, pale flowers of the elderflower plant, harvested in the Alpine foothills of France. But the liqueur owes a lot of its popularity to its beautiful vintage-inspired art nouveau bottle. —Michele Foley

Michael Phelps Miracle Diet Found to Work Only for Michael Phelps

While many Americans failed once again to lose weight on the latest diet, it was revealed that Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps gorges himself on 12,000 calories a day. To reach his astonishing intake during Olympic competition, Phelps routinely breakfasted on a five-egg omelet, three slices of French toast, three chocolate-chip pancakes, and a bowl of grits—all at one sitting. Lunch was a pound of pasta, two large ham-and-cheese sandwiches, and 1,000 calories of energy drinks. Dinner? Another pound of pasta and an entire pizza, washed down with more energy drinks. As Phelps gamely ate—and swam—his way to eight gold medals, Pizza Hut offered to feed him and his team for a year, and Fox News actually soft-peddled the story with its headline “Michael Phelps’ 12,000 Calorie-a-Day Diet Not for Everyone.”
—Traci Vogel

Ordering Out for Chinese Misses the Point

After months of incessant Chinese food-safety scandals, a single worry crystallized in the heads of Olympic organizers everywhere: Would eating zha jiang noodles kill their athletes? What followed was farce. The USOC announced that it would import 25,000 pounds of protein to Beijing. In response, China pointed out that foreign athletes were technically banned from bringing food into the Olympic Village, which then caused Australia to panic about its athletes’ access to Vegemite. When American distance runner Shalane Flanagan did come down with food poisoning, it turned out to be a good thing: Her husband credited the forced rest that accompanied the illness with restoring her vigor and helping her win the bronze. —Nicholas Day

Books: Once
Again Helpful

Everyone deals with recessions a little differently. Some people vacation in Cape Cod instead of Brittany. Others switch from Grey Goose to Smirnoff. But millions of Americans started adapting to 2008’s not-so-prosperous times by falling back on old eating habits: canning, for example. Packing a cooler instead of eating road food. Starting a garden. And finally, that old unsexy standby, cooking at home, a once waning practice that is now booming and helping cookbook authors feel a little more recession-proof than the rest of us.
—James Norton

A Case of the Cow Calling
the Goat Milky

As a phrase reflective of the times, “Got Milk?” is increasingly being overtaken by “Got Enough Money to Afford Milk?” Dairy prices have risen about 9 percent this year. President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tactfully blamed countries with large populations of starving and malnourished people for the rising food prices. Among other factors cited, the problem was caused by “improvement in the diets of people, for instance, in China and India,” said Rice. India responded to the United States by saying: Look in the mirror, fatty. “Milk consumption, in fluid form, is 78 kg per year for each person in the US, compared to 36 kg in India and 11 kg in China,” said the Times of India in an article whose headline read “US Eats 5 Times More than India Per Capita.” Still, as Asian economies industrialize and diets Westernize, that ratio may tilt less and less toward the U.S., with potentially serious consequences for the way food is priced … and eaten. —Roxanne Webber

Survivor, $2 Challenge Edition

As a fiscal shortfall turns into a full-fledged recession and consumer confidence crumbles, the Two Dollar Challenge takes on increasingly ominous resonance. The project, designed to document the experience of living on $2 a day for five days and four nights, challenges its participants (primarily students of economics professor Dr. Shawn Humphrey of the University of Mary Washington) to travel and eat on a severely restricted budget, plus limited access to water. This year’s participants watched as their quality of nutrition and life plunged while the amount of time they spent walking, cooking, and searching for affordable food shot through the roof. Meanwhile, they also blogged skeptical observations about fellow students who looked too well fed or adequately showered. No surprise that some participants would game the system, by asking people not on the $2-a-day plan for free food and showers. —James Norton

No Shame in the Early Bird Special

As customers clamped down on their food budgets, restaurants like Memphis’s Circa added happy hour specials to lure penny pinchers, or, like San Francisco’s Orson, retooled their menus to be more casual. Others waved corkage fees or launched half-off wine nights. Some just plain bit the dust, like the chain Bennigan’s. Meanwhile, Whole Foods went on a massive PR tour in which it took members of the media shopping, hoping to show that the store’s prices aren’t higher than anybody else’s. Most of the tour took place in the dry lentil bins. —Lessley Anderson

Bono, Michael Jackson Didn’t Do Enough

Food riots rocked countries from Egypt to India to Burkina Faso this year. Many people hoped starvation was a problem that Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie had solved already with “We Are the World.” Instead, rising oil costs, military conflict, and surging demand in rich countries for resource-intensive meat have led to tragic situations such as mothers in Haiti feeding their children dried mud cookies in order to fill their bellies. —James Norton

Meet the Freegans

As food prices jumped and stock markets fell, the dumpster diet of freegans—the food division of the anticonsumer vanguard—became the perfect alternative-lifestyle story idea for editors everywhere. Simultaneously alluring—free!—and appalling—dumpsters!—freeganism even showed up on Oprah. There’s no shortage of dumped food out there. Witness this Seattle freegan who passes up dry pasta because she hates cooking. —Nicholas Day

In the Kitchen with Julia the Spy

Was the grande dame of celebrity cookery also a spy? After years of speculation about Julia Child’s wartime role, her classified files were made public in August when the National Archives released personnel documents on those who served in the World War II–era intelligence agency that preceded the CIA. We’ve known for a while that Child worked for the agency—before she was cooking boeuf bourguignon on TV, she helped whip up a recipe for shark repellent for the government, the CIA noted in 2007. But the documents put an end to any remaining speculation that she had actively spied for the agency. —Roxanne Webber

RIP: The Food Miles Concept

This was the year the food miles debate died. It has been established—over and over again, and then again—that local food won’t always emit fewer greenhouse gases on its way to your plate. Sometimes local conditions (think of the warm tropical sun that grows fruit without the need for greenhouses or extensive chemical fertilizers) more than compensate for the environmental cost of shipping food to an overseas market, making an overall carbon footprint a more useful metric for measuring food’s impact than miles traveled. So here’s hoping that future arguments over eating local will include a few criteria other than mere mileage. Like, say, taste. —Nicholas Day

Paul Newman Dies at 83

Hollywood legend Paul Newman died from cancer this year, leaving behind a long and illustrious film career. If there were an Academy Award for salad dressing, Newman would be a shoo-in. On the day of his passing, social messaging service Twitter was awash with comments like “Does Newman’s death make my salad dressing worth more” and “Thanks for the popcorn Paul,” as well as fears about the fate of Newman-O’s. His company, Newman’s Own, promises that the food isn’t going anywhere. That’s good news for beneficiaries of the Newman’s Own Foundation: Since 1982, the group has given more than $250 million to thousands of charities. —Michele Foley

Foraging: Still Deadly

When you’re foraging for salad toppers in the wild, it’s hard to play it too safe. British novelist Nicholas Evans (The Horse Whisperer) was severely poisoned after eating wild mushrooms on vacation in Scotland this year. Evans, his wife, and two other family members were hospitalized and had to undergo kidney dialysis to prevent renal failure after picking and consuming the rare Cortinarius speciosissimus mushrooms on a walk around the Scottish Highlands estate owned by Evans’s brother-in-law. Mushroom experts speculated that the group had mistook the deadly and rare Cortinarius speciosissimus for the similar-looking and edible chanterelle. Worldwide numbers are hard to come by, but poisonous mushrooms have killed people by the dozens in places as disparate as Mozambique, Japan, and Russia. Here’s one scenario in which DIY might not be the best way to go. —Lessley Anderson

David Foster Wallace Was Good for the Food World. He’s Gone Now.

He wasn’t a food writer, and never wanted to be, but David Foster Wallace, who committed suicide in September, was the author of one of the greatest food essays ever written. “Consider the Lobster,” a rumination on the ethics of boiling a creature alive more or less because it’s delicious, appeared in the August 2004 issue of Gourmet magazine, and caused many a lobster-lover to reconsider. —Meredith Arthur

Budweiser Embraces (and Renounces) Its American Heritage

The same year Budweiser-maker Anheuser-Busch sells out to Belgian beer titan InBev, the newly merged brewery releases its Budweiser American Ale, a fake microbrew designed to compete with the booming craft (or good-tasting) beer market. Seems even mega swill-mongers are clueing in to the increasing number of people with an interest in something other than a beer’s poundability.
—James Norton

Chocolate-Flavored Candy-Type Item

It’s been a bad year for Hershey’s: The company announced the closing of six North American plants, competitor Mars has gotten aggressive in its pursuit of the number-one U.S. chocolatier slot, and Hershey’s took a PR drubbing when it started blending cocoa butter substitutes into a number of its old-school mainstays to cut costs. Candies affected included Milk Duds, Mr. Goodbar, Whatchamacallit, and Kissables. American consumers may not notice the difference between the words chocolaty and chocolate, but informal feedback suggests that they’ll notice the difference in taste. The good news, according to the PR flacks: “In Mr. Goodbar, for instance, the change lets the peanut flavor shine through.” —James Norton

The Last Time We’re Ever Going to Print the Word Bacon

Bacon is tasty. That’s never been seriously disputed, and in recent years, the presence of bacon as a secular sacrament of food bloggers and the kind of people who make their own ironic T-shirts has become unavoidable. We’ve been assaulted by bacon-flavored salt, the Baconator, Baconnaise, country-fried bacon, the $150 artisanal bacon-of-the-month club, chocolate-covered bacon, the bacon alarm clock, etc., etc., etc. In 2008, however, the worm may have finally turned on the bacon fetish. New York magazine’s Grub Street blog took Salon to task for its “tiresome” and “predictable” Pork Week article “Bacon Mania,” asking in an understatedly self-referential way: “When will the anti-bacon backlash come?” It has come, baby, and you done brought it. —James Norton

The Latest Rachael Ray Pile-On

Last year, we jumped all over Rachael Ray for being married to a weirdo. This year, the media piled on Ray when she decided to appear as a spokesperson for Dunkin’ Donuts. Anthony Bourdain even accused her of doing the equivalent of “endorsing crack for kids.” To top it off, her ads were eventually pulled when Fox News called her a terrorist for her choice of neckwear. —Meredith Arthur

Fro-Yo, No, No!

Also in the will-not-die department, fro-yo swirled its way across the States, spreading the availability of low-cal pap to the skinny-jeans crowd nationwide. There were indie shops opening in Arizona and California. Mr. Yogato opened in DC. Fro-yo kingpin Pinkberry celebrated its 50th shop and settled the what-the-hell’s-in-this-crap lawsuit. We also saw the beginnings of a backlash. The Village Voice questioned fro-yo’s virtuous status, calling out the “interchangeable, infantile shop names—YoGo Monster, Yolato, Oko, /eks/, Flurt, Pinkberry, Yorganic,” and getting heavyweight food author and professor Marion Nestle to take a look at Pinkberry’s ingredients. “I’d judge it a poor-quality commercial frozen yogurt (compared, say, to Häagen-Dazs) on the grounds that it has replaced real food ingredients with additives and emulsifiers,” she told the Voice. “The calories seem low [70 calories per 1/2 cup], and I don’t see how they can do that unless the bulk of the ingredients are indigestible.” —Roxanne Webber

Brand Extensions of the Rich and Famous

It seems these days everyone’s got his own vanity booze: Dr. Dre has announced his Drinks America line of spirits, Sammy Hagar has Cabo Wabo premium tequila, and Donald Trump has his eponymous vodka. But you know that the celebrity alcohol thing has gotten out of hand when Dan Aykroyd spends what feels like an hour and 45 minutes lecturing you about magical vodka stored inside a crystal skull. —James Norton

BK Becomes the King of Cool

Quick—name the least hip fast-food chain in existence. Correct: It’s Burger King, the perennial downmarket also-ran behind McDonald’s, never as quick to spot a trend, never as hard-core about its branding, never as willing to market its food with a creepy clown. That is, until a few years ago, when BK introduced its creepy king-mask-guy commercials. This year, Burger King built on those ads’ success with a much-buzzed-about series of Internet shorts by Family Guy auteur Seth MacFarlane. Dark, edgy, usually tangentially related to food—Burger King may not overtake McDonald’s on the sales front, but it’s making a serious bid for the cool front. Or at least the funny front. —James Norton

A Starvation Diet for Food Sections

The Dow Jones buckled, and newspapers decided to cook their food and restaurant sections. As part of larger staff layoffs this year, some notable food writers were let go or offered buyouts, including New York magazine’s Insatiable Critic, Gael Greene; New York Times columnist Marian Burros; and Susan LaTempa, acting editor of the LA Times food section. What’s to become of food and restaurant coverage? Surprise: It’s being replated to the Web. Blogging gained more and more weight, whether by newspaper employees, ex-employees, or neurobiologists who moonlight as cocktail lounge babes. Of course nobody knows how to turn blogging into big money, and since enthusiastic amateurs are willing to do it for free, it’s hard for media outlets to justify paying the pros to blog. As Gourmet’s Ruth Reichl once told Serious Eats’ Ed Levine, we’re in the middle of an industrial revolution. —Traci Vogel

Dial “C” for Clueless

Urbanspoon, the iPhone app that tells users about nearby restaurants when they shake their phones, was a clever way to take advantage of iPhone madness and GPS technology. But it disappointed New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni when it failed to find the restaurant he was standing in front of. On a similar high-tech, low-payoff note: A Citysearch/Scanbuy bar code system that’s big in Japan got lost in translation on its way to the United States. More than 500 restaurants in San Francisco put the bar codes on their windows, which when photographed with a camera phone delivered the places’ Citysearch info on the phone’s Web browser. Since then we haven’t heard much about the system. Probably because it’s not that hard to just go to Google and type in “citysearch.” —Roxanne Webber