Six on Food: The Salad Giant Sweetgreen Has Used Hip Hop to Turn Lettuce Into Gold; Two cities tussle over who makes the tas

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Six on Food: The Salad Giant Sweetgreen Has Used Hip Hop to Turn Lettuce Into Gold; Two cities tussle over who makes the tastiest Sichuan hotpot; How Basque Food Got to Northern Nevada; An unlikely gourmet capital; Picking strawberries takes speed, stamina, and skill; Smyrna Meatballs with cumin and green olives;

"As a black hip-hop fan, gazing across the landscape of corporate America can be disorienting.

In the 1990s, juggernaut brands like Sprite and Tommy Hilfiger used rappers Q-Tip and Spinderella to boost sales. Through the 2000s, outlets like Urban Outfitters peddled rap iconography from “Ghettopoly” to bamboo earrings. And last year, as hip-hop surpassed rock as the most popular American music genre, even bougie brands like Tiffany profited off the art. Where does one draw the line between where cultural appreciation ends and cultural appropriation begins?

For many, it is hard to separate the practice of cultural exchange from extraction. One clue is the vacuum hose that can usually be heard when a company rips an art form out of a community and resells it without investing in the community that produced the artists. And all too often, when I see retailers use hip hop, I hear a sucking sound.

One need not look further than the salad shop, Sweetgreen, to spot a siphon. Founded in 2007 by three Georgetown students, the restaurant began as a scrappy start-up serving “simple, seasonal, healthy food.” Sweetgreen came along right as the emphasis on health and fast-casual marketing was beginning to trend, and the chain seemed to capture the zeitgeist. The founders were fluent in the kind of savvy, millennial, social-impact language that turned investors’ eyes googly, and the company grew quickly. In those heady days, I thought that a restaurant like that, with potential to scale, might be able to serve the black neighborhoods that sorely needed less greasy options. I was young and dumb. ...

Yea, and I don’t have to go to Hollywood
’Cause Hollywood come through my neighborhood with cameras on
I really think they’re stealing from us like a sample song

Stealing from us. Wayne’s words cut to the core of how corporations harvest black culture, black lyrics, and black bodies. So often, the sensation of theft occurs because the communities—and sometimes even the artists—receive so little in return for what they contribute to these corporations. It’s an old refrain, remastered for the hip-hop era by companies like Sweetgreen. Because while it’s abundantly clear that the restaurant values rappers like Big Pun and Cardi B as a tool for selling its products, it does not appear to see their black and brown Bronx neighborhoods as sites for that business."

bern on Twitter “When @sweetgreen puts @iamcardib salad on blast #savage. Go check out their instastories lol”

The Salad Giant Sweetgreen Has Used Hip Hop to Turn Lettuce Into Gold

The Salad Giant Sweetgreen Has Used Hip Hop to Turn Lettuce Into Gold But if the salad giant is so woke, why are 95 percent of its shops in majority white neighborhoods?

Two cities tussle over who makes the tastiest Sichuan hotpot

Two cities tussle over who makes the tastiest Sichuan hotpot

Two cities tussle over who makes the tastiest Sichuan hotpot A fiery dish takes China by storm, irking snooty food critics

How Basque Food Got to Northern Nevada

"It all started with the Gold Rush."

How Basque Food Got to Northern Nevada

How Basque Food Got to Northern Nevada It all started with the Gold Rush.

An unlikely gourmet capital: Jamshedpur is a unique blend of cuisines and cultures

"A hot griddle sizzles over the fire as a young man swiftly pours the batter and spreads it out in one smooth swirl. Next, he sprinkles a mix of sliced onions, beetroot and a potato mix and pours a copious amount of oil. A few flips later, the batter emerges on a dented steel plate as a glorious golden dosa.

On another cart, a man dunks small discs of dough into smoking oil. The puffed-up discs emerge as crisp puris . They later rest in a large platter from where they are served on a plate with a spicy potato curry and a large syrupy jalebi.

Meanwhile, tea boils on a stove at a nearby shack, idlis steam in a large steamer and rasgullas rest in a container. Men, women and children hover between the carts, plates in hand and a smile on their face. Welcome to a typical morning in Jamshedpur, a town that lives to eat."

An unlikely gourmet capital

An unlikely gourmet capital As Jamshedpur completes 100 years of existence, we look at the food that defines the flavours of this industrial...

Picking strawberries takes speed, stamina, and skill. Can a robot do it?

"Picking a strawberry properly, and doing it fast enough to earn a living wage, requires speed, dexterity, and stamina. On a typical plant, only some of the berries will be ripe; the pickers must identify them by working their hands through the thick canopy of leaves with little fruit-seeking movements of their fingers, catching the stem of the ripe berries in the webbing of their fingers, and cupping the fruit. Then, with a wristy twist that prevents bruising around the calyx, they pluck the berry from the vine the way you might pop a frosty can of beer from a six-pack."

The Age of Robot Farmers

The Age of Robot Farmers Picking strawberries takes speed, stamina, and skill. Can a robot do it?

My Prefect Greek Soutzoukakia: Smyrna Meatballs with cumin and green olives

https://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2019/04/10/soutzoukakia-recipe-traditional-smyrna-meatballs/