Here’s what you might have missed

Mayor Mamdani’s city-run grocery stores might have shoppy-shop aesthetics, and not everyone is thrilled: Curbed confirmed that Gander, the Brooklyn design firm behind the now-iconic branding of Graza olive oil as well as the very of-the-times Magic Spoon protein cereal and Pop Up Grocer, will be working on New York City’s impending municipal grocery stores. Adriane Quinlan wrote that this “focus on branding feels a little strange for a store that’s built on a fundamental promise: to cut out middlemen and margins and get prices down.” But that idea drew pushback from people like Andrea Hernández of the food and beverage publication Snaxshot, author Alicia Kennedy, and designer and writer Elizabeth Goodspeed, the latter of whom argued that design, in this instance, “helps balance public trust with competitive retail appeal.”
Food delivery apps are embracing AI agents, but even they might be upended by them: Last week, I mentioned that DoorDash is testing agentic features, like the ability to text DoorDash and let its agent order for you. The Verge’s Mia Sato reported this week about a new startup called Bites, which threatens to undercut the delivery apps entirely. (One of its founders also founded Grubhub.) As Sato explains, companies like DoorDash exist as a middleman, making restaurants visible to diners on ordering platforms but charging fees that force restaurants to raise their prices. Bites, by comparison, is offering lower fees and simpler delivery by allowing users to place orders directly through ChatGPT and circumventing third-party platforms like DoorDash. The Verge previously coined the phrase “the DoorDash problem” to refer to the way AI is positioning itself between people and service providers like DoorDash.
“The restaurant industry is broken. Can it be fixed?” Sunday’s episode of The Daily podcast from the New York Times focused on the restaurant industry’s myriad struggles right now, including the rising operating costs for owners. Reporter Brett Anderson goes into everything from exorbitant food costs and credit card fees to delivery apps and the way the #MeToo era and Black Lives Matter movement changed labor standards. He also explores the case study of Modern Times in Minneapolis, which explored a pay-what-you-want model earlier this year, though it has since resumed charging almost all diners.
Superiority Burger’s Brooks Headley is heading to the West Coast: The chef has gained plenty of goodwill in NYC with his popular vegetarian diner, but according to a new interview in the Los Angeles-focused Substack publication No Bad Days, Headley is now seemingly moving to LA for a new project, though he remains mum on the details. “I work at Superiority Burger 24 hours a day, every day, forever, and I can’t be there anymore because it’s killing me. I came to California for the sense of whimsy, and LA has whimsy to burn,” he told writer Tasbeeh Herwees. Headley describes hype as having “ruined [his] restaurant”: “A bunch of embarrassing a-holes come to your restaurant, and then they don’t come again… The thing I’m trying to do in Los Angeles is the opposite of that.”
The Carbone of it all: This week, Caper’s Chris Crowley reported that Volkan Guzey, a longtime staffer of Carbone, the flagship restaurant of the massively successful Major Food Group, was detained by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents at the Miami International Airport in early September and has remained in ICE custody ever since. The situation has prompted Guzey’s wife to start a crowdfunding campaign. The juxtaposition of Caper’s report with the recent, high-profile coverage of MFG co-founder Mario Carbone’s wedding feels a bit icky, given the opulence of the event, which featured towers made of produce and a giant ice sculpture of a clam that showed off a huge bowl of caviar (among other indulgences), plus a performance by Benson Boone and appearances by Alix Earle, Sylvester Stallone, and other big names.
A car crash killed a chef at the Malibu location of Nobu: A 16-year-old driver speeding along the Pacific Coast Highway crashed into the parked car in which chef Ryo Uchimiya was waiting before his shift. The chef had worked at Nobu for 25 years, per KTLA. That stretch of the PCH is notoriously dangerous due to frequent speeding, according to the Los Angeles Times. Nobu, which opened its first location in 1994, has defined Japanese fine dining in the United States in recent decades. Its Malibu location in particular is a major celebrity hotspot — the restaurant is co-owned by Robert De Niro.
Tom Cruise got to eat the famous Tom Cruise cake: For years, the actor has been known for sending the same cake to his celeb friends for the holidays. It’s the white chocolate coconut bundt cake from Doan’s Bakery in Woodland Hills, California. On an appearance on the Jennifer Hudson Show last Friday, Cruise, who’s currently on the promotion circuit for the new movie Digger, got a chance to enjoy the cake for himself and share it with the show’s entire audience. Cruise apparently learned about the cake from the late Diane Keaton and decided he had to share it more broadly with the world.
Blue Bottle has embraced whole milk once more: Tech reporter Thomas Maxwell pointed out, after trying to place an order at a California Blue Bottle location, that the coffee shop has returned to whole milk by default. In 2022, the chain had established oat milk as the default across its United States locations as part of its commitment to carbon neutrality, but according to an FAQ on Blue Bottle’s website, the company’s app now prioritizes whole milk. Why? Apparently because “guest preferences have evolved.”
Did Dua Lipa really just have her first hot dog… ever? The singer was spotted at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday with her husband Callum Turner. The couple was seated next to the sports fan known as “Marlins Man,” who later claimed on X that not only was Lipa (yes, that’s her real name) “super nice,” but that it was a special night because it was both Lipa’s first baseball game and first hot dog “ever.”
My favorite headline of the week: “Keith McNally Absolutely Loathes Thomas Straker. Loathes.” For Vanity Fair, Elise Taylor got the influential restaurateur’s take on London’s polarizing chef, whose first American restaurant opens tomorrow.