Food Porn Fest

Year two of the Harlem Eatup is set to blow year one out of the proverbial special sauce. Broken up into dinners, main stage and grand tasting events then sprinkled with names you love like Flay, Emeril and Waxman, there’s something for ever foodie style. Plus, your in Harlem USA (as they say). Historic, reborn and ground zero for so many cultural transformations, and now food, just being up on the 125th is exciting. Make a day and a night of it. Go hungry and with your party shoes on. You just might end up on stage at the Apollo. You know you have it in ya. May 18-22 in Harlem, NYC.

I’ve been going to Raffetto’s for as long as I can remember to stock up for our traditional Italian Sunday suppers. My father grew up just a few blocks away on Thompson Street and when I moved to the city in the 90’s I was at Rafetto’s every week. Over the years a lot has changed around the neighborhood but Raffetto’s still has the simplicity and old-world charm of doing one thing really really well. I don’t think the pasta chart has changed since I was a kid. Pick a flavor. Pick a size. Done. One thing that has changed at Raffetto’s is Sarah Raffetto, the fourth generation great-granddaughter of Marcello Raffetto. She grew up and opened a pop-up pasta restaurant inside the shop. With her partner Emily Fedner, of @foodloversdiary, they offer intimate meals on Sunday and Monday when the retail shop is closed. Dubbed Petite Pasta Joint, the experience is a food and story filled evening hosted by the two carb fanatic founders. We expect nothing short of the fresh and perfect Rafetto’s pasta paired with some equally delicious sauces and sides. Currently, it seems events are by inquiry only. We can only imagine COVID restrictions are to blame.

The term “No time to eat” is running the hashtag circuit. A report released the other day reported 80% of millennials concede to eating meals quickly and alone. These two statistics are alarming and not the way we like to open posts on FT. So, we’ll get back to that in just a minute. Two mums in East London have started Dabba Drop, an innovative Friday night dinner service using a century-old method of delivery. If that sounds contradictory, it is, but Indian culture has plenty of those. Let’s start with Dabba, the Hindu word for box. You’ve probably seen the metal, stackable, interlockable containers Indians use for food at lease once. What you might not know is that everyday 200,000 home cooked lunches are delivered to Mumbai workplaces in these tins thanks to a service known as DabbaWallas or TiffinWallas, depending on who you ask. Aside from the incredibly complex yet 99.99% accurate operation, Indians are eating hot, homecooked meals for lunch at their place of business. Enter Anshu and Renee and their Dabba Drop service. Inspired by the Dabbawallas, they created a brilliant Friday night meal subscription that’s prepped and dropped for you like Mumbai clockwork. With curry being the unofficial national dish of Britain their mission “to change the way Britain does Indian takeaway” is brilliant. Back to those stats at the top, eating together is one of the reasons this blog exists. If it wasn’t for our upbringing and the maturity those meals provided us as kids we wouldn’t be who we are today. To have the majority of a generation saying they eat alone removes the ancillary, yet equally important, reason for eating. Socialization over meals is a critical and profound bonding moment for us all. Dabba Drop is doing it’s part to ensure that we continue that behavior which we greatly applaud. We just wish they expanded to New York sooner than later so we can stop dealing with inevitable GrubHub mistakes. All the details on the currys they deliver are here. We really don’t think it matters what you choose, they are all delicious homemade specialties that you will crave once you get a taste.

We’ve gone on record several times tout “New Orleans has the best food in the country on a per bite basis.” The Taste of Louisiana Festival will give you a chance to test our theory with 100’s of available bites from some of the greatest creole and cajun chefs the bayou state has to order. The only catch with this one is that it’s being held in Texas. We still can’t figure that one out. Saturday, March 19 @ 1:00 PM in Sugarland Texas.