Margaret Littman

We talk to the chef-turned-author and James Beard Award winner ahead of Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger’s release.
The book has been highly anticipated in food circles. In 2018, Donovan won a James Beard Award for an essay in Food & Wine magazine, “Dear Women: Own Your Stories,” which in rapid-fire succession mentioned her own sexual assault and abortion, as well as harassment and inequity in restaurant kitchens. The tone of that essay is reflective of Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger.

Tony Mantuano was the longtime chef at the Michelin-starred Spiaggia, one of Chicago’s most beloved restaurants, while his wife Cathy ran its lauded wine program. Tony ran the restaurant for nearly 35 years — an uncommonly long stretch in the restaurant world — before they moved to Milan in October 2019 to eat, drink and think about their next act. At the beginning of this year they moved to Nashville, where they are now announcing that they are the food and beverage partners at The Joseph, a luxury hotel opening downtown in August.

Dane Carder, by his own description, is a “one day at a time” kind of guy. So the fact that his long-dreamt-about business — selling small batches of a family-recipe spaghetti sauce — is launching just when Nashvillians who are stuck cooking at home need it? Well, it’s serendipity, not prescience.

It wasn't long ago in the United States that the idea of buying things—be it salad, frozen custard, socks, baby wipes, ramen, or art—from a robotic vending machine was a novelty. That has shifted—quickly. Now, a word that wasn’t much used before the coronavirus epidemic began—contactless—has become a must for retailers and a competitive advantage for those in the vending game.

Ashleigh Diaz should be wrapping up hiring for her busy season about now. When the coronavirus pandemic really took hold in her area, Diaz, the managing partner at Durango, Colo.-based 4Corners Riversports, was on track to finding the additional 20 employees she needs each summer to help sell kayaks, rafts, and camping.

But then COVID-19-related non-essential business shutdowns started and Diaz quickly realized things were going to be different.

We’re all being asked to step outside of our comfort zones (though perhaps not literally outside) as we shelter in place. For many of us, this means heading to the pantry and figuring out what the hell to make with the stuff we bought.
My personal emergency food rationing plan is “eat GORP,” so when my editor asked me to look into the best things to do with the best canned fish, I bounded out of my culinary comfort zone and into research mode.

“Lots of people don’t have the resources to start cooking for a family of five,” says Julia Sullivan, chef and co-owner of Germantown’s Henrietta Red and The Party Line catering company.
Does Sullivan get us or what? Quarantining, isolating, sheltering in place, or as the Metro government has termed it, “Safer at Home” — call it whatever you like. The bottom line is, we’re all inside for a while. We asked some Nashville chefs for their help wading through the cans of beans and frozen vegetables we stress-bought to help us cook decent meals for our families during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Today should be a big day, a raucous green-beer-filled good time after a big weekend of much the same. the same. For many bars, restaurants, and liquor stores, including 2Bears Tavern Group, which owns three bars on Chicago’s North Side, the combined St. Patrick’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day weekend is traditionally one of its top five weekends for sales all year.

The Nashville hospitality industry will experience long-term repercussions from last week’s storms — here’s a look at a few short-term solutions.

Four separate tornadoes hit Middle Tennessee around 1 a.m. on March 3, 2020, one of which stayed on the ground for more than 50 miles. The storms, which reached wind speeds of more than 175 m.p.h., battered the metro area, suburbs, and rural counties. Within the city, the neighborhoods hit hardest, like East Nashville, were those with concentrations of small businesses, from dry cleaners to boutiques to restaurants. At least 25 people lost their lives, with more than 400 homes and nearly 200 businesses destroyed, including the popular Basement East music venue.

The soundtrack in Nashville on Wednesday was not the usual Telecaster guitars, orange amps and kick drums, but instead, chainsaws, generators and nail guns as Music City started to recover from a cluster of deadly tornadoes.

One day in 2016, Judy Anderson was talking to a couple, Kip and Rachel Dyer and learned that their place of employment was for sale. “Do you want to buy a trout farm?” she texted her husband. That afternoon, Jim strolled around Bucksnort Trout Farm near McEwen with Kip and Rachel. He soon became its new owner. He bought the trout farm with the agreement that Kip and Rachel would stay on board and set about to make the business jump for the next generation.

As someone who travels for a living—writing about the best places to eat, hike, and sleep—I spend a lot of time on airplanes. Sometimes I’ve wondered as I look out at the clouds floating by the window or wait for my laptop to boot up: Why do the same snacks that satisfy me at my desk on the ground never seem to do the trick when I’m in the air?
Rachel Herz, PhD, has an answer: neurogastronomy.

With a single loan, Bank of Labor in Kansas City, Kan., changed the lives of a group of lobstermen in Maine, more than 1,500 miles away. The community bank even made an award-winning short film about it.
It was clear something had to change. A group of lobstermen were waking well before dawn and coping with storms and other unpredictable conditions to trap lobsters, only to get back to shore and have wholesalers determine the prices they would pay for the lobsters the lobstermen had caught.

Every autumn, giant crowds—last year it was 886,037 people—head to New Mexico for the world’s largest hot-air balloon festival. If you want to see the nine-day Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta without the crowds, try it on a paddleboard.