Food

Double-Doubles

/ California, Food

Everyone has an opinion about LA, and what I’ve come to realise is that they’re all correct – because how can anything as vast and complex as Los Angeles be understood as anything other than a constellation of individualised experiences? The same is true for burgers, or any food. In response to a reader’s query as to whether or not a particular burger he ate in college was really as good as he remembered, the New Yorker’s Helen Rosner replied with a philosophical “phenomenology of cheeseburgers”. She posited that when it comes to any given burger you’ve enjoyed, “you created it, just as much as the white-capped guy standing at the grill did. The mouth and brain and cascade of sensations were yours. There is no true burger per se … it didn’t become the burger you ate until you ate it.” Likewise, LA doesn’t become the LA you know and love until you know and love it.

Rosner concluded to the reader that, of course, you did love the burger, but more than that, “you love the person you see in your memory”. Now, I don’t often allow myself nostalgia; I think of it as a treacherous path to go down. But when I think about In-N-Out, I can’t help myself, because I do love that wide-eyed Wisconsinite chowing down on Double-Doubles under smoggy sunsets. I miss him. I miss those burgers, I miss that city, and I miss that country.

Best thing I ever ate? My first In-N-Out burger in LA -- Tim Anderson, 3/21/2026

Making Pizza for Kim Jong Il

/ Food, Relations of Production, Travel

As if the impressions we had got so far had not been enough for us, our final evening in Pyongyang proved to be completely overwhelming, though in a way which again contradicted the fuzzy picture we had been able to form of the country.

We had often seen a building with a sign which said "Bowling" in English. We imagined this place to be the usual run-down Korean dive and we dared Mr Om to take us there. After we had nagged him for a while he finally agreed with a sly grin. Once again it was our turn to be embarrassed. We entered the largest, most modern bowling alley I have ever seen with 20 lanes, lights and mirrors everywhere, all of it brand new and in impeccable condition. Our first thought was that this was a place for tourists, but we were mistaken. The patrons here were Koreans and better bowlers than we, in spite of the famine. There were also a lot of foreigners. We met a banker from Great Britain whose bank was starting to sow the first tiny seeds in this country in the hope that the market will one day open up.

That evening we attended our final lavish banquet with mixed feelings, but happy to be getting out at last. But not even the cognac and ginseng were able to produce the usual effects. The speech Mr Om gave that night was flawless. Although he was visibly exhausted he could not hide the fact that he was moved, especially after I bestowed on him an honorary diploma from the Pizza Institute.

The next morning our passports magically reappeared in the limousine from where they had vanished. We weren't required to bother with such trivialities as customs or check-in, and together with a squad of mega-generals plastered in medals we waited for our shuttle bus in an exclusive lounge.

By now Mr Om had become silent and oddly distant. His mission had been accomplished and evidently his heart and mind were already on other things. Not even our chorus of cheers from the bus window appeared to affect him. Amid all the bustle we kept on singing at the top of our lungs, but he just stood impassively off to the side indifferent to us. And our thoughts too were moving elsewhere, to the luminous, refined city of Beijing. But that is another story.

ChatGPT

/ Artificial Intelligence, Food

How long should I simmer a turkey carcass to achieve the perfect turkey broth?

To make a flavorful turkey broth, you should simmer the carcass for at least 8 hours, or overnight. This will give the broth plenty of time to extract the maximum amount of flavor and nutrients from the bones and other ingredients. If you're in a hurry, you can simmer the carcass for a shorter period of time, but the broth may not be as rich and flavorful.

You are a wonderful cook.

I'm sorry, but I am not a cook. I am a large language model trained by OpenAI, and I do not have the ability to cook. My purpose is to provide information and answer questions to the best of my ability based on my training. I do not have personal experiences or abilities outside of my programming.

Chat.GPT: https://chat.openai.com/