restaurants Archives - Tracie McMillan

Food Workers Scramble to Put Food on Their Tables

January 22, 2025November 14, 2016

“The Plate,” National Geographic • Nov. 14, 2016

One in seven American workers is employed in some segment of the food chain, from apple pickers to packing-house workers, truckdrivers to supermarket clerks to fast food counter staff. And many of them increasingly struggle to put food on their own tables, according to a report released Monday from the Food Chain Workers Alliance, an advocacy group founded in 2009, and the Solidarity Research Center. What’s more, the problem is worse among women and people of color.

What Chili-Mango Ice Cream Says About Urban Renewal

January 22, 2025August 24, 2016

“The Plate,” National Geographic • Aug. 24, 2016

If I ask you what Detroiters eat to cool off on hot summer days, chances are you think of two Midwestern staples: ice cream and pop. If you know Detroit you might even think Faygo or Vernors. (You may also, to be honest, think beer.)

But folks around Lawndale Street, on the city’s southwest side, have an option that might seem, to outsiders, an odd fit for Detroit: Mexican-style frozen sweets and snacks from a six-table, five-year-old shop called Mangonadas del Barrio. The shop’s namesake, a variation on a popsicle, is a godsend on a steamy August afternoon—and it’s so popular that owner Antonio Hernandez opened up a second shop in June.

Pita and Hummus: The Next Great American Foods?

January 22, 2025May 6, 2016

“The Plate,” National Geographic • May 6, 2016

Picture a traditional American meal, and chances are good that you’re headed for the 1950s: burgers and fries, fried chicken and potato salad, maybe an Italian-turned-American-staple like pizza (see How Italian Cuisine Became as American as Apple Pie.)

But chances are good that the cuisine of the Middle East, a region whose immigrants to the U.S. face varying levels of acceptance, does not come to mind right away.

And yet, at the James Beard Foundation Chef and Restaurant Awards this week, a Lebanese restaurant was named an “America’s Classic.”

How Italian Cuisine Became as American as Apple Pie

January 22, 2025May 4, 2016

“The Plate,” National Geographic • May 4, 2016

If you’re wondering about how and why food gets appropriated—i.e. when Americans consider it their own—think about this: Eating Italian food was once considered “slumming.” So what does it take for a foreign cuisine to melt into America’s pot? We talked to Krishnendu Ray, the director of NYU’s Food Studies program and author of The Ethnic Restaurateur, a book about how immigrants to the U.S. shape the food culture, who gave us a step-by-step breakdown of how a cuisine can go from unnoticed to avant-garde; from popular to prestigious.

Are Restaurants Big Food or Small Business?

January 22, 2025April 19, 2016

“The Plate,” National Geographic • April 19, 2016

Oil, banks, and big box stores are some of the industries that probably come to mind when you hear the term “powerful lobbyists.” Now, a new report aims to add one more to the list: restaurants.

Some Restaurateurs Are Building Better Benefits Into Food Jobs

January 22, 2025February 2, 2016

“The Plate,” National Geographic • Feb. 2, 2016

The eggs and flour at Rose’s Fine Food, a diner on Detroit’s deep east side, are local. The bread and mustard, the donuts and pickles and beets, are all made in-house. The lunch menu offers a $13.75 rabbit sandwich; the chef apprenticed at San Francisco’s famed Tartine bakery; and there is a well-worn Ottolenghi book among the stack of cookbooks displayed on a kitchen shelf. In this, Rose’s is unmistakably a trendy kind of place.

But Rose’s is also becoming known for a new kind of trend: Paying restaurant workers a decent wage and offering opportunity for advancement.

‘Forked’ Rates Restaurants On How They Treat Their Workers

January 22, 2025February 2, 2016

“The Salt,” National Public Radio • Feb. 2, 2016

Saru Jayaraman may be restaurant obsessed, but don’t call her a foodie. She’s the founding director of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, a national organization that advocates for better wages and working conditions for restaurant workers. She’s also published several studies in legal and policy journals as director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California-Berkeley.

The combination of grassroots and ivory tower makes Jayaraman arguably one of the country’s leading experts on what it’s like to live as a restaurant worker in America. She’s someone celebrity restaurateur Danny Meyer turned to as he decided to banish tipping at some of his restaurants to try and close the pay gap between what his servers and dishwashers make.

Ung: ‘Seasonal’ and ‘fresh’ as marketing terms

April 1, 2024July 15, 2012

NorthJersey.com • July 15, 2012

Not words I would associate with … Applebee’s.

But like other chains, Applebee’s is putting its own spin on the latest food trends. Red Robin slathers burgers with “premium aiolis,” Burger King’s got a bacon sundae, and you may remember those Korean tacos I tried at TGI Friday’s.

Reporters love to show we had “impact.” Fingers crossed that Applebee’s is switching their focus to fresh because of me!

April 1, 2024July 3, 2012

Huff Post Food • July 2, 2012

Everyone is allowed a small mid-life crisis — even the world’s largest casual dining chain. Applebee’s President Mike Archertold USA Today that he wants to create a “new generation of Applebee’s lovers.”

ah: My one-time employer Applebee’s fails @ROCUnited ‘s Dining Guide. #catchingUp

April 1, 2024December 13, 2011

I’ve been waiting for the Dining Guide from the Restaurant Opportunities Center for a while, and it does not disappoint. Well, scratch that: It does disappoint, but only because they find such depressing norms across the restaurant industry, which now employs nearly 10 percent of U.S. workers. My alma-mater, Applebee’s, came through with straight failing … Read more