'A Cruel Love' re-creates the 1950's murder trial of Ruth Ellis
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Atlantic
2 days ago
- Atlantic
Turns Out Meat Is Still the Ultimate Luxury
A few years ago, during the coronavirus pandemic, Daniel Humm had an epiphany. Human reliance on animal products was cooking the planet, and, as a chef, reducing his reliance on them could be part of a solution. When his New York City restaurant, Eleven Madison Park—which had once been named the world's best restaurant —reopened, it would be free of animal products, making it the first three-Michelin-star dining room to bear that distinction. Humm seemed reinvigorated by the change, and very, very eager to talk about it. 'From a creative place,' he told his friend Gabriela Hearst in Interview magazine at the time, 'the world does not need another dry-aged ribeye or butter-poached lobster.' He went on The Tonight Show and Morning Joe; he released an illustrated journal featuring observations such as 'our cooking should not conform to society,' as well as his own hand-drawn portraits of lentils, broccoli, and a popsicle, rendered in a rustic, neo-Expressionist-by-way-of-nursery-school style. He talked about going plant-based as both an ethical and an artistic imperative. 'It became very clear to me that our idea of what luxury is had to change,' Humm said at the time. 'We couldn't go back to doing what we did before.' He would make a small but decisive correction to a food system that was 'simply not sustainable.' Four years later, vegan luxury dining is apparently the thing that wasn't sustainable. Yesterday, Humm announced that, after creating 'a new culinary language,' building 'something meaningful,' and igniting 'a debate that transcended food,' he will go back to speaking his previous culinary language. Eleven Madison Park will continue to offer a plant-based menu, but will also serve 'select animal products for certain dishes.' These select animal products, he said, will include 'fish' and 'meat.' And 'honey-lavender-glazed duck.' And oysters, and lobster. Also, chicken, maybe. In an interview with The New York Times, Humm said he was moved to return animals to the menu for reasons of inclusion. 'I very much believed in the all-in approach, but I didn't realize that we would exclude people,' he said. 'I have some anxiety that people are going to say, 'Oh, he's a hypocrite,' but I know that the best way to continue to champion plant-based cooking is to let everyone participate around the table.' Elsewhere in the piece, he was somewhat more direct: Diners had become less interested in what Humm was offering. Sales of wine—which tends to come with a heavy markup and is thus a highly important part of many restaurants' business—were down, because people seemed to be less inclined to uncork a $1,500 bottle of Côte-Rôtie when a big bloody steak wasn't also involved. Bookings for EMP's private events were also flagging, Humm said: 'It's hard to get 30 people for a corporate dinner to come to a plant-based restaurant.' Well, yeah. The thing is, people really, really like meat. All the time, but especially when they're paying up to $365 a head for dinner before tax, tip, and beverages. Between 2014 and 2024, annual per capita meat consumption rose—even as various publications heralded the end of beef, even as the consequences of climate change became even more unignorable, even before the secretary of health started telling people to eat tallow. Sales of plant-based meat have been declining since 2021, according to the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit devoted to alternative proteins. In June, the CEO of Impossible Foods, which sells high-tech meat substitutes, told The Wall Street Journal that his company was considering taking an approach similar to Humm's, developing a half-beef burger. Though plenty of animal-free restaurants seem to be doing perfectly well, in fine dining they may be the exception rather than the rule. Of the United States' 263 Michelin-starred restaurants, just four are exclusively vegetarian or vegan. Americans just cannot seem to quit meat, no matter how good the alternative tastes. But then again, part of Humm's problem might have been that his alternative didn't taste very good. When Pete Wells, then the New York Times ' restaurant critic, went to EMP in 2021, he found food that he described as 'acrid' and 'distorted,' including an extraordinarily fussy-sounding beet dish that 'tastes like Lemon Pledge and smells like a burning joint.' The people who are willing to shell out hundreds of dollars for food tend to pay attention to reviews, and they tend to want to feel like they're getting what they've paid for. What happens in fine-dining restaurants does, eventually, trickle down to the rest of the food industry, but the problem with appointing yourself as an agent for the revolution is that then you really need people to buy what you are selling. And you can only be one of the world's most influential restaurants if you are making enough money to stay open. The idea of a place such as Eleven Madison Park being on the vanguard of social change was funny even before it was revealed to be temporary. A nice meal is fundamentally a luxury good—one where no expense is spared, customers are always comfortable, the linens get washed every day, and the appeal is a sense of perfection. It is the opposite of sacrifice, which is what responding to climate change will require from all of us. Humm is right, of course—meat really is unsustainable. So is hubris.
Fox News
3 days ago
- Fox News
MSNBC contributor voices alarm on DC crime, says issue is 'personal' and many are frustrated
An MSNBC contributor admitted Wednesday that "many people" in Washington, D.C., are "frustrated with crime." "And I live in Washington," said the network's justice and legal affairs analyst Anthony Coley on Wednesday's "Morning Joe," adding, "This is personal for me." "Many people are frustrated with crime that we see, particularly committed by juveniles in the — in the city of Washington. People are frustrated, Willie, that they, when they go to CVS to buy deodorant, that they have to — from behind locked plexiglass, right?" he told co-host Willie Geist, referring to having to call an attendant to unlock products from cases in stores due to rampant shoplifting. "But the response here — and you know, let me say this, right, these are not just random anecdotes," Coley said. "What we see in Washington Post polling, among others, is that roughly half of D.C. residents, mostly half of D.C. residents, view this as a serious problem or an extremely serious problem." Many in the press have criticized President Donald Trump's Monday announcement that he would be taking control of D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department and would deploy 800 National Guard troops to the nation's capital. On Tuesday, however, "Morning Joe" co-host Joe Scarborough said that some in the liberal media were not being completely honest about their concerns regarding crime in D.C. Scarborough called out one reporter for publicly disparaging Trump's takeover while privately expressing fears about their own safety in the city. "This is interesting," Scarborough said. "I actually heard from a reporter when this happened, going, 'Well, you know, if he doesn't overreach, this could actually be a good thing for quality of life,' etc., because in D.C. right now, I had this happen to my family and I had that, and they go down the list. And then I saw him tweet something completely different." Since Aug. 7, law enforcement officials in Washington, D.C., have arrested over 100 people. Later in the segment, however, Coley said that Trump's response was excessive. "Now, having said all of that, I want to be clear that this does not justify the disproportionate response that we are seeing from Donald Trump," Coley said. "It is a political stunt. He is exploiting people's fears. But to be frank, Democrats on the D.C. Council have created this political opening that allows him to do that." Coley added, "Now, I'm not naive, Willie. I suspect that even if juvenile crime wasn't a problem, Donald Trump would have taken the actions that we have seen in recent days. But from a raw political perspective, you never want to give your political opponent an opening to address the needs that many of your constituents have. And that's what we're seeing playing out right now.
Fox News
4 days ago
- Fox News
MSNBC host reveals DC journalist privately shared concerns about crime while publicly denouncing Trump's plan
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough suggested that some liberal media figures blasting President Donald Trump's federal takeover of Washington, D.C. were not being entirely honest about their concerns over crime in the nation's capital, on Tuesday's "Morning Joe." Scarborough said he found it "interesting" that some reporters critically covering the Trump takeover have privately expressed concerns about their own safety. "This is interesting," Scarborough said. "I actually heard from a reporter when this happened, going, 'Well, you know, if he doesn't overreach, this could actually be a good thing for quality of life,' etc, because in DC right now, I had this happen to my family and I had that, and they go down the list. And then I saw him tweet something completely different." Scarborough, who said he's lived in D.C. for more than three decades, added that crime isn't as bad as it was two or three years ago, but it still was not a safe city. "It's certainly not as safe as the nation's capital should be." Trump announced Monday that he would place the city's police department under direct federal control and deploy National Guard troops to "reestablish law, order and public safety." Top Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, criticized the move as unnecessary, pointing to a reported decline in homicides. Liberal media personalities such as CNN's Dana Bash and NBC's Jonathan Allen argued that the most violent day in recent D.C. history was January 6, 2021, during the Capitol riot. During the "Morning Joe" segment, MSNBC host Symone Sanders Townsend pushed back, saying she has lived in D.C. for the past decade and believes rising crime fears are largely about perception, not reality. "The way I've heard DC being described this morning, is like it's a city under siege. Like it's a dangerous place, clutching your pearls, got to keep your bag under your dress when you leave the house and that is just not true," she argued, while acknowledging "instances of juvenile crime." She argued that more police on the streets would not address the root causes of juvenile crime and accused Trump of amplifying public fears. "We need to rethink what makes cities safe in America," she added. Scarborough countered that even lifelong Democrats are worried about their safety in Washington. He read a message from a liberal resident who refused to walk outside past 8 p.m. and whose friends had been carjacked or shot at, calling it "a change from a decade ago." "I guarantee you that's a person that has never voted for a Republican in their life," Scarborough said. "This isn't imagined. People you know, that I know, that they love, they and their friends don't feel safe in Washington, D.C." During a press conference on Monday, Trump challenged liberal journalists to be honest about crime concerns in the city. "I understand a lot of you tend to be on the liberal side, but you don't want to get — you don't want to get mugged and raped and shot and killed," Trump said. "And you all know people and friends of yours that that happened. And so you can be anything you want, but you want to have safety in the streets. You want to be able to leave your apartment or your house where you live and feel safe and go into a store to buy a newspaper or buy something. And you don't have that now."
