Plus, pizza drama in the pizza capital, a podcast about your espresso machine, and Goop Kitchen arrives in New York

Welcome to Open Tab, a weekly roundup of news, gossip, and stories that have stayed open in my tabs all week. Last week we covered the pasta sauce company that wants to record your conversations.

This week I was pleased to read a lovely piece by Ella Quittner about Jacques Pépin, now 90, who makes the world's greatest chicken. I particularly liked when Pépin told Quittner, author of the incredible cookbook Obsessed with the Best, that everyone's “definition of the best of anything is ‘to a certain extent a narcissistic reflection of your taste.’” Gagged me a bit, to be honest.

Oysterman Graham Platner will likely be the Democratic challenger to Susan Collins in Maine's upcoming Senate race after governor Janet Mills dropped out this week. When I profiled Platner late last year, I found it fascinating to see how food—and his work as an oysterman—play a huge part in his politics.

In this week’s Open Tab: Noma's reservation books are certainly not empty, there's pizza drama on the feed, we review Goop Kitchen's NYC offering, and we're curious: would you take product recs from an AI podcast?

If you have any food gossip to share, please send me a note or a DM.

SAM STONE
STAFF WRITER

Critics are Still Dining at Noma for Some Reason

BY SAM STONE

Perhaps you remember the Noma scandal that rocked the food world, and ended with René Redzepi's stepping away from the LA residency? After the outcry, sponsors dropped, reservations were cancelled, and the general sentiment was “screw those guys! I'll never eat deer penis there ever again!”

And yet here we are. The reservation books at Noma aren't empty. Tom Sietsema, former food critic at The Washington Post, ate at the Noma pop-up last month, and declared the food “perfect-adjacent.” Now Los Angeles Times editor Daniel Hernandez, too, has reported on his meal at Noma LA, even as the paper's critics declined to dine there. Certainly they're not alone. Elon Musk has eaten there, as have some notable other rich people.

As another LA scandal restaurant, Sqirl, enters its redemption era post Moldy Jam-gate, perhaps we must ask ourselves: Can a restaurant ever actually be cancelled? Should they be?