The hottest Restaurants Substack posts right now

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Top Food & Drink Topics

More Problems at Serve Robotics (SERV)

The Bear Cave • 1376 implied HN points • 05 Mar 26
💼 Business Restaurants
  1. City residents and local politicians are pushing back hard against sidewalk delivery robots, driving petitions, complaints, and local rules that could block their expansion.
  2. The robots frequently malfunction or obstruct pedestrians, vehicles, and emergency services, creating safety and accessibility problems that hurt the service’s credibility.
  3. The company is losing money and many restaurant partners aren’t scaling trials, so expected rapid revenue growth looks unlikely to materialize.

The Monday Media Diet with Crista Luedtke

Why is this interesting? • 844 implied HN points • 02 Mar 26
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. She’s a self-taught chef who turned Midwest supper-club roots and a varied career path into a successful hospitality business with hotels, restaurants, and TV appearances.
  2. Her media diet is visual and bite-sized—music, Instagram stories, streaming shows, and lots of cookbooks—and she believes cookbooks are cultural love letters that inspire and teach.
  3. She’s an obsessive travel planner who prefers planes for speed but treasures epic train rides, and she highly recommends visiting the Basque region for its food, landscape, and people.

15 things I consumed this week

Maybe Baby • 563 implied HN points • 20 Feb 26
🎭️ Culture Restaurants
  1. A long, immersive read about psychedelic therapy (ketamine, DMT, LSD) can feel deeply pleasurable and worth savoring.
  2. A big dim sum spread at Nom Wah Tea Parlor in Chinatown was a standout food experience this week.
  3. Two aphorisms from family landed this week, showing how short sayings can stick and resonate.

The Vittles Guide to the London Chinatowns

Vittles • 279 implied HN points • 17 Feb 26
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. London now has six distinct "Chinatowns" across the city, each serving different Chinese communities and culinary traditions.
  2. Soho’s old Chinatown has transformed—rising rents, staff shortages and changing tastes have altered the scene—but it still contains long-standing anchor restaurants and remains a major central eating destination.
  3. New Chinatowns in Bloomsbury, Spitalfields, Colindale–Hendon and the Docklands reflect where Chinese people actually live and together offer unprecedented regional variety, with the guide pointing to 80+ restaurants covering 15+ Chinese cuisines.

How Chinese Students Transformed British Chinatowns

Vittles • 143 implied HN points • 24 Feb 26
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. Large numbers of Chinese international students have transformed UK towns and cities by creating demand for regional Chinese restaurants, bubble tea shops, and bigger Asian supermarkets, effectively building new, student-centered Chinatowns outside traditional urban enclaves.
  2. Delivery apps, dark kitchens, and mainland brands now do much of the organising work that Chinatowns used to do, letting students access familiar food and ingredients online and enabling restaurants to scale without relying on a single neighbourhood hub.
  3. Economic shifts—post‑Brexit stagnation, China’s slowdown and pandemic effects—have tightened student spending and made the boom fragile, while changing international student demographics mean other cuisines could shape local high streets next.
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The Vittles Chinatowns Project

Vittles • 215 implied HN points • 17 Feb 26
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. Historic Chinatowns are shifting — some are in decline or losing their original Cantonese character, while new, unofficial Chinatowns are emerging around universities, suburbs and new immigrant communities. People now debate who these neighbourhoods are for and what actually counts as a Chinatown.
  2. Food is the common thread that holds these communities together: restaurants, dim sum halls and Asian supermarkets act as cultural anchors, practical resources and sources of nostalgia for diasporic life.
  3. There is a concerted effort to document and celebrate these changes across the UK with guides and maps that list hundreds of restaurants and different Chinatown hubs, helping people find and support both old and new Chinese food scenes.

Lunch at Arowhon

The Analog Family • 799 implied HN points • 04 Aug 24
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. A special meal can be a strong motivator for change. The author stopped sucking her thumb after promising to go to a fancy restaurant if she succeeded.
  2. Experiences can create lasting memories and traditions in families. The author's children enjoyed a meal at the same restaurant years later, connecting them to her past.
  3. It's never too late to revisit places that hold special meanings. The author looks forward to returning to the restaurant without needing to change a habit.

The Monday Media Diet with Drew Nieporent

Why is this interesting? • 603 implied HN points • 12 Jan 26
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. A restaurateur shaped New York’s dining scene over four decades by opening about 40 influential restaurants, including Montrachet, Tribeca Grill, Bâtard, Rubicon, and Nobu.
  2. The daily media diet is routine-driven: Morning Joe during workouts, regular reading of major newspapers and magazines like The New York Times and The New Yorker, plus documentaries and films from admired directors.
  3. A long-standing struggle with weight and specific food obsessions—especially soup dumplings—led to a 40-pound loss on GLP-1s and 120 days without soup dumplings, though the cravings persist.

The Vittles Knafeh Guide

Vittles • 148 implied HN points • 13 Feb 26
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. There’s a short list of the best traditional knafeh in London, plus two excellent examples from elsewhere in the UK.
  2. Knafeh varies by region — Palestinian (Nabulsi), Syrian, Turkish (künefe), and Egyptian styles all have different textures and spark strong debates about which is best.
  3. Truly authentic, steel-pan-fresh knafeh is much more common in the Middle East, so it’s rare in the UK, but a few shops do manage to get it right.

The Monday Media Diet with Harrison Chapin

Why is this interesting? • 4042 implied HN points • 28 Jul 25
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. Harrison Chapin shares his love for cooking and aims to make restaurant recipes easy for home cooks. He believes everyone can enjoy great food without waiting in long lines.
  2. He enjoys reading various Substack newsletters and listening to The Moth podcast, which features short, true stories that help him connect with different people's experiences.
  3. Chapin has a fun way of exploring New York's dining scene called 'Restaurant Roulette,' where he randomly picks restaurants to try and encourages stepping out of your comfort zone when dining out.

What the Bathroom at Balthazar Taught Me About America

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 987 implied HN points • 26 Nov 25
🎭️ Culture Restaurants
  1. Many people come to America drawn by the promise of easy opportunity, the idea that you can just pick money up off the floor.
  2. People leave poverty and family obligations behind and take huge risks—even without speaking the language—to try to build a better life for their relatives.
  3. What they often find isn’t just fortune but belonging and dignity in small, overlooked places and everyday work.

Can you trust Michelin?

Vittles • 148 implied HN points • 06 Feb 26
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. A Michelin star doesn't guarantee good food—restaurants can use cheap ingredients, pair flavors poorly, or botch execution so dishes taste disappointing or even inedible.
  2. The Michelin inspection system can be inconsistent: with few inspectors and infrequent reinspections, ratings sometimes reflect individual mistakes or taste rather than reliable, up‑to‑date quality.
  3. Economic pressures and business incentives lead some kitchens to cut corners or mark up low‑cost ingredients, so some lower‑rated or unstarred restaurants may actually offer better produce and cooking than starred ones.

The Curious Case of the Beano Cafes

Vittles • 379 implied HN points • 05 Jan 26
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. A cluster of Beano cafes in Kent traces back to an original Beano Cafe started by a Turkish family in London and then spread as relatives and friends opened similar shops rather than as a formal franchised or trademarked brand.
  2. These family-run cafes serve cheap, classic British comfort food and act as local institutions with loyal, multi-generational customers, more focused on community than on social-media-driven foodie trends.
  3. Their future is uncertain because younger generations often don’t want to take over, yet the cafes quietly preserve a slice of British cafe culture and show how immigrant families have sustained local traditions.

The 99 Best Restaurants in London, by Jonathan Nunn

Vittles • 541 implied HN points • 08 Dec 25
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. This is the first instalment of a ranked list of the 99 best restaurants in London, covering positions 99–76.
  2. The full list is split into multiple parts, with later posts covering higher-ranked entries up to No. 1.
  3. Full access to the entire list and past issues requires a paid subscription, and the post is behind a paywall that asks readers to subscribe or sign in.

La RentrĂŠe, Part 2

David Lebovitz Newsletter • 4933 implied HN points • 25 Sep 23
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. Brittany is a beautiful region known for its rocky coasts, dramatic weather, and delicious food like moules-frites and local hard apple cider.
  2. In Languedoc, you can enjoy a relaxing vacation with fresh seafood, warm beaches, and charming markets like the one in Olonzac.
  3. Exploring vide-greniers in the French countryside can lead to great finds, while enjoying delicious food at local restaurants can be a highlight of the trip.

‘I once ate a fly thinking it was crispy carbonised meat’: On Ratting

Vittles • 220 implied HN points • 12 Jan 26
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. Ratting is the furtive habit of scavenging leftover food in restaurant kitchens that became a way to reclaim appetite and feel a risky, illicit pleasure.
  2. The practice acted as a quiet rebellion against narrow, performative masculinity and enforced self-control, building staff solidarity and small acts of defiance against management.
  3. Ratting continues at home as a domestic, anti-waste joy that mixes sensory delight with social taboo and minor hygiene risk, framed as a decadent pushback on hygiene-obsessed norms.

Six of One - Myanmar Special

Vittles • 120 implied HN points • 30 Jan 26
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. Burmese food is becoming much easier to find in London now, thanks to many online Myanmar grocers, delivery and catering services, and a growing number of restaurants serving authentic dishes.
  2. Nway Oo Pokhara in Cricklewood stands out for its Mogok-style sticky rice noodles, fried platters and weekend Burmese spreads, and the owner plans chetty banana-leaf feasts and teashop-style all-day grazing with strong condensed-milk tea.
  3. Politics in the Myanmar diaspora shape dining choices, so many people check whether restaurants or chefs support the military before recommending or visiting them.

The best and worst of London food (media) in 2025

Vittles • 284 implied HN points • 31 Dec 25
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. Traditional food media is shrinking because journalists are poorly paid and often have to rely on free meals, which makes it hard for them to write truly critical, independent reviews.
  2. Influencers now dominate food culture and are expanding into real-world ventures, but their power is fragile since platform algorithms and tech changes can quickly wipe out reach and income.
  3. A hopeful trend is owner-operated, low-overhead restaurants moving from homes into small spaces and focusing on a few authentic dishes; these independent places need discovery and support to thrive.

October 2023 newsletter

David Lebovitz Newsletter • 4363 implied HN points • 01 Oct 23
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. The author missed writing the September newsletter but enjoyed taking a break in Sicily.
  2. In France, 'Non' doesn't mean being rude; it's about valuing personal time like vacation and work-life balance.
  3. When dining in France, tipping is not mandatory as service is included in the price, but leaving a little extra for good service is appreciated.

April 2023 Newsletter

David Lebovitz Newsletter • 3714 implied HN points • 01 Apr 23
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. Visiting San Francisco bakeries like Arsicault can be a rewarding experience for pastry lovers.
  2. Prioritizing family time during travel can lead to meaningful and enjoyable experiences.
  3. When traveling to places with potential strikes, it's essential to be flexible and plan accordingly to navigate transportation disruptions.

Illegally Yours, Keith McNally

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 417 implied HN points • 26 Nov 25
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. Ambition and boldness can open doors in America; charm and nerve often beat class or pedigree, and hard work can lead to success without privilege.
  2. Many immigrants start with almost nothing and build lives through restaurant and service work, where caring for staff creates strong loyalty and mutual respect.
  3. New York’s nonstop streets and late-night life symbolize freedom and possibility, and movies and images of the city inspire people to come and chase those opportunities.

Whipped Labneh

David Lebovitz Newsletter • 3184 implied HN points • 21 Mar 23
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. Whipped Labneh is a versatile spread that can be easily made at home with just a few ingredients like labneh, feta, herbs, and olive oil.
  2. The recipe offers flexibility to customize with different herbs, grilled vegetables, and toppings like radishes and black olives.
  3. You can store the whipped Labneh in the refrigerator and enjoy it as a snack, serve it with main dishes, or use it as a side for various meals.

The 99 Best Restaurants in London, Part 2: No 75–41

Vittles • 292 implied HN points • 09 Dec 25
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. London’s top restaurants range from tiny, formal tasting rooms to busy neighbourhood canteens, so you can find both haute cuisine and homestyle dishes.
  2. Specialist, immigrant-run places that focus on regional traditions are often the most memorable. They deliver deeply authentic dishes from across the world, from kaiseki and khoresh to tiffin and phở.
  3. The dining scene is constantly changing, with openings, moves and chef changes meaning recommendations can shift quickly.

Brittany Addresses

David Lebovitz Newsletter • 3007 implied HN points • 20 Sep 23
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. Brittany is a popular destination for its cool weather, coastline, beaches, and delicious food like seafood, crĂŞpes, and pastries.
  2. Brittany is known for its sparkling apple cider, love of salted butter, and local specialty honeys.
  3. Reserve in advance when dining in Brittany, explore local beverages like cider and wines, and try the delicious salted butter available at markets.

The Best Restaurant in London

Vittles • 248 implied HN points • 12 Dec 25
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. A week-long series ranked the 99 best restaurants in London and today the number one spot was revealed.
  2. The choices span a wide range of places and areas — 25 of the 33 boroughs, six transport zones, 20 Michelin-starred spots, three sandwich shops, and even one location outside any London borough.
  3. A full list with links and addresses will be published on the website later, and the current write-up is behind a paywall for paid subscribers.

The 99 Best Restaurants in London. Part 3: No 40–11

Vittles • 256 implied HN points • 10 Dec 25
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. London’s top spots are very diverse, ranging from a Syrian booza ice cream parlour to Ivorian seafood, Jamaican jerk smokehouses, and contemporary British brasseries.
  2. Chefs focus on confident technique and big, elemental flavors — whole-animal butchery, smoke and grill, careful braises and inventive condiments show up again and again.
  3. The best places marry tradition and invention, serving comforting classics executed brilliantly alongside bold, experimental dishes that push culinary boundaries.

The Vittles Guide to Liverpool’s Chinatown

Vittles • 30 implied HN points • 17 Feb 26
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. Liverpool is home to Europe’s oldest Chinese community, with a historic Chinatown that developed around the docks from the 1880s and grew further after postwar migration from Hong Kong.
  2. The traditional Chinatown is quiet most of the year and only really buzzes at Lunar New Year, but new student-driven mini‑Chinatowns, hot pot clusters, and market trials are helping spread and revive Chinese life across the city.
  3. The local food scene is diverse: you’ll find old-school dim sum and fusion takeaways famous for ‘salt and pepper’ dishes, alongside newer Malaysian and Vietnamese spots, food courts like eJoy, and regional restaurants serving Sichuan, Chongqing and other specialties.

The 99 Best Restaurants in London, Part 4: No 10–2

Vittles • 213 implied HN points • 11 Dec 25
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. Ikoyi delivers bold, inventive food that layers tiny, perfume-like flavours and giant ingredients into thrilling, highly technical dishes; it’s expensive but stands out as a pinnacle of virtuoso cooking in London.
  2. Kaieteur Kitchen (Faye Gomes) offers reliably excellent, comforting Guyanese food where even a regular meal feels special; the pepper pot is a legendary highlight and the cooking’s quality feels permanent even through venue hiccups.
  3. St. John Bread and Wine applies a simple, nose-to-tail philosophy to a flexible menu with many perfect routes to a great meal, serving timeless, intensely memorable dishes whether you’re dining alone or with others.

The Vittles Guide to Birmingham’s Chinatown

Vittles • 25 implied HN points • 17 Feb 26
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. Birmingham’s Chinatown is a living, community-focused neighbourhood that has changed with the arrival of Chinese students and recent Hong Kong migrants, so you now get both classic Cantonese favourites and newer regional cuisines like Sichuan, Shandong and Yunnan.
  2. The city’s Cantonese barbecue scene is dominated by Peach Garden and Look In, but they offer very similar roast meats — pick whichever looks freshest by peering through the window.
  3. Redevelopment around Southside has given the area new energy, and if you come with an open mind you’ll often find surprising, life-changing dishes at unassuming spots.

New York City Green Book

Yolo Intel • 1061 implied HN points • 27 Jan 24
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. The post provides a wellness list for New York City, featuring culty matcha and juice bars, GF and plant-based spots, banyas, and classes.
  2. Contributors include individuals deeply connected to the wellness and food industries in the city.
  3. The post is available to paid subscribers and offers insights on food and drink spots in NYC.

Hurt feelings and regrets while eating a $300 meal

Sex and the State • 24 implied HN points • 13 Feb 26
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. Spending a lot on an experience doesn't stop you from feeling hurt or regretful. A high price can't buy emotional comfort or fix relationship strains.
  2. There's a clear self-awareness that something's wrong, even if it's only partially understood. Recognizing a problem is important but doesn't immediately resolve the pain.
  3. Investing money in an experience or content can raise expectations and make disappointment sharper. Financial cost can complicate how satisfied you feel afterward.

The Vittles Guide to Chinese Restaurants in Glasgow

Vittles • 20 implied HN points • 17 Feb 26
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. Chinese restaurants have been part of Glasgow since the mid-20th century, with long-standing institutions and a Chinatown hub that helped anchor the community even as local industries changed.
  2. The city’s Chinese food scene now mixes old and new: traditional family-run spots sit alongside West End places serving students and newer regional restaurants, keeping the scene lively and diverse.
  3. Standout offerings include long-running dim sum houses and old-school Cantonese bakeries, while claypots, home-style Hong Kong cooking, and Southwest Chinese flavours are growing in popularity across the city.

The Vittles Guide to Chinese Cambridge

Vittles • 20 implied HN points • 17 Feb 26
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. Cambridge has a lively, growing Chinese restaurant scene driven by a large Chinese student population, even though the city doesn’t have a traditional Chinatown.
  2. The food on offer is very regional and diverse, with standout specialties like Xi’an rougamo and top-quality xiao long bao that set the city apart.
  3. High rents, university-owned buildings, and students using college dining halls limit new openings, so Chinese eateries are dispersed in neighbourhood pockets like Mill Road rather than centralized.

Fegato alla Veneziana with Buttery Mash

Vittles • 133 implied HN points • 17 Dec 25
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. Fegato alla veneziana is thin strips of calf’s liver quickly sautéed with sweet Chioggia onions and finished with a splash of white wine or vinegar, giving a tender liver balanced by caramelised sweetness and a bright sweet‑sour hit.
  2. It’s traditionally served with polenta, but coarse buttery mashed potatoes are a lovely alternative, and the dish pairs well with small tumblers of light red wine.
  3. With good ingredients, quick cooking and a short rest, the dish is simple, comforting and transportive, evoking the mood of Venice even at home.

The Vittles Guide to Manchester’s Chinatown

Vittles • 17 implied HN points • 17 Feb 26
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. Manchester's Chinatown is small but deeply rooted, anchored by its grand arch and a food scene that mixes established Cantonese traditions with spicy Sichuan, northern noodles, hot pot and newer Gansu specialities.
  2. The Chinese community has stayed resilient despite rising rents and economic pressure. The area focuses on feeding locals with authentic, everyday cooking rather than performing for tourists.
  3. Individual restaurants show both craft and creativity. Places like Only Yu serve inventive Cantonese dishes, Chef Diao delivers masterful dim sum, and new Gansu and hot‑pot spots broaden the choices.

Three Things

Dinner: A Love Story • 1474 implied HN points • 12 Sep 23
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. Try the Chicken with Peppers for Rosh Hashanah recipe from Leah Koenig's new cookbook
  2. Make Mark Bittman's Eggplant Burgers inspired by his Instagram post
  3. Check out Daniel Mason's new novel, North Woods, a captivating story of a house's history

The Best Shawarma and DĂśner in London

Vittles • 148 implied HN points • 05 Dec 25
🍲 Food & Drink Restaurants
  1. Much of London’s shaved-meat scene feels identikit and often relies on bought-in or uninspired döner. There are, however, a few spots putting real craft into their wraps and standing out from the crowd.
  2. Pasha Shawarma in Willesden serves yaprak döner and iskender with clear Ottoman influence and can deliver excellent texture and bold flavours when it’s on form. It does suffer from some inconsistency in portioning and carving, but when it hits the mark it really stands out.
  3. Star ratings and review sites don’t always reflect what a place actually tastes like, so tasting for yourself matters more. Doing a proper crawl and comparing multiple spots gives a much clearer picture of where to find the best shawarma and döner.