Are you enrolled in The Food Section’s Southern Food Crash Course? (If not, fix that here.) I’d love to hear what you’ve liked, learned, and wished was different. Is there another course you’d like to see The Food Section offer?
So, I was disappointed to see a gaping hole in Substack’s new Audience Insights map, which shows where a newsletter’s readers live. Until the company unveiled this feature, I didn’t have a clue if my subscribers were clustered in Pakistan or Japan.
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“Adipiscing tristique risus nec feugiat in. Sit amet nulla facilisi morbi tempus. Consectetur adipiscing elit pellentesque habitant. Tempor orci eu lobortis elementum nibh. Rhoncus urna neque viverra justo nec.”-Smarty McSmartface
I’d love to hear about the standout dish on your Thanksgiving table yesterday—especially since we’ll be on to another holiday before you’ve eaten your last leftovers.
On the other side of this weekend is Cyber Monday, followed by Giving Tuesday: I hope you’ll consider donating to The Food Section’s reporting fund here, allowing the newsletter to continue commissioning freelance contributions. I’m very thankful for your generous support.
Well, not “you” individually. As the spin above shows, only paid subscriber Bob Sullivan can look forward to an all-expenses-paid, two-hour private party for 35 people at Pink Cactus. Congrats to Bob, who, upon learning of his victory in the random drawing, responded, “Wow!”
Upgrade your TFS subscription today at a deep discount
Hello again!
As you learned from this morning’s newsletter, I’m officially back from my monthlong sabbatical, which included a stay at the National Critics Institute. One of the many things I discovered while living at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center is that plays don’t start on time. If the tickets say 7:30 p.m., seasoned theatergoers don’t start getting antsy until 7:45 p.m.
If you’re not a paying subscriber, you haven’t yet had the chance to read The Food Section’s Wednesday edition, a weekly compilation of columns about new restaurants, upcoming food festivals, and obscure food stories culled from the collections of small Southern museums. While the featured places span the whole of The Food Section’s coverage map, the format is a rough approximation of what I seek out when I roll into a new town.
For instance, when I recently drove through Bishopville, South Carolina 30 minutes before the South Carolina Cotton Museum opened, I felt like I had to bide time until I could get inside (Turns out the museum is also home to the world’s greatest archive of Lizard Man memorabilia: Paid subscribers will get all the details in a forthcoming Wednesday column.)
Earlier this week, I published a story about delivery robots which was exceptionally fun to write—and presumably useful to eaters who don’t stray far from home and are curious about their dining futures.
Yet delivery isn’t applicable to folks out on the road, who at least in the short term don’t have a fixed address.
The Food Section marked Shrove Tuesday with plenty of sugar
You know a pastry is iconic when other pastries are created in homage to it.
The above is not a king cake, but an apple fritter celebrating king cakes that I purchased at Doughnut Dollies in Marietta, Georgia on Tuesday (aka Mardi Gras, or Paczki Day in my hometown.)
And you’re invited (so long as you’re a paid subscriber.)
As subscribers know, Monday’s feature this week was about Ark-Mex, a hyper regional cuisine that’s falling off the map for good reason. (Namely, it’s the vestige of a time when there were barely any Mexicans in Arkansans.)
But some Ark-Mex fans are having a tough time giving up their favorite restaurants, which to them felt like perpetual parties.
When I launched The Food Section, I subscribed to four newspapers: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Post and Courier. Now I subscribe to more than twice that many papers, since it’s hard to contextualize what’s happening in a city’s dining rooms if you don’t know what’s happening in its council chambers.
But I bet for every paper on my list, I’ve turned down 10 solicitations to bypass a paywall by buying an annual subscription: I can’t afford to plunk down several hundred dollars just to read one story about the fate of a flagging salad bar—and that’s assuming I can pull off a cancellation in one year’s time.
Although it came toward the end of a hugely successful decade for country music, at least as measured by sales figures, 1997 was still a momentous year for the genre. Shania Twain sold more records than any woman before her. Nearly one million people gathered in Central Park to hear Garth Brooks sing.
The Food Section encourages subscribers to comment on stories, but the same rules which prevail in The Food Section’s Facebook group apply here. To wit:
Keep it civil. Debate is welcome. Name-calling is verboten. Any comments which coarsen the tenor of the conversation will be deleted.
I’ll keep this short: Because of a backend glitch, the 40 percent discount on subscriptions promised in yesterday’s email was not functional. I’m sorry.
And I’m sorry too about once again taking up space in your inbox: Neither system errors nor spam are emblematic of how The Food Section works.
It’s your last chance to buy into local food journalism at this price
Good morning! It’s Oct. 1, which no doubt has significance on the made-up food holiday calendar. At The Food Section, though, Oct. 1 is important because it’s the last day to get in on the newsletter’s Launch Month Celebration.
Through 11:59 p.m. Eastern tonight, all subscriptions are discounted by 40 percent. That means you can lock in the monthly price of $5.40 just by clicking the button below.
Good morning! It’s Friday, the day on which folks who don’t pay for their subscriptions to The Food Section will receive a short summary of the stories they missed over the course of the week. Since The Food Section just launched on Wednesday, there aren’t too many headlines to share this time around: In fact, the only headline of note is “The Food Section just launched on Wednesday.”
If you’ve already joined The Food Section as a paying member, thank you. And if you haven’t yet signed on, now’s an ideal time to do so: Subscription fees are discounted 50 percent until the clock strikes 11:59 tonight (NB: Said clock is in the Eastern time zone.)
How The Food Section progresses from pitch to publication
According to a document that the state of South Carolina this month provided in response to a Freedom of Information Act request I submitted way back in May, no foodservice workers died from COVID-19 in Charleston County between the start of the pandemic and June 2021.
Hi, I’m Hanna Raskin. For more than two decades, I’ve worked as a newspaper reporter, starting in Columbus, Miss. Since those cub years of covering crooked cops and beauty pageants, I’ve written about every aspect of Southern food, including its contested history; the culture surrounding it and big business of selling it.
