Welcome to Secret Breakfast / An exclusive newsletter, the best place to start your day with tacos in a secondary city, overthinking, overloving and overcaring

Hi there!

Have you ever had dinner at a “secret chain”?

As per Food&Wine it is “a new type of upscale restaurant grouping, which rather than gravitating towards the trifecta of chain locales — Los Angeles, Miami, and New York (and I suppose Vegas counts, too) — focuses instead on smaller, secondary cities, sometimes called “discovery markets,” as its growth driver”.

Ok, they opened in Austin, Texas - not in Soverato, Province of Catanzaro - but the experiment is quite interesting and it is a refreshing play on the classic franchise or pop-up move.

Piero

Bonus: 11 Controversial Secret Restaurants Chains Don't Want You to Know.

Photo by Laure Noverraz

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THE QUOTE

✦ Claire Keegan, Small Things Like These. It’s a good tip for paella, as well: don’t overthink, or the rice will be overcooked.

What do you say? “I overthink because I overlove and I overcare”.
Ok, you’re probably right, and the above quote is just right for you.

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THE MISSING INGREDIENT

SEVEN DAYS IN MENORCA

Queso Mahon. Torralbenc Albenc wine. Sucreria Vallès’ - or St°Christo’s -Ensaymada (★recipe). Xoriguer Mahon Gin. Sobrasada. Pintxos and croquetas (★recipe) displays at the Mercat de Peix de Mahon. Barreres and parets seques. Spanish people voting, Spain split in two. Bodegas Binifadet Merluzo Wine (for the illustration!). Es Cranc’s Caldereta de Langosta (★recipe) in Fornells. Pretty Ballerinas and absolutely no pretty avarcas. Jaleo Horse Parties. Pomada(★recipe)! Happy Nudists on the Public Beaches. Jamón everywhere.

Menorca, it’s been a really good week.

Photo by me

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THE BOOK

Is the Country that Makes the Food? Or is It the Opposite?

★★★

In many places, Flat-Earth-Populism is currently covered with a Nationalist film. We’re full of proud product labels calling for a genuine “Made in [country of choice]” and yet we’re on the brink of cultural appropriation as we hear the first crack of an egg for our breakfast. Who owns what? What makes a dish a true national treasure? Who was the first one to cook that? I do not know you, but I’d love these questions to be answered by the lady who wrote Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking.

National Dish by Anya von Bremzen (more in the Food for Later section)
→ Shortplot: 🍕 🍣 🍷 🌮

❍ OnlyPans
This is where Secret Breakfast picks juicy content from food creators

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RANDOM ACTS OF HUNGER

This is the space where I share some food (un)related stuff of my week

🐟A Restaurant Level Aged Salmon, at Home (★recipe) 🇲🇾 A Pro-Chef Designed a Kitchen Perfect For Malaysian Home-Cooking 🥬Oxford Scientists Confirm Vegan Diet Is Massively Better For Planet 🐶Human-Grade Pet Food Is on the Rise ✋🏻We Already Had Ben Affleck at Dunkin’, Now Why Is Lana Del Rey Working at Waffle House?👠A Brief History of the Barbie Cake 🏄🏼‍♂️Men (and Ken) are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness. 🍕Pizza Chef Answers Pizza Questions From Twitter - ehm - X 🗄️Empty Offices Could Be Turned Into Vertical Farms 🔥Who still needs fire? Cooking is Going Electric 🌶️A Massage Parlor Worker’s Night

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FOOD FOR LATER

The world’s last internet cafes
VV.AA. / Rest of World

From Kathmandu to Lagos, the places where the Internet connection - not the coffee - was the star.

The Problem with National Dishes
Marianna Giusti / Saveur

Anya von Bremzen’s book, National Dish, is not to be missed. “She sets out to investigate the truth behind the eternal cliché—we are what we eat—traveling to six storied food capitals*, going high and low, from world-famous chefs to scholars to strangers in bars, in search of how cuisine became connected to place and identity”.

*Paris, Naples, Tokyo, Seville, Istanbul, Oaxaca.

➤ Last issue’s most clicked link was the one about Kristen Kish’s 5-Minute Soup She Can't Stop Making. And that's all for today.