There’s a wave of savory soft serve this summer; you can beat the heat with basil soft serve at Pasta Louise, or the smattering of umami ingredients in Lisbonata’s weekly soft serve rotation, including truffles and miso. In Cleveland, my colleague Missy Frederick recently enjoyed a pea-flavored soft serve at Rosy; and Magpies Softserve in Los Angeles will be serving an heirloom tomato flavor next month. The team behind New York City’s Double Chicken Please just opened Unnecessary, a very Architectural Digest-tour-looking (so, chic) soft serve spot in Manhattan that features unique soft serve flavors such as dirty martini (yes, you can expect an olive garnish on the martini cone) and Waldorf salad. When I asked co-founder Frank Zheng what savory flavors we can expect next, he reminded me that “peak tomato season is upon us” and that they “have some fun flavors in the pipeline that aim to express tomato as a fruit/berry, rather than as a vegetable.”
Coffee drinks are coming up orange
Orange espresso and coffee beverages are thriving this summer; I recently enjoyed a shaken orange cream cold brew at the new Yellow Rose cafe in Brooklyn, and my Los Angeles-based colleague Matthew Kang has high praise for the orange coffee beverage at Verve Coffee; Eater’s Mona Holmes also reminded me that “LA's independent [but] mighty chain, Quat/Kumquat/Loquat adores orange coffee drinks,” and that cafes across the country are turning out seasonal kumquat matcha tonics (at Fifth Ship in NYC), orange marmalade espresso tonics (at Cafe Tropical in LA), and iced orange cream horchatas (at Living Room in Portland, Oregon).
Gas stations are going bougie
Gas stations are steadily becoming more than just pit stops, and transforming into full-blown food destinations: the newly opened, sprawling Dolly Parton gas station (Dolly's Tennessean Travel Stop in Cornersville, Tennessee) has a cafe called “Cup of Ambition” where you can sip your coffee from a butterfly-handle mug and dine on peach cobbler sundaes; diners craving something hardier can order Southern-style pulled pork and smoked brisket at the adjoining restaurant. Los Angeles will also be getting a specialty gas station next year, as Alex Canter (yup, of iconic Canter’s Deli) announced that he would be opening a luxury gas station in Beverly Hills called Maggie’s Refuel, where customers can enjoy curated snacks from around the world, locally sourced pastries, fancy soft serve, matcha beverages, and lattes on tap. Yes, someone on X already called it “Woke Buc-ee’s.”
Destination restaurants in gas stations aren’t necessarily new (consider long-standing spots such as Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que and Whoa Nellie Deli), but according to the Wall Street Journal, this wave of more food-centric gas stations is likely due to rising food costs and changing consumer habits. As the market research firm Technomic explains in the article, tobacco use and alcohol consumption in the U.S. is “at an all-time low,” so the country’s 152,000-plus convenience stores are “broadening their food programs.”
Midwest coolness is hitting the coasts
Recently, I spotted a “Midwest supper club ‘fit check” video in the Stories of NYC writer and influencer Harry Hill, and wondered: Is the Midwest getting some much-deserved love right now? It was a question my Eater colleague Brenna Houck also asked in Slack (“Is it just me, or is everyone seeing a lot of Midwest-coded stuff popping up?”), and our colleagues wholeheartedly agreed; in addition to all the buzz around the rise of more wood-paneled, tavern-like dining and restaurant aesthetics, Midwest cocktail bars have been gaining traction and branching out of the heartland; Chicago-based Truce and Columbus, OH-based Cobra Bar popped up at BCB and Bar Snack in New York City; and Vals in New Orleans recently featured a “Midwest takeover,” a series of cocktail collaborations with Friends of Friends, Union, Charis Listening Bar, and others Midwestern gems.
The glory days of sidewalk dining may be coming to an end
We’ve come a long way from the regulatory looseness of COVID-era sidewalk dining. In New York City, bars and restaurants have reckoned with the lengthy permit process for sustaining outdoor dining, and, as Eater recently reported, well-funded restaurants can more easily afford to wait out the bureaucratic process while smaller, independent restaurants may get squeezed out. Nor is the problem unique to New York City: Los Angeles newsletter the Eastside Rag recently discussed changes to Los Angeles’ COVID-era outdoor-dining policies, notably a partial phase-out of Karen Bass’ L.A. Al Fresco program. While the program still exists, new sidewalk dining spaces must adhere to open-air designs in compliance with zoning standards, including removing some types of DIY roofing. No wonder folks on Los Angeles Reddit threads about patio dining have been wondering “what happened to the outdoor seating/awnings at LA restaurants??” and lamenting the loss of the patio at Wurstküche in the Arts District and at The Semi-Tropic in Echo Park.
