Here’s what you might have missed

Another bad review for a splashy New York City restaurant: The major NYC publications have all now reviewed Marcel, the new restaurant in Manhattan’s iconic Breuer building. The restaurant, which is part of a partnership with Sotheby’s (the owner of the building), got early attention for its art, which is all available for its well-heeled guests to purchase. Its food, however, seems to be a major miss. This week, the Times’ Ligaya Mishan delivered a zero-star (“satisfactory”) review, concluding that the food was “placid, rote, unexceptional,” despite its hefty price tags. According to the New Yorker’s Helen Rosner, most of what she tried was “fairly unremarkable, and a few dishes were downright bleak.” But Grub Street’s Matthew Schneier was the harshest with his review in May: As a restaurant, he wrote, “It fails.”

Negative reviews are actually so back: Last week, the Washington Post’s Elazar Sontag published his second zero-star review since he assumed the post late last year, of the live-fire Argentinian restaurant Brasero Atlántico in Washington, D.C. The first one came in March, with his review of celebrity chef Michael Mina’s Acqua Bistecca. Even at their harshest, none of these reviews constitutes a pan to the level of, say, Pete Wells’s famous Guy Fieri takedown — that said, in the Times’s star system, zero stars puts Marcel technically on par with Fieri’s restaurant — but it’s interesting to see the major critics veer into emphatically negative verdicts after the pulled punches of the pandemic era, when any bad-mouthing of small businesses seemed like bad form. Perhaps in the case of a moneyed place like Marcel, it’s justified by a sense of punching up.

The influencer backlash is brewing in Nantucket: According to the Cut, Nantucket locals are pushing back on the influx of influencers filling up their idyllic island for the summer, with one shop owner going viral for putting up a sign that said “no influencers.” Clothing store Dairy Boy, which is owned by influencer Paige Lorenz and sells $88 hoodies printed with milk bottles, is one of the causes for complaints, with long lines taking up the sidewalk. Naturally, the influencers are mad, too, calling the sign and backlash “anti-feminist.” Meredith Hayden, the cooking creator also known as Wishbone Kitchen, described the sign as “so yucky.” “Taking the name of a female dominated industry and using it as a derogatory term is the issue,” she wrote in her Instagram stories.

The Minneapolis restaurant that stopped charging for food after the ICE raids earlier this year is shifting gears: After ICE agents killed Alex Pretti in January in Minnesota, local restaurant Modern Times transitioned into a donation-based restaurant called Post Modern Times as an act of protest. The move earned the restaurant major attention, with the New York Times reporting earlier this summer that Post Modern Times was thriving even with up to 50 percent of customers not paying for food. Earlier this week, however, the restaurant’s owner announced that after serving over 30,000 meals as Post Modern Times, it will implement organizational changes — including the return of prices on the menu — as donations dwindle. The new crowds outside the restaurant have also led to conflict with its neighbors, who cite safety issues and tension with patrons, according to a report by the Minnesota Star Tribune.

Uber Eats was sued over its “priority” delivery fees: A proposed class action lawsuit filed in California this week claims that although Uber charged Uber Eats customers “priority” fees for “direct to you” delivery, the company doesn’t actually tell drivers which orders are “priority.” According to the suit, Uber Eats even tells drivers to pick up other orders before delivering “priority” orders.

Emily Wilson weighed in on the worldly pleasures in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey: The University of Pennsylvania professor, known for her much-discussed 2017 translation of the epic, dropped an excoriating review of the new film in the London Review of Books. Among her complaints: “There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible.”

Mamdani’s city-run grocery stores will offer a 30 percent discount on basics: NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani has promoted city-run grocery stores since his early candidacy for the position. The Mayor announced that these municipal grocery stores, the first of which is set to open in the Bronx by the end of 2027, will offer a 30 percent discount on fresh produce, meat, and seafood (in addition to many pantry staples and refrigerated goods). The discount will apply regardless of a shopper’s income, and it won’t fluctuate from week to week, according to the administration. Per a recent Associated Press report, grocery prices have risen by 33 percent from 2019 through June 2026, while they rose by only 6.4 percent in the seven-and-a-half years prior.

Nara Smith went on Call Her Daddy and talked about unwittingly becoming the face of the tradwife movement: Unsurprisingly, she’s not a fan of the label and wants to distance herself from it. My favorite line from the interview: “I don’t think a tradwife would be cooking in like, Schiaparelli,” the eccentric luxury fashion house.

No more tote bags except maybe this tote bag: Fishwife announced a new tote bag made in partnership with Whole Foods, and I regret to report that it is really very cute (better, even, than the tiny Trader Joe’s tote bags!), especially the tiny tote that fits two tins of fish.