Bear Fat Caramel and Dot Cake Extravaganza 🐻
Welcome to Secret Breakfast / The best place to start eating queer cold noodles, food from demolished cities, and viral cupped calories
Hi there!
I don't have much to say. The other day I bought something like 3,000 shiso seeds, planning to grow them on a piece of land in the countryside. Except I wasn't there long enough to see them sprout.
The same thing - maybe it happens to you too - happens with other things in life. You start something but you don't really know if it will bear fruit, if you'll be around when it does, or if you'll just end up with a bad result because you didn't follow the instructions closely enough (guilty!).
But within limits, there's something good about letting yourself take a leap. And hoping that, despite everything, maybe there's a surprise waiting in a future you haven't met yet. Right?
Piero
✹Yuzuki Asako, Butter. If you've lost that, it's a good novel. Food and feminism, murder and Japan. What else do you need?
Fiesta! Fiesta! Fiesta!
This one is a recipe book born from a collaboration between nine Barcelona kitchens and Shanghai fashion brand Short Sentence, made for the launch of their summer capsule collection. Three chapters (The Classics, A New Take, From the Sea) move through Catalan staples and Mediterranean riffs, all built to cook at home. Each recipe comes with an off-menu conversation between the editor and the chef, local and international, trained and self-taught, talking about what keeps them cooking. The kind of superfluous object you didn't know you needed until it was already in your hands.
Fiesta: a collection of Spanish Recipes (Off-Menu x Short Sentence)
→ Shortplot: 🇪🇸 🐟 🥘 🍷
Lemon, chicken and nostalgia
I spent the last few days lost inside Kowloon Generic Romance by Jun Mayuzuki. The story unfolds in a kind of "miniature mega-city": crumbling tower blocks stacked and pressed against each other, no space between. It was somewhere around volume 5 that I started wondering if a place like that had ever really existed.
Mea culpa.
Kowloon did exist, just outside Hong Kong. At its peak in 1990, it housed around 50,000 people in 2.7 hectares, making it the most densely populated place on Earth. Demolition began in March 1993 and was completed in April 1994.
In the manga (there's also an anime and a live action) food matters a lot. Certain flavors matter. Nostalgia is basically a main character. Why am I telling you this? First, because it's a beautiful story. Second, because it will make you want Hong Kong-style Lemon Chicken (★recipe). Third, because if you smoke, it will make you want to try the watermelon-and-cigarette pairing. Please don't smoke, though.
This week went like this. Kowloon Generic Romance. Wow.
🗺️ Dua Lipa's favorite spots 🎂 So, this dumb Dot Cake went viral (★ lemony recipe) 🐟 Grinded anchovies into your burger 🥒 15-min miso pickle (★recipe) 🫧 Black seaweed caviar, quick 🍕 38 best restaurants in Rome, 99% approved by a random local (me) 🫘 Dense bean salad 🍷 Comrades, Stalin's Georgian wine collection up for auction 🍉 Watermelon and lime in tajin sugar (★recipe) 🍜 It's Pride Month, have some Queer cold noodles (★recipe) 🍅 Tiny tomato galette (★recipe) 🐻 Roar, Bear fat caramel - chill, you don't need a bear 🌿 150 kcal summer rolls (★recipe) 🧈 Translate in your language these 5 savory biscuits (★recipe) ⚫️Like dots? Like music? Like masked people? Maybe you'll love Angine de Poitrine's newest album, everybody is talking about it
One Night at the "Most Interesting Dinner Party in the World"
Sam Stone / Bon Appétit
An inside look at the Explorer's Club Annual Dinner, the most exclusive and bizarre feast in the world. A ritual where adventure, taxidermy, and extreme food collide.
