Retro Food and Duplo Dinners 👾

Welcome to Secret Breakfast / The best place to feel like an amoeba, then start baking 20+ kinds of Christmas cookies after you cooked for Thanksgiving

Hi there!

I was reading this super-cool feature by Ronald W. Dworkin called The Amoeba and the Mathematician.

The essay argues that in the AI age, workers should stop trying to be machine-like and instead cultivate "wisdom"—a middle ground between pure instinct (the amoeba) and pure reason (the mathematician).

Using poker as an example, it shows that the "wise" player who blends intuition with logic outperforms both impulsive amateurs and mathematically optimal machines when dealing with human opponents.

The cooking world is having its own reckoning with this continuum.

At one end: the home cook who eyeballs everything, tastes constantly, adds "a little of this" until it feels right. Pure amoeba. At the other: the modernist chef wielding a scale accurate to 0.1 grams pursuing the mathematically perfect soft-boiled egg at 63.5°C for exactly 45 minutes.

Here's what the essay reveals about food: neither extreme wins in the real world. (Ok, defining "wins" can be tricky, I know)

The amoeba cook makes inconsistent food. Can't teach anyone. Can't replicate success. The mathematician cook produces technically flawless dishes that somehow lack soul—or worse, can't adapt when the tomatoes are too watery or the oven runs hot.

The wise cook? They know the recipe but read the room. They understand that Wednesday's chicken needs more salt because it's been frozen. They spot when a dinner guest is gluten-intolerant before being told. They combine technique with observation. Data with instinct.

AI will nail the perfect béarnaise every time. But it won't notice that your grandmother just stopped enjoying rich food, or that the birthday girl seems stressed and needs comfort food, not ambitious cuisine.

The future of cooking isn't about memorizing ratios or following gut feelings. It's about knowing when to trust the thermometer and when to trust your nose. When to follow tradition and when the ingredients are telling you something different.

That's wisdom. And no algorithm can taste the difference. At least, for now.

Piero

✹Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.

Alison at home

Alison Roman is my Achilles' heel. She's one of my four North Stars (yes, one isn't enough for me) when I'm looking for simple food or some form of comfort. Compared to her previous work, this book feels like an expression of how she actually cooks at home. I mean: it's probably not an essential book, but it's an authentic cookbook. It could be a thoughtful gift, a way of saying that good food doesn't require reaching for the stars—just heart, and knowing how to work with what's at the market or in your fridge.

Something from Nothing: A Cookbook by Alison Roman
→ Shortplot: 🍅 🐟 🥬 🥧

Retro food is not a nightmare like this

Every year, without fail, we're told retro food is back.

You roll your eyes, skeptical as always—until you walk into Harrods' food court, or Peck in Milan, or any high-end Parisian rotisserie and find yourself surrounded by langoustines trapped in jelly, jambon persillé, shiny pâtés, beef Wellington, even curry rice.

What is it about these dishes that keeps pulling us back? Perhaps it's that they're economical, nutritious, and taste good as food writer Tom Parker Bowles says of his beloved stews.

Or perhaps it's showmanship—these are dishes that demand to be seen, that transform eating into theatre.

In an age of minimalism and clean eating, retro food offers something we're starving for: pomp, excess, the sheer pleasure of not taking yourself too seriously.

We return to these extravagant creations not despite their kitsch, but because of it—because sometimes an enormous prawn perched on the edge of a glass vessel is exactly what we need.

🎄22 Christmas cookie recipes you won’t want to share 👰🏻‍♀️The Wedding Food Trends for 2026 🌎The top trending travel destinations for 2026 revealed – with an Asian capital taking the top spot 👾Duplo Dinners are a great idea for meal preps 🇬🇧The Country Women's Association of Victoria is famous for its scones (★recipe) 🍠Japanese Sweet Potato Soup (★recipe) 🫔Everywhere I look, I see Sheet Pan Chicken Kabob Wraps (★recipe, or this) 🍟Fry something using paper instead of a frying pan 🎃Pumpkin Pie Cookies (★recipe) 🍿If You Love Popcorn So Much, Why Don’t You Cook With It? 🇵🇸Palestinian taboon bread (★recipe) 🍬This Is What Sugar Does to Your Skin—and How to Fix It

Some last-minute Thanksgiving (November 27, 2025)
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🇺🇸 Andy Baraghani’s gorgeous Thanksgiving menu (★recipes) + the Secret Breakfast TG special 👨🏾‍🍳The 5 Thanksgiving Dishes That Aren’t Worth Making, According to Professional Chefs

"You want to imagine what this tastes like? Fuck you, says AI"

Georgina Voss / Vittles

A hunt for AI-generated images in London restaurants reveals something stranger than fake pictures: the moment when photography itself becomes uncertain. From Hot Cross Toasties that look like digital slop to McFlurrys that might be Photoshop, this investigation traces how synthetic images are quietly infiltrating our streets—and what gets lost when algorithms replace the craft.