Pandemic

From Food Truck To Phenomenon: How Chef Teach Found Nationwide Success During A Pandemic

Mitchell R. Lajoie 2 weeks ago
From Food Truck To Phenomenon: How Chef Teach Found Nationwide Success During A Pandemic

2020 was a devastating year for the restaurant industry. According to the National Restaurant Association, restaurant and food-service sales were $240 billion below its 2020 pre-pandemic forecasts. 

Despite the impact that COVID had on the industry, there were a few who swiftly made changes to their business model and found success, even when the world seemed to be crumbling around us. Chef Derrick Turton (also known as Chef Teach) of World Famous House Of Mac, for example, was one of them. The South Florida restaurant helped to provide food for first responders, offering delivery of mac and cheese beyond the city, to Brooklyn, Los Angeles and Tallahassee. 

The former music manager of Pitbull was inspired after the death of his father to change the direction of his life. Teach attended culinary school in 1998, but began his professional career in the music industry, where he managed Pitbull for more

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Latter-day Saint food bloggers have been a source of comforting recipes and culinary advice during the pandemic

Mitchell R. Lajoie 2 months ago

Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.

It took a pandemic and a societal shutdown — schools moving online, offices forced to telecommute, and restaurants restricted to takeout — for the dying art of home cooking to be resurrected.

It happened one soup pot, macaroni casserole and bread loaf at a time in kitchens across the country, including Utah.

And to whom, in many cases, did these cooks turn for comforting recipes and culinary advice in a time of need?

Some of Utah’s top Latter-day Saint food bloggers.

“I don’t think we’ve ever had a better year on the blog,” said Carrian Cheney. “Our traffic almost quadrupled.”

Cheney and her husband, Cade, have operated the Oh, Sweet Basil blog for nearly 12 years — and have 115,000 Instagram followers.

The popularity of preparing food at home has

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The pandemic changed the way we eat and get food

Mitchell R. Lajoie 2 months ago

The coronavirus pandemic changed many aspects of life, including how people eat, get groceries and enjoy food.

Restaurants began offering curbside pickup, grocery-delivering apps were created, and people started cooking more at home rather than eating out. Like almost everything else, the COVID-19 pandemic changed people’s relationship with food.

Burcay Gunguler, 45, and her husband, Aybars, opened Social Sloth café in downtown Lansing in August 2020. The couple created a space to share their love of Turkish baked goods and coffee, something Gunguler believes is missing from the city. Adhering to COVID-19 standards, the couple came up with unique ways to introduce people to their café.

The café now has some regular customers, but Gunguler is slowly growing its clientele through creative initiatives such as holiday brunch boxes and virtual or in-person cooking workshops. The couple also utilizes social media to promote the café and word of mouth.

“When people

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How the pandemic changed L.A. food culture

Mitchell R. Lajoie 2 months ago

For this weekend’s Food section, the Food team marked the anniversary of the pandemic-related shutdowns and its rippling effects on Los Angeles’ dining and cooking culture.

Jenn Harris profiles four longtime hospitality workers to find out how they survived the last year: Dante De La Rosa, a server at Las Brisas in Laguna Beach; Abby Zialcita, service operations manager for Tartine Silver Lake and Sycamore; Cynthia Longley, director of operations for the Lucques Group; and Enrique Rosas, a bartender at Tam O’Shanter in Atwater Village for more than 40 years. The dine-in closures and the roller-coaster months that followed entwine their narratives, but each of them have very different and compelling stories.

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Lucas Kwan Peterson makes the case that we should pay more to eat in restaurants

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