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Trend & Inspiration Gallery

Here’s why New York has the best pizza

These three pizza spots are the best examples of why New York has a love affair with pizza and quite possibly the best pies in the world.

Photo by Fancycrave on Unsplash

These beloved desserts preserve sugar’s historyInle Lake, Myanmar (CNN) — The smell of smoke and boiling sugar filled the air as I pedaled a bicycle along the shore of Myanmar’s Inle Lake.

It was December, which is sugarcane season here. Since the cut cane must be processed quickly after harvesting, small-scale producers were hard at work as field workers carried heavy bundles from nearby farms. When an old man beckoned me in, I paused to watch the process.

The sugarcane was pressed through a pair of heavy rollers powered by a diesel generator, the juice funneled into a series of bamboo baskets set over coals. It looked like hot, heavy work to stir the thickening sugarcane juice, which would eventually cool into a brown mass shot through with tiny crystals.

I broke off a piece of brown sugar and savored the full, rich flavor.

Read the full story at CNN.com

5 Trends Defining The Food And Beverage Industry, And Retail In GeneralIf you’re in the retail real estate business, there are likely two words you’ve heard incessantly over the past year: “dining” and “entertainment.” But while they are certainly buzzy terms at this point, they are not in the same league as the most dreaded buzz word of all.

That, dear reader, is because food and entertainment options, in various forms, are actively being implemented across the industry. New food uses in particular are serving up (couldn’t help myself) some of the most interesting concepts for shopping centers to pay attention to, which is particularly important given that American now spend more money on dining out than they do on groceries.

Dating back to the days of the Greek agora, shopping centers have been social, well, centers of their local areas. While food has always played a role in shopping centers, as more channels evolve to handle the mere transactional nature of commodities, shopping centers would be wise to place greater focus on the experiential.

According to a study released from JLL, shoppers who stop to eat spend 35 minutes and 12% more at a property, than those who forgo a bite. That’s quite a lot of dough (ok, I’ll stop … promise), when you extrapolate it over thousands of shoppers. To take advantage of that, the report outlined five mega-trends in consumerism that are impacting the F&B and retail real estate industries.

Read the full story at Forbes.com

The Best Coconut Water You Can Buy at the Store

Photo by Emily Bauman on Unsplash

Epicurious editors tasted 19 brands of coconut water to determine the best-tasting (and most hydrating) version around.

Champagne Makers Bubble Over A Bumper Crop Caused By European Drought

The champagne grape harvest in northeastern France, like this one near Mailly-Champagne, started early this year due to lack of rain.
Francois Nascimbeni/AFP/Getty Images

“What I’m hearing around me, even from people older than 80 years, is that this is the best harvest they’ve ever had,” says Philippe Schaus, the CEO of Moet Hennessy.

Experts are predicting a sharp rise in production — perhaps up as much as 50 percent from last year. Schaus says some of the excess wine will be stored for use in leaner harvest years. But that still leaves a lot to be bottled.

The Champagne region typically produces 300 million bottles a year. 2018 will yield at least 10 million more bottles than last year, and it is expected to be some of the best bubbly in history.
Read more from NPR

At Seasoned Vegan in Harlem, Soul Food That Never Harmed a Soul

Credit: Jenny Huang for The New York Times

Chef Brenda Beener’s family roots go back to New Orleans, and the food she grew up with — crayfish and shrimp, the bounty of the bayous and the Gulf of Mexico — did not prepare her for the day her husband announced, “I’m just going to eat plants now.”

Read more from The NY Times

Plant-Based Purees: Hummus and Beyond

PHOTO CREDIT: CREATIVE DINING SERVICES

With so much momentum behind hummus innovation, a new opportunity has taken shape, where chefs are looking beyond traditional hummus and exploring the menu potential of other plant-based purées.

Read more from Flavor & The Menu