In 2005 when Einat Admony opened Taïm, a falafel and fast-casual spot was a hardly a popular choice for a fine-dining chef. A lot has changed since then.

Although the growth of Taïm has been slow — Admony didn’t open the second location until 2012 — she hopes to capitalize on the Mediterranean food moment the industry is having. With the backing and guidance from a group of investors and advisers, many of whom have spent time at Chipotle, Admony plans to open three new outposts this year with larger ambitions in the works.

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After running four restaurants in São Paulo — among them his acclaimed Michelin-awarded restaurant D.O.M. and his latest, Bio — Brazilian food evangelist Alex Atala is tackling his biggest project yet: a 35-floor hotel. Like his most famous restaurant, the hotel will be called D.O.M.

Scheduled to open in São Paulo’s scenic Jardins neighborhood in 2021, hotel D.O.M. will feature multiple restaurants and food service from Atala’s team. The Chef’s Table star is still figuring out the details of what, exactly, that will look like.

“I have not yet decided whether to move D.O.M. and Dalva e Dito there, but this will very likely happen,” he says. The two restaurants — his fine dining crown jewel and a more casual spot, respectively — are currently located less than a half mile away from the future hotel property. ”What we do know is that we will have at least five food operations in the hotel, in addition to managing the entire room service for our guests, such as breakfast and catering for events.”

Days after his first-ever Fruto symposium — which will return in 2019 — Atala talked about the hotel, his ideas for a new book, and why he doesn’t plan on opening any new restaurants in 2018 — at least for now.

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The former students of a now-defunct Le Cordon Bleu culinary school in Portland, Oregon, could have a big check coming their way. A class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of 2,200 students at the for-profit cooking school is on its way to settlement, with Le Cordon Bleu agreeing to pay back 44 percent of its students’ tuition or loan amounts, KGW reports.

The settlement will end a decade-long legal battle against the school and its parent company Career Education Corporation. Students at Le Cordon Bleu and Western Culinary Institute claimed the school advertised itself as highly selective and prestigious, but in reality offered low-quality materials and provided training that only qualified graduates for entry-level, low-paid positions. The lawsuit further alleges that Career Education Corporation encouraged students to take out predatory loans because it had a secret deal with loan company Sallie Mae to overcharge students by 44 percent.

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Customers hesitate when passing through the turnstiles at Seattle’s new Amazon Go store, as if they’re about to be transported into another dimension. They hesitate even more when leaving.

One can hardly blame them. In what’s being billed as a fully automated, cashier-free shop, Amazon hopes to create the most convenient of convenience stores, a place for anyone who wants to feel like they’re shoplifting, but without all that law-breaking nonsense. The concept seems inherently designed for lunch-goers looking for something with a little more variety and cultural cache than the office cafeteria, minus the minutiae of debit transactions and customization. Those are precious seconds that could be spent taking a selfie at Amazon Go.

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We’re about to reach a tipping point on tipping: In December, the Trump administration’s Department of Labor announced it would roll back regulations that prohibited tip-pooling, or the distribution of tips to anyone other than the front-of-house staff who earned them. (These regulations were enacted under the Obama administration in 2011).

Under proposed — and currently pending — new regulations, employers that pay all of their employees the full minimum wage (not the tipped minimum) would be considered “owners” of any tips made by their staff. They could then: Share or redistribute tips between servers and back-of-house employees like cooks and dishwashers; keep the tips for themselves; distribute among management; or keep for their business.

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After years of declining sales, McDonald’s has seemingly righted its ship: Since CEO Steve Easterbrook took over in 2015, changes such as the launch of all-day breakfast have helped propel the fast-food titan out of its sales slump. It’s managed to maintain its upward trajectory over the past year, with its stock price rising by more than 40 percent in 2017.

The chain just reported its best sales growth in six years, with domestic same-store sales up 4.5 percent, and it’s seen an increase in foot traffic to its restaurants for the first time in four years. “We’ve successfully completed the transition from turnaround to growth,” Easterbrook told investors on the company’s quarterly earnings call.

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The east coast of South Florida feels like purgatory. There’s Miami, and there are beaches, but drive for 20 minutes outside of either, and it’s just vast plains of boxy, beige retirement villages, distinguishable only by their names, which all sound like euphemisms for a place you go when you die — Valencia Isles, Windward Palms, Mangrove Bay — and the relative elaborateness of their welcome fountains. The sky is a flat blue, and the temperature ranges from a chilled 62 degrees indoors to a muggy 85 degrees outside. Entire strip malls have been colonized by medical centers, generically advertising “Eye Care” or “Dermatology,” and every home purchase comes with a subscription to Nostalgic America magazine. “If Florida is the Great American Escape, it is also less enticing: the Great American Dumping Ground,” wrote Gloria Jahoda in Florida: A History in 1984. “It is where Mom and Pop go to die.”

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You never know you invited a double-dipper to your party until it’s too late. One moment, they’re just enjoying some delicious ranch dipping sauce, and the next, the ranch is RUINED by their need for more. While no one can be blamed for needing all of the ranch in their life, their desire might have jeopardized the rest of your party.

However, Tyson’s new device might have solved your issues once and for all. Wear your sauce on your sleeve with their new Chicken Wing-Mate, a wristband that has a section just for your personal dipping needs. Just think of the combos you can make in there!

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U.S. corporations just got a big tax cut, and Starbucks is using some of its savings to boost worker benefits. The coffee giant announced this morning that all domestic employees, both hourly and salaried, are getting a pay raise; it’s also doling out company stock and expanding paid sick leave and parental leave.

Pay raises will take effect in April, and are in addition to the regularly scheduled annual raises employees have already received this year. Starbucks did not indicate how much the pay hikes will be, but says they ”will be allocated based on regional cost of living and laws that vary from state to state.” It will also dole out stock grants of at least $500 to all employees at its stores, plants, and support centers who worked for the company as of January 1, 2018.

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It still thrill at the memory of the last time I went to Woodland, a two-floor restaurant down the block from Barclays Center, for a sweat-inducing birthday gathering. We’d been seated near DJ Yung Hova, whose bass-heavy mixes of hip-hop, soca, and reggae, all reflecting New York City’s robust West Indian immigrant population, slowly turned the space into a full-blown party. Neighbors hoisted their sloshing drinks in the air and gyrated their hips as a conga line of happily fed patrons — whose high-heels had shifted impatiently beneath them while waiting to be seated — turned raucous and jubilant to the same songs that power the annual Eastern Parkway Labor Day parade. It wasn’t deep into Friday or Saturday night, though — it was just a normal black brunch, a scene repeated every Sunday afternoon like clockwork.

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