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Yesterday at about 11:30 AM, for no particular reason other than that we could, my man and I ordered 70 (yes, s-e-v-e-n-t-y) pieces of KFC popcorn chicken for $10, with free delivery to boot. Having recently abandoned any hopes that our Coachella/summer beach bodies will be of any use to us during a lockdown, we are determined to eat whatever the heck we want, whenever the heck we want it. It’s the form our grief takes.

Last night, my boyfriend surprised me with sushi. For my birthday, he’d planned on taking me out to one of LA’s hottest sushi spots (SUGARFISH!) but, obviously, our state-imposed lockdown rotted that plan before it even got out of the water. So, though he said we would just postpone (you know, till things get normal again) he was actually making magic happen, ordering a birthday boy’s feast to-go, paying a little extra for a rushed delivery, and getting it all done without my knowledge.

Chipotle had themselves a heck of a fourth quarter to end a heck of a 2019. Despite renewed safety concerns and brazen violations of child labor laws, the fast casual pioneer has continued to drive same-store-sales growth. They also had a minor sensation with their limited-time-only carne asada offering. 

Fuji Foods, the country’s largest provider of prepackaged sushi, issued a thirty-one-state recall last month with concerns that products sold under Okami and Trader Joe brands may contain listeria, an uncomfortable-at-best, deadly-at-worst food-borne bacteria. Yup, that’s right, Trader Joe’s gets their sushi from the same company that provides Walgreens, 7-Eleven, Food Lion, Golden Eagle, and a host of other grocers. And it got recalled. 

Chipotle has a cheesy problem, more specifically a queso one. After testing the new product in Colorado and California, the food purveyor—whose last 18 months have been, well, challenging—rushed it to market with much, much fanfare and the results have been less than impressive. According to Business Insider, only about 15% of customers are actually ordering the product, and it's reception on social media has been somewhere between caustic and molten.