Dear Readers, If your office remains closed, or if you've a few free hours in which to help your fellow man, please donate some time in the first half of tomorrow to make deliveries for Food & Friends. The organization serves upwards of 1,400 of the city's hungry and debilitated individuals and has done yeoman's [...]

For a small city, New Haven, Conn., has an impressive chokehold on fetishized food. There’s Louis’ Lunch, where the burgers come on white toast and the staff threatens to expel any patron classless enough to request ketchup; there’s the late Yankee Doodle, which for more than 50 years mastered the art of artery-clogging griddle food. [...]

Asking to see a restaurant's trash is like asking a stranger for a stool sample: You'll learn a lot if you look carefully, but you'll also have a hell of a time making your case. At the Cleveland Park Starbucks, a shift supervisor who requested to remain anonymous was tight-lipped on the subject of waste. [...]

This morning, during my rendezvous with baker Lindsey Kirtz: A woman is choosing a design for her daughter's cake. "Ooh, go with the blue frosting," she murmurs, glancing at the Giant bakery catalog. "And you want the yellow edges, right" Kirtz asks. The woman frowns and shakes her head. "No, no yellow. I don't want [...]