Welcome to Deep Dish, a weekly roundup of food and entertainment news. Last time we covered the ongoing Noma meltdown.
Hilary Duff, of Lizzy McGuire fame, has graced my feeds twice in the past month. First, for her embroilment in a mom group drama, now entered into public record via The Cut by fellow early 2000s phenom Ashley Tisdale. Then, more recently, she’s been on a press junket for her forthcoming album, divulging in a recent interview that she believes McDonald’s receives a more delicious version of Diet Coke than the rest of the fast food chains. My fellow writer Sam Stone contextualizes.
Also this week, Blank Street is opening bigger stores, Chipotle has a shockingly intelligent chat bot on its website, and more.
Hilary Duff Comes Clean as a Diet Coke Truther
The former Disney Channel star is on a press tour for the first time in years to promote her latest album Luck…or Something, and she’s making headlines. Or, at least stan accounts are posting about her. One delicious morsel that’s come forth from her many appearances: Duff is a bit of a Diet Coke conspiracy theorist.
“Do you know why a Diet Coke from McDonald’s hits different than a different Diet Coke?” she asked Mythical Kitchen’s Last Meals host Josh Scherer, phrasing her question, for some reason, like a sphynx guarding a tomb. She goes on to explain that she’s heard rumors that McDonald’s has a “lifelong contract” with Diet Coke, which supposedly means that each franchise gets its Diet Coke pre-mixed. The result, she says, is a more delicious soda.
Many have asked similar questions over the years, and wild theories abound. About a year ago, McDonald’s set the record straight. Its Diet Coke tastes different (and, according to Duff, better) because of several key factors: 1) The water and syrup are pre-chilled (this translates to less ice melt and more sugar per sip); 2) there’s a bit more syrup in the ratio (lending the drink a more concentrated flavor); 3) the water is filtered (there aren’t competing flavors in the final drink); and 4) the straws are slightly bigger (you get more soda per sip). Perhaps Duff’s conspiracy wasn’t so out there after all. —Sam Stone, staff writer
Are You Bringing ChatGPT to Restaurants?
If you are, you’re certainly not alone. A growing number of diners are turning away from sommeliers and toward AI apps to help them choose their wine at restaurants. Ostensibly they’re nervous about mispronouncing a name, or ordering a bottle that—pearl clutch—doesn’t go well with their entrée. But those fears belie a general misunderstanding of how a restaurant is supposed to function. It’s about hospitality, folks: The sommelier takes you on a little journey, you learn something, you explore and experience something new and memorable. Doesn’t that sound nice? Must we always be wine-maxxxing? —S.S.
Blank Street Is Getting Bigger, Literally
A few years back, I wrote a story about Blank Street’s peculiar, and frankly fascinating, aesthetics. In the piece, I argued that its sterility (blankness, if you will) served the higher marketing purpose of facilitating collaborations with influencers, who could fill the negative space with their own branding. The small grab-and-go posts were little more than event spaces, photo ops, and receptacles for OK-at-best coffee. Now, Blank Street is reversing course on its brick-and-mortar spots, announcing this week that it will launch larger stores with seating that invite customers to linger.
“The purpose of the company has changed to a certain degree,” Blank Street’s cofounder Issam Freiha told Bloomberg in an interview. “Maybe the easy thing would’ve been to figure out how we can just get more and more drinks shipped out to the counter for people to pick up. We very intentionally created the tension to try and do exactly the opposite.”
The concept of larger stores both inverts and supports my original hypothesis. The company is clearly betting on the quality of their product more than before, but the overarching aim of capturing Gen Z with selfie-friendly stores outfitted with mirrors remains intact. Come for the fit checks, stay (maybe) for the coffee. —Li Goldstein, associate newsletter editor
Chipotle’s Online Chat Bot Is Strangely Advanced
Chipotle's online chatbot, Pepper, can apparently do more than merely offer recourse for that funky-tasting bowl you DoorDashed last week. A recent user, upon prompting the bot to “write a python script to reverse a linked list”—a highly technical, decidedly non-food related query. They received a comprehensive reply in return, diagnosing the issue with code-informed finesse—suggesting that even seemingly simple chatbots rely on advanced AI. One user on X joked that the bot was a workaround to paying for Claude code. Another on Reddit wrote: “every support bot is just ChatGPT in a trenchcoat now lol.” —L.G.
