The Sporkful Stitcher Studios

Hip hop records as placemats. A sneaker chandelier, reminiscent of shoes hanging on telephone lines. A bouillabaisse overflowing with seafood from the south of France. That was the scene at one of the high-end events put on by Ghetto Gastro, a Bronx-based culinary collective.

Zahra Tabatabai’s parents grew up in an Iran that would be unrecognizable today. “The pictures I see of my family in Iran in the sixties and seventies, they're in bikinis at the beach, drinking beer,” she says. Now, after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, women are legally required to wear hijabs and alcohol is banned.

A year ago we spoke with a young woman we’re calling Raina, who felt she was on the verge of developing an eating disorder. For context and perspective, we spoke with comedian Margaret Cho, who's struggled with eating disorders much of her life. This week, we get an update on how Raina is doing one year later.

The Copenhagen restaurant Noma has consistently topped lists of best restaurants in the world. People fly in from all over the globe to pay $500 per person for the hyperlocal tasting menus dreamed up by chef/owner Rene Redzepi. But a couple months ago, Redzepi announced the restaurant will close next year because it had become unsustainable, “financially and emotionally.”

When Alexandra Yingst plopped down at a bar in Reykjavik after a 10-hour drive through a blizzard, she saw something unexpected: a Big Mac, in seemingly perfect condition, under a glass dome. It turns out that Big Mac tells us a lot about Iceland’s economy and national identity. Our friends at the Atlas Obscura podcast explore the world’s strange, incredible, and wondrous places — and this week they’re bringing us two of their best food stories.

"Flirting over food is really the best way to flirt," says actor Alan Alda, and he would know. He met his wife, Arlene, at a dinner party in college. A rum cake fell off the top of a refrigerator, and Arlene and Alan were the only ones to grab a fork and eat it off the floor.