Food news antipasto

Are you Team Hydrox or Team Oreo? If you are the former, here is some news from Leaf Brands, maker of the chocolate sandwich cookie: it is planning an antitrust lawsuit against Mondelēz, the parent company of Oreo. Leaf Brands accuses the Oreo manufacturer of intimidating retailers and telling workers in stores to “hide, misplace or move Hydrox to less desirable locations.” Leaf Brands’ CEO Ellia Kassoff says that Mondelēz is afraid of losing “even a penny” of market share, and notes that “Rarely do we lose a taste test between Oreo [and Hydrox] and I think that’s what scares them.”

We’ve previously reported on trends involving croissants such as the Cronut and the Crookie. Food & Wine’s Amelia Schwartz wonders if these and other trends like flat croissants are getting out of hand. Whether you like them or not, these trends probably won’t die down any time soon, due to one simple fact: “A croissant has a universal appeal,” according to pastry chef Scott Cioe. “Nobody hates flaky butter.”

Customers of gourmet food shop chains Foxtrot and Dom’s Kitchen & Market had a rude surprise earlier this week as all locations of the Chicago-based entities abruptly closed on April 23. The parent company, Outfox Hospitality, was formed last year when the brands merged. As little as two weeks before the closure, Outfox was considering expansion plans. Now, the company will be filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, meaning it’s headed for dissolution with no plans to reorganize its debt.

A vegan blue cheese was set to win an award from the Good Food Foundation, that is, until the Foundation removed the cheese from the competition for reasons that they have not fully explained. The maker of the vegan cheese accused the foundation “of caving to pressure from dairy cheesemakers” in disqualifying the product. The brouhaha highlights the tension between traditional cheesemakers and those who are working on plant-based alternatives. The fact that the cheese impressed the judges enough to award it the prize shows how far these products have come in the last few years.

Vegan restaurateur Matthew Kenney is in the news again, this time the subject of a report by The New York Times on his crumbling restaurant empire. The report chronicles many financial misdeeds plus accusations of racism and creating a hostile work environment. As Eater LA notes, this isn’t the first time that Kenney has faced scrutiny over his restaurant operations. In the early 2000s, he was part of NYC’s Pure Food & Wine, one of the first upscale vegan restaurants, with former business partner/girlfriend Sarma Melngailis. That eatery went down in flames after Melngailis and her then husband Anthony Stangis were accused of financial misconduct after siphoning millions from the restaurant. Their exploits were the subject of the Netflix documentary Bad Vegan. As one vegan food writer noted, “You can see in [Kenney’s] interviews that he will always place the blame elsewhere, but after three decades of the same thing happening over and over, the blame must be placed on him.”