Food news antipasto

This liminal period between Christmas and New Year’s has my brain scrambled, so please accept my apologies for this delayed recap of food news.

Since 2025 is nearly over, everyone is looking back at the top stories and recipes for the year. Australian Gourmet Traveller published its most popular recipes of 2025, and The Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Food recounts the best splurge meals they had in the past year.

Epicurious wrote about the 50 most-saved recipes in its app, and The New York Times gave us its most popular food stories of the year (gift link).

The Guardian’s Grace Dent weighs in with her take on the best restaurants she visited in 2025 and similarly, David Ellis of The Standard offers his take on the best country pubs in England. Meanwhile, The Independent brings us three standout cookbooks of the year that we might have missed, along with a recipe from each.

Food and Wine took a slightly different approach in looking back, with a retrospective of the most important food policy stories of 2025. This year featured economic issues with tariffs adding to food costs, and the US Secretary of Health and Human Services’ push to “make America healthy again” that included controversial changes amidst a sea of misinformation.

New Year’s Eve is almost here, and for many it’s the one time each year that they pop open some bubbly to celebrate. In case you need a refresher, Simply Recipes offers advice on the best way to open a bottle of champagne or sparkling wine. Unfortunately, this method doesn’t involve a saber (but it’s a lot safer).

With the New Year we will see plenty of articles on getting organized, making cooking resolutions, and so on. To start us off on the right food, The Kitchn has the top tips on making a small, cramped kitchen feel bigger. Ruthless edits and focusing on how you actually cook are key, but there are other useful gems here as well.

Other posts during the holiday week:

• Self-checkout theft is rising
• In pursuit of perfection
• How well do you know Christmas food traditions?
• The worst gifts ever