Free Republic

It's the Dollar Menu, take two. McDonald's hopes it has a catchy, new deal that will be as hugely popular as its Dollar Menu. Starting Jan. 4, the fast-food chain will launch the "McPick 2" menu, which will let customers pick two of the following items for $2: a McDouble, a McChicken, small fries and mozzarella sticks. The offering has gained the necessary votes from franchisees to make it onto the national menu, and will be available in U.S. restaurants for a five-week run starting Jan. 4. After that, McDonald's said it may change the details of the offering, but...

Taco Bell is saving its first fast-food restaurant from the wrecking ball by relocating the iconic 400-square-foot food stand from Downey to its corporate headquarters in Irvine. “This is arguably the most important restaurant in our company’s history,” said Taco Bell Chief executive Brian Niccol. “When we heard about the chance of it being demolished, we had to step in. We owe that to our fans; we owe that to Glen Bell.”

Mulberry Street, where New York's "Little Italy" is centered, c. 1909.  (Photo: Library of Congress)“Don’t eat gabagool, Grandma,” says Meadow Soprano on an early episode of The Sopranos, perhaps the most famous depiction of Jersey Italian culture in the past few decades. “It’s nothing but fat and nitrates.” The pronunciation of “gabagool,” a mutation of the word "capicola," might surprise a casual viewer, although it and words like it should be familiar to viewers of other New Jersey-based shows like the now-defunct Jersey Shore and The Real Housewives of New Jersey, where food often drives conversation. The casts are heavily Italian-American, but...

(CNN) - In a revived push to boost the minimum wage and influence the 2016 elections, fast food workers are planning a nationwide strike this coming Tuesday. Workers from 270 cities are expected to walk out on their jobs, demanding a living wage of $15 an hour and the right to unionize. At the same time, thousands of protesters are expected to make their voices heard Tuesday at the Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee...

This is the time of year Californians look forward to if fans of decadent crab meat. The start of the Dungeness season could be in jeopardy, however, as this California Department of Fish and Wildlife report suggests: The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) issued a health advisory warning individuals to avoid eating rock and Dungeness crab due to the detection of high levels of domoic acid. The advisory was followed by a recommendation from the Office of Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA) to the California Fish and Game Commission and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) to delay...

Oh boy. Thanks to those among us that have a peanut allergy, everyone else has to have a crappy Halloween. That’s what it means to be a sensitive, “responsible” American these days. Here’s the sign asking parents to only hand out carrot sticks, raisins and other boring treats:

'Every restaurant in America would shut down.' Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's strong stance on illegal immigration has already drawn serious backlash from the restaurant industry, and celebrity chefs José Andrés and Geoffrey Zakarian have pulled restaurants from Trump's new Washington, D.C., hotel. Now ex-cook and current world-traveling TV host Anthony Bourdain is getting into the mix. Bourdain made an appearance on SiriusXM's StandUP With Pete Dominick and defended America's undocumented workers. I grew up in the restaurant business — 30 years in the restaurant business. I came out of, like a lot of other white kids, I rolled out...

Is your deer meat tough, dry and gamey-tasting? It shouldn't be. Check out this list of 12 deer-butchering sins to find out why your venison tastes bad — and how to make it better I'm often amazed at the people, deer hunters included, who tell me they just don't like venison. That statement is usually followed by a qualifier: it's tough; it's gamey; it's dry. And so on. I've eaten a lot of good deer meat. But I've eaten some really bad deer meat, too. I'm only a self-trained butcher, but I process five or six animals each fall,...

This is the moment it was claimed a pork chop was placed on the face of a dying Palestinian man. He had been gunned down after allegedly stabbing an Israeli police officer in the settlement of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron. In 12 days of bloodshed four Israelis and 26 Palestinians have been killed in Jerusalem, the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Gaza and in Israeli cities. The death toll is said to include eight children....

Earlier this year, New York Times food critic Pete Wells was moved to write 841 words about breakfast sandwiches. It was a love letter of sorts, an ooey gooey ode to the most basic form of one of the most basic morning foods. But it was also a complaint: A new restaurant called BEC — short for Bacon Egg and Cheese — was about to open in Manhattan, and he was less than pleased. Breakfast sandwiches, Wells explained, are nothing if not practical, prepared quickly and eaten on the go, stuffed with modest ingredients and sold at a reasonable price....

Analysis: With $15 minimum wage campaign gaining political traction, group says workers need more for a living wage. As the nationwide campaign for a $15 hourly minimum wage gains traction, some labor groups have set their sights on an even higher number: $16.87 — a demand that could help push the $15 figure closer to the mainstream of American politics. A new report, published Tuesday, from the Alliance for a Just Society, a coalition of labor organizations, argues that $15 an hour is less than a living wage in most states. A single, childless adult earning $15 per hour would...

PROVIDENCE — Protestors marched in Providence Monday afternoon in support of the "black lives matter" movement. A group of about 50 people gathered outside of a Providence Dunkin' Donuts on Atwells Avenue, where an employee last week wrote "black lives matter" on a police officer's cup of coffee. For about an hour, they carried signs and posters in support of the movement. Several told NBC 10 News they believe the employee didn't do anything wrong. Activists also said they feel the Providence Police Union overreacted to the incident and that the phrase, "black lives matter," isn't anti-police, but pro-African American...

From the army of machines that work in Amazon warehouses to automatons that milk cows, the job-taking robots of the future are among us. Now the lettuce in your salad of the future might be grown by robots too. Oh, by “future,” we mean 2017. That’s the hope of Spread, a company in Kyoto, Japan, that plans to begin constructing the world’s first large-scale lettuce factory next spring. Once it’s fully operational, the entire process of growing a head of lettuce—from seeding to harvest—will be automated and run by robots. The efficiency of machines will enable the factory to produce...

My name is Christine, and I get food stamps. I've had to apply off and on over the past 16 years in order to make sure my family was fed. I don't feel the least bit ashamed of myself for this, but apparently some people think I should. Some people think I, and people like me, am lazy. Or that we're taking advantage of other (smarter, harder-working) people. Those people seem to have an image in their heads of how someone who "deserves" assistance behaves, and a very narrow idea of how we should feel about it. Those people are...

WEST HARTFORD — People from Connecticut and across the country reacted on social media over the weekend to a local Dunkin' Donuts worker's comment with a West Hartford police officer waiting in line that the store wouldn't serve police officers. Dozens tweeted the accounts of the local Connecticut Dunkin' Donuts franchise group and the national Dunkin' Donuts headquarters, many users calling for a boycott of the company and for the employee, who police said told the officer, "We don't serve cops here," to be fired. Both accounts answered with the same response: "We are aware, Dunkin' Donuts & our franchisees...

The union called the move "unacceptable and discouraging." A Rhode Island police union is outraged over what a Dunkin' Donuts employee wrote on an officer's coffee cup. According to Go Local Prov, a Providence police officer purchased a coffee Friday night from a local Dunkin' Donuts. A Facebook post (which does not appear to be public) from fellow police officer William O'Donnell claims that the employee was "immediately rude, and didn't appear to want to serve" his co-worker who was in uniform. Upon leaving, the unnamed police officer noticed that his coffee had "#blacklivesmatter" scrawled across it in marker. (IMAGE-AT-LINK)...

There exists in this world a condiment below all others. It has all of the flavor of sawdust and the sublime texture of soap scum. Until recently, I was unaware that The Federalist, lovers of freedom, etc., was complicit in its spread. I rise today to defend America—nay, the world—against such scurrilous anti-food propaganda. As all Americans, especially Texans, know, mayonnaise is a tool of oppression used by communists and bland-food lovers everywhere. It is a form of mind control designed to cow you into a sense of complacency about life. Food has flavor, and mayo covers that flavor...

REEDSPORT — The Reedsport School District again is able to provide free meals to every student for the 2015-2016 school year, a program that began last year. A controversy in the North Bend School District, with which Reedsport cooperates to get bulk pricing on food items, should not affect that program. “We're a school-wide free-lunch program,” said first-year Superintendent Brian Gander. “That's based on our local incidence of poverty. We started that last year.” Gander said the district would have 65 percent of students eligible for free and reduced lunch, if that program were still in effect. The current program...

Ten of the world’s largest food production companies sent a letter to the U.S. Congress on Thursday, encouraging them to take action on climate change. The letter was signed by the chief executive officers from Unilever, Mars, Kellogg, General Mills, Nestle, New Belgium Brewing, Ben & Jerry’s, Clif Bar, Stonyfield Farm, and Dannon. “The challenge presented by climate change will require all of us – government, civil society and business – to do more with less. For companies like ours, that means producing more food on less land using fewer natural resources. If we don’t take action now, we risk...

A police officer in the Nograd region in northern Hungary claimed refugees on board trains and massed at border crossings were donating supplies to security guards who were being forced to work 27-hour shifts without enough food or water. Some were also having to sleep rough in fields as the migrants shelter under donated tents. Zsolt Demjan from Hungary's independent police union said: "The daily food amount should be 5,000 calories, but mostly the police officers won't get the fraction of that. "In many cases they only get water from local people. "An officer from Nograd county states that they...