Welcome to Open Tab, a weekly column covering the news, gossip, and stories that have stayed open in my tabs all week. Last time we covered the end of corporate cookie chains.
A couple colleagues returned from a trip to Italy this week. Were they raving about the world-class food? The beautiful views? Their truffle hunting expedition? No, they came into the office chatting about the big wine heist that, according to them, everyone in Italy was talking about.
Basically, a group of men stole 30,000 bottles of wine from a warehouse in Tuscany, estimated to be worth $5.5 million. “Could they simply be passionate oenophiles who plan to drink the 30,000 bottles of Tuscan red themselves?” asks the New York Times. Ever the optimists over there.
Is there a single recipe that you love enough to make your legacy forevermore? That’s presumably the idea behind the recipes people have carved into their tombstones which, yes, is a real thing that happens quite often. Archivist Rosie Grant has chronicled these recipes online and in her aptly-named cookbook To Die For, but in putting the book together she discovered something much more profound about them.
Also in today’s Open Tab: Are GLP-1 supplements just another kind of snake oil? The Michelin scandal unfolding in Texas, new tech from Square that could change restaurants forever, and an essay from Daniel Humm on the frenzy of opening his latest restaurant.
What the hell are GLP-1 supplements?
My colleague Nina Moskowitz flagged something to me that caught her eye: A smoothie shop with locations around the country was offering what she called “GLP-1 powder.” Odd, I thought to myself. I investigated and found that it was listed as “GLP-1 Fiber Booster” on the shop's menu. Naturally, I ordered a scoop in my smoothie; it was $30 with tip.
The powder is made by a company called Supergut, which named it GLP-1 Daily Support. It’s one of many such GLP-1-adjacent powders on the market. On its website, Supergut claims the powder “supports GLP-1 levels”—with an asterisk that notes that the claim hasn’t been evaluated by the FDA.
Dr. Babak Orondi, an obesity specialist at NYU Langone, told me that there’s no evidence these powders can boost the effects or the levels of GLP-1s. “And even if it were to, it is unlikely to have a meaningful effect,” he wrote in an email. “The medications act at concentrations hundreds to thousands of times higher than the body’s own GLP-1 and are designed to last for days, while the body’s own GLP-1 is broken down within minutes.”
In fact, these supplements are something much simpler: fiber.
An email statement a spokesperson from Supergut said, in part, that the powder is “not a GLP-1 medication,” but is “designed as companion nutrition for people on GLP-1 medications and anyone supporting their gut health.” The supplement, they said, “may support feelings of fullness and beneficial gut bacteria associated with natural GLP-1 production.”
The $79 billion industry of GLP-1s has changed the way we eat. GLP-1s may even be supercharging nutritional therapy, and along the way they’ve become buzzwords in the weight-loss and wellness space. Slapping the phrase GLP-1 on the label is an easy way to sell more fiber powders (and smoothie supplements), even if it's misleading consumers. “I think the name oversells it,” Orondi told me.
It’s telling, too, that the Supergut’s CEO herself has noted that it’s risky to use the term GLP-1 booster. When I first visited the smoothie shop and asked the guy working the counter about the term, he told me, “It’s the same stuff that goes into Ozempic.”
When I returned the next day for another GLP-1 supplement-laden smoothie (might as well see what drinking this supplement for a week does, I’d decided), a different cashier told me the GLP-1 supplement was actually more of an appetite suppressant, but that it wasn’t the same thing as an actual GLP-1.
For what it’s worth, after a week of consuming GLP-1 boosters I feel exactly no difference. Didn’t even keep me full, really.
Did Michelin use AI to write its Dallas guide?
Dallas landed five new spots on Michelin’s Texas guide this year, part of the guide’s ever expanding remit. But D Magazine’s dining critic Brian Reinhart noticed something strange in the guide’s writeups. They didn’t read quite right. After putting the text through an AI-detector, it looks like the majority of the reviews of the new restaurants were created by AI.
Reinhardt’s reporting points to the overuse of specific words and grammatical structures, words like “serene” or “careful,” which LLM’s tend to use more frequently than humans. Michelin denied that AI was used to write the restaurant reviews, and also refused an interview or to review Reinhardt’s findings.
The Michelin guide is known and lauded for its rigor. In a sea of influencers, Michelin’s century of dining expertise and its strict code of secrecy stand out. It is widely considered one of the last international authorities on food and restaurants. But critics have noted that trust has begun to erode as Michelin accepts cash in exchange for coverage, and accusations of AI-use would further undermine the rigor and thoroughness on which Michelin has built its reputation.
On the new Square Kiosk
Do you remember when, seemingly overnight, every coffee place and bakery suddenly had those tablets that would work as cash registers. Point-of-sale (POS) systems, they’re called—the kind that swivel around and ask you if you’d like to add a tip. Those systems are basically made by two companies at this point: Toast and Square.
This week, the latter released the next product in the swivel POS line, simply dubbed Kiosk. It’s an AI-enabled tablet on a stand with microphones and speakers, and does everything a human working a register would do: take orders, recommend dishes, explain menu items, and upsell, among other things. In short, it seems primed to take a lot of jobs.
Tech optimists would say that Kiosk will help independent restaurants cut costs and stay open, but I’m no tech optimist. I wonder if the idea of Kiosk is built on a fundamental misunderstanding of restaurants. We don’t go out to eat just to satisfy our hunger. We go out to feel like we’re a part of the world, to interact with people, to feel wrapped in and a part of the hum of servers and conversations and disagreements and sly jokes happening all around us. Optimizing that friction out of the restaurant experience with AI isn’t solving for a problem most customers experience. Just as self-checkout machines have made the grocery store experience more lonely, so too might Square’s new devices.
Daniel Humm’s love letter to his latest restaurant
“Opening a restaurant is an insane thing to do,” chef Daniel Humm writes in an essay for Bon Appétit. He’s spent months obsessing over the details—the light fixtures, the perfect shade of red paint—all in service of getting his latest restaurant just right. Read on to see how Humm made it through the madness to open Humm, the first restaurant to bear his name.