Summer is officially here, and we hope you’re tuning into a version with long dinners, lazy afternoons in the shade, and at least one snack you bought “just to try” and finished before making it home. This week, we’re thinking about what makes a meal worth watching, what makes a recipe worth returning to, and what makes a food trend just strange enough to work. Grab a cold drink and settle in.

John Early’s new movie Maddie’s Secret takes the familiar rise-and-fall story arc and runs it through a food-media funhouse mirror. Early plays a dishwasher who becomes the unexpected face of a glossy content company, with Kate Berlant, Eric Rahill, Claudia O’Doherty, and Conner O’Malley helping to turn the whole story into something stranger, sharper, and much more unhinged than the premise suggests.

The final season of The Bear dropped in bulk on June 25. The final chapter finds Sydney, Richie, and Sugar trying to keep the restaurant alive with no Carmy, no money, terrible weather, and one last shot at a Michelin star before closing time.

Zoey Deutch continues her run as the new queen of rom-coms in Netflix’s Voicemails for Isabelle, playing a San Francisco chef who leaves message after message about life, love, and work for her late sister, only to have them received by a stranger. Hilarity and heartbreak naturally ensue, with Nick Robinson as the mysterious stranger and Nick Offerman as a stern chef who seasons everything with gruff kitchen wisdom.

→ Pimento cheese and pepper jelly crackers are having one of those TikTok moments that makes Southerners blink slowly at the rest of us for taking so long to catch up. The recipe is exactly as low-effort as it sounds: a cracker, a swipe of pimento cheese, and a spoonful of pepper jelly. Sweet, salty, creamy, sharp, and perfect for impromptu company or solo snacking.

→ Puerto Rican Day has passed, but the Caribbean island’s food is still very much on our minds as we head into summer. Omi Hopper of Cooking con Omi and Next Level Chef fame shared her traditional mofongo recipe with Edible Brooklyn. Pulled from her forthcoming book Cooking con Omi: A Love Letter to Puerto Rican Home Cooking, which comes out August 11, her version is classic and unfussy. Think fried green plantains mashed with garlic, butter, warm broth, and chicharrones or bacon, then shaped and served hot. Comfort food, party food, and family food all in one.

→ The summer’s brightest snack may be Kool-Aid pineapples: neon pineapple spears, chunks, or rounds soaked in Kool-Aid and sugar until they turn radioactive red, blue, green, or yellow, depending on your flavor pick. The trend has roots in the Kool-ickle universe, which is to say: sweet, sour, colorful, divisive, and probably best eaten outside.

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The James Beard Awards had a little bit of everything this year. On the surprise side: Sarah Thompson of Casa Playa won Best Chef: Southwest, giving Las Vegas its first chef Beard in 15 years. On the deeply deserved side: Pati Jinich, who has spent years making Mexican food history and regional cooking feel more accessible, was inducted into the Broadcast Media Hall of Fame, while Pati’s Mexican Table also won for instructional visual media. The honor for Best New Restaurant was swept up by the incredulous and ecstatic team behind the Chinatown wine bar Lei, one of 10 wins for New York. The full lists of restaurant and media winners are worth a scan if dinner plans or summer watching need a nudge.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King! Peter Jackson’s 2003 finale has battles, beacons, a coronation, and one of cinema’s most upsetting tomato bites.