The Most Popular Food Stories of 2025
You’re not the only one feeling the weight of 2025. The crush of headlines made this year feel more like a decade.
Shake-ups in Washington touched everything from food regulations to grocery prices (here’s what to buy when it’s on sale) and even changed how we make change (R.I.P. to the penny). GLP-1s continued to upend how we eat at restaurants. Congestion pricing altered the calculus for Manhattan restaurateurs in the zone.
The Make America Healthy Again movement left companies like Whole Foods Market struggling to find their place in the food and nutrition landscape. And alpha-gal syndrome, a tick-born illness that causes those affected to become allergic to meat and dairy, shook Martha’s Vineyard.
We lost George Foreman, whose knack for selling electric grills gave him a second career after boxing, and Marilyn Hagerty, the food critic who found nationwide fame for her earnest review of an Olive Garden. The food world also mourned Pableaux Johnson, who spread the gospel of red beans and rice, and the chef Charles Phan, who helped change America’s perception of Asian cuisines.
Franchise owners of the world’s largest barbecue chain, Dickey’s Barbecue Pit, said they were enticed to purchase franchises based on misleading financial information provided by the company. Many lost everything.
This year, the Food section announced two new chief restaurant critics. Ligaya Mishan began with the View in Times Square and ended up giving her first four-star review to Yamada. Tejal Rao checked in on the Tesla Diner and found much to love in New Orleans at the revamped Emeril’s.
Two other critics, Mahira Rivers and Ryan Sutton, are also writing shorter starred reviews of New York restaurants in the Where to Eat newsletter. If you are curious about how the New York restaurant landscape has changed over the past quarter-century, click here.
On the flavor front, we longed for Dubai chocolate and jjajangmyeon. We turned to pizza, new Thanksgiving recipes and a restorative Ghanaian soup.
For many of us, our kitchens and dining tables became places of refuge, allowing us to re-center and reset over a bowl or plate of warming food.
It’s no wonder, then, that so many of our most popular stories centered on cooking tips to make your lives that much more delicious. Here are the top 12, listed in descending order to the most read story of the year.
12. Inside Meghan’s Real Kitchen, Away From the Cameras
Julia Moskin was the first reporter allowed in the Duchess of Sussex’s kitchen in Montecito, Calif., where in March, days after the Netflix premiere of “With Love, Meghan,” Meghan was preparing for the release of her lifestyle line, As Ever.
11. The 23 Best Salads of All Time
These recipes will make you forget that, for some, a desk lunch can be sad. Categorized as leafy, hefty, starchy or fruity, the salads in this feature from Krysten Chambrot offer something for everyone.
Readers couldn’t get enough of Kenji López-Alt’s nonnegotiable rules for burger success in this installment of our Cooking 101 series.
Recipes: Smash Burgers | Diner Burgers | Thick Backyard Burgers
9. How to Make Cooking Substitutions
Alexa Weibel wrote this article at the beginning of the pandemic, when the housebound needed to make do with the ingredients they had on hand. But as tariffs changed what was available on grocery store shelves, her update provided insights for those needing to make smart swaps in the kitchen.
Protein has been a buzz word this year, and these breakfasts are packed with it — and offer enough variety to keep your taste buds happy.
7. Anne Burrell’s Death Ruled a Suicide
The death of the chef Anne Burrell in June (see No. 3 on our list) shocked the food world, and in July, the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner released her cause of death.
6. 14 Easy Healthy Dinners to Put on Rotation in 2025
Meant to kick-start 2025 with easy and healthy recipes, this article from Allison Jiang helped many readers hungry for bowls, salads and stir-fries.
In June, the World’s 50 Best announced its 2025 list, with Maido, in Lima, Peru, given the top honor as the list’s best restaurant in the world.
4. 3 Salad Dressings You Should Memorize
The recipes in this installment of Cooking 101 “aren’t just simple, they take any kind of greens you have on hand to the next level.” When Samin Nosrat talks, we listen.
Recipes: House Dressing | Creamy Lemon-Miso Dressing | Creamy Sesame-Ginger Dressing
3. Anne Burrell, Chef and Food Network Star, Dies at 55
The chef and television personality was found “unconscious and unresponsive” at her Brooklyn home in June. Ms. Burrell, who began her career working in Italian restaurants in the United States, had hosted “Worst Cooks in America” on the Food Network. In July, the medical examiner ruled her death a suicide (see No. 7).
2. The 100 Best Restaurants in New York City in 2025
To compile this list, our interim restaurant critics Priya Krishna and Melissa Clark crisscrossed the boroughs in search of restaurants worth the commute and the splurge.
1. The Restaurant List 2025
Our reporters, critics and editors spend much of the year traveling around the country trying new and classic restaurants for our annual list of the best restaurants in America. This year’s list included a Kansas City barbecue spot focused on turkey, a West Indian restaurant in Eugene, Ore., and a Philadelphia noodle house specializing in Cambodian cooking.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.
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