Intelligence Briefs is aweekly compendium of food and drink-related news stories gathered from a variety of sources here and around the world and published every Monday morning.

Eater explores the numerous ways that some restaurants cheat their employees out of millions of dollars every year.

The Scout 25 list for Fall 2018 is out. Check out their picks for the best restaurants around town and don’t forget to weigh in on your favourites.

Not only has this university cafe done away with cash transactions, students now pay for the morning coffee with their personal data.

“To get the free coffee, university students must give away their names, phone numbers, email addresses and majors, or in Brown’s lingo, concentrations. Students also provide dates of birth and professional interests, entering all of the information in an online form. By doing so, the students also open themselves up to receiving information from corporate sponsors who pay the cafe to reach its clientele through logos, apps, digital advertisements on screens in stores and on mobile devices, signs, surveys and even baristas.”

When life gives you bananas, apparently you’re supposed to hide $18 million worth of cocaine in them, ship them to a prison and hope no one notices.

Nita Lake Lodge Head Bartender Rhiannon Csordas shares her picks for the best places to eat and drink around Whistler.

Vice pays a visit to Mike’s Chili Parlour and lauds it as one of the best dive bars in Seattle.

Citylab looks at research from years of Yelp reviews by Harvard economists as a novel means to trace gentrification.

And now for the “Oh Shit” moment of the week: the story of a woman that returned a fridge to Costco but accidentally left her life savings in the freezer.

Eater explores all of the foods affected by the Trump tariff war. Turns out the Canadian feds have been fighting back with a few tariffs of our own.

Drinking via Instagram honours this week go to @tiannakwongcreative for capturing this perfect light at Matchstick. If ever there was such a thing as coffee-drinking light, this is it:

 

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Coffee shop shots #freelancelife

A post shared by Tianna Kwong (@tiannakwongcreative) on Sep 28, 2018 at 7:36am PDT

The Georgia Straight’s Craig Takeuchi reports on the instant success of a recently opened tonkatsu restaurant in the West End.

Local blogger Liza Agbanlog recently released a new cookbook celebrating Filipino cuisine: The Vancouver Sun reports.

Three Portland bouncers share the most challenging part of their work, the weirdest thing they’ve ever had to deal with on the job and their favourite post-work drink.

After the success of their pop-up dinners, the chefs behind Tayybeh have decided to start offering local cooking classes.

Sommelier Stephanie Mathis of Botanist shares a few of her picks for favourite local wines.

Time to stock up on bacon folks. Looks like climate change is affecting the appetite of pigs and prices are about to increase on pork products across the board.

“Scientific American reports scientists have found that hotter weather causes pigs to eat less. It also causes their bodies to switch from making protein to amping up their immune systems. Even if you feed them richer food, they won’t process it into muscles we can eat, meaning the hot pigs don’t get as big as farmers need them to. Worse yet, heat-stressed sows are less fertile, and they make leaner, smaller piglets that can’t store protein as well.”

Ever wonder where the term “going dutch” came from? Atlas Obscura explains the origins of the phrase, a story steeped in history and a bitter international dispute.

Some seriously poor decision making on display when this bar decided to offer bottomless mimosas during the Kavanagh hearing this past week.

Bestselling author Cal Peternell makes the case for anchovies in his most recent book.

“The best anchovies, whether salt-or oil-packed, open up a world of flavor that is surely of the ocean, but with a salty, solidly ashore savor that can be as unignorable as it is undetectable and as chewy as a sip of seawater. You’ll know it when you taste it in a good Caesar salad, in spaghetti alla puttanesca, or in warm, buttery bagna cauda.”

What happens when you drink from an $80 water bottle with crystals in it? Bon Appetit’s Rachel Sugar reports.

Drinking via Instagram honours this week go to @tiannakwongcreative for capturing this perfect light at Matchstick. If ever there was such a thing as coffee-drinking light, that is it!

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