The Intelligence Brief is our weekly compendium of food and drink news sourced from outlets all over the world, including right here at home.

NPR answers an age-old question: Why the heck do Canadians sell milk in bags? 

NYT reviews recently released “Pig” starring Nicolas Cage, who plays a high-end Portland chef/truffle forager. 

One minute you’re declared the restaurant of the summer and the next, three chefs hand in their letters of resignation. NYT explains what happened at Brooklyn’s Outerspace.  

This week in drinks and podcasts: Life Behind Bars sits down with Beam Suntory’s Robin Nance and award-winning Portland bartender Jeffrey Morgenthaler to discuss the future of the bar industry.

With restaurant workers in high demand, the balance of power may be shifting for a profession that has historically been both undervalued and underpaid: 

New York City’s recovery will depend in large part on the success of a restaurant industry now required to extend its definition of prosperity to include the ability of workers, both front and back of house, to live decently. In this case, the rhetoric of returning to normal is inapt, because “normal” was dysfunctional and bleak.

The worker shortage even has MacDonald’s considering increased staff benefits such as emergency childcare to attract employees:

In the face of a labor shortage — which is actually just a shortage of jobs that pay well — fast-food restaurants like Jimmy John’s and Chipotle have offered potential employees a number of different incentives, like signing bonuses and free college tuition, to join their ranks. Most recently, McDonald’s announced that it could offer emergency childcare benefits to entice workers to apply.

A word of advice: If you’re treating hospitality staff so poorly that restaurants have to close to give workers a break from your bullsh*t, you should probably just stay home.

The Dishes has returned and this time F.I.S.H. CEO and co-founder Jenice Yu shares her favourite spots to dine and drink around Vancouver.

A handy round-up of the best local ciders to enjoy all summer long.

From favourite local wineries to first love bottles, The Pie Shoppe sisters Stephanie and Andrea French talk all things wine. 

Now open: the West End welcomes Camion, a new Vietnamese street food trailer. 

Now closed: East Van brunch spot Scandilicious.

Also closed: Yaletown’s DD Mau location. Thankfully, the Vietnamese restaurant’s Chinatown location will remain open.

With travel back on the table, it’s worth checking out what the Okanagan has on the menu these days. 

Several local restaurants have removed wild BC salmon from their menus in efforts to preserve what remains of a species on the brink of collapse.

Meanwhile, California is facing similarly dire concerns about their local Chinook salmon:

The potentially dire outlook for the salmon provides a snapshot of how the effects of rising temperatures and the ongoing drought ripple throughout the state. “It’s an extreme set of cascading climate events pushing us into this crisis situation,” Jordan Traverso, deputy director of communications, education, and outreach for the Department of Fish and Wildlife, told Eater via email Wednesday.

Certain areas of the PNW have resorted to moving their local salmon by truck to help support the survival of the species.

“…increasingly, the industry has been resorting to moving the fish around on dry land — trucking young salmon to and from hatcheries in lieu of letting them swim through potentially deadly waters on their own. A few weeks ago, a team of scientists chose to truck about 350,000 Chinook salmon from the Warm Springs River in Oregon to the Little White Salmon National Fish Hatchery in Washington, according to the Wall Street Journal.”

Finally, the New York Times watches the recently released Roadrunner, a documentary on the life of chef and author Anthony Bourdain.