Hilary Pollack

3 weeks ago | eater.com | Hilary Pollack

Hilary Pollack is the senior commerce editor at Eater. She has more than 15 years of experience in culture journalism and food media, grew up in an Italian restaurant, and is always down to order for the table. Dear guest of someone else’s home: I hope you didn’t show up empty-handed. Bringing a host or hostess gift isn’t just chic; it’s good manners! Now, different situations (and different hosts or hostesses) call for different gifts, from earnest to cheeky, casual to Very Special.

1 month ago | eater.com | Hilary Pollack

I’m not sure exactly when it happened — sometime circa 2021 or 2022 — but I have become a bona fide farmers market person. Catch me there every week; I’ll be the one stocking up on apricot kefir yogurt, telling all my personal secrets to my farmers market fairy godmother Evelyn while I buy my weekly ration of garlic curds from her cheese stand, and racing to the Japanese greens booth in hopes of grabbing one of the last bunches of shiso leaves.

2 months ago | eater.com | Hilary Pollack

Hilary Pollack Calling all people who eat cereal covered in a combination of chocolate, peanut butter, and powdered sugar: Today is the day I found out that this concoction, which I’ve always known as Muddy Buddies (I could never get behind the term “puppy chow,” popular in the Midwest, since I don’t really want to eat dog food?) is also called “monkey munch,” “muddy munch,” “reindeer chow,” or “doggy bag” — or, at least, that’s what Wikipedia seems to believe.

2 months ago | eater.com | Hilary Pollack

Oxford Languages defines the word “ultimate” as “the best achievable or imaginable of its kind”; the Cambridge dictionary says that it’s the “most extreme or important because either the original or final, or the best or worst.” So with that in mind, what is the ultimate version of a utensil you use every day, say, the humble fork? Would it be the highest achievement in dining tools? The most extreme, with infinite tines?

2 months ago | eater.com | Hilary Pollack

The Eater staff recently had a spirited exchange about our favorite gas station snacks, and mine, unequivocally, is cheddar-flavored Chex Mix (ideally purchased with a York Peppermint Patty, a canned iced tea, and an ugly pair of wrap sunglasses from the rack near the checkout stand). There’s just something about the umami explosion of cheesy flavor crystals coating a medley of crunchy textures, from pretzels to little sourdough crostinis.