Lucia’s Nabs a Visa for Its New Italian Chef

After years battling for a visa, chef Ernesto Palmieri is now heading up the Lucia’s kitchen

Lucia’s, a Neapolitan pizza restaurant in downtown Berkeley, has been working since 2018 to score a visa and properly hire a real-deal Neapolitan pizza chef — Ernesto Palmieri — who has won a slew of Italian cooking awards. The government finally came through, and Palmieri has taken the top slot in the kitchen. Menu updates include fried mini pizzas like the kind you can buy on the streets in Naples.

The environmental advantages of the Impossible Burger aren’t completely clear

With shadowy political consultant Rick Berman reportedly on the payroll of the U.S. beef lobby, headlines touting the advantages of meat over alternatives like well-funded food tech startup Impossible Foods are likely to become more common. CNET attempts to unravel the (oft-hyperbolic) claims made on both sides of the debate — and concludes that the topic can’t be boiled down to a handful of convenient statistics or sound bites.

A participant in a bar-based nude art class is questioning her feminism

Bold Italic contributor Gisella Tan says that she’s been participating in classes at the San Francisco branch of Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School, at which (per its site) “artists draw glamorous underground performers in an atmosphere of boozy conviviality.” Of the “naked ladies” she’s been painting at Madrone Art Bar and DNA Lounge, Tan says she’s in “sticky, dimly lit bars where men slosh back beers and eat pizza with one hand while holding a grubby pencil in the other,” and that she’s grown worried that she’s “partaking in objectification and the historical tradition of the male gaze.”

Mourad Lahlou is extending his empire to Hawai’i

Michelin-starred chef Mourad Lahlou, the man behind Aziza and Mourad, is partnering with a former Aziza sous chef for a new restaurant venture in Honolulu. The Pacific Business News reports that Chris Kajioka, who was at Aziza’s previous incarnation about a decade ago, will open a French- and Japanese-inspired spot called Miro Kaimuki in early 2020.