Coronavirus Variants, GameStop, Polar Vortex: Your Weekend Briefing
Here’s what you need to know about the week’s top stories.
Image
Credit.James Estrin/The New York Times
1. U.S. health officials are waiting to see if more contagious coronavirus variants upend the country’s progress in its battle against the virus.
Most communities remain at an extremely high risk of contracting the virus, like New York City, above. But transmission seems to be slowing throughout the country, with the number of new average cases 40 percent lower on Jan. 29 than at the U.S. peak three weeks earlier.
Still, the average reported daily death rate over the past seven days was above 3,000, and we are by no means out of the woods yet.
A Rare Menu That Tells the Truth: The Pork? Greasy. The Beef? Meh.
A Montreal restaurateur’s self-lacerating style has drawn worldwide attention, perhaps striking a collective chord of humility in the pandemic.
Feigang Fei’s Montreal restaurant, Cuisine AuntDai, got a welcome lift this month after a tweet about his bluntly honest online menu went viral.Credit.Nasuna Stuart-Ulin for The New York Times
Jan. 29, 2021
MONTREAL Feigang Fei doesn’t like to boast about the orange beef at his restaurant in downtown Montreal. As a matter of fact, he doesn’t much like it.
“Comparing to our General Tao Chicken, this one is not THAT good,” reads the description on the online menu of his restaurant, Cuisine AuntDai, under a glossy photo of the deep-fried beef. “Anyway, I am not big fan of North American Chinese food and it’s your call.”