Some eager product designers have replaced the toaster’s familiar buttons, levers, and dials with screens and automated software. The results are rather stale.

Using local ingredients like hoja santa, huitlacoche, insects, and a variety of mercurial spirits, bartenders in the Mexican city are testing the boundaries of flavor and presentation.

This year’s best cookbooks provide inventive, well-tested instructions for dips, barbecue, beans, and pasta. There’s even a book that tells you what the heck to do with celery root.

The restaurant featured in the hit TV show Midnight Diner is a wholly a fictitious izakaya. On a recent trip to Tokyo, I set out to find it anyway.