Convenience Big Store: How Italy’s most famous food is helping solve the plastic waste crisis

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In 2018, much of the world turned against plastic straws. Bars and restaurants across the country stopped offering them unless people asked, and then states started banning them. In 2019, the European Union voted to phase out single-use plastic (including plastic straws). Though plastic straws represent less than 1 percent of total plastic waste, cutting back and replacing with alternatives can draw awareness and encourage further sustainability efforts. Enter the pasta straw: a bucatini-like noodle that's sturdier than paper straws and more sustainable than plastic. Just one more reason to love pasta.

Elsewhere in the world, writer Dayana Aleksandrova dug into the cheesy, buttery, and creamy traditional Serbian dishes that prove the country's cuisine is one you should pay attention to. Christopher Osburn put together a list of the most easily faked foods you'll find at restaurants. Hint: some foods aren't the real deal unless it comes from a certain part of the world. Finally, if you're looking for an Italian escape, Airbnb is holding a home cooking contest and 100 winners will be flown to Italy to cook with celebrity chefs like David Chang as well as popular Airbnb experience hosts like a pasta chef.

Warm up with some pasta this week,

Nickolaus Hines, food and drink editor

FOOD + DRINK

How Italy's most famous food is helping solve the plastic waste crisis

A variety of sustainable straw alternatives have hit the shelves since plastic straws became the face of the single-use-plastics problem in 2018. Paper straws are among the most common, though others are crafted out of glass, metal, grass, and hay, to name a few. Following the European Union's 2019 vote to phase out single-use plastic utensils, straws included, another substitute started popping up in the country that perfected spaghetti: pasta straws.

PASTA STRAWS TO THE RESCUE

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Where to eat in Atlanta

You can count on one thing in Atlanta: You will not go hungry. The city's food scene has exploded in the last five to 10 years, with new innovative eateries popping up all the time as locals scramble to sample the latest flavor.

Much like its transplant population, the eats here are ever evolving and diverse. Yes, you'll find Southern influences on menus (shrimp and grits, fried chicken, pimento cheese, etc.), but you'll also find restaurants inspired by the cuisines of France, Spain, Italy, Mexico, India, and Japan, not to mention plenty of farm-to-table contemporary American cuisine. Perhaps the best displays of the city's varied fare are at its popular food halls, Krog Street Market and Ponce City Market, where just about any craving can be satisfied.

Thanks to the popularity of the Atlanta Eastside Beltline Trail, a new rails-to-trails walking/biking path, much restaurant development has been focused in the Old Fourth Ward and Inman Park neighborhoods, where diners can use the path to bounce from one spot to another. That's not to say the rest of the city isn't worth exploring for food. The whole city is dense with exceptional restaurants, not to mention shops, art galleries, cocktail bars, and pubs, so pick a food spot that sounds delicious and then explore the area around it.

EXPLORE ATLANTA FOOD