Food & Drink

Food trucks, gastropubs, burger joints and pop-up dinners, simplified menus and complicated cocktails — the past 12 months have brought big changes in the way we're eating and drinking now.

This is what it takes to make a great cocktail.

Dim and Den Sum founder Chris Hodgson hit the food truck fast lane last summer, paving the way for others to follow in 2011.

Pop-up dining takes the show on the road with tasty results.

We love these 20 proven spots for keeping it fresh season after season.

Call it the Melt phenomenon. Customers go to single-dish-themed spots for the novelty, says Matt Fish of Melt, but that's not enough. "It goes beyond the whole nichey thing," he says. "The food quality has to be dead-on, creative enough to keep people com