Pizza Hut

The rumors are true: The Girl Scouts of the USA are pairing up with Nestle to create candy bars flavored like the famous cookies-- and they'll be available this week. The bars will come in three options: Thin Mints, Caramel & Coconut and Peanut Butter Creme, all based on cookies that the Girl Scouts have sold for years to raise money.    On Wednesday, customers can start buying the bars online in a limited-edition pre-sale on the Nestle Crunch Facebook page . Then, from June through September, the bars are to be sold at retailers nationwide.

Restaurant sales may be recovering nicely in the U.S., but eateries are increasingly looking abroad, where diners are more accepting of innovations such as Pizza Hut's new cheeseburger-crusted pies in the Middle East. Think it's a joke? A fantasy food dreamed up by a teenage boy? Even the advertisement acknowledges how silly it all sounds. In the video, diners look on agog as a royal page brings in the monstrosity “masterpiece” - dubbed the “Crown Crust Pizza” - on a cushion.

Pizza sales were piping hot well before Pizza Hut revealed its hot-dog-stuffed-crust monstrosity in Britain this week, according to research group Technomic. Now, 41% of consumers say they eat pizza once a week. Two years ago, just 26% did. That's because restaurants are offering more options beyond the cardboard-y dough and oily pepperoni discs of old, according to Technomic . Pies now come with gourmet ingredients and fancy pedigrees. Eateries now advertise how the pizzas are prepped - hearth-baked, wood-fired, made over coals or cooked in a brick oven.

It's really not fair. Lucky residents of Britain can now buy a Pizza Hut pizza with a crust stuffed with a hot dog.  And it comes with a "free" mustard drizzle! It's grosser than the cheese-stuffed crust pizza we get in this country, though not as gross, I'd argue, as a vegetarian pizza I once got in Britain that was just a crust topped with those canned cubed vegetables. Here it is on the British menu ! I am going over there in a few weeks, and now I know what one of my meals won't be. An item over at Time asks us to soul-search how this fair nation can “redeem its title as most unhealthy country?

Looking to take your lady love or handsome paramour for a romantic meal this Valentine's Day? White Castle is here for you. Harold and Kumar's favorite burger joint plans to offer a candlelit dinner with table service on Tuesday, just one of many quick service chains angling for a piece of the estimated $3.4 billion that will be spent on holiday dining. Most of that money usually goes to fine-dining establishments. But with many consumers still sensitive to price, fast food eateries are betting that they can siphon away some of the prix-fixe crowd.

Looking to take your lady love or handsome paramour for a romantic meal this Valentine's Day? White Castle is there for you. Harold and Kumar's favorite burger joint plans to offer candlelit dinners with table service Tuesday. It's just one of many quick service chains angling for a piece of the estimated $3.4 billion that will be spent on holiday dining. Most of that money usually goes to fine-dining establishments. But with many consumers still price sensitive, fast-food eateries are betting that they can siphon some of the prix-fixe crowd.

  With Super Bowl XLVI just days away, advertisers are in an all-out blitz, pitching everything from pizzas to TVs in conjunction with the biggest sporting event of the year. The ads often feature "super" savings and football themes, but one thing is conspicuously absent from nearly all of them: the name of the game itself. Trademarked and tenaciously defended by the NFL, the phrase "Super Bowl" is available to just a handful of official sponsors that pay significant amounts for the right to include the name in their marketing efforts.

Making it big is perhaps the oldest lyrical trope in hip-hop, and there are many different ways to go about it. One could take the Jay-Z route and, through hit-making skill and business savvy, rise to the top of the old-guard music establishment. Another is to bypass that establishment entirely, hustling mix tapes and carving out your own regional or genre niche that can become self-sustaining. Or you could do what the Brooklyn trio Das Racist did, which is to write scabrously hilarious songs that make the music and media elite feel very, very bad about itself.

Behind the tall counter at Il Dolce, a new Costa Mesa pizzeria and restaurant, silver-haired owner Roberto Bigne stretches pizza dough over the backs of his hands in a sure, practiced gesture. The pizza oven behind him glows a fiery orange. Bags of almond wood are stacked on the floor in front of the counter; the 2-month-old restaurant is so small there's nowhere else to put them. Meanwhile, the smell of pizza dough cooking in that wood-fired oven wafts over the counter into the simple dining room with bare-topped tables lined up in rows.

Writing up an early report on a new restaurant can sometimes be awkward. At just a week or two old, some places are not yet ready for prime time, which is why we generally wait two or three months before publishing a full review of a new restaurant. Tin Roof Bistro in Manhattan Beach falls into that awkward phase -- almost ready but not quite. Mike Simms, owner of the popular Simmzy's (his family also created Mimi's Cafe, Lazy Dog Cafe and the Kettle), has given himself a difficult assignment transforming a space that was once a free-standing mall restaurant into a vibrant welcoming bistro.