New on the Menu: Charred melon and bright red cocktail

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Plus a Cantonese pasta dish, multicultural jollof rice, and a salami sandwich

What makes a sandwich special? It’s a question of balancing flavors and textures, using the appropriate ingredients, and finding the right bread.

Chef Grégoire Jacquet breaks down his approach to that with his new sandwich at his namesake restaurant in Berkeley, Calif.

How do you resolve a dispute over who makes the best version of a traditional dish? You probably never do, but Tolu Eros strikes a compromise at Ilé, his dining room in West Hollywood, Calif., whose name means “home” in Yoruba, where he uses elements of Nigerian, Ghanaian, and Senegalese approaches to making jollof rice.

At Yao, a new Cantonese restaurant in New York City’s financial district, chef Kenny Leung gives a southern Chinese treatment to Italian fusilli pasta, and a bit farther uptown on the city’s Lower East Side, at Two Fifteen Bar, mixologist Charlotte Voisey offers a bright red tequila-based cocktail for the summer.

And in Chicago, on the new menu at Sifr, chef Sahil Sethi celebrates the season with a charred melon dish served over labneh.