Sampler Platter: Cherpumple, Slim-Fast recall, grocery shrink ray, chocolate Ritz

Your late-Friday-afternoon food news roundup, featuring the most insane cake/pie hybrid ever, reasons your waiter hates you and more:

-- The Cherpumple, the dessert version of the Turducken: a three-layer cake with a pie stuffed in each layer. Charles Phoenix
-- 20 secrets your waiter won't tell you + 30 more secrets = 50 reasons your waiter hates you. Reader's Digest
-- Tiger Sushi ready to open in former Luckyfish space; Santa Monica Bar & Grill to become Upper West. Eater LA
-- Eating with Kristen Schaal: oyster shooters, monkey brains and the tyranny of onions. Fork in the Road
-- Unilever recalls all Slim-Fast ready-to-drink products in cans because of possible contamination. FDA
-- Nine foods attacked by the grocery shrink ray. Live Cheap
-- Aqua Teen Hunger Force wants you to Have Yourself a Meaty Little Christmas.
-- Ritz now dips its crackers in fudge -- during the holidays.
-- Describe what Lender's Bagels mean to you to win $1,000 and a year's supply of bagels.
-- The world's most extravagant meals. Forbes

-- Elina Shatkin

Photo: Rob Takata / For The Times