Free Krispy Kremes! and more

Doughnuts ...

Participating Krispy Kremes celebrate National Doughnut Day on June 5, giving away a free doughnut to each customer. For locations, check www.krispykreme.com/storelocator.html.

Softshell crabs ...

Special at TOMI (7741 Colony Road): East Coast softshell crabs, pan-seared and dusted with salt and sansho (a pepper powder), and served with steamed vegetable. You get two crabs for $18. 704-759-1288.

... And whatever they're having...

Simply telling diners a dish is popular increases the chances they'll order it, according to a new study by Duke economist Hanming Fang and others, conducted in Beijing. Fang attributes it to "the Google effect" -- "People want to sort through large amounts of information by learning from others who faced similar choices."

The "Observational Learning" study is slated to be published in the June 2009 American Economic Review. For one week in 2006 at Mei Zhou Dong Po restaurants in Beijing, researchers gathered data on customer choices with no intervention. For the second week, they put placards on some tables. Half named the top five most-popular dishes from the previous week; the other half listed "sample dishes" not identified as popular. The demand for the dishes listed as top-five increased by 13 to 20 percent. Demand for dishes listed as samples wasn't significantly higher. (That lessens the possibility diners were responding to mere suggestion.)