There’s no shortage of steak-and-martini joints in this town, and plenty of old-school gems scattered across The Valley. I consider myself relatively well-versed in both, so I was surprised, when news that restaurateur Jonah Freedman was revamping Sherman Oaks bistro Mistral hit, that I had…no idea what Mistral was. (Nor, for what it’s worth, did Emily or a handful of other longtime L.A./industry pals.)

Apparently, I learned, Mistral has been a Sherman Oaks destination for nearly 40 years, with a devoted crew of regulars (many with house accounts) as attached to original owner Henri Abergel as they are to the restaurant’s signature steak frites. With its dark wooden walls, beveled mirrors, and crystal-dripping chandeliers, it’s the kind of place that Valley families and studio executives have been sidling in to for a stiff drink and a dimpled plate of escargots since time immemorial.

But unlike, say, Dan Tana’s or Musso & Frank, Mistral has flown relatively under the radar for much of its 38-year tenure. It received a positive review from Jonathan Gold in 1988, shortly after opening (and another, slightly less flattering one a year later from Michelle Huneven), which was more or less the last time Mistral received any serious press. Abergel briefly opened a second location in Beverly Hills in 2000, which lasted for about two years. And, since then, it’s pretty much been an IYKYK kind of place, beloved among Valley locals, little-known to outsiders. Ètra owner Andrew Lawson, who grew up in Studio City and now lives in Sherman Oaks (and who happens to be good friends with Abergel’s stepson), describes Mistral 1.0 as “the kind of place where people have a standing reservation. You have your table and you go every Tuesday night, you know you’ll see Henri, and that’s just what you do.”

Now, that’s all changing. Freedman, the owner of Greekman’s [FKA Freedman’s] in Silver Lake, along with culinary director Josh Migdal (also of Greekman’s) and chef Colin Gatrell (Bavel), discreetly took the reins at Mistral last October, with Abergel’s blessing. For months, they worked quietly, “slowly learning the customer base, introducing ourselves to the neighborhood, and really getting a feel for what this restaurant is, how it functions, and what people love about it,” says Freedman. Simultaneously, they planned a light remodel and a menu refresh, which were publicly unveiled, after a brief mid-summer closure, last month. It’s a deliberately slow rollout, allowing Freedman to reassure protective longtime diners that the Mistral they know and love is only receiving some tasteful nips and tucks; while attempting to attract a new generation that, like me, has never heard of the place.

This wasn’t always the plan. Freedman wasn’t familiar with the original Mistral either, but Migdal grew up in the Valley, where his father was friendly with Abergel. Abergel had made it known that he was ready to retire, and the elder Migdal suggested Freedman and his son go check out the prime Ventura Blvd space. “When we first walked in, I immediately felt that it was an institution,” says Freedman. “This was one of those old establishment restaurants that has been there forever, doing its thing, chugging along with no PR. My first reaction was basically, holy shit, this space is unbelievable—why is this restaurant not on every ‘best place in L.A. to get a martini’ list?”

Freedman wanted the space, but not necessarily the restaurant. His initial concept, when imagining his next restaurant, skewed nouveau chophouse, a sort of “hipster Hillstone,” he says with an eye roll. Another potential buyer, he learned, had plans to demolish the entire building and start from scratch. Neither felt right. “So Josh and I started talking about it, and we agreed that we were more interested in preserving what was there,” Freedman says. Part of that desire stems from the fact that the original Mistral was by no means failing. “There are people who have dined here every single week for 30 years,” Freedman says. “What’s the point of closing this restaurant and losing all of these regulars, and all of this history?”

It’s a delicate balancing act, keeping the longtimers happy while simultaneously breathing new life into an old space. Many other restaurateurs have tried1, with varying degrees of success. To that end, Freedman and Migdal sought to make the kinds of changes that would subtly enhance the look and feel of Mistral, while still keeping it looking and feeling like, well, Mistral. (Truly, what could be more L.A. than a little light cosmetic surgery at age 38?)

They fabricated new U-shaped banquettes and installed them along the perimeter of the dining room, which look as though they’ve been there forever. They redid the molding and millwork on the walls, which blend naturally into the pre-existing wooden bar and ceiling. “People were scared when I talked to them about redoing the dining room,” says Freedman. “But now, they don’t even realize what we changed—they think it’s always looked like this, because it should look like this.” Lawson, who has dined in both versions of the room, is a fan of the subtle updates: “There’s an incredible amount of charm that [the new owners] have gracefully maintained and helped even enrich,” he says of the new space.

The menu has kept its original structure, and most of its existing dishes, but nearly all of the food has received a culinary glow-up, too. Beef tartare is now mixed with pops of pickled fig (delightful) and roasted hazelnuts in addition to standard-issue Parmigiano. The French onion soup arrives deconstructed, with Comte grilled cheese soldiers perched atop a crock of rich beef and onion broth. The branzino, formerly crisp-skinned and served with roasted grapes, is now seared and placed atop a Sungold tomato-and-shiso panzanella. The signature steak frites section has been expanded to include four different cuts of beef; and the martini selection has grown to include five variations, along with cocktails like a Jaguar (tequila, amaro Montenegro, and green Chartreuse) and “Mistral 75” with lemon and yuzu. (The Wine Spectator-recognized wine list, it’s worth noting, has been a particular point of pride for Mistral; it’s newly overseen by French sommelier Julia Djaoui, formerly of Bourbon Steak in Glendale).

Much of the original staff has remained, too, including 25-year veteran bartender Dana Ryan (“she’s something of a local celebrity,” says Freedman; Lawson confirms this by name-dropping her repeatedly in our conversation), and Alex Varela, dining room captain for the past 15 years. Most importantly, Abergel himself is still in the picture, if informally. “He’s really been a mentor through this whole process,” says Freedman. “He’s ushered us into and through this process from day one, and been unbelievably supportive. He’s also still our landlord, so, you know, we’re with him for life,” he laughs. Later this year, when the team transforms what is currently the private dining room next door into a new cocktail and raw bar concept, it will be called Henri’s.

All of this is a long way off from what Freedman and Migdal originally envisioned, but they’re thrilled with how it’s turned out. “In the very beginning, I was more interested in the space,” says Freedman. “I had no idea about the history, I hadn’t met Henri, I hadn’t met any of the regulars. I didn’t know the world that surrounds this place. It really is a crazy ecosystem here, and that makes me want to keep it alive and going for another 40 years.”

#100 is Adam Weisblatt, the co-founder of Last Word Hospitality, which operates some of my favorite L.A. and Joshua Tree-area restaurants, including Found Oyster, Barra Santos, Queen’s Raw Bar + Grill, Hermon’s, Rasarumah, the Red Dog Pioneertown, and The Copper Room. He’s a lifelong restaurant rat, the kind of guy who’s worked his way up every FOH position there is, and still has a deep respect for the game. That’s very apparent in his newly-released first book, “For the Love of Restaurants: An Insider’s Guide from Daydreams to Opening Night,” which chronicles the birth and meteoric rise of the group’s first restaurant, East Hollywood’s very own Found Oyster. Here are Adam’s Plugs:

Restaurant: Philippe the Original

I love old stuff and Philippe's is old. Wood chips on the ground. Cheap, chilled red wine. Lamb Dip with blue cheese and see ya later. The perfect precursor to a nap.

Read more

That said, this issue of Plugs is free for all to read because it’s sponsored by Postcard, a smarter map for deciding where to go and what to do. You can save places from anywhere, find exactly what you need, and share your lists. Download Postcard here.

#17 is me, Emily Wilson, a New York native and the founder of The Angel, need I say more? Although I’ve plugged in other formats, such as On Repeat and in travel guides, I’ve yet to write my own set of New York Plugs. Now feels like the right time to do just that, as I have an announcement to share. After today’s send, I’m taking a several-month sabbatical from writing The Angel. I’ll still be here behind the scenes, and hopefully, occasionally, popping into your inboxes with a byline, but otherwise, will be taking the wheel. There's no one else I'd be so comfortable giving the platform to, and she's already earned your trust with missives on beach sandwich season and why Two Rose’s David Wilcox is moving on, and features like this past week's on how the OC's Ecology Center transformed a dirt lot into the future of farming.

This means The Angel will be re-centering in Los Angeles for now, as that's where Jamie is based (although she is often in New York), and where most of The Angel's readership remains. I'm taking some time off from Substack to focus on other creative projects and life things, but I'm not going anywhere; if you have questions or want to reach me, you know where to find me. And now, here are my New York Plugs — and here’s my map on Postcard.

Here’s also a bigger, bonus list on Postcard (think of it as a subtle preview for what’s to come, post-sabbatical): my ultimate (f&b) guide to Los Angeles in map form.

Restaurant — Bread & Salt

I considered plugging Bread & Salt’s sensational almond biscotti—thick, well-salted, crunchy yet tender—as my treat. I also considered Crema di Mandorla, or Sicilian almond spread (this or this), for my ingredient, which, when diluted with water, becomes the purest-tasting homemade almond milk that can be mixed with espresso and ice to make caffè Leccese. Bread & Salt’s version might be the most delicious coffee drink I’ve ever had the pleasure of enjoying.

But then I remembered a recent Saturday lunch at Rick Easton’s counter-service bakery and pizzeria in Jersey City, and realized it was the most satisfying restaurant experience I’ve had lately, at least on food alone, despite it being rainy outside, and the only seating being al fresco, and actually standing (albeit under umbrellas). Come hungry, and be prepared to carbo-load: sausage or mortadella sandwiches on squishy, fresh-baked bread; thin-crusted Roman pizza, made to order; and authentic Italian pastries, 10x better than anything you’ll find at the old-school bakeries that exist within New York City’s Italian enclaves. Easton makes real-deal Italian baked goods, the kind of stuff that makes you wonder why so many people consider France superior to Italy on bread and pastry.

Shout out, too, to Zoli, the most interesting and tasty new New York restaurant I’ve been to this year.

Bar — A joint and a walk around the piers of Brooklyn Bridge Park

My truest bar plug is Henry Public, but I've written about my love for our neighborhood pub enough, and since I don't really go to other bars, I'm plugging what I do instead: roll a joint (I recently got “back into weed"), then take it on an after-dinner walk along the piers of Brooklyn Bridge Park with my husband. The view of the downtown Manhattan skyline from the piers is unmatched, and there's no better way to wind down than a long, pretty walk.

Shop — Farm to People

I love going to the grocery store, and I love to shop in person. I realize more New Yorkers these days prefer to order their groceries online, though, so the fact that my favorite grocery store is delivery-only makes sense. Plus, the convenience—especially given that I work from home—is appealing, I won’t lie. Farm to People sources the best local produce, meat, fish, dairy, pantry items, and snacks, grown/raised by small farmers and made by artisans. They’re always expanding their offerings and, importantly, filling the tri-state area’s seasonal produce gaps with the good stuff from California. And best of all, they’re just really good people who are always listening to their customers and bettering the shopping experience. In a New York where the Union Square Greenmarket is frankly stressful, Citarella and Whole Foods have gone downhill, Happier Grocer (don’t even get me started on “Meadow Lane”) is soul-sucking, and Union Market is... fine, Farm to People is my saving grace.

Here are some of the things that are regularly in my cart: Suzuki Farms’ Japanese cucumbers, Strange Water sparkling coconut water, Catsmo Gold Label smoked salmon, organic frozen Maine wild blueberries, FLX Farm Fresh New York State rolled oats (makes the best oatmeal), Sourmilk probiotic Greek yogurt, Snowdance Farm Heritage Breed whole chicken, Kitchen Garden Farm Calabrian chili flakes, Taproom Farm Jimmy Nardellos, Jake’s Gouda aged Gouda

Ingredient — Ume miso

We cook Japanese food regularly, and The Japanese Pantry is my go-to for keeping our pantry stocked with rice vinegars, soy sauces, sesame oils, dried seaweed, etc. Nothing I've ordered from the San Francisco-based Japanese ingredient importer has disappointed me, but my favorite discovery has been this ume miso from Yamaki Jozo, which blends the prized sun-dried plums with brown miso to create a pink-hued, jammy paste that's gorgeously sweet, sour, and salty at once. You can mix it into a dressing or a marinade, but it's so insanely good as-is—as a dipping sauce or spread on toast. We brush it onto fish or meat, hot off the grill, to be eaten alongside rice and vegetables.

Person — Hannah Root

Hannah Root is a rising star in the art world, with a decade at Pace under her belt and now a new role as senior director at Megan Mulrooney Gallery, working between Los Angeles and New York, and appearing in all of the other major art towns whenever she's needed. She's whip-smart, not to mention hilarious, piercingly honest, and a true original. She's also my oldest New York friend (since age 6!), and one of my favorite people to eat with on account of her critically informed opinions, ferocious appetite, and advanced palate (she was eating uni when we were in 1st grade), plus a deep respect for restaurants and an understanding of the merits of being a regular. I feel lucky that she's been in my inner circle of dining mates for 25 years.

Treat — Sullivan Street Bakery scone & Grapenut ice cream from Taste The Tropics

Maybe it’s just the phase of life I’m in, but since moving back to New York, I’ve been rarely moved by the new, and instead, have really taken comfort in the classics. By that I do not mean The Odeon (too basic) or Noodle Pudding (just bad), but deeper cuts and specific dishes. This treats section here is an ideal place to demonstrate with not one, but two plugs:

1. The Sullivan St. Bakery scone is a classic in two senses: one, in that the bakery has been slinging some of the city's most reliably great bread and pastries since 1994, and two, in that it's a perfect articulation of the form, from before bakers started getting all cheffy with scones—puck-shaped, with a rich and creamy, orange zest-scented crumb studded with dried cranberries and sour cherries and a craggly exterior achieved with turbinado sugar. The Chelsea location is a block from my therapist’s office, and so on Wednesday mornings when I’m in need of a treat, you’ll find me here having a cold brew and a scone.
   

2. A Grapenut ice cream cone from Taste The Tropics has been on my summertime to-do list for at least a decade. A few weeks ago, I finally made the trip to East Flatbush to cross it off with my friend Chip, a fellow Grape-Nuts lover. Let me tell you, it was worth the wait. Rich, creamy (in a different way than the scone above), and unmistakably hard ice cream is studded with crunchy, fiber-bomb cereal grains for a wholly satisfying cone (if you don’t believe me, although why wouldn’t you, believe Zohran).

   
   

went searching for local Southern Californian seafood (specifically, grunions). Instead, he got a lesson in the broken economics of our seafood supply chains. Really good one. [Buffet]

Very entertaining read from Annie Armstrong on the Casa Bonita revival. We’ll have to go next time we’re in Colorado visiting David’s family… [Caper]

Can Le Canal Saint-Gowanus happen? Can’t say I’m fully sold, but I do love Liar Liar. [Grub Street]

I’d like to go to London to eat at the Garden Café, a restaurant inside of a museum dedicated to gardens, which Jonathan Nunn believes is serving the best desserts in London right now. [Vittles]

I am thrilled to have culled so many yogurt recs from William Mullan’s Ultimate Guide to Yogurt and Late Summer Fruit, which ran in her newsletter last week. I’ll add two more to the mix: Tide Mill Creamery, another exceptional Maine Greek yogurt I stumbled upon while there last month, and Pequea Valley Yogurt made from Amish creamery milk in Pennsylvania, carried by Farm to People. +1 for White Moustache, Aris, Sourmilk, Seven Stars, & Riverine Ranch Buffalo Yogurt. [Feed Me]

I wrote about MUSCADINES for The T List, the musky oversize grapes indigenous to the Amerian South, which I was put onto during an exceptional meal at Neng Jr’s in Asheville last year, while roadtripping cross-country. [T Mag, gift link]

Pulling into a dirt lot in a sleepy residential neighborhood in Orange County, I made a last-minute decision to swap my sneakers for a sturdy pair of Blundstone boots. I wasn’t sure how rugged things were about to get at The Ecology Center, the 28-acre regenerative farm in San Juan Capistrano, but I wanted to be prepared.

For years, I’ve heard about this place, described by chefs and industry friends with words like “magical” and “paradise.” I took notice when Betsy chef-owner Tyler Wells camped out there for several months after his home and business (and marriage) were destroyed by the Eaton Fire; and when Erewhon started selling Ecology Center strawberries this spring. But I had not yet made the two-hour drive from L.A. until I was invited to the kickoff for the farm’s new Hearth series, upmarket farm dinners with acclaimed chefs like Oregon-based Joshua McFadden (author of the award-winning cookbook Six Seasons) and Texan live fire expert Tim Byers. And once I finally did, I learned that this independent farm run by an ambitious Deadhead is at the forefront of one of the most progressive food movements in the country.

The boots, as it turned out, may have been overkill. The Ecology Center is very much a working farm, but it’s also a 28-acre nonprofit cultural and educational center, with a staff of 125 serving some 155,000 visitors a year (many of them children), so suffice it to say: they know how to make you feel comfortable. Founder Evan Marks, in a Grateful Dead lightning bolt hat, ushered in past a table laid out with various housemade ferments, pickles, and preserves, and under the literal rainbow bridge that led out to the sprawling fields. Dinner was served in the middle of said fields, beside a live fire pavilion where McFadden devised an eight-course menu tied to the farm’s four seasonal crop rotations: market garden, milpa, fruit forest, and cover crops. “It’s just such a crazy, unique, special place,” says the chef, who has been visiting and cooking at the Center for the better part of 10 years. “I love what they’re doing and what they’re trying to do and where they want to go, and I think it’s a really special offering and opportunity.”

At 45, Marks still has the youthful air of the OC surfer boy he grew up as, with long salt and pepper hair and a crooked grin. He’s nearly always outfitted in Dead attire, and has the open manner of someone for whom early psychedelic experiences proved formative. But don’t let his happy-go-lucky hippie exterior fool you: Marks is highly credentialed, exceedingly driven, and extremely passionate in his mission to shift food, farming, and consumer culture writ large, by offering a whole slew of “ecological experiences” that provide nothing less than “creative yet achievable solutions for thriving on planet Earth.”

Those experiences, beyond the farm operations itself, range from the monthly high-end Hearth Dinners to the more affordable bimonthly Community Table meals with local chefs, to farm tours to children’s programming, to yoga classes and movie screenings in the geodesic “Peace Dome,” plus an on-site farmstand, bakery, fermentation lab, and daytime-only cafe serving salads and sandwiches made from their own produce. There is, in short, a lot going on here.

Marks grew up in Newport Beach and studied agroecology at UC Santa Cruz, a pioneering holistic approach to farming that works with natural systems, not against them. It’s rooted in traditional models for sustainable small-scale farming, with an emphasis on respecting not just the land, but also the farmers, and the local culture. Post-college, Marks spent formative time at Camp Joy, an intentional community and organic garden in the Santa Cruz Mountains, before moving overseas, developing eco-entrepreneurial projects (eco-villages, eco-hotels, and the like) in Latin America and West Africa. In 2008, to his own surprise, he felt a calling to return to OC, where he leased a one-acre dirt lot with an empty historic farmhouse from the city of San Juan Capistrano and got to work.

Today, the farm has expanded to 28 acres on the original lot, plus a two-acre market garden for culinary ingredients that operates across town. The Ecology Center grows hundreds of thousands of pounds of produce, some of which is available, beyond the farmstand and cafe mentioned above, at L.A. retailers like L.A. Grocery, McCall’s, and Erewhon; the Santa Monica and Mar Vista farmers’ markets; and restaurants like Crudo e Nudo, Felix, RVR, Gjelina, and Betsy. “Evan and I connected on a really interesting level—there was no exploration process of our friendship, it was just codified in that moment [we met],” says Wells. Before the fires, Wells would often drive the two hours from L.A. “just to do a half-hour farm walk, get my feet in the dirt, and come back up — it’s such a restorative place,” he says.

In 2021, The Ecology Center became the first farm to apply for, and receive, the official Regenerative Organic Certification. It’s a buzzword you may have seen if you’re a frequent farmers’ market shopper; but unlike “sustainable” or “natural,” which have no measurable standards, or even “organic,” which has become so co-opted by Big Ag that it holds hardly any meaning, regenerative organic has real quantifications associated with it. “At a high level, it’s about giving more than you take,” says Marks. “It’s just a new word for agroecology, which is understanding the balance between the ecology, the economy, and the equity.” What that means is not just farming for profit, but also actively maintaining the health of the soil, and the health of the farm workers, by paying them a living wage. “The triple bottom line is that we create the wholeness for the farm ecosystem, and financially, it can all circulate around itself,” he says.

In the near future, The Ecology Center is ramping up, in both size and ambition. Marks is angling to lease another 150-300 acres, which dovetails with the farm’s efforts to increase their value-add products. They’re building a commissary kitchen (set to open early next year) and will grow out their budding tortilla business, made with heirloom San Juan blue corn grown on-site; along with a dried heirloom bean program; baked goods like sourdough bagels, crackers, breads, and granola; and pantry items like jams, pickles, and ferments, much of which will be available at farmers’ markets and retail outlets like Erewhon. (I can attest to the excellence of the granola, laced with dried figs and amaranth, and, mercifully, no desiccated coconut shards.)

They’re also continuing the Community Table series (including an upcoming dinner with Crudo e Nudo chef Brian Bornemann on October 10th and a season-ending Friendsgiving gathering in November), as well as the Hearth Dinners, and working on a new book exploring bioregional cuisine and “the taste of the land.”

For Marks, it’s all part of a larger vision, one in which a farm is about far more than simply growing vegetables. In an interview a few months after my first visit, shortly after the New York Times published a heartbreaking story about beloved Santa Clara Valley fruit farmer Andy Mariani selling his family farm, I asked Marks about why he continues this work in the face of so many challenges. He’s circumspect about Mariani (“one of the greatest stone fruit growers I’ve ever seen”), and then replies: “We have very different context and reality than many other farmers, and that comes back to the principles all laddering up together and the business model working. And maybe that’s part of the vision that we didn’t even know was going to be necessary for the future, which is that our agriculture needs to be supported by community outside of just consuming.” And with that, he’s off, to go lead a kid’s farm tour or plan a chef dinner or fundraise for his not-so-little farm that is almost singlehandedly putting the culture back in agriculture.

#17 is David Gurzhiev, a photographer whom long-time readers, especially, should be very familiar with by now. David has served as The Angel’s in-house photographer since its inception and is responsible for the beautiful work in countless profiles and features, including Tomatopalooza, fishing for ike-jime tuna, and Larry Finkelstein’s rugelach. David is originally from Colorado, and has spent his adult life living and working between home, New York, and Los Angeles. His work, which is documentarian in nature, spans fine art photography, editorial, and commercial. David is particularly brilliant at making portraits and still lives. He’s also, fun fact, my husband. Here’s David with his Plugs.

Restaurant — Frankies 457 Spuntino

If I’m going to a restaurant, Frankies is the kind of place I always want to be in. A well-lit interior that’s full of character, capable bartenders, good bathroom, great food, great service, and The Franks at the helm, co-captaining the ship. They’re the kind of guys I admire, hospitable in a way I’ve only felt from my family. They care about everything and do it all the right way. They make my favorite sandwiches I’ve ever had, and I can go for lunch and dinner multiple times a week and not end up in a coma. Also, we had our wedding there, and they made it the best wedding I’ve ever been to, so….

Read more

#99 is Karen Spector, an artist, designer, and co-founder of the effortlessly cool architecture and design firm Lovers Unite, which is responsible for the look and feel of some of your favorite L.A. restaurants, including Dunsmoor, Lielle, Bar Etoile, and Konbi (RIP); in addition to some truly beautiful homes (like this one, which was just featured in the New York Times). She is also, as I can personally attest, a talented home cook and generous friend, with a wicked sense of humor (especially after a Colombo’s martini or two). And although she appreciates the finer things in life, she’s still a Jersey girl at heart (see below). Here are Karen’s Plugs:

Restaurant: Langer’s

Against all instructions to wait until we called from the hospital, my dad and brother showed up anyway after I delivered my son. I woke from anesthesia not to my baby, or even my partner Alan, but to the two of them standing over my bed with a bag from Langer’s. All I really remember are their smiles, reaching for the wrapped sandwich, and someone, maybe Alan, maybe a nurse, basically launching across the room to take it out of my hands. I still had six hours before I was allowed to eat.

I could have wept. Proust had his madeleine. I have a pastrami on rye, a Cel-Ray, and a short glass of ice. It’s a meal for joy, for heartbreak, for every season. Only the malawach and schug at Kismet come close to stirring something as deep.

Read more

I grew up on the tradition of Saturday morning bagels, sourced at 6 a.m. from Murray’s Bagels (which has since, unfortunately, gone downhill) by my dad, year-round. In the summertime—specifically August through September—there’d be tomatoes alongside the cream cheese and lox: juicy beefsteaks and ridged heirlooms with tie-dyed cross-sections. Not long after I flew the nest, as my taste became more refined (i.e., I turned into a food snob), bagels became a seasonal pleasure, and I needed the slab of late-summer tomato—full-bodied in tomato-y flavor, with a hit of acidity, a throughline of umami, and firm yet yielding flesh—seasoned with flaky salt and pepper, laid on top of the schmear and, on a really good morning, finished with a sprinkling of chopped chives and ribbons of basil to make a bagel worth my while.

The moment for this ethereal pleasure is here, and it’ll last for only one more month—six weeks, tops. Which means the time is ripe not only for my beloved tomato bagel, but also for BLTs and tomato-mayo sandwiches, Caprese salad and pan con tomate, gazpacho and bruschetta, spaghetti tangled with fresh tomato sauce, and slow-roasted cherry tomatoes that taste like candy.

Today, The Angel joins the ranks of every last food media website, newspaper, magazine, and Substack, not to mention blogs and TikToks, in celebrating tomato season. For our part, however, I want you to be able to enjoy the best of the best, the peak of the peak—to get your hands on the most extraordinary varietals of tomatoes grown by the tri-state area’s top-tier farmers, and enjoy them with abandon, whether at home or in restaurants. So, I hit up a dozen-plus chefs to ask for their favorite tomatoes that can be found at the Union Square Greenmarket, plus what they’re planning to make with them, either in their own kitchens or at their restaurants.

Here are 14 specific tomatoes you should seek out right here, right now (including Sungolds from three different farms), along with cooking inspiration, and where to eat them in restaurants.

Campo Rosso Farm
Montgomery County, PA

Babymunda Oxheart

“A rosy-colored bell-shaped tomato whose seeds originate from Liguria, they have a drier, denser, and more compact flesh, which makes them suited to eating raw with sliced onion, saffron vinegar, and melon,” says Maxime Pradié, chef-owner of the West Village restaurant Zimmi’s. At Zimmi’s, he’s been stuffing them with lamb and pork and serving them as a component in petit farcis niçois, a Provençal dish of hollowed summer vegetables filled with meat, breadcrumbs, and herbs. He also saves the tomato scraps to make gazpacho.

Datterini

These aromatic baby plum-shaped tomatoes originate from Sicily and are prized for their sweet flavor and meaty flesh. In Italy, they’re often used in salads, to make quick pasta sauces, or preserved for off-season use. Flynn McGarry, chef-owner of the California-inspired fine dining restaurant Cove, preserves them in oil, while Ed Szymanski, chef-owner of Dame, Lord’s, and Crevette, makes a sauce by roasting datterini, then slow-cooking them with olive oil and garlic, and steeping in basil at the end. “To be eaten on toast with slices of lardo, Catabrian anchovies, tossed in pasta, or as the garnish to a nice piece of poached trout,” he says.

Norwich Meadows Farm
Chenango County, NY

Read more

That said, this issue of Plugs is free for all to read because it’s sponsored by Postcard, a smarter map for deciding where to go and what to do. You can save places from anywhere, find exactly what you need, and share your lists. Download Postcard here.

#16 is Luke Fortney, a food reporter who writes The New York Times’ Where to Eat newsletter. Luke is one of the most devoted eaters I know, traversing the five boroughs on any given week to find the finest piadina, $50 dinners, extreme hot dogs, and beyond. His recommendations rarely miss because he puts in the work, and IMO, he's one of the most compelling young voices in food media. He’s also a skilled interviewer and story-finder, having cut his chops at Eater, where he was on staff for almost five years. Though Luke is one of the most trustworthy bylines in the New York food scene, he originally hails from Southern California—which is definitely part of why I like him so much. As a Mexican-American, he’s particularly sharp on matters of Mexican cuisine: his story about flour tortillas finally getting their moment won the 2021 New York Press Club Award for food writing, and he and some of his colleagues at NYT Food recently published this list of 41 of the Greatest Mexican Restaurants Across the United States. Here’s Luke with his Plugs — and here’s his map on Postcard.

Restaurant — Mariscos El Submarino

Whoever said New York has no good Mexican food (hello, bi-coastal readers!) has never been to Mariscos El Submarino. The closest location to me, in Clinton Hill, is the best place on Earth to be hungover. There is the shrimp burger with Muenster cheese that somehow works, the stone bowls of aguachile and the carne asada tacos, which are much better than they need to be for a seafood restaurant. But really, no further proof is needed than a michelada and a pile of camarones zarandeados in the huge backyard.

Bar — Up Stairs

The best dive bar in America, and probably the entire universe, is Santa's Pub in Nashville, Tenn. (How can you beat trailer park Christmas 365 days a year?) But second place goes to our own Up Stairs in Chinatown ... where at least one of my credit cards is currently behind the bar. You'll find me there most Friday nights, singing "Driver's License" or trying to convince the bartender Tim to let me pleaseeeeee have one more shot. The kitchen, by the way, is on a whole 'nother level. Over the years, I've spotted $55 lamb chops on the menu, plus popcorn chicken and a Philly cheesesteak. Take it from my friend Becky, who called it the best bar food in the city: The pan-fried udon is goated.

Shop — Kinokuniya

Nerd reveal: I love anime. The food scenes. The pointy hairstyles. (The bootleg profile pictures you can download from DeviantArt ...) These days, whenever I’m near Bryant Park, I pop into Kinokuniya, a three-story Japanese bookstore, to pick up the latest volumes of “One Piece.” The bathroom on the first floor has saved the day many times, and the upstairs cafe is the ideal place to bury your head in some manga with an onigiri.

Ingredient — Sprouts

Tanya Sichynsky, one of my editors at the Times, reminded me of my love for sprouts last week when she introduced me to this chickpea salad sandwich. It’s part hummus, part chicken salad (lots of crunchy minced celery), and a dead-ringer for the squishy, alfalfa sprout sandwiches I subsisted on as a vegan in California. Yum.

Person — Robert Sietsema

When I was starting out as a food writer in 2020, one of my very first colleagues was the elder food critic . This was at Eater New York, when us reporters had about $200 a month to spend at restaurants, and he was kind enough to share his dining budget with me. So, we ate in every corner of the city together, as I tried to absorb everything he knew about our city and its restaurants. Other things came up, too. Once, I left him alone with my mom outside of the pizzeria Mama’s Too in the West Village while I ran inside to grab napkins. Not even 30 seconds later, he was teaching her how to make acid in a bathtub. Robert Sietsema will happen once and never again.

Treat — Common Meadows

We had a big froyo summer here in New York, where all anyone could talk about was the wait at MYKA. Can I go out on a limb and say we’re about to have a bigger gelato fall? There are some cool-looking new gelaterias in the city — Nepita in the West Village, Hana Gelateria in Long Island City — but I keep coming back to Common Meadows, which opened last year in Williamsburg. I love the wall of punk rock CDs — really, the only decorations here — and the constantly changing flavors of gelatos and sorbets. (I’ve seen kiwi, sudachi, melon, and rooibus tea.) Not a day goes by without someone in my group chat suggesting we stop in to see what’s been added to the menu.

Absolutely devastating: Andy Mariani of Andy’s Orchards, who grows the finest stone fruit I’ve ever had the pleasure of eating, is selling his Silicon Valley farm (for reasons that make sense, but still make me sad) [NYT, gift link]

Sadie and Anthony of Bistrot Ha and Ha’s Snack Bar resurfaced this story I wrote in 2020 about their start as a Covid-era pop-up in response to Ligaya Mishan’s two-star review of the bistrot this past week. It’s worth a re-read to remember how far they’ve come… [TASTE, NYT (gift link)]

YES : We have a farmer’s market problem [From Home]

Not food-related, but I loved every bit of ’s Johnny Knoxville profile [TNY]

Tokyo-based writer Yukari Sakamoto asked five chefs to share their picks for the 10 Japanese pantry staples you need in your kitchen (we often cook Japanese food at home, and I rely heavily on The Japanese Pantry, so I loved this) [T Magazine, gift link]

A great issue of Rory Satran’s , including the correct take on smoothie culture and a concise profile of Chris Kelly, “The Beekeeper King of The Hamptons” [THC]

Read more

#5 is Rachel Webber, the Chief Commercial and Brand Officer of 11:11, the media and entertainment company founded by Paris Hilton. Prior to joining forces with Paris, Rachel was the President & GM of Digital at Playboy, and before that, an Executive VP of Digital at National Geographic. She’s been shaping media and entertainment brands at the high level for almost two decades, and she’s also a dear friend and mentor. In other words: having her on The Angel is long overdue! Rachel lives between Los Angeles and New York, and, having grown up in Massachusetts, she’s been summering on the Cape for much of her life. Fittingly, the first time I went to Sal’s Place, that first year the idyllic Provincetown restaurant wintered in Los Angeles, was with Rachel. Here are her go-to spots for eating, drinking, shopping, culture-ing, and nature-ing in Cape Cod.

Read more

I’ve been an unabashed fan of Two Rose, the MEHKO-certified backyard bakery run by former Hail Mary owner David Wilcox, since he first started selling breads to Proof last year. And I’m not the only one—Bill Addison, Tejal Rao, and Jessica Koslow are just a few high-profile fans, along with the hundreds of people who line up every weekend for a crack at Two Rose’s long-fermented whole grain pain de campagnes and experimental Pullman loaves, sweet corn and leek scones, and lamb sausage pizzas (among other things).

So when Wilcox announced on his Instagram Stories a few weeks ago that Two Rose will break its last bread on August 23rd, I was quietly devastated. But while details are scant at the moment, it’s reassuring that the legacy of Two Rose will continue on under a new name, as two of Wilcox’s current baking partners have bought much of his equipment and plan to relaunch in a new location in coming months (more details on this as I have ‘em). And after talking to the ever-thoughtful baker about why, why now, and what’s next, I have a deeper understanding of what my favorite Beatle has been saying: all things must pass.

Here’s Wilcox, in his own words:

Read more

That said, this issue of ECS is free for all to read because it’s sponsored by Postcard, a smarter map for deciding where to go and what to do. You can save places from anywhere, find exactly what you need, and share your lists. Download Postcard here.

#4 is David Gruber, a brand and communications strategist who advises restaurants like Cove, Cotogna and Quince, and Altro Paradiso, plus big names like Nancy Silverton, Eli Zabar, and Grant Reynolds. Prior to founding Gruber Strategies, he was the head of brand at B&B Hospitality Group (Babbo, Lupa, Del Posto, etc). On a taste level, David is very discerning and almost never wrong, so I'm thrilled he agreed to share his Maine intel with us, especially since he's the one who sold me on taking a trip to Deer Isle, ME next month. Here are David’s go-to spots for eating, drinking, and shopping in Portland & Downeast Maine — and here’s his map on Postcard.

I went to college in Maine, which means I’ve been driving from New York to Vacationland at a regular clip for almost two decades. Emily asked me to write a guide to Downeast–the tony section of coastline that includes Camden, Rockland, Castine, Blue Hill, and the islands. I’ve spent a handful of summer weekends scouting that pocket, but my real area of expertise is the stretch of Maine from the New Hampshire border to Wiscasset. So I expanded the aperture a bit to also focus on Portland.

This list is far from exhaustive. These spots are scaffolding for a road trip itinerary from all points south. They’re listed in geographical order, from when you cross the Piscataqua River Bridge heading north.

The Palace Diner

The Palace Diner is a century-old, 15-seat railcar diner in a parking lot in a former mill town. About a decade ago, it was reborn as one of the country’s greatest versions of the form. A legendary retired New York restaurant critic recently told me that the Palace team has been tinkering with a BLT for years, obsessing over bread thickness and mayo quotient–with no end in sight. Every item on the menu is its nostalgic ideal: pancakes, tuna melt, chicken sandwich. I daydream about the fried smashed potatoes. The Palace hype is real, and it’s warranted.

Cong Tu Bot

If I have time for only one dinner in Portland, I pick Cong Tu Bot. I should be eating Vietnamese food more often. I always over-order, and I always consider the wisdom of keeping leftovers in a hotel minifridge.

Street and Co.

If you’re a Manhattan parent visiting your kids at Walden or Winnebago, you probably set a calendar reminder to book a reservation at Fore Street every year for visitors’ weekend. I prefer Fore Street’s sister restaurant, Street and Co. The menu has a section titled “over linguine.” Pick a protein from the sea (pick grilled lobster) that’s laid over a bed of noodles slicked in garlicky butter. I attempt to recreate it every summer, and I never use enough butter.

Tandem Coffee & Bakery

In my line of work, people talk a lot about “placemaking,” the supposed art of installing a colorfully branded coffee shop or marquee restaurant to anchor a neighborhood. The thinking goes that cultural signifiers boost residential appeal so that landlords can increase rental prices. Most of it is developer mumbojumbo. But in the ten years since Tandem hung a shingle in a former gas station on Congress Street, two boutique hotels have opened on the block. I’ve stayed at the Longfellow for its proximity to Tandem alone, so that I can start my day with yogurt with rhubarb compote and puffed rice granola. Suffer in line and fill a pink pastry box with cookies and scones to have on the counter at your rental house.

If you have more time in Portland, consider:

Rose Foods: a bagel shop where my brother worked as a line cook.

Smalls: a coffee shop in the West End for when I don’t have time to wait in line at Tandem.

Browne Trading Market: the go-to fishmonger.

Maine & Loire: the wine shop where I stock up en route to points north.

Rosemont Market: Portland’s answer to Bi-Rite, where I buy olive oil, vinegar, and salt en route to rental houses.

Friends & Family: a wine store that serves pizza and salads at biergarten tables.

Eventide Oyster Co: home of the brown butter lobster roll. The appeal diminished when Eventide expanded to Boston.

Bresca & the Honeybee

Sabbathday Lake, the last “active” Shaker village, is about half an hour north of Portland. Just down the road from the village–a Commerce Inn fantasyland with white clapboard buildings and cedar-shake roofs–is the titular lake. The chef from my beloved Purple House operates a seasonal ice cream shack on the beach there called Bresca & the Honeybee. As the website reminds you repeatedly (four times), the operation is WEATHER PERMITTING. On the three occasions when I’ve attempted to go, the weather has not permitted. But I am undeterred! [Editor’s note: I’ve been, and it is indeed fabulous.]

The Alna Store

Further north, everything is at least half an hour away. Even in that context, The Alna Store feels like an oasis. Part restaurant, part shoppy shop (with Afterglow ice cream sandwiches rather than Faire fare), The Alna Store is the local I wish I had in Park Slope. Breakfast bloody Marias are garnished with half of a boiled new potato.

Tinder Hearth

When I fantasize about moving to Maine and opening a restaurant, it looks a lot like Tinder Hearth. A bakery in a leaning old farmhouse that anchors a farm campus. There’s an open-air building with a pizza oven that spins out pies; and a hut with soft serve in just-pressed waffle cones. If you stand on a tree stump you can see the ocean in the distance. I’d make time for dinner on campus, but it’s not a mistake to order pizza and ice cream sandwiches to-go and eat on the beach just down the road. (A handful of coffee shops and bakeries in the area sell Tinder Hearth bread. If you see it, buy it.)

Chase’s Daily

My friends spent a recent summer in Belfast, a few blocks up from the main drag. If every town had its own Chase's Daily, there would be no war. Assuming you arrive at the right time of day on the right day of the week, the store is a Nancy Meyers fantasy of flowers, produce, muffins, and pizzas. Of course, hours are limited.

Much to the dismay of my friends and loved ones, I gladly drive half an hour for a latte in the morning, and an hour (plus) for the right farm stand or oyster farm. If you share my affliction, I’d recommend going out of your way to buy a week’s worth of cheese at Blue Hill Wine Shop. Endure a (scenic!) winding drive to the farmstand at Four Seasons Farm. And pick up a sack of oysters at Glidden Point Oyster Farm in Edgecomb to shuck on the porch. Every Maine town has a lobsterman who will sell you a few lobsters from the back of his boat. Oysters are destination fare.

I haven’t had much luck in Camden or Rockland. When I’m there this summer, I’ll be scouting The Place, Cafe Grazie, and Sammy’s Deluxe.

Because cooking opportunities are important, I always stay at a rental house. If I were to stay at a hotel north of Portland for a day or two, I’d consider The Brooklin Inn and The Ark.

Some of my recent contributions to The T List: on gooseneck barnacles (percebes!), restaurants with house accounts, and sorghum. [T Mag, gift links]

Beautiful piece by : Nearly half of the restaurants included in Jonathan Gold’s Counter Intelligence have closed. What does that mean? [Lunch Box]

shopped the Union Square Greenmarket with (and he’s got tips!) [Shop Rat]

Pete Wells went on a tour of Bourdain’s Provincetown, in light of the new biopic, Tony, which I’m going to see this weekend. [NYT, gift link]

Ella Quittner with an entertaining profile of Carla Lalli, whose divorce memoir-slash-cookbook Food Is a Feeling, hits stands in early September. [Grub Street]

That said, this issue of ECS is free for all to read because it’s sponsored by Postcard, a smarter map for deciding where to go and what to do. You can save places from anywhere, find exactly what you need, and share your lists. Download Postcard here.

#3 is Lauren Schofield, a pastry chef whose resume includes Flora Bar, King, and Marlow & Sons, and whose intricate and rustic, fruit-forward cakes have starred in stylish brand events, private dinners, and weddings across the city and its surrounding regions. As for her connection to Litchfield County, CT—with its charming towns including Washington, Kent, and Cornwall—here’s Lauren in her own words: “I love Connecticut. I’ve been going up to my fiancé’s family’s place there since we started dating, and whenever we have a few days to escape the city, we’re there. What I love about Litchfield County, in particular, is that there are so many little towns, each with its own unique identity. We love cruising between towns, always taking the scenic route to see as many pretty roads and houses as we can, and stopping in at favorite shops, cafes, and restaurants along the way.” These are her go-to spots for eating, drinking, shopping, and nature-ing in the bucolic region of northwest Connecticut — and here’s her Litchfield, CT map on Postcard.

The shops of New Preston

New Preston is a little village in the greater town of Washington, and the main street is full of treasures — there’s a strip of homewares, clothing, and jewelry stores that are all worth visiting, even if you’re just window shopping. The move is to get lunch (or breakfast!) at my beloved Smithy Cafe and then take your time moseying in and out of the adjacent shops. Plain Goods, which sells gorgeous antiques and both vintage and new clothing, is one of the most beautifully merchandised stores I’ve ever been inside. I could spend hours in there.

Clamp’s

Go to Clamp’s if you’re eager to experience some real nostalgia. It’s a roadside stand in New Milford that’s only open in the summertime, where they dish out burgers, grilled cheeses, and other American Summer Fare. The lemonade is really sweet and really excellent. The burgers remind me of the ones from my youth — simple, with only the classic array of condiments and fixings available. This is a fun place to take a big group or kids. Tastes like summer.

Hollister House Garden

Gorgeous English garden in Washington surrounding several classic New England buildings. Beautiful hedges and reflecting pools, and just a lovely way to spend an afternoon. You can tell the people who take care of this garden really love it.

Swyft

Swyft is a restaurant in downtown Kent known for its pizza, but they also serve a lovely array of non-pizza dishes. This is a real go-to for us — we usually wind up here for dinner when we get into town on Friday evenings and sit at the bar. Love the Randy Savage pizza and the rigatoni. The smash burger is also fire.

R. Derwin

I love boutiques where you can see the owners’ vision! R. Derwin is a preppy and beautiful clothing store in the town of Litchfield, which has one of the larger downtowns in the county, and a lot of great shopping. The quality of everything here is excellent and luxe. Worth admiring even if you’re not there to purchase. I did buy a Madras bucket hat there earlier this summer, which has become my staple sunwear.

West Shore Seafood

I love Connecticut-style lobster rolls, and they have a very good one here (my mother-in-law makes the best ones, though). It’s a super casual spot off of Bantam Lake with a big menu, but it’s all about the lobster roll for me. Fun to sit at the picnic tables on the back lawn with a beer.

Community Table

This is a favorite special-occasion-y restaurant. The food is always delicious, and the menu changes seasonally. The dining rooms are lovely and really comfortable, the staff is so friendly, and they have great cocktails. Fun for a night out.

Arethusa a Mano

Arethusa Farm is a dairy farm that makes a bunch of different products, but they also have three spots in Bantam — a restaurant, an ice cream spot, and a cafe, Arethusa a Mano, which I like because they have a really good breakfast sandwich (egg and cheese on English muffin — very simple, I love an austere egg sandwich). I would describe this as a Connecticut spot for city slickers, and by that, I mean you can get Stumptown nitro cold brew here.

Bantam Bread Company

Next to Arethusa a Mano is Bantam Bread company, which is, in a word, charming. It’s a bakery that you enter through an ivy-covered door to the basement, and they sell delicious pastries in addition to bread. They don’t sell coffee, which I think is really cool. I love the fruit crostatas!

interviewed me for her Sweet City Roundtable series this week; you can read my dessert-related takes here. :) [Sweet City]

The paper of record tackled an all-important issue: ‘Welcome to West Village’? The ‘the’ Is Not Optional, Say Some New Yorkers. (When the “the” is dropped, my stomach curdles.) [NYT, gift link]

hit me up to help answer an epitome Bangers & Jams question: Where do hot people eat well? [Bangers & Jams]

I loved this investigation—and the idea behind the column—from Annie Armstrong: How Did That Joan Jonas Get There (the there being Houseman)? [Caper]

does Ojai (very well). [A Small & Simple Thing]

We’ve got some hot, hot heat in the forecast, for which the only cure is a giant, steaming bowl of spicy-ass soup. You heard me. More on that in a minute, but first, a few bits and bobs:

Food on Film: I was invited to an early screening of the new A24-produced Anthony Bourdain biopic Tony (out August 7) last week. I was initially hesitant, but the film was made with the full cooperation of Bourdain’s estate, which took some of the ick factor out for me. As for the movie itself, it’s a romp: director Matt Johnson (Blackberry) wisely narrows his focus to a single summer in 1976, when a cocky college-era Bourdain spends a pivotal summer at a chaotic seafood restaurant in Provincetown, Mass (a.k.a. the first chapter of Kitchen Confidential). It’s fundamentally a popcorn flick, anchored by strong performances by Dominic Sessa (The Holdovers), Leo Woodall, and a delightfully silver-tipped Antonio Banderas. IMO, it’s smart (and respectful) to zero in on a contained time period, rather than trying to capture the entire life of a man beloved by millions. I don’t think it will win any Oscars, but Tony is a fun way to spend 90 air-conditioned minutes during the dog days.

A Good Loaf: I have nothing but respect for a carb that contains another form of carb, and thus, have been chasing the city’s finest porridge breads. Tartine’s moist oat-infused loaf, which you can find at L.A. Grocery and Whole Foods in addition to the bakery itself, is the standard-bearer for a reason. But at Santa Monica national treasure Petitgrain Boulangerie, best known for their laminated pastries, owner Clémence de Lutz has been selling an exceptional wild rice-enhanced sourdough porridge loaf in recent weeks (and is gearing up for an expansion that may involve more breads—more on this soon). Two Rose bakery is always changing the menu, but I was lucky to snag a sweet corn-and-honey cornmeal Pullman before it sold out recently and was blown away. (I also saw owner David Wilcox tease via IG that he’s testing a wild rice loaf inspired by Petitgrain’s!) I’ve yet to try Jyan Isaac’s multigrain version, but it’s very much on my radar, and I’m curious if you know of others worth seeking out.

Not only does eating spicy food in spicy weather make you feel like a tough guy, it’s also a scientifically legit method for cooling your body down (TLDR: hot foods make you sweat, which regulates your body’s internal temperature). And as a certified all-seasons soup freak, I feel qualified to point you toward five of my favorite spicy soups across L.A.

Read more

For those who don’t know him: David is a media veteran (The Awl, Wirecutter, Grantland, FiveThirtyEight) and creative director whose clients have included Nike, Apple, and Google. He’s also the founder of Postcard, a smarter map for deciding where to go and what to do. You can save places from anywhere, find exactly what you need, and share your lists, like David’s 13 Favorite Places in New York. You can download Postcard here.

Also, a quick travel update on my end before he gets into it: I was back in Paris last week, and have updated The Angel’s Paris guide accordingly. Now onto David.

I don’t want to undermine or disrespect The Angel, Emily Wilson, or any of her past contributors, but I am by no means a San Sebastián expert.

I’m just a person who went there a few weeks ago, who did a lot, a lot, a lot of research beforehand, and had a really nice few days in the Basque Country as a result.

The method was simple: I got a lot of lists from real experts and people who grew up there or currently live there, watched an absurd amount of reels and TikToks (once you watch one, they really hammer you with them), and opened approximately 38 tabs of editorial, Reddit, just everything, and then built out our agenda from there (below), which included one of my favorite meals/days of the year so far.

Think of this as a really nice way to spend a jam-packed four days in the area.

Some good general advice (some I received, some I learned):

• Your bigger meals should be lunch, which should serve as anchors for day trips outside of San Sebastián to see all of the other towns in the area. The smaller, surrounding towns are full of interesting character, and the evenings in San Sebastián proper are beautiful and a great way to close your day.

• I’m very averse to lines and chaos, and eating in San Sebastián can feel like a lot of lines and chaos. It took me a second, but once you lean in, you’ll realize that all of the lines go pretty quickly, that the madness is in fact pretty efficient, and it’s all very doable.

• In terms of food, there are no real wrong answers in this region—besides filling up on bread (please don’t fill up on bread)—because everything is pretty great. I’m going to list a lot of dishes that we ordered (or were recommended to me) for each place, but you should get whatever speaks to you, because the floor is extremely high.

Day 1

Twist: We’re not even starting in San Sebastián, mainly because you can’t fly directly into the city, so you’re most likely landing in Bilbao. (Some people on the internet will try to tell you that flying into Santander is also an option, it’s not; it’s a three-hour, €300 car ride from San Sebastián.)

So, since you’re in Bilbao, it’s silly to not to take a 15-minute cab ride from the airport to the Guggenheim Museum. (There are barely any Ubers here, so plan to hit the taxi lines or have people at the hotel or restaurants order them for you.)

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
The massive Frank Gehry building gives you a cinematic “hello” as you drive up, which serves as a nice way to start your trip. They’ll also store your bags (if they’re carry-on size). Inside and out, there’s a lot of beautiful work that you should probably budget ~2-3 hours for.

There’s a huge—both in scale and quantity—collection of Richard Serras (great), a Louise Bourgeois spider (neutral), a big Jeff Koons dog made out of tulips (redacted), and a good mix of Spanish artists and greatest hits (there was a Jasper Johns exhibition when we were there) throughout the museum. All in all, it’s a great and chill place.

When you’re ready to leave, you’ll take another cab to the bus station. San Sebastián is a little over an hour away, and you can book (and modify) bus tickets via the website Omio.

As for where to stay in San Sebastián, I can’t give you any firsthand advice, because we booked our trip way too last-minute (and during peak season), so we had to settle, but these were the hotels most recommended:

• Lasala Plaza – pool on the roof, great views throughout, and aspires to look like a boat (take from that what you will), all while being reasonably priced.

• Hotel Maria Cristina – this is the “very nice” option; it’s on the water and designed by the same architect who did the Ritz Paris.

• Hotel Arbaso – slightly outside of where you want to be, but seems like the most interesting of the three.

The one thing I would recommend is to stay in Old Town. It puts you within a 10-minute walk from most of the things you want to do, both in the day (beach, food) and at night (food, drink). And, as I mentioned before, getting a cab is annoying and slow.

Onto the food (and some beaches).
Note: dishes with double asterisks indicate my favorites.

Read more

#98 is Alex Tatusian, an editor, designer, and worker-owner of the revamped Gourmet 2.0, one of my favorite new food publications, which puts a delightfully subversive spin on the beloved magazine of the same name (where I, incidentally, interned in college). He is the man responsible for introducing me to an excellent Cuban restaurant in Pico-Union and a cocktail called the Tovarich, which he aptly describes as “a daiquiri from the other side of the planet.” Alex is a proud Orange County native who put in his time in New York before moving back to SoCal; his taste reflects a deep knowledge of the high-low pleasures of dining and drinking in L.A. Here are his Plugs.

Restaurant: Yerord Mas

We didn’t have Armenian food like this when I was growing up. Our family ate (happily!) at Carousel, Raffi’s, Skaf’s, Taron, and Sarkis Pastry. That was pretty much it. (The boomers thought it was cute when my cousin Tenny suggested we check out Mini Kabob and Monta House.) Food writers love to trot out the D-word when describing Yerord Mas, but the restaurant owns the word “diaspora” in Los Angeles, as far as I’m concerned. Where another proprietor might fold in an unexpected spice, yassify a family recipe, or go full fusion (IndiMex, we’ll meet one day!!), Arthur Grigoryan endeavors 1) to survey the food of a people that overwhelmingly live (and for generations have lived) outside their homeland and 2) to freak it. Dishes from Iraq and Iran not often seen outside Armenian homes coexist with tastes of Soviet and ancient Armenia on a tiny menu. Everything is handled carefully but unpretentiously, e.g., my favorite (literal) touch: their various kyuftahs (bulgur balls with assorted fillings) possess a strange, spiny seashell shape accomplished by squeezing the mixture inside a fist until it begins to poke between the cook’s fingers.

Read more

#2 is Jake DeNicola, one of my oldest and dearest friends, a talented cinematographer, and the co-founder of the production company ANIMA Works. We grew up together in Greenwich Village, and now he’s DP’d an impressive roster of music videos, shorts, and documentaries, including Santacon (2025) and Class Action Park (2020). Jake has also spent summers and many weekends in Delaware County, NY, for his whole life, and has become deeply enmeshed in the community over the years, watching it change and grow (more on that below). As someone who has stayed with him upstate and given myself over to his guidance, I can promise you: Jake knows what’s up. Here are his go-to spots for eating, drinking, shopping, and swimming in the Western Catskills.

Good Cheap Food

Before the multitude of upscale general stores, hipster cideries, and farm-to-table restaurants in Delaware County, there was Good Cheap Food. When Fega, the owner and founder (who calls herself my surrogate godmother), started the health food store in 1976, it was just a tiny hole-in-the-wall. Now, it is smack dab in the middle of Main Street in Delhi, NY. It specializes in local produce, dry goods, a sprawling tea section, local beer, wine, and cider, and also has an impressively large Asian grocery section. Fega, a vegetarian herself, has now turned operation of the store over to her son Jonah, who has started the incredible Catskill Smokehouse Company. His frozen sausages, smoked trout, and many other cuts of meat can be found at GCF. I don’t think I’ve had a better Berkshire pork chop in my entire life.

Read more

This summer promises rolling heat waves from Paris to L.A., and, naturally, New York (where we just survived one—or did we?—last week). It’s hard to drum up an appetite in this kind of weather. Unless it’s for ice cream: soft serve dunked in a chocolate shell, procured from a jingling truck; a pint of Cherry Garcia from the bodega; scoops of brambleberry crisp and black sesame from the fancy ice cream shop; and, best of all, restaurant ice cream, served in steel coupes or sundae glasses.

In restaurants, ice cream often plays a supporting role on the dessert menu, as a component that completes a plated dessert. But some pastry chefs give it room to shine on its own, offering a few scoops (or more) for diners to choose from at the end of a meal, with flavors that rotate by season and the whims of the pastry team. I’m here, today, to tell you that when you see ice cream centered on a dessert menu like this, you should order it—maybe even instead of the silky tiramisu or apricot tart—because ice cream made by ace pastry chefs at sit-down restaurants goes light years above the listless, over-processed dreck you’ll find lurking in the freezer aisle.

The other, more obvious case to be made for ordering ice cream in restaurants is that it’s somewhat light and definitively cold, and thus particularly refreshing on a hot summer day. As Quarter Sheets’ Hannah Ziskin, an ice cream lover and skilled practitioner of the form, once told me: “It’s just perfect. It’s not too heavy, you can eat the whole thing… It’s something that lightens instead of depresses your stomach at the end [of a restaurant meal].”

As a hobbyist ice cream maker myself, I know firsthand the pleasure of freshly churned ice cream made with organic local dairy, pastured eggs, and peak-season farmers’ market produce—a pleasure that, if you don’t make your own (fair, though I’d invite you to join the club), you can really only find in restaurants, not scoop shops, ice cream trucks, or freezer aisles. For this story, I spoke to a number of pros to prove why.

Ice cream is frozen, so it keeps, but that doesn’t mean month-old ice cream tastes like the freshly made stuff. Ed Cornell, a seasoned restaurant ice cream maker and co-owner of Café Tropical in L.A., told me that at scoop shops, he always orders the most popular flavors—the ones that move in volume, like cookies and cream or chocolate—since they’re less likely to have been sitting in a tub for months.

Commercially made ice cream also tends to contain stabilizers, such as guar or xanthan gums, to slow ice crystal growth, improve texture, and extend shelf life. Stabilizers aren’t inherently bad—they’re what let you eat a cone slowly without it melting down your arm—but they can mask flavor, affect texture, and cause digestive discomfort.

“The fact that [ice cream in restaurants] is usually churned the day of means that they don’t need as much stabilizer as commercially produced ice cream,” says Claudia Fleming, the executive culinary director of Union Square Hospitality Group’s Daily Provisions, and the author of the dessert-centric cookbooks The Last Course and Delectable. “Also, the freshness means the intensity of flavor is more pronounced, because when things freeze, flavor tends to dissipate.”

Pastry chefs, with their access to high-quality ingredients and their obsession with maximizing flavor, tend to produce highly potent ice creams.

Stephanie Prida, the pastry chef at Bar Chimera in Midtown (formerly The Grill, Manresa), makes a vanilla that goes far beyond a typical scoop: “I use a shit ton of vanilla beans, way more than I should, and I also marinate sugar in vanilla beans, then pulverize the beans afterwards, and let them sit overnight [in the ice cream base], so there’s so many different layers of vanilla,” she says.

For Clodagh Manning, the pastry chef at Zimmi’s in the West Village (formerly Lyle’s, in London), distilled, specific flavor is the cornerstone of her approach. “I really like ice creams that taste like the thing that they’re based on, rather than just a faint suggestion,” she says, adding that a restaurant setting is conducive to this style: “Because you’re eating [ice cream] in smaller volumes, they can be more charged with flavor.” At Zimmi’s, she regularly offers a trio of ice creams; her favorite, on the menu last fall, paired Concord grape with a boozy vanilla made with an excess of beans and a toasty hazelnut tossed with chunks of chocolate. “It read as a really luxurious PB and J combo,” Manning says.

Fleming crafted the opening dessert menu at Ci Siamo (a Union Square Hospitality Group restaurant), channeling the Italian ethos of ingredient-quality fanaticism and concentrated flavor. The resulting scoop menu features a satiny dark chocolate sorbet and a deeply buttery pistachio gelato. “I remember having this epiphany while eating cheapo roadside soft serve, nothing special,” she says. “I kept eating it and I kept eating it and I kept eating it, waiting to get satisfied, and it never happened. It was just a lot of air, and not very good flavoring… I find that when you have a richer ice cream, you just need a small amount to satisfy.”

The odds of finding greengage ice cream or Tristar strawberry sorbet at an ice cream parlor are slim to none, except at certain cheffily-minded scoop shops. At restaurants, especially those with hyper-seasonal ambitions, they’re good. “You can put a dish on for a little bit, then take it off,” says Manning. “And instead of selling a pint or a giant scoop on a cone, you’re selling a [smaller portion], so that unlocks more potential of interesting or rare flavors, where you get one batch of, say, mulberries, and make ice cream out of that.”

Come late summer, she’s looking forward to making damson ice cream from the tiny, tannic plums commonly used in the UK but harder to find in New York (she sources hers from the Union Square Greenmarket).

Finally, many of the pastry chefs I know are technique-driven brainiacs who love to go the extra mile. At Zimmi’s, Manning has been making ice cream with cherry pits, infusing the dairy with the kernels to extract their almondy flavor, then pairing it with a cherry dessert. “Those kinds of flavor pairings are so satisfying to me: the fruit with the flavor of the seed from the fruit. It’s like whole animal cooking, but the dessert version,” she says.

One of Prida’s staples is a zero-waste frozen yogurt that takes four days to make: “I make my own yogurt, put it in the oven overnight, then cool it down and press it. The next day I turn the whey into a whey caramel, and churn the fresh yogurt into frozen yogurt,” she says.

Meanwhile, David Lebovitz, author of the ice cream bible The Perfect Scoop and the former longtime pastry chef at Chez Panisse (who now lives in Paris), recently made a Chartreuse ice cream studded with vegan chocolate marshmallows, “which blew a few French minds,” he says — “But everyone ate it.”

As a bonus, I asked a handful of my favorite ice cream makers—David Lebovitz, Kitty Travers, Claudia Fleming, and more!—for the single most memorable scoop they’ve ever had. Here’s what they said:

Read more

#1 is Emily Wilson, yours truly, founder of The Angel and a food writer with bylines in T Magazine, Bon Appétit, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and New York Magazine, among other outlets. Switching to first person now: my family has been summering in Amagansett, on the east end of Long Island (aka the Hamptons), since 1999. I’m biased, but I also know it’s the coolest Hampton. That said, we pretty much never eat out, except for lunch, and only at the few spots we truly love. Otherwise, we cook, we go to the beach, and it’s all very beautiful—mostly because we skirt the horrendously behaved crowds and the overpriced, subpar food. (One casualty this year: Amagansett Seafood, our go-to fishmonger, where Mike O’Rourke sells exceptional tuna salad, smoked mussels, and local fish, is closed for the summer. Support Mike if you can. I’m leaving them off this list as a result.) Here are my go-to spots to eat, shop (for bagels, cheese, produce, and clothes), and exercise.

Bonus: I shared this link last month, but I’ve also got a more in-depth guide to the Eastern East End on Rec League. It includes everything below, plus more in East Hampton, Napeague, Montauk, and the Springs. A few of the recs are free, but most are only unlocked when you buy the guide; paid subscribers get a discount code at the bottom of this letter.

Doubles

Full transparency: My brother is an owner of this Caribbean-inspired eatery in Amagansett Square. But ask anyone else who spends time in the area (or in Sag Harbor, where there’s another outpost), and they’ll tell you that Doubles rocks. Crowd favorites include the breakfast roti, the Island Blue smoothie, the Freddie bowl, and the Mahi cutter; my order is market crunchy greens with grilled jerk chicken, plus a side of sweet plantains (or a roti wrap). Don’t sleep on the house hot sauce, charged with scotch bonnet peppers. In exciting news (a scoop!): Doubles is opening in Brooklyn Heights soon, hopefully later this year…

Read more

Hi, angels. It’s nice to write to you again!

I’ve had summer brain, been traveling, and planning more: Paris next week, Maine in August, and Japan in late September. (If you have burning, extra-special Tokyo recs, food and otherwise, hit my line.) But this weekend is America’s 250th birthday, and that’s… something. If anything, it’s a fitting time to talk about taverns, a category of restaurant-slash-bar that comprises our nation’s earliest public eating-and-drinking establishments. Perhaps this year’s milestone is why taverns are trending right now.

As per Grub Street editor Alan Sytsma, in an “Eating New York” newsletter from last month (subject line: Everything’s a ‘Tavern’), newcomers include Red Hook Tavern’s Tavern Next Door, Trudie’s Tavern (Carroll Gardens), Grimm Tavern (Prospect Heights), and Wainwright’s Tavern (UES).

For me, however, the truest taverns are not bona fide restaurants like Gramercy Tavern or Minetta Tavern, with dark interiors and best-in-the-city burgers, but casual neighborhood mainstays where drinking/gathering is the primary event, and the food is unfussily American (regular burgers, buffalo wings, familiar beers). Also, they are places that have been around for quite a while.

Taverns are the closest thing we have to Mexico’s cantinas and England’s pubs, where friends can get together and shoot the shit, groups growing and shrinking over the course of a night, food orders being placed if and when anyone gets hungry. They’re always there, being exactly what you need them to be. Fanelli’s was a foundational stomping ground for me, among high school friends when home from college, and then among coworkers, as an after-hours hang when I worked in SoHo. They’d give you a table even if you were just drinking, knowing you’d probably eventually get something to eat. Other taverns listed below played smaller roles at various points in my adult life.

It wasn’t until I moved to L.A., a city devoid of taverns (save for HMS Bounty, which fully counts—although parking is miserable—and The Prince, which is kind of the most perfectly L.A. version of this), that I realized how central they were to my social existence. I often longed for a place to enjoy rounds of cold beers and share properly crispy fries in an easygoing environment, surrounded by friends. I missed the East Coast, then. Now, I miss L.A. for all sorts of reasons, but at least we have taverns (plus the New York friggin’ Knicks :)).

These are my favorites. What are yours? Sound off in the comments, as they say…

The Ear Inn, purportedly New York’s oldest bar—although FiDi’s Fraunces Tavern says they are—in the neighborhood now known as Hudson Square. Est. 1817.

Old Town Bar in Flatiron, complete with a tin ceiling and tasty giant pretzels. In operation since 1892; renamed Old Town Bar in 1933.

Fanelli Café, aka Fanelli’s, my beloved SoHo watering hole for Stellas and fries, once a well-kept secret among downtowners in the know, now less appealing since it was taken over by Gen Z. Est. 1874; called Fanelli since 1922.

White Horse Tavern in the West Village, not really my scene, despite being located in the neighborhood where I was raised. I prefer Corner Bistro, which, I’d argue, counts—even if some people are there for a burger first and a beer second. Est. 1880 and 1961, respectively.

Pete’s Tavern of Gramercy, adored for its Christmas decorations and chicken pot pie. Est. 1864; called Pete’s since 1922.

Walker’s, which pours a solid Guinness in Tribeca. Newer to the game, with a founding date of 1987.

The weekend before last, David and I drove up to Montreal, stopping in Vermont for a wondrous creemee at a rural sugar shack (more on that below), and spending a night in the Berkshires at the lovely Inn at Kenmore Hall on the way back. It’s well-known that Montreal has a stellar food scene. Part of what makes it so compelling, for me, is the level of hospitality provided at some of its best restaurants. Because it’s both a smaller city than New York and a much more affordable, favorable environment in which to operate a restaurant, there’s not the same pressure to turn tables. Furthermore, you can feel real warmth and passion from the people working in establishments like Vin Mon Lapin and Le Violon. I think we tackled 48 hours there quite well; this was our dining itinerary. Here it is on Rec League, too, with some leisure recs included, such as a requisite visit to the grave of Leonard Cohen. (Paid subscribers get 50% off; code below the paywall.)

Read more