Plugs — Emily Sundberg
New York food, drink, and leisure recs from the Feed Me mastermind + LINKS
Plugs is The Angel’s recs column. On most Saturdays, you’ll get six picks—a restaurant, a bar, a shop, an ingredient, a person, and a treat—from someone in New York who knows what they’re talking about, plus a selection of Angel-curated links. Plugs are for paid subscribers of The Angel only; upgrade your subscription to receive all six!
#98/#3 is Emily Sundberg, the brains behind the wildly sucessful business newsletter Feed Me, aka the queen of Substack. Emily is an incisive writer, a rigorous reporter, and a discerning analyst. Outside her own publication, she’s bylined in New York Magazine and GQ, with standout coverage on topics from the Shoppy Shop to Zyn. She’s also the director of THE END, a film about Gardiner’s Island, and a former big-get marketing hire, having worked as a creative strategist at Meta and shaped social media strategies for The Cut and Great Jones. The superlatives have piled up across the media landscape—too many to catalogue here—so I’ll just say that Emily has been one to watch for a while. Here she is with her Plugs.
Restaurant — YŪGIN
Last month, my husband and I had the pleasure of eating dinner at YŪGIN, an omakase restaurant in the GM Building run by Eugeniu Zubco (who spent ten years working at Masa), who goes by Yugin. The counter looks over the sparkling lights of midtown and the quiet darkness of Central Park.
It’s funny, when we tell people about the evening, the sushi (fantastic) ends up taking up a fraction of the conversation. The space is so intensely intimate that we ended up being in dialogue with Yugin for most of our dinner. We learned that he sands the sushi counter by hand each night. Every time I put my phone on the counter, someone would come over and slide a square of fabric underneath it — the hinoki wood counter is considered somewhat sacred. I also learned about Yugin’s fish sourcing, which involves early morning drives to Newark airport to pick up tuna straight from Japan. He also hand-draws the menu each night, and each guest goes home with a copy of the illustration in an envelope sealed with wax. Other diners at the counter included an A-List rapper, a restaurant investor, and what a casting director would call “business people.”
And yes, the sushi was fantastic. I want to tell you all about my scallop wellington and amuse bouche course served on Central Park autumn leaves, but apparently, no evening ever has the same menu, so you’ll have to tell me about your dinner when you go.
