who am i?
I’m a freelance writer and editor based in Brooklyn, New York. I started my career at Food & Wine and have worked in and around food media ever since. I also have an MFA in creative nonfiction and this newsletter is one way of making myself use it.
what is this?
Portraits of restaurants I love in the form of short vignettes, tone poems, projections, vague impressions, and so on. If a restaurant has it, I’ll write something about it. I’ll also include pictures and recommend dishes. Most of the restaurants will be in New York City. Some will be in other places.
where when why how, and so on?
Well, if we’re really getting into it. Food makes me feel things—and I’ll just clear this up now, don’t worry, I won’t subject you to any personal essays about which food makes me feel what and why—I feel fine saying we can lay off those for now, except for the ones that are good, which will of course always be exceptions—but food makes me feel things, same for you I’m guessing, things that can be meaningful but for which the vocabulary I would usually have at my disposal (the typical words about mouthfeel and Maillard reactions and descriptions of things being studded with this or redolent with that or containing lashings of something else entirely, but also the words for what I like and don’t like, the words for feelings, since it seems to me that the point of feelings is not having the words) are fatigued, and not only that, frustratingly insufficient. In conveying what makes for “good vibes,” or what gives you the immediate, warm impression that the person doing the cooking is “good people.” Or the experience of a flavor that when you taste it you feel you’re suddenly seeing a new color they never told you about.
What I’m rooting around for is that straight prose, or whatever you want to call it, isn’t really how I prefer to write about food. Also, I want more food writing to be kinda weird. In this context, restaurants are a context; food, yes, but people and place, a space being filled and used. Food, yes, and sound and smell, wooden chairs with seats furrowed over the ages by sitting butts, framed newspaper clippings annotated with highlighter. When the bathroom was clearly designed for selfies. When the bathroom is too good to not take a selfie! Wholesome Yelp reviews for a spot in a neighborhood I had to Google in Queens, no PR on ten-grand monthly retainer, just someone’s granddad in a hairnet. Roses or zinnias? Writing the menu—two words per dish or twenty? Paint color, awnings. How I feel when I walk in and how I feel when I walk out. Put food in context and the canvas becomes larger. All that to say, that’s why I’m focusing on restaurants.
Oh and also, I’m using “stream of consciousness” loosely here—I am uninterested in debating the strict boundaries of the method, though I suspect those are fake anyway—to mean my version of lyric, impressionistic, free-associating, list-y, unedited, spiraling, wafting, waffling, et cetera. The hope is that things will get even looser over time. The hope is to find my own new ways of weirdness. The hope is that any strict boundaries around food writing are fake, too.
huh?
〰️꩜〰️〰️꩜〰️〰️〰️꩜〰️꩜꩜꩜〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️〰️ !!!