Get invited to supper clubs and surrealist events.
French Laundry is your rich friend, well-heeled and warm. A friend who places huge demands on terrified staff, who is blind to their fear. A friend whose displays of generosity may remind you of the limits of your checkbook, but never make you feel poor.
There is an old saying that in order to make an apple pie, you must first invent the universe. In order to have a proper New York-style slice, you need to conjure the city around you. Because the secret to New York pizza is not the pizza. It’s New York.
Birthed from the chapped hands of a hungry girl, Lao Gan Ma transcends the western pain circus to touch something deeper. Decades later, that girl is hungry still. Her sauce tells her story.
Your life is a warm bowl of curry on a nameless Rockridge corner, a telescope of histories on loan in a Wayfair-and-knickknack present.
Gin Gin, a constantly flexed bicep of a restaurant, has staked its territory in Roma Norte. The tempo is brisk, constantly a half beat ahead of your heart. Brace yourself and enter.
Popov is the death wish incarnate. The label is a sinister red, dim shadow of the Kremlin gazing demonically behind the all-caps brand name. Drink it and you tempt oblivion.
Quest makes protein-loaded simulations of a guilt-binge desserts: the romance, the texture, the flavor, all Instagram-ready, carbless yet convincing.
The candy that most resembles a meal, a candy most nourishing if left uneaten.
Each puff destroyed leaves behind trace remnants, gritty cornmeal and powdered cheese, and if you eat them fast enough that grit accumulates: a tiny hoard of white gold dust, panned through in your teeth, slipping away in the river of your mouth.
Necco wafers, immortal and brittle, hold a mantra that swallows the universe.
A conspicuously invisible cultural infiltrator. A remnant from a past we never had.
Symphonic scents entertain while a profound mole asks the big questions.
With soul-baring harmonies and empty words, Willie performs performative vulnerability.
