Feed Me’s Expense Account podcast is back today! 🍾 This morning, dropped two episodes — one with , one with . You can listen wherever you listen to podcasts, and new episodes will be coming out weekly going forward. Thank you for your patience, I think it was worth it.

Today’s newsletter includes: A 15 Central Park West rental only available to 15 Central Park West keyholders, a hobbit tea party in Midtown, on pregnancy and burgers, LVMH heir Alexandre Arnault joins Nike’s board of directors, a job I’d apply for if I was 23, and OpenAI disclosed six more cases of the AIs going rogue.

Three Things That Bring You Uptown: Botox, Babies, and Burgers. By .

This week on Feed Me, we’re observing Smashion Week — a weeklong celebration of burgers, smash and otherwise. Today, Alison Roman writes about pregnancy, and reminding herself of who she is, within the walls of J.G. Melon. If you’re starting to get hungry on day four of Smashion Week, may I suggest Alison’s recipe for Smashburgers? In the intro to the recipe she writes, “Even if this burger doesn’t go exactly according to plan, you’ll likely end up with something wonderful.”

At no point in my seventeen years in New York did I ever spend much time on the Upper East Side, save for the occasional trip to Bemelmans or Elio’s. Though in the last two years, all of a sudden, I had reasons to go. Namely, I started seeing a very good dermatologist who does all sorts of things to my face in the pursuit of eternal youth, like Botox to soften the wrinkles and lasers to reveal new, fresh skin. Also, I got pregnant.

It just so happened that the best doctors for my specific situation were all on the Upper East Side, which meant I was now trekking it from Boerum Hill to York and 72nd (technically Lenox Hill, though when you get off the Q uptown, it’s all “Upper East Side” to me). Whether by car or train, it always took about an hour to get there, which made me feel like I needed to make the trip “worth it.” Always be optimizing. “Worth it,” by my standards, means lunch or early dinner, something novel to someone like me, a person who lived so far from this neighborhood.

While it was several blocks from my doctor’s office, J.G. Melon was still close enough to justify the several blocks—rain, snow, or freezing-cold-shine (the joys of a deep winter pregnancy)—in pursuit of all the things I was craving: an old, dark wooden bar serving Coca-Cola on tap with too much ice, and a large puck of could-be-seasoned-more ground beef topped with melted cheddar cheese, a generous pool of mustard, thin slices of good pickles, thick slices of red onion, all between a properly griddled white-bread bun.

Many things change when you’re pregnant—the relationship to yourself is taken for the ride of a lifetime, your physical body is in a constant state of flux and newness, and all of a sudden, after thirty-nine years on this beautiful planet, you find yourself needing a hamburger all the time. Meat of all sorts, really, but this period of my life was sort of strangely defined as especially burger-positive. If it was on a menu, I’d order one, and if for whatever reason I was hungry for something else, I’d still order one (“for the table,” of course). But it was the burger at J.G. Melon that I’d go out of my way for, my little post-doctor’s-appointment prize.

Read more

Last night I saw 3/4 of New York City at How Long Gone’s live awards show, The Gonies. I sat in the front row next to Paul Needham, and in front of . The whole production was extremely impressive and a testament to HLG’s devoted fanbase, and friends like and Sam Hine and and John Early and Andy Baraghani. J Mascis, of Dinosaur Jr., performed an awesome cover of The Cure’s “Just Like Heaven” at the end of the show. Maybe it’s because I was directly in front the speaker, but I got goosebumps. Jason and Chris are athletes of the microphone — day in day out just talking, talking, talking into the microphone. Take after take. Pretty special what that can build when people get addicted to hearing you three times a week.

Afterwards, I went to Coppelia (open 24 hours) for chicken soup with rice, and while I waited for my Uber I got a Marble Cruller at Donut Pub (also open 24 hours). I lost all of my headphones, so I’ve been carrying around a copy of The Paris Review. In the car, I finished the first short story in the latest issue, and cried one tear. That postgame also felt just like heaven.

Today’s newsletter includes: Jason Stewart on why burgers are like omakase, a Brooklyn Heights reality check, an exclusive on Seventeen and Cosmopolitan’s new fashion director, Alysa Liu taught me a conversation-starting party trick, New York restaurants are already ordering Christmas decorations, why one WSJ fashion editor started posting on TikTok this week, and the kindergartenification of the modern adult.

In which I compare the drama and purity of burgers and omakase sushi for fashion week. By .

This week on Feed Me, we’re observing Smashion Week — a weeklong celebration of burgers, smash and otherwise. Today, Jason Stewart (half of the podcast How Long Gone) writes about nigiri and hamburgers — both of which are to be eaten with one’s hands. I’ve been listening to Jason speak about food for a long time. In fact, I often think that How Long Gone is my second favorite food podcast (after Expense Account). I think you’ll enjoy Jason’s funny comparison.

Six years ago, giggly-high on mushroom chocolates at an Airbnb in Sedona, Arizona, I wrote my first (and one of my last) Substack essays, about the Travis Scott burger at McDonald’s. It was peak COVID, and driving a pickup truck through Death Valley in the middle of summer to binge episodes of “Girlfriends” on a different couch than the one at home felt like the right thing to do. Chris Black and I had only been recording How Long Gone, the podcast that is now my job, for a few months, and I was still adjusting to life on the road, working from home wherever that may be. I found it funny and fitting to write about two things I hated (Travis Scott and McDonald’s) in such a tranquil and mystical locale. I even made my now-wife take a photo of me standing on the turquoise-blue arches, N95 mask and all, at their Sedona location, the only McDonald’s in the world with this rare colorway. Meanwhile, a wild bobcat roamed the open-ish backyard, Cheshire-style, almost egging me on to do my best to write an essay about a burger that I couldn’t even finish. Six years later, writing this on my birthday, my life has changed for the better in every way but three: I still hate Travis Scott, I still hate McDonald’s, and I’ve found myself, once again, writing about burgers for Substack. (Thanks, Emily.)

I often catch myself referencing the “no soy sauce” initiative of purist sushi chefs in my everyday life. These hardliners spend all day treating rare and expensive fish with the respect and care it deserves. Maybe curing it between sheets of kombu, or soaking fillets in vinegar to accentuate each species’ flavor. Plunging this perfect protein into a Kikkoman bath reverses days, sometimes weeks, of care. And this action tells others around you that you’re unable to appreciate the delicate sweetness of a golden eye snapper; you’re probably hoping the next course will feature sriracha mayo, or a flap of wagyu beef that you can film being blowtorched.

Read more

Today’s newsletter includes: The male friendship crisis might be affecting all of us, a scoop on Brooklyn Heights’ new members’ club, Daniel Humm started a Kraft competitor with a CPG vet, a Yankees collab at San Gennaro, on the London burger spot starting a scene, details on ’s Louboutins, a menswear pop-up in LA serving Courage Bagels, Vanessa Friedman is a solid political reporter, and a16z opens a West Palm Beach 🌴 office.

This week on the Feed Me Job Board: Community Manager at Three Wishes Cereal, Senior Director of Brand Marketing at Fishwife, and Vertical Video Journalist at Barron’s.

FEED ME JOB BOARD

I love to hate it but I’m the one who ate it. By

This week on Feed Me, we’re observing Smashion Week — a weeklong celebration of burgers, smash and otherwise. Today, London-based editor (who writes ) writes about the specific sensation of a scene percolating at a new burger joint in Shoreditch.

After a trip to Trisha’s, we’ve arrived later than most to the opening of the Soho outpost of Dumbo, the Parisian purveyor of smashburgers – excuse me, I mean the “best burger in France” – that has taken London by storm since opening its first location in Shoreditch last summer.

Attracting a fashion-forward crowd, with playful video campaigns shot by the likes of Sam Youkilis and creative duo Yoann et Marco, while appealing to the masses through a carefully curated sense of sentimentality, and the appropriate amount of butter yellow to stay on the right side of elegant, Dumbo has made it so that everyone wants to try its burger, and tonight, it is mayhem.

“Raven Smith was here! He just left in a black cab. Who even gets black cabs anymore?” On arrival, I bump into my friend Ying-Di Yin, who goes on to explain the lay of the land. “Wine’s here so you can sneak through this door, but they’re giving out tokens at the other door, which you need for getting the wine, and then you queue over there to order food.”

I remind myself that however much I’d happily never touch a ketchup-smothered potato bun again, I cannot say no to seeing who will turn up for freebies. Particularly when it’s burgers, chips, orange wine, and ice cream. The things money can’t buy.

Read more

Today marks the first day of New York Smashion Week, which you may have never heard of because I invented it last year (these are things you can do as an independent media company). It’s a weeklong editorial celebration of hamburgers — smash and beyond — on Feed Me that takes place somewhere between New York Fashion Week and London Fashion Week. I invited some of my favorite writers to contribute this year, and I think you’ll be surprised at who they are and what they they have to say about pickles, mustard, and beef.

Today’s newsletter includes: Substack’s new UK Lifestyle hire, a recipe from Ben Smith’s barbecue last night, the most in-demand wedding dress tailors in New York, The Times hired a Stephen Colbert alumni for their Shows team, Dario Amodei is also worried about the speed of AI advancement, and a New York museum exhibit dedicated to girlhood.

For our next Guest Lecture, we’re talking to Ari Emanuel, the agent-turned-mogul who runs MARI and TKO (parent company of UFC and WWE), founded the talent agency Endeavor, served as the inspiration behind Ari Gold in Entourage, and has represented industry titans like Martin Scorsese and Aaron Sorkin.

Paid readers can ask him anything about the 1995 walkout that started Endeavor, buying the UFC for $4 billion when it had only just been legalized New York, or the current state of Hollywood. His memoir, Roll The Calls, is out September 22.

Designed to be consumed quickly and efficiently, with both hands. By Patrick Radden Keefe.

Many of you may have read Patrick Radden Keefe’s London Falling, which spent 15 weeks this year at #1 on the non-fiction chart in the UK. When I was putting together my dream group of 2026 Smashion Week contributors, Patrick also had the #1 spot on that list — I was thrilled when he said yes. I attended a book talk with him a little over a week ago in Bridgehampton, where when asked he told attendees that his favorite piece he’s ever written was The Jefferson Bottles for The New Yorker in 2007. So now you have some burgers to go with your wine.

One of my shortcomings is the sheer velocity with which I eat. I put food away like a guy on his first day in prison. Manners-wise, this is pretty gauche, so in polite company, I try to slow down. But I tend to think hot food should be consumed while it is still hot, and with Newton’s Law of Cooling etc., I can always sort of hear the clock ticking. The burger may be the perfect food for a person with my proclivities: compact and ergonomic as an MRE, heat-retaining, designed to be consumed quickly and efficiently, with both hands.

Read more

I loved seeing/meeting so many of you last night at Canyon Coffee. We went Jeff Klein mode and stickered everyone’s phones with a soft no-phone rule in an attempt to get people to talk to each other. I woke up to several late-night texts and DMs, including selfies of groups of friends who didn’t know each other before the party and ended up going out together afterwards. We’ll do it again soon. Stickers work!

Today’s newsletter includes: Molly Baz’s new business venture, reviews Marcel, Noguchi in Midtown, an inventive (and useful) new use of the Substack comment section, an excellent hotel lobby guide to Toronto ahead of the Toronto International Film Festival, and Anthropic is attracting New York Times employees.

“The room was not built for me, but I’m happy to be there.” By

Expense Account is a series on Feed Me by semi-anonymous restaurant critic J Lee. He hosts a podcast with the same name, which is back next month! This week, he wrote about the VC-backed berries and picture-perfect potato gratin at Marcel.

Much has been said about Marcel. I can’t remember the last time a restaurant in New York has been so universally panned. I think for critics, Marcel has been quite the fun punching bag this year. It’s been entertaining for me to watch, from the outside, as someone with no opinion, and only the slightest amount of skin in the game. It’s not often that a critic gets to throw a guilt-free haymaker to boost their credibility, and Marcel is an easy target. It’s rare that a restaurant has so unabashedly, and enthusiastically, embraced commerce. We live in New York and we love to pretend that money is this taboo icky topic. I have to admit, I still don’t know how most of my friends pay their rent.

Marcel doesn’t try to hide who butters their bread, and how it’s buttered. After all, Marcel is a French restaurant, co-owned by a luxury design brand (Roman and Williams), in the corporate headquarters of an auction house (Sotheby’s) on Madison Avenue. They wear their dollar signs and their ambition on their sleeve. Everything in the restaurant is for sale, from the martini glass in your hand, to the paintings and dinosaur bones on display. Go ahead, call it gauche, but you have to hand it to them, they know who they are, and who they’re for, and what they want, which is more than a lot of restaurants can say. They’re not a restaurant for you, or for me. It’s not for the person reading restaurant reviews in the Times, the Yorker, or the Mag. It’s a restaurant for people who eat dinner on Madison Avenue, it’s a restaurant for people who wear suits and never sweat. It’s for people who buy paintings and dinosaur bones at auction. It’s a restaurant for people who don’t care about food, people for whom money is not an object. I’ll stand on my platform and say that these people deserve a place to call their own, a place to eat steak, and drink Bordeaux, and spend enormous amounts of money. I don’t really need or want them coming downtown, taking up a seat at one of my favorite restaurants, complaining that the fish is too fishy, and the music is too loud. Let them eat cake at Marcel.

Read more

I’m excited to see some of you tonight at the Feed Me party in Brooklyn. If you really wanted to come and didn’t get a ticket, respond to this email and I’ll see what I can do.

We have exciting news here in the office: Expense Account, our podcast hosted by food critic , is returning this month! Jason and I have spent the summer working hard with the team at Higher Ground to bring this show to life in a new format, and I can’t wait for all of you to listen (and watch).

Have guest requests? Leave them in the comments. Interested in working together? Email emily@readfeedme.com.

Today’s newsletter includes: The spectrum of midtown lunch options, Alex Heath joins the tech reporter → investor pipeline, Andrew Ross Sorkin announced his first DealBook guests at Oliver Darcy’s Status Summit (and Kara Swisher reviewed the new Musk doc), a new NoHo bakery selling $60 loaves of bread (this is called financial domination), on distractingly bad CGI, it’s a rough year for nonfiction book sales, and it’s interesting that James Turrell drives cars with sunroofs.

FEED ME JOB BOARD

Read more

We always start with food. But we always wind up somewhere else - because food is culture, and everybody eats.

New season, same appetite. Season 2 drops September 17th

Last night, I went to Somssi a few hours after the Times review for the new Greenwich Village restaurant dropped (to be clear, the res had been in my calendar for days). My friends Lily, Lizzie, and I devoured their Potato, Potato, Potato (potato wrapped in potato and served on more potato), and for dessert we had fig-leaf custard with early autumn grape granita. If we can’t have figs this year, at least we can have fig leaves.

Today’s newsletter includes: A kickoff to New York Fashion Week with a Lauren Sherman Guest Lecture (masterclass in Guest Lecture responses), speaking to about her decision to go free-stuff-affiliate-link-brand-trip sober (fashion writers — your readers are smarter than you think), Substack is hosting an Emmys watch party with Polymarket and your favorite writers, the Astoria Fig Festival, Sam Altman’s skinny jeans (by Jonathan Anderson), and Zuck is baking something with coconut sugar and almond flour. 🍰

Have a story or some good neighborhood gossip you want me to cover?

Text the Feed Me Tip Line: ‪(646) 494-3916‬.

This interview is part of a Feed Me feature called Guest Lecture. In this series, I introduce you all to an expert who I’m curious about, and give paid readers an opportunity to ask them anything they want. Past guests have included Alison Roman, Andrew Ross Sorkin, and Kareem Rahma.

This week Lauren Sherman, Puck’s fashion correspondent and author of Line Sheet newsletter, answers your questions about her recent Vanity Fair profile, the most underrated creative director, moving to Paris after years in LA and New York, and the biggest open secret about the fashion world.

“Fuck, marry, kill: New York, Paris, LA.” - Emily

Kill New York. That’s easy. I’m never moving back. Bad weather. Too expensive (no matter how rich you are). Rats. New York is a drug, or a boyfriend who treats you like shit. Once you’re out, you realize how insane and unhelpful it was to be in it. But also like a bad boyfriend, it’s fun when you’re in your twenties.

As for fuck and marry? I’m undecided. Back to the boyfriend analogy, there are always two guys to choose between, right? Both of these places are marriage worthy. Paris feels great at the moment, but I am not committed either way—maybe we’ll be here for 2 years, maybe we’ll be here forever.

“What are you curious about right now that you have no professional reason to be curious about?” - Tatayana

I can make anything about work.

“With the current popularity of northeast kids going to Southern schools, do you foresee them bringing back much of that influence as they grow up and presumably return?” - Andrew

Here is something far more interesting to think about: There will not be college in 20 years.

“Do you ever fear potential backlash to what you might be publishing? How do you remain authentic in an industry that seems to value money and being in good favor over truth?” - Juliana

Read more

Today’s newsletter includes: The New York Times is launching a new podcast about New York City (it’s about time), tits are MAGA-coded, depressing news for fig lovers, depressing news for champagne lovers, a $6,000 matcha, is Biologique Recherche still the most coveted facial in New York, the fall campaign that stars Olivia Nuzzi, Nikki Ogunnaike-Fonzin, and Huma Abedin, and Kendall Jenner invests in magnesium.

What role does a homepage play in 2026?

Earlier this summer, I was hanging out with my friend Emmett Shine (whose design work you’ve seen at Harry’s, Air, Sweetgreen, Warby Parker…), when he pulled up a trailer for his agency Little Plains’s new site. It was the first time I can recall an agency dropping a trailer for a website. It got me thinking later that night about the changing role of the homepage (there was a parallel conversation about personal websites happening on Twitter this weekend), and even how startups work with design agencies post-2020 DTC boom.

Below is a conversation that Emmett and I had a few days ago that I though you guys would enjoy as we all enter back-to-school mindset. In typical Emmett fashion, it comes with some of his hand-drawn doodles. I like this inspiration guide on the Little Plains site.

Emily Sundberg: Talk to me about the importance of an agency website. How many new clients have you gotten from people discovering your work through the site?

Emmett Shine: “While most client service work comes from warm leads and referrals, you still often need to introduce yourself to the world. With your own website, you can control how you present yourself, your work, and what you want to be known for. You can’t always control how you are presented on platforms like Instagram or LinkedIn. With a website, you can. However, a big not-normal goal of our new site was to build what a website in 2026-2027 could be.

We wanted to push the envelope by showing how agentic technologies are allowing us to build more intelligent, conversational, personal, and fun websites. Most websites are like clickable PDF menus from a restaurant. Websites should feel alive, be dynamic, and respond to you. So we wanted to build the website we wanted to see. I love watching old sci-fi films of what digital interfaces will look like in the future. Remember the floating screens from Minority Report? Let’s build towards that.

Lastly, I hope we can self-select people who get how exciting our interfaces are about to become. Not just websites but all things digital. These curious users can look at the site and immediately know we speak this language, see where things are going, can build it, brand it, and communicate it. It’s a showcase, or like a bat signal over Gotham.”

ES: What role does an agency like Little Plains play in a brand launch in 2026?

ES: “Rollouts and launches are increasingly a big deal. In technology, it’s a double-edged sword. I love working with startups; they’re brilliant, ambitious, and not precious. The hard part is that they move extremely fast, and often challenge everything.

I’ve always positioned our work as a sushi knife, not a Swiss army knife - meaning we go deep in a specific area instead of trying to do everything. As launches become more important, we’ve had to evolve a bit.

That means not only sticking to what we’re great at—branding, websites, etc.—but increasingly having to help with positioning, go-to-market, and launch content.

We now try to be a strategic launch partner. For example, we have built a full-time in-house motion, asset, and animation team because launches today need so much content: a launch video, enough material for PR, comms, social, merch, and often out-of-home advertising.

Founders need something closer to a full rollout package than a single deliverable. Whether you’re in CPG or at a frontier tech company, showing you have a point of view—and can execute it confidently and cohesively—helps make you attractive to users, talent, and potential investors at once.”

ES: What’s the right fit and the wrong fit for a brand or founder looking to work with Little Plains?

ES: “We talk to everyone. I remember being an intern reaching out to studios myself, so I try to respond to every inquiry, every email. Some of the most successful projects I’ve worked on in my career were ones I wasn’t sure about at first. It’s a good habit to explore each opportunity that comes across your desk deeply.

If I’m honest about who ends up being the best fit, it’s people who value storytelling and design, are curious about interactivity, aren’t afraid of technology, and know this work is worth investing in.

At the end of the day, we’re telling human stories, whether that’s for skin care or machine learning.”

ES: What are some recent sources of inspiration (books, movies, runs) that have influenced your brand work? Can you point out specific examples?

ES: Sometimes I check in on meme accounts to see what’s trending. When people zig, it’s helpful to zag. Your inspiration has to come from weirder places. Almost nothing today is ‘offline,’ but you can find stuff that is less ‘online’; deeper cuts, b-sides, lost references, or combined unrelated ideas.

I always think of the Nas line, No idea’s original, there’s nothing new under the sun. It’s never what you do, but how it’s done.

Great artists steal; history doesn’t repeat itself, it rhymes. Etc. etc. We are social creatures; part of what makes being a human amazing is shared cultural experiences, some en masse, and some with a tiny niche audience you are a part of.

It’s a skill to find references, and it’s a skill to know how to apply them.

Some recent touchpoints for me:

Saul Bass’s archive and Jan Tschichold’s typography work for how disciplined and timeless good design can be.

Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows for how to deal with a changing technological landscape, and Stewart Brand’s book, The Maintenance of Everything for how I think about business and longevity.

I love vintage rave flyer archives, books like Antenne Publishing’s New York Rave Flyers. Xeroxed, hand assembled, zero rules, made by people often without formal training but who were having fun and speaking to a very insider-based community.

Cari Institute (Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute) is the greatest site on the web. Our team regularly goes diving into it during moodboarding sessions. Please go visit it and get wonderfully lost.

I spend a lot of sleepless nights buying weird things on ebay. I fall asleep and days or weeks later all these random dead-stock books or used hats arrive. Working so much in digital, I think I love surrounding myself with the patina of secondhand items.

Movies inspire me a lot. I watch a lot of old film trailers and film intros. I love the editing and the graphics of trailers and intros. I have hundreds of photos of film titles in my iPhone library. Every decade is an insight into the culture for that era.

I love film posters, especially illustrated ones, alternative posters, and ones made for different regions. I buy lots of vintage film merchandise. A logo for a film can be super 3D and full of motion on screen, then it has to be reduced down to one color embroidered on a hat. I love that.

Film soundtracks are incredible. I just read that Frozen was the biggest-selling album the year it came out, beating Taylor Swift’s 1989. I also listen to a lot of film scoring. I really like Daniel Lopatin.

I like campy films. I just rewatched Hackers, from 1995 starring a young Angelina Jolie. Parts of it are cheesy but a lot of the fashion, design, and soundtrack have stayed really relevant. My wife and I just watched the 2003 film View from the Top starring Gwenyth Paltrow, with Mark Ruffalo, Christina Applegate, Mike Meyers, and many more. It has a 13% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. No one knows about it. It is inadvertently very camp, with pretty great fashion, outfits, interiors, and design.

Films build immersive worlds that pull you in. The long tail of a great film extends into so many facets of modern life. Think of Disney. I like to draw inspiration from all this when building and launching brands. I like to make little worlds.

From the Feed Me Tip Line: A reader sent me a tip that The New York Times Metro desk is launching a new bi-weekly narrative podcast focused on New York City. To which I say, it’s about time. The show is in collaboration with Serial Productions, the production company behind the podcast Serial, which the Times acquired in 2020. The paper is hiring a Senior Multimedia Producer for the show who will also focus on all the extensions of the show – TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts (big investment in vertical video for social), and a newsletter. I wonder who’s hosting. Good opportunity to remind everyone that Subway Takes host Kareem Rahma used to be on staff at the Times.

“While we were pretending not to be looking, breasts had somehow become Republican-coded.” Did you know there were Make America Hot Again mixers occurring in New York City?

Argent’s latest campaign is studded with media stars like Olivia Nuzzi, Huma Abedin, Lindsay Peoples, Katie Couric, and Jennifer Siebel Newsom. If they got all these women in the same room for this shoot, it’s wildly impressive.

Kendall Jenner is now an investor in a calming magnesium drink called TRIP. I need one of those right now.

London- and Berlin-based architecture studio Casper Mueller (whose clients include Jil Sander and Celine) designed the new Biologique Recherche spa in Soho. Biologique Recherche used to be it — I remember feeling like a zillionaire when I went to Rescue Spa for the first time for a press day (for Glossier’s Solution in 2018), and seeing all of the Biologique products in the treatment room. I wonder what role the brand (and standalone spa) play in New York’s current esthetician landscape of Raquel’s and Sofie’s and Cynthia’s.

The once booming business of Kenyan college grads writing essays for American college students has gone bust. Thanks, AI.

The City is pushing to re-open Columbia’s College Walk, which has been closed to the public since October 2023, in response to protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. Residents of Morningside Heights previously sued the university to open its gates and its cut-through on West 116th Street from one side of the campus to the other, which has been closed to the public for nearly three years, the closure of which, they claimed, was a violation of a 1953 agreement between the school and the city. In a recent court filing to the New York Supreme Court, the Mamdani administration joined them in supporting reopening the pathway to the public.

Another new video podcast: The Atlantic announced a new show with David Brooks, the longtime former New York Times columnist who joined The Atlantic in February, called The Permanent Questions. It premieres this Sunday.

A sign that matcha has finally peaked: a $6,000 Judith Leiber embellished matcha clutch, that appears to be nodding to the Erewhon font.

💥💥💥 The world is ending:

• France’s 2026 champagne output is set to fall by almost half from last year as extreme weather (heat) batters yields. My recommendation for 2026 brides and holiday party hosts is to start getting curious about British sparkling wine. I had a few glasses at Andrew Edmunds with Louis Cheslaw last year and have been searching for it on menus since.

• Moms are bullying other moms for putting Oreos in their kids’ lunchboxes.

• Polymarket worked with podcaster Amanda Hirsch to encourage people to bet on the Lindsay Clancy murder trial. Hirsch quickly deleted the post, and posted a Notes App apology. Instances like this really make me wonder what people’s teams look like.

• It’s a dreadful year for figs. wrote an essay over the weekend about the horrors happening to this year’s fig crop – fermenting from the inside out, becoming homes for fly larvae, and overheating and dropping to the ground before ripening. Sorry to leave you with this news on your first day back from Labor Day Weekend.

If you need to get in touch, reply to this email or reach out to emily@readfeedme.com

Today’s newsletter is a London Edition of Feed Me. For those of you observing Labor Day, I hope you are spending very little time in your inbox. Perhaps this newsletter will inspire an autumn trip across the pond. London readers, hope you had a nice bank holiday last week.

To celebrate the end of summer (and beginning of fall), everything in the Feed Me Store is 30% off through the end of Labor Day. Use LDW30 at checkout. We ship to the UK.

Today’s newsletter includes: London’s 40+ best healers and beauty practitioners (according to Feed Me readers), Anglo-Italian’s new category, an interesting-looking media summit, Alex Eagle designed a hotel, a new personals column for Londoners who love restaurants, the New York designers opening London boutiques (with UK-exclusive styles), and a queer wine party.

Browsing and posting on the Feed Me Job Board is free. This week, there are roles from hiring teams at Bumble, Warby Parker, and AppLovin.

FEED ME JOB BOARD

The London Beauty and Wellness Black Book, According to UK Feed Me Readers.

Earlier this month, I emailed a group of UK-based Feed Me readers to help me assemble a comprehensive guide to the best healers, injectors, masseuses, colorists, and facialists in London. The reason I wanted names of people and not just names of practices or spas is because I was looking for clients who actually know the names of the people taking care of them.

The final list includes 40+ contributions from , , , , and a self-proclaimed bon vivant who works in tech. The guide includes life-changing facials, an Ayurvedic tea shaman, afro hair treatments that “big names” fly in for, a psychic that left one woman’s mouth hanging open, Hugh Grant’s gym, a doctor for post-breakup acne, the injector who all the fashion girls see, and a nail tech that one reader’s 91-year-old grandmother sees for medical pedicures.

FACIALS AND SKIN

Abi Titterington Lough (Hackney)

“Abi Titterington Lough in Hackney. A facial with Abi will change your life. A sweet Scottish angel doing amazing things in a gorgeous apothecary space hidden at the top of a warehouse conversion in Dalston. Come for the facial and reiki, stay for the snacks, homemade iced tea and tarot cards. My skin has never looked better since meeting Abi — the bespoke oils she makes for each season and mood are magic in a bottle. Book via Instagram DM at least a month in advance, sometimes more.” - Jillian, academic

Millie (Central London)

“Millie is the first Facialist — yes, with capitalised F — who’s actually worked with my skin first rather than with a cosmetics brand. She has never once tried to sell me a six-step routine and £100 of supplements. I usually go once every 1-2 months for a bespoke facial and we decide what we’re treating on the day; before my wedding in June we did a course of microneedling and exosomes, and next up is laser and PDRN under the eyes. She also puts you in Therabody compression boots for the treatment, so your legs get sorted while she works on your face. The clinic is a proper little sanctuary in central London — high ceilings, tasteful interiors, none of that clinical-white-and-orchid thing. Book directly with Millie at the clinic, well in advance, or online via Fresha / WhatsApp.” - Marta, Brand Strategist

Pandora Long (Chelsea)

“I’ve done microneedling in a couple of places, but this is the only salon where I saw the difference. I heard The Glow treatment is wonderful as well. She’s WhatsApp only and has long waiting lists, but you can still get in.” - Kristina Spencer

Julia Hart (Marylebone)

“Julia Hart single-handedly healed my acne. I’ve been seeing her for 3 years now, every few months. Julia is very techy with her many forms of apparatus, but she’s also pro natural and uses anti-invasive treatments. She’s also super thoughtful, extremely knowledgeable and caters entirely to you, beyond just the skin, offering her smarts on women’s health more generally and hormones particularly e.g. which supplements to focus your attention on, and what goes on in your diet and gut too.” - , editor and host

Read more

To celebrate the end of summer (and beginning of fall), everything in the Feed Me Store is 30% off through the end of Labor Day. Use LDW30 at checkout.

HATS: $20 → $14

NALGENES: $30 → $21

CREWNECKS: $75→ $52

AND MORE!!!!

SHOP THE SALE

Last night I went to a parody play of Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network called Dammit, Mark! that a group of Morning Brew employees put on at Caveat. It was wacky and well-produced and made me deeply miss the camaraderie and inside jokes that office coworkers provide. One big target of Morning Brew’s ridicule was Aaron Sorkin, and his skill (or lack thereof) in writing the movie’s female characters and sexy scenes with his signature weapons-grade cringe. Morning Brew really seems to have cast the perfect group of employees for a media business in 2026 — writers and video creators and producers who have magnetic personalities that make readers/viewers excited when a new piece of content (or a play) drops. I was excited to see some Feed Me readers there who found out about the play from one of our recent event roundups. And I think Caveat sells the most affordable Ghia spritz in the city ($8).

Afterwards, I stopped by Toriya (which is open until midnight for future reference) for a quick bowl of udon and a yakitori skewer. (It was a night of skewers - first Aaron Sorkin, then chicken thigh.) I walked downtown past Seward Park where teenagers played ping-pong with seniors, while groups of sweaty couples who looked like they were on first dates sat on the benches, watching the game and talking with their hands. One man sang karaoke into a machine. I ended up at my friend Alex’s birthday party at Cellar 36, where I bumped into some old friends I hadn’t seen all summer. Everyone was pouring each other glasses of wine from magnum bottles, half listening to stories about vacation and fall plans and half observing all of New York’s characters who started snapping back into place in the city. On a walk to get coffee at Daytime this morning, I noticed how different the morning light looked than a few weeks ago.

Today’s newsletter includes: A new dating app for people who read books, an Alison Roman book talk, GQ’s new Senior Editor, ask Lauren Sherman anything, people are snorting caffeine for energy, an $105 million house inspired by one of life’s greatest pleasures (hand and cheese 🥪), and Labor Day Weekend merch discounts for paid readers!

For our next Guest Lecture, paid readers can ask Puck fashion correspondent Lauren Sherman anything they want. Get your questions in ahead of New York Fashion Week.

Read more

Today’s newsletter includes: Public Records heads to Manhattan, the loudest U.S. Open ever, interviews hotelier and filmmaker Eric Goode, New York Magazine is expanding their podcast offerings, and Los Tacos No. 1 is about to expand with fresh cash.

"I was a closeted reptile guy in New York City for decades." By .

Stay Tuned is a Feed Me guest column about film and entertainment, written by Teddy Kim. Today, he interviewed Eric Goode.

Long before he created Tiger King, before he opened legendary establishments like the Bowery Hotel, Waverly Inn, and ‘80s nightclub Area, Eric Goode became obsessed with reptiles. He started keeping them as pets as a kid and has devoted at least part of his life since to their safe-keeping. Goode’s new five-part HBO series Monsters of God (the final episode drops tonight) is about the fascinating world of illegal reptile smuggling, its connections with drug trafficking, and the colorful characters and creatures at the center of it all. I watched the doc knowing nothing at all about reptiles, except for a short stint owning two turtles as a kid. But for all its craziness, there’s an irresistible charm to the main characters and a universality to the subculture. If you have a niche obsession these days, you might end up spending an inordinate amount of time on the relevant subreddit. Monsters of God gives us a look into a past where instead of hanging out on internet forums, people are going to reptile conventions in Florida, cold-calling sketchy reptile dealers across the world, and doing copious amounts of drugs, all before the feds bust down your door.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Teddy Kim: You’ve been into reptiles since you were a kid?

Eric Goode: My parents made the mistake of giving me a pet tortoise when I was six, and then I was hooked. I started keeping all kinds of reptiles and collecting them, and that went on for years, into high school. I lived in a room with tortoises and lizards and snakes. I never shook the bug completely. There were times I went off to college, I went to New York and started doing other things, but reptiles were always in the back of my mind. I was a closeted reptile guy in New York City for decades.

TK: When did it cross over into your professional work, on the conservancy side and the filmmaking side both?

EG: I always loved, and always tried to figure out, how to mix science with art, since I was a kid. Just how to be creative. That’s what drew me to New York City, the art world in the late 1970s and into the ‘80s. I always tried to find a combination of how to merge the two, and one way or another I always did, whether it was a nightclub or a hotel or even a restaurant. I’d have a huge aquarium with pig-nosed turtles in it. I always somehow had to include my interest in reptiles or wildlife.

Ultimately I started an organization called the Turtle Conservancy in the early 2000s, and that was when I’d reached a point in my life where I had some resources from some successes in New York in the hospitality business, opening and running restaurants and hotels, and I started really thinking about how to give back. I realized how endangered turtles and tortoises were.

TK: What was the first seed of Monsters of God?

EG: Reading the book The Lizard King, in 2008. That book by Bryan Christy was really inspiring to me. It’s a cat-and-mouse story mainly focused on Strictly Reptiles, the biggest wholesale reptile dealer in the United States, the Van Nostrand family, and I was very familiar with them. I’d been a patron of those dealers. I bought reptiles when I was younger. Not in big numbers, and I wasn’t buying illegal reptiles, or at least not that I knew of. What I wasn’t familiar with was all the ins and outs of law enforcement, the trouble they were getting into, the prison sentences. That was the revelation. I tried to buy the rights after it was published, unsuccessfully. I low-balled it.

Over the years I flirted with the idea of doing a documentary about the reptile world, but I think the inspiration came from that book. Everyone told me I was crazy. “How would you do a documentary about a subject like this without getting killed?” Eventually I started filming with these young filmmakers called the Safdie brothers, and that started in 2014. So it’s been about twelve years, off and on, to make Monsters of God.

TK: How did you start working with the Safdies? Had they made Daddy Longlegs by that point?

EG: A friend of mine helped them fund Daddy Longlegs. They were young guys in New York trying to find their way in the film world. I would hire them to film different people holding turtles for turtle PSAs: Slash, or Christopher Walken, or Parker Posey, Liev Schreiber. Matt Dillon. Richard Branson holding a turtle. Then we made a short together called The Trophy Hunter, which was this crazy film about the wildlife trade that we shot in an apartment in New York with all kinds of taxidermy.

TK: How much work did it take to get your subjects to talk with you on camera?

EG: Access is the thing you need more than anything to make the kind of documentary I make. Are they willing to talk? You just have to realize some people will never talk to you, and you have to be incredibly patient. That’s partly why this took twelve years. Some people didn’t want to talk for two, three years and then finally changed their minds.

TK: How much did the scope of the doc and the story change as you went along? For example, one of your central subjects, Ray, has Alzheimer’s and can’t remember the things you need to ask him about. How did you work around that?

EG: I was acutely aware that the players from the sixties and seventies and eighties were aging out and dying off. Bill Haast, who ran the Serpentarium, that famous snake show near Miami, died a number of years ago. Ray Van Nostrand died during the making of Monsters of God, and he was struggling with dementia and Alzheimer’s. Tom Crutchfield is getting older. Hank Molt is in his eighties today and he’s not in the best of health.

So it was now or never. If I didn’t do this story now, there’d never be a time to do it.

TK: Watching it, I couldn’t help but understand where most of them were coming from. They’re driven by some passion for the animals, and that for all the trouble they get into they can’t help themselves. Tom, or Mike, who sets up this genuinely successful legitimate business and then gets pulled back in.

EG: You mean almost like an addiction. The pathology is similar to art collecting, or antique car collecting. You want the status of having that rare piece, the very rare Ming vase, or whatever it might be in whatever culture you come from. You want the thing everyone’s going to brag about. It gets boring only selling green iguanas. They’re everywhere in Florida. You want the thing that’s going to give you some kind of status.

So people take these crazy risks to get animals that are forbidden, and they do it and do it and think they can get away with it, and eventually they get caught. It’s chronic in the reptile world. People go to prison, they go to prison again, they go again. Tom went a number of times. Mike Van Nostrand went a number of times. His father went.

Listen, I even have that pathology. I find it really exciting to see a reptile I’ve never seen before. Now, will I go and smuggle it? No. But I understand the pathology.

TK: Have there been boom-and-bust cycles in this market?

EG: Absolutely. There are trends and fads, and some are spawned by pop culture. You’ll have a movie like Jurassic Park and everyone wants a bearded dragon. Or Finding Nemo, and everyone wants a clownfish. Or Harry Potter, and everyone wants a baby owl. They call them Harry Potter birds. And then there are fads that happen naturally, where suddenly everyone wants an albino ball python, and then people get tired of that and go on to the next thing.

The sad part is they’re like disposable pets. People buy something, they’re excited for a year or two, they get a rush keeping it, and then they move on to the next dopamine rush of whatever species they haven’t seen before. You don’t see that when someone buys a dog. You actually fall in love with your dog. You don’t go out and exchange it for a new dog. In the reptile world it’s a little bit like whatever the most delicious flavor is at that moment.

TK: What’s the trending flavor right now, legal or illegal?

EG: It’s always whatever you can’t get. The illegal flavor is the most delicious flavor for many people. They want what’s forbidden, they want what nobody else has, the bragging rights. A Fiji Island iguana, which is taboo in this country unless you’re a bona fide zoo. Ploughshare tortoises. There’s a very bizarre reptile called a tuatara from New Zealand. It’s not even really a lizard, it’s in its own class.

In the nineties, everyone in this country wanted a green iguana. Today there are laws forbidding you from having one, because there are too many running amok in Florida. Burmese pythons are banned for good reason, because they’re taking over the Everglades.

TK: Has the problem of illegal reptile smuggling gotten worse as the world’s become more globalized? In the doc, you see young American kids sending faxes to reptile traffickers in Malaysia. Today, would I just send someone a WhatsApp? Could I order it off Alibaba? What does it look like today?

EG: Asia and China took a page out of our playbook about 25 years ago. Historically there was consumption of certain reptiles there, yes, and traditional medicine involving turtle shells, and that’s been going on for thousands of years. What Asia learned from the West is that it’s cool to keep reptiles as pets, that it’s cool to have a rare tortoise as a status symbol. And because Asia and China combined are so much bigger than Europe and the US, the trade going to that part of the world is enormous.

I don’t want to vilify that part of the world, by the way. We’ve done tremendous damage in our own. But the reptile trade is probably bigger than it’s ever been. Fifty years ago the hobby was mostly Europe, the United States, and Japan.

TK: So the direction of the trade has reversed.

EG: Don’t be mistaken, there are still illegal reptiles coming into this country. But what’s new over the last ten years is the animals leaving. That never happened before, and now it’s happening on an enormous scale. Enormous numbers of our native turtles are leaving our shores for Europe and Asia.

I get confiscations [at the Turtle Conservancy] almost on a monthly basis, hundreds and hundreds of native turtles we have to take in. I just got a confiscation two weeks ago of 500 turtles that were sent to Singapore in FedEx boxes. They were confiscated in Singapore, sent back here, and now I have half of them where I am right now.

At LAX, of everything confiscated over the last three years, 50% were marine species: coral, invertebrates, abalone. The other 50% was almost entirely turtles, going out to largely Asian countries — China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, Jakarta, Bangkok — and Europe. But I don’t want to suggest one part of the world is worse than another. We’re all complicit.

TK: Even on the legal side, the reptile trade looks like the Wild West in the doc, with all these independent operators and colorful characters at reptile conventions. Is it still like that? Or are there new rules and regulations in place?

EG: When you look at all the different sides of this — law enforcement, the dealers, the consumers — there are a lot of great intentions and a lot of unintended consequences.

You create a law, or you put a species on the Endangered Species Act, and then you go to Jakarta or Hong Kong and they’re using that very law as a selling point. “This is on the Endangered Species Act, it’s on CITES, we want to sell it for more money. This is special.” So the laws sometimes backfire and turn into a marketing tool. You’d think elevating the scarcity of an animal would make people more conscientious: better take care of that one, better not buy it. But it’s the opposite. When something becomes rare, people want it and pay more for it. Being protected accelerates the value and makes the animal more vulnerable. In some cases the laws work. In some cases they really backfire.

TK: The Gila monster comes up in the series, and everyone’s talking about Gila monsters lately because that’s where the GLP-1 drugs came from. Are pharma companies suddenly interested in these animals to find the next Ozempic?

EG: The Gila monster is one of the only venomous lizards in the world, and it happens to live in the United States, in Mexico, a little in Guatemala. That’s the only place they live. And yes, that drug originally came from Gila monsters. Obviously now they make a synthetic version. There are other drugs that come from cobra venom that help with muscle issues in humans, and God knows what else might come from reptiles.

That’s a compelling reason to think we should revere these animals and save them, so that the next amazing drug might come from one of them. Reptiles have been vilified. People are scared of snakes and want to kill snakes, when it may be the very thing that saves you from some kind of cancer and you don’t even know it. There’s a lot of ignorance on display. We are, by the way, the monsters of God in this story, not the reptiles.

***

New releases this weekend: By Any Means opens wide this weekend, featuring a mafia hitman (Mark Wahlberg) and a young black FBI agent (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) assigned to work together to solve the murders of civil rights leaders in Jim Crow-era Mississippi. A sort of Green Book meets The Sopranos. I’m personally excited for this one because I remember when this was floating around almost a decade ago as an unproduced script (when it was titled CI-34) back when I was an agency assistant. We’re also getting Onslaught, the new action-horror from A24, which stars Adria Arjona as an Army sniper who has to protect her daughter from genetically engineered soldiers. It’s a great example of the kind of movie A24 probably wouldn’t have made even five years ago (a commercial action shooter), before it made the decision to go after more commercial projects.

We’re also entering the stretch when the rest of the movie year comes into Focus. The Venice FIlm Festival started yesterday and runs through September 12. Telluride opens tomorrow through Monday. TIFF starts next Thursday and New York Film Festival a few weeks later, on September 25. NYFF just announced that Luca Guadagnino’s OpenAI movie, Artificial — which was controversially dropped by Amazon when it was near completion and subsequently picked up by Neon — will have its world premiere at the festival.

It’s free to post and browse on the Feed Me Job Board. This week, it was used by hiring companies at Warby Parker, NBCUniversal, and The Lede Company.

FEED ME JOB BOARD

New York Magazine appears to be cooking up a new audio and video podcast strategy. This week, they posted a job listing for a Director of Podcasts, who will “identify the most promising opportunities across our editorial brands, develop original franchises, and build a sustainable slate of shows that extend the reach and impact of New York Magazine across audio and video platforms.” New York Magazine’s podcast strategy was always small – I really enjoyed listening to The Cut on Tuesdays that Molly Fischer hosted back in 2018, and Vulture’s Good One has been going strong since 2017. But podcasts always seemed like Vox’s thing post-New York Magazine acquisition. I always thought a New York Magazine New York City version of The Daily would do well, or a ten-part interview series between Jerry Saltz and artists. Excited to see what they work on.

Is the U.S. Open more valuable to New York City than the Knicks? Good headline. The NYT article compares the economic impact and fan attendance of the U.S. Open to New York’s other major sporting events. The U.S. Open brings in $1.2 billion annually (this summer’s World Cup tallied a projected impact of $3.5 billion in the metro area, but comes to New York only once a generation) and now regularly welcomes 1 million+ attendees (43% from outside NYC, including 8% from other countries). Writes the Times: “With its unique combination of high-end clientele and huge attendance — a record 1.14 million fans went last year — the U.S. Open boasts both the aristocratic spending power of a polo match with the populist volume of an N.F.L. franchise.”

Speaking of the U.S. Open, a section usher said Arthur Ashe Stadium is louder this year than he’s heard it in 25 years. Could be the chatty influencers, could be attendees reviewing the COQDOQ chicken nuggets, but it could just be general poor etiquette. From a Friend of Feed Me: “Yesterday afternoon, I saw a chair umpire reprimand some influencers in the stands at a small court for taking selfies with flashes during a crucial tiebreak point, pissing both players off.”

Los Tacos No. 1, which I really thought was the most brilliant place to suggest to 24-year-old bankers I met on Hinge while I was in college in 2015, just took an investment from TSG Consumer. I really liked their sauce counter and unlimited limes. TSG Consumer’s portfolio includes Pura Vida, Crumbl, and Stumptown Coffee.

Gowanus bar/nightclub Public Records is opening an 11,000-square-foot extension in The Seaport. After reading this in Tribeca Citizen, I scrolled down to the comments and learned that Luis Vazquez, who runs a newsletter-type of thing in a Facebook Group called FiDi Fan Page (cool use of FB Groups), reported this back in April. Rumor is the new location will be in 219 Water Street, which has been vacant for decades. A liquor license was filed in July for that address under the name Village of Wolves, which is a trademark owned by Public Records. I think this is exciting for the neighborhood, which has great food, lots of office space, and is easily accessible by train, car, and… ferry! Boat to the club is kind of sick.

If you need to get in touch, reply to this email or reach out to emily@readfeedme.com

Writing to you this morning from the LIRR. The theme I gave myself for my first set of fall reading is “books by people who work/ed in media.” I ordered a copy of Scribble Scribble (Nora Ephron’s collection of essays about the media that she wrote for an Esquire column) per the recommendation of Olivia Nuzzi. I went to a thrift store in East Hampton yesterday and found a copy of Save Me the Plums, by Ruth Reichl, and a book called The Potato Book, which I decided was on-theme because the forward was written by Truman Capote. Reading Capote’s description of eating a hot baked potato from a field in Sagaponack, covered in sour cream, on a chilly October morning, made me shiver in my straight-from-the-dryer $4 Chico’s sweater (that I also got from the thrift store). If you have books that you’d recommend in this category, please leave them below or shoot me an email.

Today’s newsletter includes: Chloe Malle on what newsletters she actually reads on Substack, Puck gets into the video podcast game, OpenAI hired an Unwell alumni, a scoop on David Protein’s Series B, a potential reason for Cameron Winter and Olivia Rodrigo’s dinner, ’s New York store, and a back-to-school AI ban in New York City.

It’s free to browse and post on the Feed Me Job Board. This week, it was used by hiring teams at Ramp, Rent the Runway, and Hearst.

FEED ME JOB BOARD

Guest Lecture: Chloe Malle

This interview is part of a Feed Me feature called Guest Lecture. In this series, I introduce you all to an expert who I’m curious about, and give paid readers an opportunity to ask them anything they want. Past guests have included Jeremy O. Harris, Brenda Hashtag, and Recho Omondi.

This week Chloe Malle, Vogue’s Head of Editorial Content, answers your questions about running a magazine in 2026, what newsletters she reads on Substack, how she thinks about the role print plays today, and what she’d wear to dinner if “not a soul” would care.

“How do you see the future of print at your company? Lifestyle journalism (including fashion) has really faced increasing competition from social media, blogs, YouTube, etc., and people have been talking about the “death of magazines” for a long time. At the same time, there is still a strong appetite for news, and some news organizations have managed to build very successful business models through things like paid subscriptions. What do you think the future looks like for lifestyle journalism? (More events? More opportunities to meet and engage with readers? Or is there even a future for lifestyle journalism??)” - Emelie

I actually think it’s a golden age for telling stories, people are hungry for narrative and point of view and now they can consume them in so many different formats, we need to be fluent in all of them. Print is still incredibly important to Vogue, but I want each issue to feel meaningful and collectible–my goal is that if someone buys Vogue at the airport to read on a flight, they’ll think twice before leaving it on the plane because the issue feels like something you want to keep (both physically—we’ve made the paper heavier—and editorially).

A big part of the future is also building a deeper, stronger connection with our audience, whether that’s through our book club, subscriber events, The Run Through podcast, social media, or by encouraging our writers and editors to lean into their own idiosyncratic and niche passions such as birdwatching or photographing a group of appealing arborists in Central Park.

It’s been really exciting to see The Run Through grow in particular. The show is a great example of how our different platforms speak to each other: a print story will come to life with a podcast interview, that interview will live on YouTube, and we’ll run clips across social. I love co-hosting with Chioma [Nnadi] and Nicole [Phelps], and getting to involve some of our other editors and writers too.

“This is SO fun! I’ve been a big fan of Chloe’s newsletter, Malle Wear. One of the things I love about it is how relatable it is - like her talking about her kids and sharing pictures from family vacations. I’m really curious about her strategy - Vogue has always been the pinnacle of ‘can’t sit with us’ vibes, but is she trying to make Vogue more relatable?” - Michelle

Thank you Michelle! I am so happy with how readers have been responding to Malle Wear! I think every editor—at any title—brings their own personality and point of view to the role, and that the most effective way to lead is to be as true to yourself as possible because people smell a rat otherwise.

People ask about this a lot—“how can Vogue stay aspirational if you are making it more relatable?”—but I actually don’t find those two qualities to be in competition. I remember reading the 2003 issue of Vogue featuring the Grace Coddington-Annie Leibovitz-Alice in Wonderland fantasy with Natalia Vodianova and being totally transported, and then a few pages later reading a reported piece on how T-shirts were the chicest Christmas gift of the season. I want Vogue to embrace whimsy and fantasy but I also want people to connect to it in a variety of ways, whether that is me mentioning seeing Minions & Monsters with my children in Malle Wear or Tyler Mitchell and Carlos Nazario describing their epic fashion shoot across Texas on the podcast. Vogue will remain aspirational, but I always want audiences to feel warmly welcomed into its pages. And I’ve always been interested in having a dialogue with our readers – what fun is it if you can’t?

I want there to be fashion, of course, but also culture, lifestyle, and ideas. I often think of longtime Vogue editor Edna Woolman Chase’s edict that Vogue presented “the outward and visible graces of a civilized way of life, the arts of gracious living.” What that meant to her in the ’40s and ’50s is likely quite different from what it means to me, but to me that confirms why we commission an illustrated series of NYC chefs’ favorite farmers’ market vendors to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the NYC Greenmarket or photograph the beach bags of the season with our favorite new novels or feature the bubblegum pink Mario Buatta-inspired interiors of the LA home of our sex columnist . It’s also important to me that Vogue has a wry sense of humor about what we do.

We are the fashion authority, but fashion is better–I believe–when not taken too seriously. Our team has been bitten by the scarf dressing bug inspired by Celine’s fall collection. In addition to a variety of trend and shopping stories, we enlisted a beautiful Afghan hound, Samantha, to model the many ways you can style silk scarves for this year’s installment of Dogue [Vogue’s dog-themed edition].

“Who are some people in the culture who you (not advertisers) find appealing for Vogue right now?” - Lindy

Read more

Today’s newsletter includes: A Feed Me party for paid readers this month, an exclusive on a Substack consulting agency from two former Substack employees, a Poconos hotel with heart-shaped tubs is for sale, WSJ’s new style columnist, the pop star recording her next album at WSA, Blank Street’s co-founder on that big raise, and I’m curious about The Marlton Hotel’s new chef.

Blank Street raised $105 million in fresh cash to focus on their West Coast expansion. Blank Street now has more than 100 stores, mostly in London and New York, and, says the FT, the company plans to open new branches in “wealthy California enclaves, including Beverly Hills, West Hollywood and Malibu, according to co-founder Issam Freiha.” I texted Issam this morning for a comment about the new investment: “We’re still so early in the Blank Street journey, and this investment gives us the opportunity to keep raising the bar across our spaces, products and hospitality experience, while bringing Blank Street to new cities around the world.”

Chez Nous, the restaurant at The Marlton Hotel, has a new Executive Chef. Sean Froedtert cooked at Buvette, Via Carota, and Manuela before joining the Greenwich Village restaurant owned by star literary agent, David Kuhn. The Marlton is one of the great late-night bars and places to co-work when you don’t know where else to go in the city, and I haven’t spent enough time at Chez Nous, or with the Cecily Brown mural painted directly onto the wall in the back room. Looking forward to trying Chef Froedtert’s New York Strip for Two with “requisite” steakhouse sides.

Read more

It was a bit overcast for a while here yesterday, so I listened to parts one and two of Amy Odell’s podcast about the Olsen twins and how The Row turned into a billion-dollar business. It was worth paying to get behind the paywall.

I drove by Pierre’s in Bridgehampton the other night and wondered what the glowing lights above the overpriced white tablecloth restaurant were. Does someone live above Pierre’s? Do they get a discount on the $22 yogurt parfait served in a martini glass? Can they eavesdrop on all of the gossiping groups of women who I wish Andy Cohen would give a show? The answer to all of these questions is no, because the answer to the glowing lights is Pierre’s Upstairs, a private-event space with the most not-written-with-AI website I’ve seen all summer. The description (best read in a French accent) just lists concepts: “Intimate - Business - Comfortable - Classy- Reunion - Privacy - Exclusive - Elegant - Media Room - Discrete - Seminar - Dress Code - Rehearsal Dinner - Happy Valentine - Anniversary - Family Affairs - Halloween - Private Party - Real Friends.” Incredible.

Today’s newsletter includes: my journey to find the best electrolytes on the market, an exclusive on ’s new business, some positive news for GQ after that rough Semafor newsletter last night, nobody on Wall Street wants to be bald, bad merch of the day, Ring’s latest influencer-filled campaign, a dramatic weekend for food media startup Caper, Chobani is 14 years late to the frozen yogurt game, and the Galliano exhibit at The Met is canceled.

Niche hydration news. I was in the Mercury office last week, where I discovered a new electrolyte brand that I didn’t remember the name of. It led to a lot of wrong guesses by X users and Mercury employees, but one of their engineers saved the day: the brand is ION.

Parking spots in Park Slope are going for $250k—and listing on Compass and Zillow. “THIS IS A PARKING SPOT FOR SALE, NOT A STUDIO APARTMENT” the listing forewarns. No, you can’t live in it. (Unless you want to illegally park your Unimog Build and camp in Park Slope.) Yes, you have to pay $400 a month in common charges. The pitch is that if you own a primo townhouse in the neighborhood, you’re upping the value of your resale by being able to throw in an indoor parking spot nearby. This and the Stickers of Shame are making me think we have an NYC parking crisis coming to a head.

Read more

Today’s newsletter includes: LA residents aren’t happy about Ballerina Farm ice cream coming to town, shares more about her new West Coast store, a 15-year-old is running for governor, nightclubs are banning Meta Glasses and those who wear them, Granola (the AI company) made granola (the crunchy yogurt topping), and on The Grill.

“There is a misconception that The Grill is absurdly expensive.” By .

Expense Account is a series on Feed Me by semi-anonymous restaurant critic J Lee. He hosts a podcast with the same name, which is back next month! This week, he wrote about The Grill, and while the headline might sound like rage bait, he’s formed a solid case.

No one talks about The Grill. No one writes about The Grill. The Grill does not get the respect it deserves. It rarely makes a list. Somehow The Grill has become underrated, underappreciated, underrepresented. I won’t say that The Grill is the best restaurant in New York City (but it’s certainly up there), the coolest restaurant in New York City, or even the most glamorous restaurant in New York City, but in my opinion The Grill is the most fabulous restaurant in New York City. It’s a restaurant that feels as if it’s made of air, and sterling silver. It’s shiny and it’s essential.

The Four Seasons is the bygone New York restaurant I most wish I could have eaten at. It opened on East 52nd Street in 1959, with a space designed as a collaboration between Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson. Watch The Throne for lovers of midcentury modern architecture. The space lives up to any and all expectations. Time magazine reported that when it opened, it employed “5 chefs and bakers and a battalion of 125 cummerbunded captains, waiters, wine stewards, barmen and busboys.” New York had never known glamour like this. It was said that the “power lunch” was invented at the Four Seasons restaurant. Powerful people eating, networking, closing deals, and drinking multiple martinis in the middle of the work day. For years it was the peak of design, luxury, and fine dining, in a city full of design, luxury, and fine dining. If Don Draper were real, I’m sure he’d have found himself at The Four Seasons regularly. I’m sure he’d have blacked out there on occasion. But times change, the world changed. Money, power, and the power lunch moved downtown. After years of struggling, and a few changes-of-hand, The Four Seasons closed for good in 2016. Then in came Major Food Group, and hot off their success opening Carbone, they took on the iconic space, as a challenge, and their biggest project to date. They restored the space to its former glory, tweaking things just enough, giving it their patented Major Food Group flair, and $30 million later, they opened The Grill in 2017, with a revamped menu inspired by the classic American chophouse, with a little bit of Southern and Creole flair. Pete Wells gave The Grill three stars, and called it “Confident, Theatrical, Sharp and New Yorky.” (The Pool, a twin restaurant they opened simultaneously, in the Pool Room, did not fare as well; MFG now uses The Pool exclusively for private events, almost every day of the week.) It’s been nine years now, and you can get an early or late reservation at The Grill almost any night of the week.

Read more

Today’s newsletter includes: A New York Times podcast scoop, Kylie Jenner wants to start a newsletter on Substack, Coney Island bachelor parties, Puck’s $250 million valuation, on strange theatrical marketing, and $5 chicken biscuits.

A walk down Super Size Me memory lane. By

Stay Tuned is a Feed Me guest column about film and entertainment, written by Teddy Kim.

Strange things are happening in theatrical marketing. Chris Hansen reportedly bought pre-show advertising for his streaming network TruBlue to run ahead of every screening of the upcoming Lance Oppenheim/Robert Pattinson film, Primetime, which is based on Hansen and his old show To Catch a Predator. Although he was apparently not able to put in an explicit disclaimer about the movie itself, I have to imagine the effect might be similarly deflating: a reminder of the “real” figure just before you see the movie version of the man and the story.

Read more