Alex Jones got more views last night than CNN did last month.
"Just another nail in the coffin."
Good morning everyone. A reminder that the Feed Me job board is updated daily — there are new roles at Perelel, Zola, and Dear Media this week.
Today’s letter includes: some great restaurant criticism, Conde Nast is allegedly cracking down on staff having their own Substacks, Paige Lorenze is leveling up her campaigns, and 500K people tuned in to watch Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes debate on X.
Two things about
(COQODAQ, Cote)’s newsletter today:First, I adore her illustrated header by Joana Avillez.
Second, she pointed out a secret door into New York restaurant history that devoured about an hour of my morning. Today, she wrote about her upcoming hospitality project – a several-story restaurant opening next year at 550 Madison, the former home of The Quilted Giraffe. I’d never heard of this opulent and slightly naughty uptown restaurant (they had handcuffs for those who wanted to eat caviar with only their mouth) that would clearly be all over social media today.
I decided to peer into the New York Magazine and New York Times archives to see what Gael Greene and Marian Burros had thought of the place. I encourage anyone on here who writes about restaurants to read more of these two women for criticism that goes way deeper than just “vibes” – they write about real things like the flakiness of tart crust, the ballet (Michael Grynbaum taught me this term) that is restaurant service, and the complexity of wine menus.
Here’s what Burros wrote about The Quilted Giraffe for the Times in 1984:
“I have only one serious quarrel with Mr. Wine, and it is over the cigars he often hands out at the end of dinner. Unfortunately, it is not the end of everyone's dinner. Encouraging anyone to smoke a cigar in the presence of such glorious food is unforgivable.”
Greene visited The Quilted Giraffe in 1992. “God or even Buddha is in the details. The ultimate brass salt shaker, weighty as a butcher’s mallet. The silver water pitcher, so heavy waiters here need no steroids to build their biceps,” she wrote. Her dining partner said, “If I were going into Chapter 11 tomorrow, I’d choose this for my last meal.”
I wish I could eat there, but if building a time machine to the 90s isn’t an option, Victoria’s new project could be the next best thing.
Other items in this issue of New York include Martin Scorsese closing his New York office, OG New York merch, and lots of Parliament ads.
Amazon is paying The New York Times $20mm/year – about 1% of NYT’s 2024 revenue – to license their “news and cooking products, along with its sports property, the Athletic.” According to WSJ, Amazon can use the material to train AI models and feature summaries of Times content in its products and services, including Alexa.
Speaking of The New York Times Cooking section, they’re hiring a new creative director.
Shower head filter company Jolie fired shots at the new Skims face sculpting wrap. If they think putting a large sock over your head is hard, they should see what’s been happening under our clothes with bras and shapewear all this time. As one person commented on my LinkedIn about my confusion around this post, “I don't think they care about Skims. I think they care about attention, and they know shit-posting about Skims will get them that engagement. (Also, wait... beauty shouldn't make you wrap your face up, but it SHOULD make you pull out your tool belt, wrench off your current shower head, install a whole new shower head... make it make sense.)”
