Good afternoon, everyone.
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, Panayiota Soutis on the London burger spot starting a scene, details on Cat Cohen’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.
I love to hate it but I’m the one who ate it. By Panayiota Soutis
This week on Feed Me, we’re observing Smashion Week — a weeklong celebration of burgers, smash and otherwise. Today, London-based editor Panayiota Soutis (who writes The Goal is to Eat) 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 find the triple nozzle condiment bottle squirting three blobs onto a bun, and then the next, and the next, rhythmically enchanting.”
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.