Everyone wants in on rich people web traffic.
It's a good summer for "wealth and power" correspondents.
Good afternoon, everyone.
Today in Feed Me: Newspapers know you want to click on stories about how rich people live, Brooklyn is getting another bathhouse-slash-members-club, a D.C. hotel offering pool passes during this week’s heat wave, a waterfront Brooklyn mansion hits the market, the marketing agency plagiarizing one of Substack’s bestselling business newsletters, and Legionnaires’ Disease is coming for New York museums.
Have a tip for me? Reply to this email or text the Feed Me Tip Line: 1 (646) 494-3916
Everything this month in the Hamptons is a pop-up:
🍝 The Surf Lodge is hosting a Thursday night dinner series with New York restaurants like Cafe Spaghetti and Fish Cheeks.
💦 VUUM is taking over Fuze House Montauk on July 25th.
☀️ Henri, Claudent, and Gewls are hosting a trunk show at French Presse in Amagansett from July 17 - July 19. I bought this set from Claudent last month and have worn it six times already.
🍦 Alec’s Ice Cream is making jam and toast pie à la mode at Jamagansett in Amagansett from July 18 - 19.
⭐ Attersee – the fashion brand founded by former T Magazine editor Isabel Wilkinson Schor – is hosting a pre-fall 2026 shopping pop-up at Galerie Sardine in Amagansett from July 21 - July 26.
The Transatlantic Restaurant Exchange. By Montague Ashley-Craig.
Last week, MRAC wrote a London Edition of Feed Me for our readers across the pond (or those curious about Petrossian caviar soft-serve at Selfridges). Today, she has an essay for all of you about the other side of the London restaurants coming to New York conversation.
American readers will probably be aware that New York City is in the midst of a British restaurant boom.
There’s Dame in Greenwich Village, which since opening in 2020 has helped redefine British food for a New York audience with its fish and chips, sticky toffee pudding, and pints of Guinness. The restaurant recently announced plans to open a standalone chippy in the East Village. Three blocks away, Lord’s has New Yorkers queueing for sausage rolls and Scotch eggs. Dean’s, a seafood-centric pub in Hudson Square, serves pork scratchings, bubble and squeak, stargazy pie, and Old Speckled Hen on draught. Then there are the British imports: Ambassador’s Clubhouse is bringing British-Indian food to Manhattan (with Dishoom to follow next year), Hawksmoor is doing a roaring trade in steak and Sunday roasts, and the internet’s favorite Notting Hill chef badboy, Tom Straker, is opening his first American restaurant this summer.
But what you might not be aware of is that, at almost exactly the same moment, the culinary special relationship has been running in reverse, as well. Since the dawn of the pandemic, London has been speedrunning the American food canon, one hyper-regional specialty at a time.
It all started with subs. During the first lockdown, as restaurants scrambled to pivot to takeaway, sandwiches suddenly made sense. But instead of doubling down on Britain’s own sandwich traditions, a new generation of shops—Dom’s Subs (full disclosure: my husband opened it), Bodega Rita’s, Mondo Sando, Fat Pat’s—looked west and embraced a distinctly Italian-American idea of the sandwich.
Travel was off the table. If you wanted the kind of Italian-American hoagie you’d normally seek out in New York, someone in London had to make it. Thanks to social media, London’s chefs could obsess over heros from Brooklyn, bagels from Manhattan, and brisket from Austin—and go about recreating it here.
“It’s no longer enough to open a pizzeria. It has to be New Haven. Or Detroit. Or New York brick-oven style. Or Chicago tavern-style. Or Chicago deep dish. Or Philly tomato pie. Or a 1:1 recreation of a Lower Manhattan slice shop.”
For years, Britain’s idea of the American sandwich had begun and ended with Subway. The pandemic changed that. Chefs started treating subs with the seriousness they’d once reserved for tasting menus. Suddenly there were freshly baked sesame-crusted rolls, shaved lettuce, vinaigrette, mortadella and capicola. The sandwich became an object of obsession.
Looking back, the sandwich was just the gateway drug.
Next came the bagel wave. London already had bagels. What it didn’t have was New York bagels. A new generation of shops – It’s Bagels, Papo’s, Paulie’s, and Banook – weren’t trying to continue the city’s longstanding Jewish beigel tradition. They were chasing something altogether different: the glossy, blistered, chewy bagels of New York City.
As lockdown restrictions eased and sit-down dining returned, attention shifted from food that traveled well to food that demanded time, space, and intention. Barbecue was the next wave.