Feed Me(rch)
Plus: Tommy Paul's new CPG brand, Substack's platform-exclusive shows, and J.Lee's review of a Japanese "pizza studio."
Happy Friday, everyone. I’m writing this to you from Los Angeles, where helicopters have been swarming around the sky, monitoring a giant flood-turned-sinkhole on the Sunset Strip. Between this, the cyclospora, the fires in Canada, and the orange skies in New York, it’s feeling a little mid-summer apocalyptic .
Earlier this summer, I bought a copy of Patrick Radden Keefe’s London Falling at Yellow Umbrella Books in Chatham. I started it yesterday and it’s a pleasure to devour. I can’t stop thinking about Robin Birley, the owner of members’ club Annabel’s, getting mauled by a tiger in a private zoo when he was 12.
Today’s newsletter includes: Tommy Paul’s new canned cocktail brand, J Lee on an East Village “pizza studio,” an interview with the designer behind influencer Halley Kate’s pink wedding dress, Substack appears to be launching a slate of platform-exclusive shows, and the magazine launching social media-only columns.
Have a story you want me to include in the newsletter? Need to tell me something? Respond to this email or text the Feed Me Tip Line: 1 (646) 494-3916
The Feed Me store is back!
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working on bringing back the Feed Me store. The collection includes reader-favorite merch, like American-made heavy crewnecks, and every version of the ouroboros hat, plus some new goods like a Nalgene with the Feed Me manifesto (which I keep getting asked about on the subway) and thick, colorful towels.
I love making things for all of you. Thank you Dano, Shannon, and Justin for helping to bring this all to life.
Touching the face of god at Pizza Studio Tamaki. By J Lee
Expense Account is a series on Feed Me by semi-anonymous restaurant critic J Lee. He hosts a podcast with the same name. Today, he wrote about a Japanese pizza “studio” in the East Village.
New York is hot, it’s full of smoke, and it’s about that time of year when it’s beginning to clear out. Those of us who are still here have our pick of reservations, but we still can’t get a seat to see The Odyssey in IMAX. I think it’s more than fair to say that all of us who are here are wishing we were somewhere else. Almost every day I have a moment when I consider blocking someone, simply because they are somewhere fabulous, and I am not. The world feels so much bigger in the summertime. There are so many beaches, so many coves, so much water in so many shades of blue, and so many plates of fried seafood. The thing about New York, though, is that even when you can’t make it out to see the world, the world will always come to you. Recently, Pizza Studio Tamaki, the legendary Japanese pizza “studio,” known for their expertly charred Neapolitan pies, opened up shop on St. Mark’s Place, steps from Tompkins Square Park. Maybe one of their pies could transport me to Tokyo. Maybe to Naples.
“Feel free to leave your flash at home, the room is bright enough. This isn’t a place where you come to have a romantic evening or a drink with friends, this place is designed for one thing and one thing only: taking photos of pizzas.”
Pizza Studio Tamaki, or PST, is in the East Village, but it feels like it’s in Madison, Wisconsin. (That’s no knock on Madison, I love Madison.) It feels like a fancy brewpub in a Midwestern college town, the place where you go for drinks with your “cohort.” The room is deceptively large and centered around a terrazzo bar where people drink beer out of wine glasses. Every surface is shiny, the lighting is very bright and very white. This is a pizza “studio” after all. Feel free to leave your flash at home, the room is bright enough. This isn’t a place where you come to have a romantic evening or a drink with friends, this place is designed for one thing and one thing only: taking photos of pizzas. Whether or not you eat the pizzas is up to you. This is the moment that we’re living in. My phone eats first, every time.