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Good afternoon, everyone.
Last night, I ate red shrimp toast and steak frites in the back room of Bar Oliver to celebrate Lachlan Cartwrightâs media newsletter, Breaker. Mark Guiducci sat to my right and Donie OâSullivan was on my left. Across from me were Tina Brown and Biltâs CEO Ankur Jain. Fabulous little room. The night ended with some tricks (Lachlan invited a mentalist), some treats (Breakerâs new merch made by Small Talk Studios), and some deep conversation about the newsletter business with Caperâs Dana Brown and Simon & Schusterâs Paul Choix.
Todayâs newsletter includes: Another newspaper launched a movie club, how I built the Feed Me Job Board, a rare Expense Account Greenpoint restaurant review, an new column penned by an anonymous banker in London, Remove.bg is shutting down, and my favorite outdoor brand is hosting a pop-up in the Lower East Side.
Feed Meâs 4-year anniversary sale ends today. Itâs your last chance to get an annual subscription for $80 $56.
A brief history of the Feed Me Job Board. đŒ
I got an email from a friend who works at a New York media company a few weeks ago: âI just went to happy hour with two of my new direct reports, and I found both of them on the Feed Me Job Board.â It made me happy. I also had a hunch that their table was having the most interesting conversation at whatever restaurant they were at.
While walking out of Cobble Hill Cinemas earlier this week, someone introduced themselves as a Feed Me reader. He also said that he recently moved from D.C. to the Upper East Side â he got a new job earlier this fall from the Feed Me Job Board.
The Feed Me Job Board launched in 2024 with a simple goal: connecting the internetâs most discerning readers with jobs worth showing up to an office for. Or at least worth getting on Zoom for. It started as a roundup in the newsletter, then moved over to a publicly shared Google Doc, and eventually reached its current form: a custom site built with Lovable. Hereâs how that happened.
It started with an offer from my friend Austin. Last year, Austin Tedesco (who used to work at Substack and now runs a growth agency called Spur) texted me: âI can help build the job board. It would be easy to use Lovable to build an actual, good tool ourselves and connect it to Feed Me. Wanna jam on it next week?â
I wasnât familiar with Lovable at the time. In fact, whenever Austin referenced Claude that summer, I thought he was talking about Claud, the East Village restaurant with the insane Devilâs Food Cake. Luckily, I learn fast. After jamming for a bit about how we wanted the job board to work, Austin set up a dashboard on Lovable and described the job board we wanted to build in plain English. In about an hour, we had a working site with listings, a submission form, and pricing built in. After fine-tuning it by uploading Feed Me logos, fonts, and language, it was just about ready to go live.
We said goodbye to the Google Doc. About a week after starting our Lovable project, I built an admin dashboard where I can approve, edit, or reject (reasons ranging from looking like spam to the form being filled out incorrectly) every listing before it goes live. Nothing gets posted on the board without being approved by me.
The Feed Me Job Board made money from day one. Before launching the site, weâd designed a section of the site where sponsors could slot in. I had faith that someone would be interested in sponsoring the launch of the board, and I was right â David Protein was the presenting sponsor of the job board when we launched it.
It basically runs itself now. Every new submission lands in my inbox with a button straight to the review queue, and listings expire on their own after 30 days.
And I can manage the site by submitting simple adjustments in Lovable. When a company needs a change, I type something like âadjust the salary to âstarting at $100,000â,â or âadd âbased in New York Cityââ and itâs done without a developer or Austin (although heâs helped me with some troubleshooting along the way).
Since launching in summer 2025, the Feed Me Job Board has been used by hiring teams from American Express, The Atlantic, The New York Times, AFLALO, Kalshi, Apple, Semafor, Substack, Bloomberg, Puck, Sothebyâs and more.
Iâm the only full-time employee at Feed Me. The speed at which I can review, approve, and edit listings wouldnât be possible without Lovable. Whether itâs for an internal tool, a new product line, or an entire company, Lovable is where you build and operate the software that runs your business.
Donât call 148 Noble Street a neighborhood bistro â itâs a restaurant thatâs in a neighborhood. 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. This week, he wrote about a restaurant in Greenpoint (a neighborhood we rarely cover in Expense Account) that reminded him of London.
Lately Iâve felt suffocated by ROOMS, by grand design, by an excess of beautiful and incredibly expensive details. By murals, and chandeliers, âartworks,â and banquettes. Do you think itâs fair to say that with the opening of Humm we have reached peak interior design? Itâs magnificent, truly, but where do we go from here? What are we paying for? Where do our priorities lie? Itâs starting to feel like weâre paying for the multimillion-dollar fashion show (that the general public is not invited to), rather than paying for the clothes. Weâre paying for logos and gilding rather than materials. As much as I love nice things, and shiny things, a magnificent room, I think it might be time for a vibe shift, it might be time for a little bit of quiet luxury in New York City dining. 148 Noble Street is the cultural reset that we need. This new restaurant in Greenpoint feels like a breath of fresh air, and I donât say that lightly. I finally feel like I can breathe again.
âNo stainless steel ramekins with ketchup and mayo. Not a single pasta. It doesnât feel like a bistro. It feels more like one of those perfect little jewel-box restaurants that you find yourself drinking a glass of wine in after walking 20,000 steps in Paris. More than Paris even, 148 Noble Street feels like a London âcafe,â a Deco, a Cecilia, dare I say thereâs a bit of St. Johnâs protestant DNA in there somewhere.â
Call it minimal, call it puritan, call it austere, call it what you want, 148 Noble Street is clean, itâs elegant, and as soon as you walk in, you know exactly what theyâre about. Dark wood, white walls, white tablecloths, the only embellishment are shaker peg rails that wrap around the dining room. You can hang your hoodie on the rails, but theyâre not really for that. The peg rails are a mission statement, theyâre a gauntlet thrown, this restaurant believes in the elegance of function, an honesty in materials, a lack of the superfluous, and, most importantly, they believe that food should come first and foremost.
Iâd hate to describe 148 Noble Street as a neighborhood bistro. Iâm sick of everything being described as a neighborhood bistro. Itâs a restaurant that is in a neighborhood, and the chef certainly knows his way around a pad of butter, but you wonât find a burger here. No pommes frites even, no stainless steel ramekins with ketchup and mayo. Not a single pasta. It doesnât feel like a bistro, really, it feels more like one of those perfect little jewel-box restaurants that you find yourself drinking a glass of wine in after walking 20,000 steps in Paris. More than Paris even, 148 Noble Street feels like a London âcafe,â a Deco, a Cecilia, dare I say thereâs a bit of St. Johnâs protestant DNA in there somewhere. (Someone whoâs spent more time in London will surely have a better comp.) Itâs an attitude, a style of cooking and dining, thatâs casual but serious about craft, the craft of cooking, and the craft of dining. Thereâs Zimmiâs, thereâs Bistrot Ha; 148 Noble Street feels next up in this lineage.
Free bread in a New York City restaurant can feel like the most thoughtful gift, and it is. 148 Noble Streetâs free bread is half a baguette by Shewolf bakery, served with their âmaĂźtre dâ butter,â punctuated by a little pool of herb infused oil. They could sell this for $12 easily, this could be a whole meal for someone on GLP-1s, but they give you bread for free because your meal should come with bread, because itâs the right thing to do, and youâll need that bread to sop up their delicious saucework. We started with some oysters with dulse ($3 a piece), a pairing that is so delicious and so obvious that Iâm shocked oysters arenât served this way at every restaurant. That tiny bit of seaweed amps up the natural sweetness and salinity of the oysters, an oceanic take on âwhat grows together goes together.â I know I said that there are no french fries at 148 Noble Street, and there arenât, but they do serve Pommes Paillasson. Shredded potato, in the shape of fish sticks, fried till golden, with a dollop of aioli. Theyâre basically a McDonaldâs hash brown, and they more than scratch the itch for some fried potatoes.
I love a server who tells me what to do. Itâs crazy that itâs so rare to find someone who will just give you a straight recommendation, rather than a âit depends on what youâre in the mood forâ or a âtheyâre very different.â The servers all wear crisp white shirts, and clean white aprons, and our server, Mike, told us âverdejo is having a moment.â Whether or not thatâs true, the verdejo he recommended was perfect. I told him that I wanted to choose two options between the haricots verts, the dandelion salad, and the zucchini. He told me that itâs the end of the season, and it would be fine to skip the zucchini. I love that. This is a no fuss restaurant. The dandelion salad, with onion jam, anchovies, and Brabander cheese is sweet, salty, funky, and complex. Itâs a salad that exists not just for the sake of being a salad, itâs more than just some roughage and requisite greens, itâs a dish as exciting as anything on the menu. Poached haricot verts and potatoes, in a sauce vin blanc, are so much greater than the sum of their parts. The green beans and the potatoes are cooked so perfectly, and theyâre served so simply, that youâre reminded of how good a good green bean and good potato can be. I canât believe Iâm saying this, but this was one of my favorite dishes of the night. Youâll want to use some of that baguette to sop up that sauce vin blanc.
But itâs not all dark wood, boiled potatoes, and protestantism at 148 Noble Street. I swear itâs a restaurant that knows how to have a good time. Chef Gabriel Borges is from New Orleans, after all, and he brings with him some of that flair, and also some of that seafood. A crawfish bisque is not a New England bisque, there are no potatoes here. Itâs minimal and elegant, which seems to be Chef Gabeâs style, but packed full of crawfish flavor, and of course lots of cream. Their coriander crusted duck is one of the best ducks Iâve had in a while. Cooked perfectly, and just spicy (spice spicy, not hot spicy) enough, it kind of reminds me of the duck at Le Veau dâOr, but with a little less polish, in the best way. But the dish at 148 Noble Street, the dish that, if it hasnât already been, will soon be all over your Instagram feeds, is the crab claws in Cajun butter. Crab claws like this donât exist elsewhere in New York, Iâm pretty sure. Tiny, delicate, and sweet, these are shipped straight from New Orleans. They come shelled (such a nice gesture) and doused in Cajun butter that tastes like a celebration. This might be the most fun dish in New York City right now. I hope you saved some of that baguette.
Chef Gabe has worked at Golden Diner and Chez Ma Tante, two of the best pancake purveyors in the world, so of course there are pancakes (technically crepes) at 148 Noble Street, and of course they are phenomenal. Thin crispy egg crepes with calvados cooked apples and a big dollop of cream. The crepe, paired with the free glass of sherry they give to every guest (this might be the most generous restaurant in NYC), is one perfect way to end a meal at 148 Noble Street; their Ăźle flottante is another. A meringue floating in a passion fruit custard is a ray of sunshine. I wonder if this is a nod to the famous dessert at Le Veau dâOr. Whether or not itâs a nod, the people running 148 Noble Street have certainly been to Le Veau dâOr, and I can tell they love it, just like I do. I can tell they love Galatoireâs and The Grill, Haâs, Septime, maybe 40 Maltby, all the restaurants that I love, special places, the classics. But 148 Noble Street isnât trying to be any of those spots, theyâre doing their own thing, something that feels familiar but genuinely new. If you spot me in Greenpoint, you know where Iâm going.
The gilet (or what Americans call vestâŠ) has gone from being popular at the shooting estate to being an essential part of the trading floor uniform. The FT begs readers that if theyâre going to wear one, to please wear a good one. Some accompanying reading: this newsletter from last year where I asked my opinionated friends about Finance Guy Vests.
Speaking of the trading floor, Plum Sykes has a new anonymous finance columnist, âMayfair Finance Girl.â In her first column she writes about wearing The Row shoes to the office, lawyers canceling on dates, and booking pedicures.
Exceptionally appropriate holiday collaboration: Susan Alexandra x Anthropologie. The collection includes a bagel menorah and a glistening olive tree topper. đ« I walked by Susanâs Upper East Side store this morning and it was buzzing.
Big Rock Candy Mountaineering is hosting a pop-up in New York from November 6th through the 9th. It will take place at Wythe. Peter Middleton, the founder of Wythe, is a co-founder of Big Rock Candy Mountaineering.
Remove.bg is shutting down. Remove was an admirably simple website that removed the background of a photo, used by many an overworked graphic designer who needed to clean up the headshots for the âTEAMâ section of a startup site. Following their acquisition by Canva, Remove has announced its closure date for December 1st 2026. I love a website that does just one thing! RIP remove.bg - you always did what you said you would.
Weâre getting a movie from cult favorite sketch group Simple Town. Simple Town has sold their debut film âBig Breakâ to distributor Greenwich Entertainment. As a fan of both the horror-thriller-comedy genre and a fan of Simple Town, Iâm stoked. The four members of Simple Town (Will Niedmann, Caro Yost, Felipe Di Poi Tamargo, and Samuel Lanier) have been putting out banger sketches for years. For a look at their unique style before the movie drops next year, below is my syllabus of my 4 favorite Simple Town sketches:
Think Jerky is trying to capitalize on its brief publicity from âYou Can See Everything.â
The Midcoast Villager announced their new Villager Movie Club. The Camden, Maine based newspaper is the latest media organization to invest in movie clubs as an events strategy â The New York Times recently screened a series of movies at Metrograph as part of their 175th anniversary celebrations; Vanity Fair recently announced a bi-coastal movie series at LACMA and Cherry Lane Theater; Feed Me hosted a month of scary movies at Cobble Hill Cinemas; and Chloe Malle has been hosting screenings and conversations to accompany Vogueâs Book Club. I like that Midcoast Villagerâs screenings take place at the newspaperâs cafe, the Villager Cafe. Imagine eating a BLT while watching âThe SearchersââŠ.. in coastal Maine.
Mayfair Finance Girl tells me shes SUPER chuffed to be mentioned in FEED ME!
RIP Remove.bg - itâs been helpful for cleaning up images for so many decks