Kanye took out a full-page ad in WSJ to apologize.

And everyone in the Hamptons was drinking Jameson last night.

Good morning everyone.

As I suspected, some of you were also at Bug on Friday night. I went with my friend Gaby after an early dinner of lasagna and spaghetti at Borgo (where we saw three friends and missed Romilly Newman’s solo dinner by a hair). Bug was unsettling, but I would still recommend it. It fit into the category of health paranoia that I felt while watching Safe a few weeks ago, or reading Madeline Cash’s essay about living among mold spores for The Paris Review this morning. We all had to lock our phones away in Yondr pouches, which added to the stressful feeling.

I was hungover for most of yesterday. The culprit was a Saturday night wedding, which confirmed to me that winter black tie is one of the top three dress codes for best-dressed guests. So many shapes of fur accessories.

Today’s letter includes: The most ordered drink in the Hamptons last night, a Harvard-Westlake grad is running TikTok USA, journalists are trying to get in touch with Clavicular, and J Lee wrote about the SNOW DAY.

Before we get into the letter: Max Tani spoke to Kathleen Hennessey, the editor of the Minnesota Star Tribune, about their work covering ICE’s operations in Minneapolis. She said that 50 of the paper’s 200 journalists are working on the story every day.

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Expense Account is a series on Feed Me by semi-anonymous restaurant critic J Lee. He also hosts a podcast with the same name. Yesterday, while 11 inches of snow blanketed the city, he took a few minutes to reflect on the joys of snow day eating:

Snow day. What a special day in New York City. Although, the actual special day is the day before the storm. The day when you get to go to the grocery store and act absolutely insane. A day when you get to spend $300 on ingredients for two meals that you may or may not actually make. We bought ingredients for a bourguignon, Alison Roman’s shallot pasta, and cookies, as well as sausage for breakfast, a very nice chocolate milk, Lactaid, an apple Olipop, coconut water, and a few Gerolsteiner for good measure. We were prepared for the worst and then some. For the next 36 hours we would live as our ancestors did, no Bánh mìs, no poke bowls, no Uber Eats at all, no gelato even — just a flame, a Staub, the flesh of a beast, and our wits.

The night before the storm I made Roman’s famous shallot pasta. This coming Thursday is the six-year anniversary of the pasta that came to define the pandemic, and a generation. Strangely enough, it was my first time making it. I think I went to the store once and they were sold out of bucatini, so I gave up. Luckily in the nearly six years since Roman dropped her recipe, we’ve steadied the bucatini supply chain, and every grocery store in New York has a mountain of shallots that greets you as soon as you walk in.

The recipe is a classic for a reason. You understand it instantly. It’s incredibly simple, you basically just caramelize some shallots and then add tomato paste, but it really makes you feel like you’ve been COOKING and it makes your kitchen smell like you’ve been COOKING. Apparently you can cook! Who knew? The most popular recipes have this in common; they’re empowering, and also generally they taste good. The shallot pasta tastes great. It’s familiar, but with a little edge. It’s rich, but not too rich, spicy but not too spicy, and the sauce really just clings to those noodles in a beautiful way. Better late than never.