The Sticker of Shame is back in NYC.
Plus: J.Lee reviews Mr Chow, Brooklyn's new wellness club, and office buildings are recruiting tenants with luxe amenities.
Good afternoon, everyone.
Hypothetically, if I were going to throw a party next weekend, would you prefer it to be in Montauk or on Shelter Island? Respond in comments or by replying to this email. Of course, there would be merch and drinks for anyone who makes the journey.
Today’s newsletter includes: J Lee on the performance that is eating at Mr Chow, SF’s tech set gets their own paparazzi treatment, the Department of Sanitation has brought back the BRAT-green stickers, Thom Bettridge steps down, New York’s best Thai restaurant returns, and Brooklyn is getting…another wellness club.
But first: I made this playlist of songs that mention Mr Chow to go along with J Lee’s review. Hit play, enjoy the weekend. It might be the most sung about restaurant ever.
“The crispy duck is crispy and it’s duck, therefore it’s delightful.” J Lee reviews Mr Chow.
Expense Account is a series on Feed Me by semi-anonymous restaurant critic J Lee. He hosts a podcast with the same name. The annual August exodus is upon us. The vibe shift is palpable. While J.Lee is stuck in the city preparing for the relaunch of the Expense Account podcast, he figured it was a good time to (re)visit some classics. The Expense Account hall of fame. Last week, he wrote about Michael’s. This week, he’s writing about another midtown legend, Mr Chow.
Mr Chow is not a man. Mr Chow is not a restaurant. Mr Chow is an artist. Mr Chow is a showman. Mr Chow is an experimental theater where as a diner you’re the audience and the performer all at once.
That said, Mr. Chow is also a man. Michael Chow, who turned 87 this year, is the son of an opera singer. His father was a grandmaster of the Peking Opera House, and starred in hundreds of productions before the Cultural Revolution. Michael was born in Shanghai and moved to London at the age of 13. As he got older, he became quite the man about town. A painter, an actor, a burgeoning businessman, a party boy. On Valentine’s Day 1968, he opened Mr Chow in London, combining all of his interests. A Chinese restaurant with Italian waiters and no chopsticks. It was an immediate hit. In 1974, he opened Mr Chow in Beverly Hills, and the Hollywood crowd ate it up. And in 1979, he opened Mr Chow in New York City on East 57th Street, just in time for the 1980s art-world boom: Warhol, Schnabel, Basquiat, a young Larry Gagosian, Madonna, the rise of the finance bro, and cocaine. Michael Chow has always been good at being in the right place at the right time. From there, he opened locations in Las Vegas, Miami, Dubai, of course. He opened a second New York location in Tribeca in 2006. Every location is legendary in its own right (maybe not Dubai), but for me at least, Mr Chow peaked on 57th Street.
As you enter the arena that is Midtown Mr Chow, everything is already happening, the stage is set, they started without you. Chatter fills the air, flowers are in bloom, the silver is polished, Richard Smith’s mobile sculpture feels as if it’s in flight. The room verges on minimalism in shades of black and white, everything is shiny, and there’s a large mirrored wall on the far side of the room, to reflect and amplify the energy. The effect is that it feels like a self-contained energetic ecosystem, a microcosm, a feedback loop that feels alive, and endless.
Every table at Mr Chow has a little beam of light, a spotlight, illuminating a glass vase with an orchid. Restaurants don’t do romance, they don’t do drama, like this anymore. The beam of light lets you know that this is where the action happens, but there are no visible spotlights. I’ll blame my first lycheetini for the fact that it took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out that the light was coming from inside the table. They’re custom tables with a cutout in the middle, and a light installed beneath. The white tablecloth really sells the illusion. I love this loaded little sleight of hand. The call is coming from inside the house. The light comes from within. The Warholian idea that everyone is a star, you certainly feel like one when you’re eating at Mr Chow.
The servers at Mr Chow feel like used-car salesmen from another era, from a movie. They’re incredibly charming and slippery, and you know they’re trying to fleece you somehow, but maybe that’s half the fun. When you eat at a restaurant like Mr Chow, you want to suspend your disbelief, you want to be fooled a bit. You want someone to tell you with a straight face that it’s completely reasonable to pay $12.50 per skewer of chicken satay (an order of four is $50). They’re a speciality of the house. Mr Chow’s chicken satay is one of the most unphotogenic dishes of all time, they look like a GI disorder, and they’re a little dry, but they’re served to you on a heavy silver platter, they feel consequential. Their signature squid ink noodles are a black mess in the way that squid ink noodles tend to be, and they don’t taste like much, but they’re garnished with a little pink orchid. Their Cy Twombly monogrammed plates are the chicest plates in New York City (can anyone help me get my hands on one? I’ll pay top dollar). The menus are watermarked. I love these little details. I love the bells and the whistles. I love the song and the dance. I’m at Mr Chow for the show, and I know that at the end of the day the food is just a prop, it’s the price of admission.
But don’t get me wrong, the food is not bad, necessarily. The crispy duck is crispy and it’s duck, therefore it’s delightful, and it’s served with little pancake wraps, which I think are homemade, a rarity in this day and age. The crispy beef tastes like candy, and is also crispy. It’s as if the panda from Panda Express shopped at Chanel, and was addicted to energy drinks. And shrimp toast is always good. The food at Mr Chow is high drama, and high pleasure, even when it’s bland. Sometimes it’s of questionable quality, but that’s Broadway baby. You know what time it is when you’re on your third lycheetini. As Michael Chow himself would tell you, they wouldn’t be going on 50 years if the food weren’t good. You can’t argue with that.
I constantly find myself asking what it is that we want from restaurants. Restaurants function in so many different ways, and serve so many different purposes for so many different people. Sometimes we want to eat food. Sometimes we want a home away from home. Sometimes we want to be taken somewhere exotic. Sometimes we want to see and be seen. And sometimes we want to be SOMEWHERE and to be SOMEONE. For nearly 50 years Mr Chow has been a place that you can go to be SOMEWHERE and to be SOMEONE. Food maybe never tastes as good as glamour feels. (Maybe.) And the glamour of Mr Chow is a glamour that has proven to be incredibly hard to cultivate. It’s not a glamour created for tech guys, and pilates influencers, by a team of consultants and investors. Its glamour created by an artist FOR artists. It’s a singular vision by a singular man. First and foremost Michael Chow is not a chef, he’s not a businessman, he’s an artist, and that’s what makes Mr Chow so great.
The New York Times once described Mr Chow as a “glittery, elegant, non-Chinese looking Chinese restaurant.” It’s certainly glittery, it’s certainly elegant, and who am I to judge what a Chinese restaurant should or shouldn’t look like? But I think of what it meant to open a restaurant like Mr Chow in 1979. To build a space like this, an undeniable, highly activated, dynamic space. A space with the power to convince celebrities, artists, and random rich people that they’re in the most important place in the world and that Chinese food can be glittery and elegant, sexy and fun, and also incredibly expensive. A Chinese restaurant with the balls to not set their tables with chopsticks. It’s no small feat. He built it, and they came, and they continue to come. They continue to go all the way up to East 57th Street, to be part of the show and to wash their greasy fingers in sterling silver tea bowls. They continue to come because no one is doing it like Mr Chow. No one will ever do it like Mr Chow. There’s no lack of glossy rooms and overpriced mediocre food and ice cold martinis in Midtown Manhattan, but none feel as compelling and alive as Mr Chow. Mr Chow has an elegance, and an energy, that I fear we can’t recreate in 2026. We may have lost the recipes. Even after all these years, Mr Chow feels like magic.
This concludes Expense Account by J Lee.
Danny Abrams and Cindy Smith, the restaurateurs behind Mermaid Inn, are opening a new restaurant on the Upper West Side. “The upcoming restaurant at 61 West 74th Street remains unnamed and its concept undecided.”
The Sticker of Shame! After a 14-year-hiatus, the Department of Sanitation has brought back the BRAT-green stickers for cars that don’t move for street cleaning. Alternate-side city parking is a pain in the ass, but eating $65 tickets once or twice a week is still often less than the monthly fee at most parking garages in New York. Perhaps too obvious a trade-off for NYC car owners has led to the city reintroducing this radical intervention after banning the practice in 2012. The sticker reads: “THIS VEHICLE VIOLATED NYC STREET CLEANING RULES. AS A RESULT, THIS STREET COULD NOT BE PROPERLY CLEANED.” No, the sticker of shame can not be peeled off (warm water and a scraper are required) and, no, receiving one does not keep you from getting a $65 ticket, too.
Ugly Baby, the Carroll Gardens Thai restaurant that Pete Wells once called “extraordinary,” is returning after closing in 2024. My mouth is watering just scrolling the restaurant’s Instagram. The new location will be in Williamsburg. I am always on a search for the best Thai Food in New York (Thai Diner goes hard, Bangkok Degree in Park Slope is extremely satisfying), but I’m curious where else you go. What is the New York equivalent of Luv2Eat? (Will venture to any borough.)
From the Feed Me Tip Line: Brooklyn is getting a new wellness club this winter called Saunter. A reader sent me a job description for the mysterious new concept’s Marketing Director. Based on the emphasis of the word “warm” all over the site, I’m guessing this is a sauna-slash-coworking space. Per the job description, “We’re building a lifestyle brand that is highly differentiated — one that touches wellness, hospitality, culture, and much more — and this role owns how that brand takes shape and reaches people.”
From the Feed Me Tip Line: Affiliate site ShopMy is now using their chat feature (historically used for promoting discounts) as a job board. A reader sent me this screenshot from footwear brand, M.Gemi. Maybe they think superfans of the brand would be good hires, or be more likely to recommend a good hire for the sake of the brand.
New York State lawmakers want to lift the ban on gay bathhouses.
Multi-amenity office buildings are playing catch up with the amenities of tech offices. Marx Realty (the company behind midtown buildings like 10 Grand Central and 545 Madison Avenue) is pouring $68 million into 430 Park Avenue to develop a “hospitality-infused” 19-story office building. When you look at office buildings like WSA (which has its own private restaurant and state-of-the-art gym) or JP Morgan’s new 270 Park Avenue (which has a private pub and yoga studios for employees), it makes sense why developers would feel the need to court hedge funds and family offices with splashy building features. Marx’s Herald Building in D.C. even has a members club called The Bouvier. As for 430 Park, there will be a library, a lounge, and a parlor (sounds redundant), as well as fireplaces and showers.
Thom Bettridge is stepping down from his role as editor of i-D Magazine to focus on his creative studio, Content World. I called this months ago, after seeing how much effort Thom was putting into his personal newsletter on Substack (which is doing quite well), all while i-D was trying to grow its own presence on the platform. Steff Yotka, who seems very cool, will succeed Thom, and as Taylore Scarabelli said this morning, Steff “has been circling the top of the masthead for far too long.”
🕷️ 🕷️ 🕷️ Martha’s Vineyard is getting ticked off 🕷️ 🕷️ 🕷️. There are concerns about the tick-related drop in tourism to Martha’s Vineyard. Ferries are carrying 5% fewer passengers this year, and short-term bookings are falling. Per Bloomberg, “There were almost 750 positive tests for alpha-gal at the Vineyard’s only hospital in 2025, a twenty-fold jump from four years earlier. Hundreds more have tested positive this year.” As I covered earlier this summer, many restaurants are altering their menus to accommodate diners with alpha-gal, removing red meat from dishes.
TBPN’s new social media bit is cosplaying as TMZ for the tech set. This week, they’ve posted paparazzi shots (assumably staged) of Founders Fund partner Delian Asparouhov, Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen, and Figma CEO Dylan Field.
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