Good afternoon, everyone.
Feed Me’s Expense Account podcast is back today! 🍾 This morning, J Lee dropped two episodes — one with Molly Baz, one with carla lalli. You can listen wherever you listen to podcasts, and new episodes will be coming out weekly going forward. Thank you for your patience, I think it was worth it.
Carla Lalli on life after divorce, online dating and pepper jack cheese
Our first guest is carla lalli. FKA Carla Lalli Music. She’s lived many lives. From the first GM at the first Shake Shack, to a beloved chef in the Bon Appétit test kitchen. She’s been a YouTube star, recipe developer, Substacker, and James Beard Award winner. She is a legend. She recently published her new book,
Today’s newsletter includes: A 15 Central Park West rental only available to 15 Central Park West keyholders, a hobbit tea party in Midtown, Alison Roman on pregnancy and burgers, LVMH heir Alexandre Arnault joins Nike’s board of directors, a job I’d apply for if I was 23, and OpenAI disclosed six more cases of the AIs going rogue.
WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND.
⚔️ Friday 9/18 @ MoMA — Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) — Ang Lee is hosting a conversation after a screening of the film, which was nominated for 10 Academy Awards (and won 4). “When a legendary sword is stolen, two seasoned warriors (Chow Yun Fat and Michelle Yeoh) pursue a young martial artist (Zhang Ziyi) whose rebellious spirit draws her into a world of love, duty, and danger.”
🏙️ Saturday, 9/19 @ Metrograph — Ghost in the Shell (1996) — Essential viewing! In the year 2029, the world looks like a hybridization of Hong Kong, Tokyo, and New York, yielding to entropy and technocracy. A recent review on Rotten Tomatoes reads, “As the world edges closer to the ideas that it once speculated, these images resurface in my thoughts like fragments of a future that was always meant to find us.”
🧱 Sunday, 9/20 @ IFC — The History of Concrete (2026) — Sarah Sherman will be in conversation with director John Wilson at the 2:10 p.m. show. John Wilson’s (How To with John Wilson) hysterical documentary about the thing that holds our world together, the world’s most widely used building material: concrete.
Three Things That Bring You Uptown: Botox, Babies, and Burgers. By Alison Roman.
This week on Feed Me, we’re observing Smashion Week — a weeklong celebration of burgers, smash and otherwise. Today, Alison Roman writes about pregnancy, and reminding herself of who she is, within the walls of J.G. Melon. If you’re starting to get hungry on day four of Smashion Week, may I suggest Alison’s recipe for Smashburgers? In the intro to the recipe she writes, “Even if this burger doesn’t go exactly according to plan, you’ll likely end up with something wonderful.”
At no point in my seventeen years in New York did I ever spend much time on the Upper East Side, save for the occasional trip to Bemelmans or Elio’s. Though in the last two years, all of a sudden, I had reasons to go. Namely, I started seeing a very good dermatologist who does all sorts of things to my face in the pursuit of eternal youth, like Botox to soften the wrinkles and lasers to reveal new, fresh skin. Also, I got pregnant.
It just so happened that the best doctors for my specific situation were all on the Upper East Side, which meant I was now trekking it from Boerum Hill to York and 72nd (technically Lenox Hill, though when you get off the Q uptown, it’s all “Upper East Side” to me). Whether by car or train, it always took about an hour to get there, which made me feel like I needed to make the trip “worth it.” Always be optimizing. “Worth it,” by my standards, means lunch or early dinner, something novel to someone like me, a person who lived so far from this neighborhood.
While it was several blocks from my doctor’s office, J.G. Melon was still close enough to justify the several blocks—rain, snow, or freezing-cold-shine (the joys of a deep winter pregnancy)—in pursuit of all the things I was craving: an old, dark wooden bar serving Coca-Cola on tap with too much ice, and a large puck of could-be-seasoned-more ground beef topped with melted cheddar cheese, a generous pool of mustard, thin slices of good pickles, thick slices of red onion, all between a properly griddled white-bread bun.
“As I neared the end of my pregnancy, I felt a desperate need to be in physical spaces that reminded me of who I was and what I liked, reinforcements for my soul before my whole life changed.”
Many things change when you’re pregnant—the relationship to yourself is taken for the ride of a lifetime, your physical body is in a constant state of flux and newness, and all of a sudden, after thirty-nine years on this beautiful planet, you find yourself needing a hamburger all the time. Meat of all sorts, really, but this period of my life was sort of strangely defined as especially burger-positive. If it was on a menu, I’d order one, and if for whatever reason I was hungry for something else, I’d still order one (“for the table,” of course). But it was the burger at J.G. Melon that I’d go out of my way for, my little post-doctor’s-appointment prize.