Good afternoon, everyone.
My King For the Day is Keith McNally, who kindly covered the bill for me and two friends at Balthazar this morning. First person on Emily Sundberg’s Nice List this year.
For our next Guest Lecture, we’re talking to Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, hosts of the Acquired podcast. You can ask them anything in the Feed Me Chat.
Today’s newsletter includes: a stellar example of what Substack TV could look like, a conversation with the Dewy Dudes co-hosts about their year-long hiatus, a DC restaurant serving foie gras Twinkies ahead of the city’s proposed foie gras ban, J Lee on perfect pasta in Williamsburg, The Strand is launching a podcast, and the restaurants that “didn’t know how bad of a juju there was” on private equity.
This is horny food. 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 writes about the gnocco fritto he would go to hell 🔥 for at I Cavallini.
One thing about me is that I don’t often eat Italian food, or rather, I don’t often eat fancy pasta. I’ve been blessed to have spent my fair share of time in Italy, and now I’m one of those annoying people who thinks pasta in New York is a rip-off. I don’t want truffles or globs of ricotta, I don’t even want nduja. I want it simple and cooked al dente, nice olive oil. I’m also the kind of delusional home chef that believes that the pasta that I cook at home is 75-80% as good as what I can get in a restaurant. I stand by this for the most part (especially with the help of Eataly).
I first went to I Cavallini, on Grand Street in Williamsburg, when it opened in the summer of 2025, and I’ll say that it wasn’t for me. Whatever Nick Curtola chose to do to follow up The Four Horsemen, his restaurant on Grand Street, was going to leave some very big shoes to fill, and I felt that those shoes hadn’t been filled, or they were the wrong style or something. If The Four Horsemen is a Paraboot (a well designed expensive shoe for connoisseurs, a classic), then I Cavallini was a Jack Purcell. Casual, not really my style, maybe a little basic, for people who live in Williamsburg, and eat sweetgreen and live in those glass towers where Glasslands used to be. There are so many restaurants in New York, it’s hard to keep up. I’ve got a long list of restaurants that I need to try, so if a restaurant doesn’t wow me on the first try, it’s hard to eat there again. And yet somehow, despite all these obstacles, I found my way back to I Cavallini last week, and I’m so happy I did.
“Let me tell you about what rubbed me on my first visit, and what continues to rub me about I Cav. I simply don’t like the design of I Cavallini. As I have noted recently, I love to say that every room is the most beautiful room in New York City, I won’t be saying that about I Cavallini.”
I guess the first thing you need to know about I Cavallini is that it’s not The Four Horsemen. And if I have any advice, you’re much better off not looking around the restaurant, searching for The Four Horsemen, you won’t find them here. That’s what I did on my first visit to I Cavallini, and I left disappointed. Let’s pretend The Four Horsemen doesn’t exist. This will be the last time they are mentioned.