Fall Roundup: Music, Theater, Dining
Kernels, September - November 2024.
Some updates on what I was up to as the city transitioned from humid hellscape to frigid hellscape, besides seeing a bunch of movies and turning thirty: eating, theater, and music. My new apartment gets very cold, it turns out, and much like a reptile, I have been thinking and moving very slowly these past couple days.
Lots of pictures in this post! Yay!
Autumn Playlist
Lately, when I just want to throw some music on, I just stream whatever is on NTS Radio, which scratches my itch for eclectic variety. My favorite hosts so far have been Crystallmess (edgy club), New York Naomi (a little bit of everything with a hipster sensibility), Nubya Garcia (jazz, R&B, and so on), and Umru (I’m a hyperpop girlie what can I say)
I made a playlist of twenty new songs that I’ve had listened to throughout the past three months, including new indie rock prince MJ Lenderman, moody Mk.gee, foul-mouthed Chinese pop punk, and my fave song from Kendrick Lamar’s new album. This playlist is overall not very cool but give it a spin!
Notes on some of the songs:
“In The Living Room,” Maggie Rogers
A throwback to Michelle Branch, in the best way. I saw her show at MSG (aka Maggie Square Garden) and she’s a phenomenal performer. The biggest issue I had with her most recent album was that some songs didn’t let the instrumentals breathe more, and in the live set, voilà, guitar solos aplenty!!
“Talk talk featuring troye sivan,” Charli XCX
On the day this dropped, a couple of my friends came over and we listened to it like five times that night. The whole remix album is incredible, both as an extension and a response to Brat Summer.
“APT.,” Rosé & Bruno Mars
It’s so obviously a cut-and-paste of two or three separate demos but it is as catchy as it is annoying. The somewhat weird lyrics are probably coming from songwriter Amy Allen, who is fresh off of co-writing every track of Sabrina Carpenter’s Short ‘n Sweet and has similar oh-so-random phrases.
“Sticky,” Tyler The Creator feat. GloRilla, Sexyy Red, Lil Wayne
You’ve seen this, right?
And the New Yorker piece on Charles Ives, who was among the pioneers of American experimental classical music (while working a day job as the head of an insurance firm), turned me on to IVES DENK, a new recording of the composer’s violin and piano sonatas performed by pianist Jeremy Denk, joined by Stefan Jackiw on the violin.
Back To School Theater
After a couple months off from seeing plays and musicals (thirty shows in six months is a lot!), I dived right back into it, with ten shows this fall.
Highlights: Teeth (Off Broadway musical based on, yes, that movie), a thrilling King Lear (starring Kenneth Branagh!), a very funny Daniel Dae Kim in Yellow Face, and the thought-provoking Walden (Off Broadway play where Emmy Rossum ponders the climate apocalypse).
Lowlight: Sunset Blvd. (Turns out, I just don’t like Jamie Lloyd’s directorial style. PSA: the sightlines in this theater are awful in the mezzanine; the people in front of us blocked most of our view. Perhaps Nicole Scherzinger was off that night [with the excellent and non-Trumpy Mandy Gonzalez scheduled to perform], the seats behind us were empty, so at one point during the first act, Brian and I looked at each other and moved one row back just so that we could see the stage.)
Weirdlight: Family, an early play from Celine Song that the producers described as “more Possession than Past Lives.” Staged by Hoi Polloi in a Clinton Hill garden apartment (realtor-speak for “a nice basement”), the play was very strange and edgelordy, but the in your face set design and committed performances from a trio of actors playing incestuous, tortured half-siblings ensured that no one would forget the experience.
I saw these just this week, so technically outside the scope of this post, but the Audra McDonald-led Gypsy and the Adam Lambert headlining Cabaret are both fantastic. I’ve figured out my favorite musicals tend to be the ones where you’re clapping but you feel bad about it. Something about the disparity in audience reactions, and the immediate externalization of that dissonant response, it does it for me.
Dining Report
Although I’ve really lost touch with the dining scene, I did have some notable meals around town...
…but also out of town! I was visiting the Bay in September to see my family and old friends. Fave bites on the trip: a super burrito at Taqueria Los Pericos (Santa Cruz), bun bo hue at Hue Restaurant (San Jose), the pulpo carpaccio at Parche (Oakland), and the kouign amann at B Patisserie (SF).
And the supermarket near my mom’s house had New Mexican hatch chiles for $2 a pound. Insanity!! I brought 5 lbs of peppers home, roasted them, and stuck them in my freezer. I initially was charring the peppers directly on my gas stovetop, but the smoke alarm kept going off. So I resorted to using the broiler, which doesn’t work quite as well. But my sanity was preserved.
For Eric’s birthday, we went to French-Italian brasserie Francie. It’s a restaurant worthy of a celebration. A decadent foie gras canelé. The famous crown of duck, dry aged for four weeks and perfectly cooked. Oh yeah.
There wasn’t really a weak spot on the menu — we split five pastas and everyone had a different favorite. And it’s super fun to end the night with the canard au citron, sort of a lemon meringue pie, but in the shape of a rubber duck.
Before going to the Maggie Rogers show at MSG, my friends and I got dinner at Turntable Chicken in Koreatown. It had been years since I’d been, but it was a reliable restaurant when I first moved to New York. Fried chicken wings aren’t always my thing, but it hit the spot.
After a film screening in Chelsea, I popped over with Byron to The Canuck to grab a beer while I could watch the Sharks game. When the Canadian sports bar first opened, I had their poutine a couple times and it was quite bad. Trying it again after a couple years, I can report that it’s much better now! The gravy, formerly flavorless, was much richer now, and the gravy is the most important part of a poutine. I’m not sure if my more discerning Canadian friends would approve, but it was a worthy sidecar to the burger.
For my birthday, I made my bi-monthly trip to Rosella with two cousins and one of their partners. Highlights this time around were bonito and porgy nigiri, the fish slider, and a carrot miso cake topped with a birthday candle, but everything here is always excellent.
Over Thanksgiving, a bunch of my cousins in NY visited our cousin in Boston. The night before our big dinner at home, we went into town to have an excellent yet casual dinner from Eventide, which puts Asian riffs on New England seafood. A brown butter lobster roll, served in bao, was perfect, as a riff on Anthony Bourdain’s famous mortadella sandwich that replaced ham with monkfish. Not entirely sure how this is done but it was amazing.
PS — if you’re in the Boston area and buying wine or booze, I was super impressed with the selection at Marty’s. A Spanish vermouth (Tempus Fugit Fot-Li), which I had previously thought unavailable in the States, seems to have found an importer, and we snagged a bottle for about $20.
Imbibing Report
While in Boston, I also popped into Equal Measure, an impressively spacious cocktail bar in Fenway. Highlights from what we sampled were “Of The Sea” (nikka coffey malt whisky clarified kiwi lime, laver seaweed syrup, maldon salt — topped with a rice paper chip) and the Velveteen (angel's envy bourbon, averna, licor 43, lustau east india solera sherry, angostura bitters, orange bitters).
A sign of entering one’s thirties is really getting into wine. (I should have gotten a bigger wine fridge.) At the end of October, I went to Lai Rai, a Vietnamese-owned natural wine bar in Chinatown. Eric (who is my cousin) has been hosting a lot of social events for the Viet friends in his extended social circles, so on an otherwise sleepy Tuesday night, roughly fifteen of us packed the small, painted brick space. I enjoyed everything I had from the old world skewing menu, especially this pét-nat from the Loire Valley.
The week after, I got post-movie drinks at Demo in the West Village, whose wines were very very nice, though a bit pricey — I spent $46 on two glasses, which is about the same as two drinks at a great cocktail bar.
Grog Logs
Closing this out with a list of the first alcoholic drink I had each day of autumn.
September
1. Nothing
2. Nothing
3. Nothing
4. A rice lager on draft at Southern Pacific (SF)
5. A bottle of Daesun Soju at San Ho Won (SF)
6. "Pajazo Mental" cocktail at Parche (Oakland)
7. A bottle of Upton Vineyard Monster Party at Alamo Square (SF)
8. Sion Kölsch at Radegast
9. Nothing
10. Pumpkin spiced hard tea at home
11. Nothing
12. Pumpkin spiced hard tea at home
13. Venta Real Orange at home
14. Mojitos at home
15. Vodka iced tea at Ainslie
16. Brooklyn kura grand Prairie
17. Brooklyn Kura Catskills Shiboritate
18. Negroni at home
19. Nothing
20. Kingston negroni at home
21. Calvados at home
22. Channing Daughters "Scuttlehole" Chardonnay 2020 at home
23. Focal Point Sushi Grade Rice Lager at home
24. Domaine Arnaud Combier "Fleurie" 2020 at Vanguard
25. Nothing
26. Domaine Vico (H)emera Blanc 2023 at Francie
27. Babich Sauvignon Blanc 2023 at home
28. "Final Credits" cocktail at home
29. Amalaya Torrontés & Riesling 2021 at Lincoln Center
30. Nothing
October
1. Nothing
2. Ginger high ball at Maze
3. BK kura shizuku at kura
4. Can of Brooklyn Cider House, Kinda Dry at home
5. Sweet Bourbon at Everything's Jake
6. Boxed Wine Spritz at Dericko's
7. Nothing
8. Nothing
9. Runaway Rabbit, 'Chester', Skin-Fermented Sauvignon Blanc 2022 at Olo's
10. Nothing
11. Nothing
12. Tuber negroni test at home
13. Spritz at home
14. Final Credits at home
15. Nothing
16. Sage and Chai at Everyone's Jake
17. Brooklyn Brewery
18. OB Beer at Samwoojung
19. Soju and Lagunitas at Turntable Chicken
20. Coney Island IPA at Coney Island
21. Channing Daughters "Mudd West Vineyard" Sauvignon Blanc 2022 at home
22. High Life and Bourbon at Fresh Salt
23. Channing Daughters "Mudd West Vineyard" Sauvignon Blanc 2022 at home
24. Nothing
25. Tuber negroni at olo's
26. Pinot Blanc at Keith's
27. A bottle of Guinness at home
28. Nothing
29. Guy Breton MaryLou 2023 at Lai Rai
30. Nothing
31. Pinot Grigio at Moma design store
November
1. Some hard cider at Snow's
2. Sangiovese wine at Olo's
3. Strawberry whiskey mule at Bar Belly
4. Nothing
5. Florez Kind of Orange at home
6. Nothing
7. Sailors Warning at b'artusi
8. Ebbs at rpm underground
9. Guinness at the perfect pint
10. 2023 Wild Arc Farms "Qamar Al-Hisad" at Rosella
11. Tanuki Sake at home
12. Old Fashioned with Fort Hamilton Single Barrel Rye at home
13. Strawberry Pancakes at Rockwell Place
14. Talea Fresh Coast at TALEA Penn
15. Brooklyn Kura Plan B at home
16. Wild East Stout at Beer Street South
17. "so high school" rum and coke riff at Brad's
18. Some red wine at L'Alliance New York
19. Nothing
20. Wild Arc, 'To Eris', Sparkling Cider at home
21. Barbera d'Alba, Produttori di Govone 2022 at home
22. Red wine at Jeffery's
23. Delacroix Brut at home
24. Archaic, Chardonnay 2023 at home
25. L'Ensemblage Étoile, Dom. de Sainte Marie 2020 at home
26. Nothing
27. Lord Hobo Boomsauce Double IPA at F1 Arcade (Boston)
28. Tempus Fugit Fot-Li vermouth at Jon's (Boston)
29. Barrel aged old fashioned at Liberty Hotel (Boston)
30. La Souteronne, Souhaut 2021 at home
Bookmarking that Boston spot for my next trip there!