Here's Where the Art World Eats

8:20Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Cool.

8:20Annie Armstrong:It's a really approachable menu, which I think has been somewhat controversial with the food side of consumers in the room. interesting when i went on opening night it was like sort of half food media people and half art world people which was really fun for me and i think that reviews were thus mixed how i felt about over on was that i think that the next time i go to the new museum which i'm really excited to do i saw that the arthur jafa is the next exhibition there like if i'm cutting my experience at the museum in half with a meal i'm not going to want something that's like much more complicated than a half roast chicken or like just a simple salad.

8:59Annie Armstrong:So that I think is what they're proposing.

9:01Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Interesting. And what is your sense of the audience? Is that the goal that it's museum visitors? Does it have broader ambitions to be a kind of destination?

9:09Annie Armstrong:It does have broader ambitions. I interviewed Henry Rich. He runs the Oberon Group, which is the hospitality group that won the bid against a lot of other different hospitality groups that wanted to put the restaurant in the museum. And he said, part of this is like the manifestation is entering through Freeman Alley. So you can go after museum hours it stays open until 1am, which is like very late. And he wants it to be a neighborhood restaurant. He wants the people living around to go and get a burger and like have it be a place you go to multiple times, which I think is a very different approach from a lot of different museum restaurants where you go to the modern maybe once every five years, you know, it's a special occasion place.

9:48Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Maybe you do a glass of wine before something there, but yeah, you're not going to splash out Sidebar about Freeman's Alley. Do you go to Freeman's? Do people go to Freeman's, the restaurant at the end of the alley?

9:57Annie Armstrong:I know that that was such a thing, but I don't think it is anymore. I have been, but it was once quite the hot spot, right?

10:04Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Yeah, we're dating ourselves here. I'm quite a bit older than you. When I first graduated college, it was such a remarkable thing. It felt like the speakeasy pie was going on. They had devils on horseback.

10:15Annie Armstrong:That does date you.

10:17Gabi Vidal Irizarry:It felt like a kind of new era down there. I love that it still exists. I want to go back.

10:21Annie Armstrong:You should, yeah. I remember going when I first moved to New York, but I have not been back since. But not for any reason. But yeah, I don't think it's quite the hang that it needs to be.

10:29Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Got it. Got it. All right, I'm sidetracking us. So the third one in the big three that have opened up is Zoli out in Amman. The whole thing blows my mind that this restaurant exists at this institution out in Bushwick. Walk us through it. Have you been? I don't want to... Spoiler alert, right? The pure weed tanks. I went when they installed the weed tanks. They had like a party, but there was no food going. It was just beers and wine.

10:50Annie Armstrong:It's really... a stunning building.

10:53Gabi Vidal Irizarry:The room is astonishing. It's beautiful.

10:54Annie Armstrong:Yeah. It's gorgeous. I feel equal parts like I'm in Copenhagen or Tokyo and then like a mysterious third place that I've never been to before. It's so fun to think about Lanty Ebers who opened the Montt. She just got to build what she wanted to see out there like from the ground up. It's just such a dream. And then the chef at Zoli is this guy, Ben Baldwin, who is the executive chef at Hausman, which is the restaurant that Barbara Gladstone was an investor in and they were very good friends so he actually has a yale mfa and he was a working studio artist i would guess like until he was 25 so he has like these inroads into the art world sure he's really following his heart out there the food is really interesting it's very oceanic it's a lot of fish and then you go there and you're having this like flayed black sea bass and then you are eating it by the Pierre Wee Aquarium, which is like all kind of themed around like environmental decay.

11:53Annie Armstrong:And I think all the fish is very locally sourced. So like that kind of tension is like on your mind when you're over there, which is maybe not super appetizing.

12:01Gabi Vidal Irizarry:I was going to say, to me, it sounds kind of perverse, kind of unpleasant, but how are the reviews? Fantastic.

12:05Annie Armstrong:He's just like racking up raves after raves. Like Helen Rosner just wrote a big rave piece about it for the New Yorker. And all of it is about how it is challenging diners. Like I said, I just want to eat like a half roast chicken. I might not have the most complex palate. I liked it. I like Zoli, but it's like food that does not taste like food I've ever had before, is what I'll say. Wow.

12:30Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Wow. Yeah. I'm in your camp where what you were saying about sometimes wanting a simple meal after a kind of intense art experience. I remember SF MoMA when it was renovated by Snowetta. This was, gosh, eight, nine, ten years ago. they had this restaurant in the lobby and the conceit was that it was curated. And so there were like great dishes from around the world, from high-end restaurants and some kind of lower end ones. It was too much. I don't want to think about this. I've just gone through an exhibition for two hours, whatever. I just want a chicken, a burger. Don't make me think about like which small bites, avant-garde things I want to eat.

13:06Annie Armstrong:Right. Yeah. Like I'm just not thinking about it in that way. I think that might just be because I like have historically not really thought about food in that way. Like I am kind of new to just being really attentive to food. Zoe's strength, I think, is that it is the least attached to the museum out of all three of them. So you really can go and it's like its own experience. Just the room is staggeringly gorgeous. And they just opened their upstairs where they're introducing a menu that is sort of more approachable, which I haven't tried yet. So I'm very curious about it.

13:36Gabi Vidal Irizarry:I love it.

13:37Annie Armstrong:And there's like a rooftop garden up there. Zora and Momdani went there.

13:40Gabi Vidal Irizarry:That man is everywhere. Yeah, I know. Oh my God. I mean, as you said, it's challenging people's taste. It's sort of food that you've not quite experienced before. The room is ambitious. Will it work? Will people make the trek over there? Or are there people in the neighborhood that want to eat there again and again?

13:59Annie Armstrong:I think that's going to be their biggest challenge is getting people over there and getting the type of people that they want to go to what they would call East Williamsburg and what we have already called Bushwick.

14:10Gabi Vidal Irizarry:I'm confused about, yeah, where the cutoff is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

14:13Annie Armstrong:I think all of the positive press is going to be great. And I think that there's so much investment in it that it's not going to be going anywhere.

14:20Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Yeah.

14:21Annie Armstrong:But yeah, I think that'll be the big challenge for Zoli.

14:24Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, man, so interesting. And so then let's pivot a little bit. And as I was saying at the start, your column has done this amazing thing at Caper, where even though you're writing about the restaurant world, the food world, you've gone so deep in it. Art keeps coming up again and again. And so my first broad question for you is, why are art people so obsessed with restaurants? And are restaurants obsessed with art? It sounds like a little bit, maybe.

14:53Annie Armstrong:Yeah, definitely. I think that this was one of the best things about reporting on the art beat for as long as I did and do, is that the traveling circus of people engaged in fine art just really treasure taste and experience. When I would go to fairs like in Paris or Basel, I did not have to think at all about where I was going to eat, because if I just follow the leader, I would end up at really tremendously great places. It was so interesting to talk to that guy, Ned Baldwin, who is the chef at Zoli, because for him, there's so much overlap between what he was aspiring to do with his ceramics practice and then what he's actually doing with his chef career.

15:32Annie Armstrong:It's all just like sensory experience, striving for a more beautiful, better experience of life.

15:38Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Totally. Totally. What do you think art people look for in a restaurant? I asked because as we were preparing, we were trading links back and forth. And there was an article from New York Magazine about when Lucky Strike closed. The great, great, great bar, kind of very chill, almost kind of tavern grill in Soho. And Jeffrey Deitch had this amazing quote where he said, you know, the food was, it was not super adventurous. His point was that art people, artists, they don't want to sit around talking about the food. I'm curious if you think that's true. And just generally, yeah, what do art people want in a restaurant?

16:09I think usually we're seeking like a cafeteria kind of feeling where you walk into a place and you reliably get to rub shoulders with other people.

16:17Annie Armstrong:And that was definitely what Lucky Strike was. It's what Walkers to me is now.

16:22Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Interesting. Okay.

16:23Annie Armstrong:I think that that's probably the most logical antecedent to Lucky Strike.

16:27Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Explain Walkers for people who don't know.

16:30Annie Armstrong:Walkers is a historic tavern, I guess. I call it a tavern. Tavern? Yeah, in Tribeca. And since all the galleries moved to Tribeca maybe like, what, five or six years ago, it's become the meetup spot. Like on Tribeca openings nights, I will go there and I cannot even get 10 feet into the restaurant without having to say hi to a million different people. And then even on nights where it's not that way, like it's just where all the dealers go and artists go to hang out and like rub shoulders with people. And when I switched over, there was a kind of misconception that like people that work in art always want to have these rarefied intensely aesthetic experiences but that's really not the case fine art people like Jeffrey Deitch hanging out and eating a cheeseburger it's a very high low visual and I think we all kind of seek that like I love when the whole art world goes to Joe's Stone Crab in Miami and we all are kind of just like a little bit like reticent to be there not really wanting to do it but for that reason it's so much more fun and you just like really let your hair down.

17:33Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Cafeteria food, I think, is a good line. It's like they want a certain scene. I think history goes a long way. And the sense that you're just going to run into people you know. Like, I'll just shout out Kenny Schachter, one of our columnists. He only dines at Fleming on the Upper East Side. And the food, it's fine. It's not the world's greatest food, but that's a room where it's just the most interesting people walk in. And it's very fun. And the staff is really fun. Yeah, rather than have an ultra-rarified, like vanguard culinary experience. It's about a great salad niçoise, some good pasta, you know.

18:04Annie Armstrong:It was so funny when I first started with Caper. Like I got the question so many times of like, oh, how often do you go to Michael's? And I was like, I've never been to Michael's once. And it shocked everybody. And then I was like, oh, well, Walkers is obviously the hangout. And everybody was like, what do you mean? Like, what is Walkers? Isn't that just like Irish people going to watch sports? I was like, absolutely not. Amazing. It's really different. Yeah.

18:24Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Amazing. So what are the other places that you run into art people? because you really have kept yourself in the art world to a large degree. What are go-tos where you just know you're going to be able to run into dealers, artists, gossip, any neighborhood? Where are you going?

18:36Annie Armstrong:Well, we were just discussing happier grocery.

18:39Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Yeah, tell us. I am intimidated by that place. I haven't been. I talked to a writer colleague who loves it. Tell me more.

18:46Annie Armstrong:Yeah, it's a gourmet grocery, which is just like all the rage in New York right now. It opened maybe like two or three years ago, I think, by this woman, Gabriella Kulil, who runs WSA, the Members Club. and lots of other destination-y places around the world. But it's New York's answer to Erewhon, I think. And I think that was very much her intention when she was opening it. They have these green juices that very much have a sticker that you've once seen in your Instagram story.

19:14Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Got it.

19:15Annie Armstrong:And it is right at the nose of Tribeca. It's across Canal. So I don't think it is. It's above Canal. They all go there. And that's quite the scene. I feel like you don't really go there to chit-chat, but I definitely see our dealers there. The new one is gosh. Have you been? I want to go.

19:31Gabi Vidal Irizarry:I worry I'm too old. I worry.

19:34Annie Armstrong:Hang on to your hat. I think I felt too old going there. It's wild. I mean, I was just really, really glad to see something replace that energy that I think has been lacking for a few years. Like when I first started doing wet paint, it was right after the pandemic. And there was just so much intensity around the dime square scene. It was so obvious that that was where everything was happening. And that has sort of decentralized since and nothing, to my knowledge, has really replaced it. Gosh feels very promising in that way. Whether that's a forced first societal good or not, I'm not sure.

20:17Gabi Vidal Irizarry:When it was Dime Square, people would be drinking at what, Clandestino?

20:22Annie Armstrong:Clandestino, Servos Outside, Cookies, which is like now in battle. And it was before the hotel came and before TikTok came. Got it. And it just felt a lot more rugged, I guess.

20:34Gabi Vidal Irizarry:A lot more rustic. And so that spirit, this communal rustic energy is now at GOSH.

20:39Annie Armstrong:Where even is GOSH? Like rustic is like never the word I would use to describe GOSH, but here we are. GOSH is in the old Juku space. I don't even know that. I sound like I'm just speaking gibberish. This is how clueless I am. Juku, it's on Mulberry Street, deep in Chinatown. Got it. And Max LeVay was an investor in it. And it was a nightclub that went two floors down. He was always there like throwing parties and stuff. And it was also an intimidating scene. Like I remember going there and it was like kind of mean lollipops were being passed out. I was like, oh my God. Gosh, kind of has like a similar feeling to that where you go in and you have no idea what's going to happen.

21:12Annie Armstrong:And it has like the fine art connections too because it was started by, I might mangle these numbers, but three of the five owners of Amanita, the gallery on Bowery. Jacob Hyman really is the man on the ground there. They just started a food program and I have not yet been, but I hear it's really good. Speaking of Kenny Schachter, his son Adrian did the interiors on the second floor where it's like he used AI to like create this kind of like Boschian nightmare, velvety situation. It feels like you're in a clockwork orange. On that floor, there's also confession booths and like every few nice or so, I think they actually get priests in there that you can confess to.

21:52Annie Armstrong:And another time they were doing piercings through the wall.

21:55Gabi Vidal Irizarry:There must be some cool priests that want to hang out in there.

21:58Annie Armstrong:Or they must be really desperate to get some converts.

22:02Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Catholicism's back, allegedly, right?

22:04Annie Armstrong:Yeah, yeah. I think it's hand in glove. In the basement, there's like Rachel Harrison prints. There's Mike Kelly behind the bar on the first floor. It's really fun. As soon as you walk in, it's a really imposing vibe. You should be scared to walk into gosh and i think it's a good thing that there's something like that out there

22:22Gabi Vidal Irizarry:i support that as well i support that it's kind of like a flaredes like i feel like there was

22:27Annie Armstrong:always like a sense of like fear walking into a flaredes like it's sort of like a fun house like something might pop out at you yes and it kind of literally would at a flaredes gosh has that feeling and i just think that like the way that we look back on the days of dance eteria we might look back at gosh and say we were lucky to have it even though right now it feels like a little bit obnoxious or over the top.

22:48Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Totally. Even Odeon back in the day when every waiter was an artist or acting.

22:54Annie Armstrong:Yeah, the Odeon, I feel like the Odeon still exists. It's definitely a different audience, but not always. I think the Odeon's modern answer is probably food, Lucian Smith's restaurant.

23:04Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Tell me about that because Lucian Smith also kind of a, you never know what's going to happen, divisive figure.

23:10Annie Armstrong:Yeah, controversial divisive figure, for sure. I mean, my colleague at Caper, Chris Crowley, wrote this piece for New York Magazine about how he was using, like, ChatGPT to come up with recipes in real time. He did not have the cooperation of the Gordon-Mattaclark estate to open his version of food, which was obviously Gordon-Mattaclark's idea. There's another version of it in Los Angeles that I think does have the cooperation of the estate.

23:34Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Amazing. This is news to me. I didn't know that.

23:36Annie Armstrong:It's less stylish, and it's more like the charitable aspect of food, which is that it's like it's meant to

23:41Gabi Vidal Irizarry:have like approachable prices and really serve the artist community and hire the artist community is it good should we go the lucian smith i think you should go i think you should go because it's

23:52Annie Armstrong:very fun james fuentes hosted a dinner there a few weeks ago that was just a blast i had like what was it it was like steak frite in a bowl and like a styrofoam bowl i'm not going to call it excellent dining but i have not called any of these places excellent dining i don't think it's really what I'm out there looking for.

24:12Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Totally, totally. I mean, the Fuentes dinner, what's your preference for a gallery dinner, for an art dinner? What would you like to see? It's all over the map, and sometimes they're great, sometimes they're not so great.

24:23Annie Armstrong:I think everybody felt set free once they stopped doing seated dinners. Once they all became standing, and I didn't feel like I had to be there at a certain time, and if I was late or had to leave early. I would feel guilty. That to me is my dream. And then also I think it's much more financially sound for the gallery hosting it to do a standing dinner. That's my zoomed out opinion.

24:47Gabi Vidal Irizarry:I support both of those things. I'm a big fan of standing. It can be a little anxiety inducing if you don't have seated places, but you have tables, kind of high school cafeteria vibe. But I think overall that can be great. Even if it's just like grab a seat and it's kind of like semi I played it. I'm game for that. If you're going to do seated, it should just be like an artist of such august stature. It should be intimate. It should be the people really close to it. When you have these big dinners and it's seated, gigantic, what's going on? Why am I here? Yeah.

25:16Annie Armstrong:Mr. Chow Miami closed, which to me was like watershed moment. I mean, I was never invited to this dinner, but I was like, oh my God, the Gagosian dinner in Miami is like totally done with. And I was talking about that with some people when I reported that. And they were just like, yeah, but like that kind of dinner is kind of over in the art world. Like people aren't really doing gallery dinners in the way that they used to, which I can kind of see. And I think is probably good. I'm so happy to hear that.

25:42Gabi Vidal Irizarry:It doesn't make sense. The expense involved. It didn't make any financial sense.

25:46Annie Armstrong:And yeah, I think unless it's like your star artists where you're like selling six figure works, there's just no reason. I mean, you obviously want your artists to feel celebrated, but I don't know. Yeah. Too much of an albatross. Like I remember being in Tribeca probably around this time last year, maybe fall of last year, reporting wet paint. It was like one of the Thursdays where all the Tribeca galleries were having openings. And one day I was like, oh, what are you doing after this? I was like, oh, I'm going to this gallery's dinner. And they're like, oh, where is it? I was like, oh, it's at Frenchette.

26:14Annie Armstrong:And it was like that moment in American Psycho with the business cards. I was like, oh, that gallery's dinner is at Frenchette.

26:21Gabi Vidal Irizarry:That's a pretty good flex. A Frenchette dinner is pretty good.

26:24Annie Armstrong:It is. Yeah. Pretty good. But I think it's maybe for the best that that kind of thing is petering out. Too much. Yeah.

26:30Gabi Vidal Irizarry:You run the numbers. Art's already expensive enough.

26:33Annie Armstrong:You were telling me about this is such a self-owned to admit out loud that I've never been to Bottino.

26:38Gabi Vidal Irizarry:I wasn't even going to touch on it. No, it's fascinating. I think that speaks to just you're of a different generation. You entered at a moment when Bottino. So for the listeners not familiar, I will say shout out Dan DeRay. He wrote a great article at the New York Observer like 15 years ago about Bottino. And this was a restaurant started. It's still there on 10th. It's between 24th and 25th. And it is super basic. I guess you would call it Italian inflected food. The funders were Metro Pictures, Barbara Gladstone and Matthew Marks. It opened, I want to say, late 90s when there just were no great restaurants over there and they needed a place.

27:20Gabi Vidal Irizarry:They chipped in the money. Now it's a little empire. They have the sandwich spot. And so I was working at Metro 2010 or so. And I would say every other dinner, every third dinner was there that the gallery would do because it was just like such a staple. And I think that was true of many galleries. I've seen a little bit of a comeback that I think galleries are doing it again because it's a restaurant that just knows how to execute. They can do the chicken. They can just keep pouring the wine, pour, pour, pour. They're in and out. because the worst thing about a celebratory gallery art dinner is like if it's 9 9 30 and the entree isn't out like people start losing their minds but tino just hits hits hits and

28:01Annie Armstrong:they get the job done that's important it's yeah it's like the cafeteria thing totally but like i

28:06Gabi Vidal Irizarry:never really had dinner out in chelsea no reason to no reason i would even go to dinners with

28:11Annie Armstrong:chelsea galleries it was never in chelsea right and that's a funny thing but that is that still is true that it's right it's not necessarily west village or even like hudson square yeah you have

28:21Gabi Vidal Irizarry:lunch in chelsea you go to cook shop yeah i was gonna name other things that's sort of it that's

28:25Annie Armstrong:it i got the dregs of the rusty knot i was at the end wow right when i moved to new york was the last two years of the rusty knot and i was there all the time and when that closed i could tell that we were losing a really important hangout for the art world i used to love the rusty knot

28:41Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Yeah, phenomenal bar. One other question. Well, a couple about art restaurants. Now that you're in the food world, you can give the rating for up or down. Beccaro. Is Beccaro in a comeback mode? Do you go to Beccaro?

28:53Annie Armstrong:Yeah, I think that they do group dinners really well. They have that like downstairs area. Great room. Kind of like a grotto. Yes. And yes, I've been there several times. And yeah, they have good tables and good service. And it's like right there. That's kind of a perfect place.

29:06Gabi Vidal Irizarry:And then Odeon. We touched on it earlier, but what's the feeling there now? Is that back? Is that a place you would stop by?

29:11Annie Armstrong:Odeon feels kind of like kitsch to me.

29:13Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Yeah, I know what you mean.

29:14Annie Armstrong:Because it's historic and like, because you want to get a cosmopolitan, though it wasn't actually invented there. It was invented at Long Island Bar, but like, whatever. I heard a crazy fun fact that has nothing to do with art. The actor that played Jim, John Krasinski, was a bartender at the Odeon when he got the call that he was going to be on The Office, which I thought was just a really funny thing. Really funny scene. I feel like I go, but I don't see as many people I know there as I would like a Beccaro, honestly. Like, I think that after Keith wrote his memoir, his restaurants became more touristy.

29:49Gabi Vidal Irizarry:That's interesting. I didn't realize that.

29:51Annie Armstrong:I think that that's that's definitely true of Baltazar. Wow. When I go to Baltazar now, it's a lot of out-of-towners.

29:57Gabi Vidal Irizarry:That's interesting. Finnelli's?

29:59Annie Armstrong:Finnelli's forever.

30:00Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Yeah.

30:00Annie Armstrong:I'm loyal to Finnelli forever.

30:02Gabi Vidal Irizarry:I like lunching there. Yeah.

30:03Annie Armstrong:I go once every other week at least.

30:06Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Wow. Okay. And you run into our people. You see people there.

30:08Annie Armstrong:Yeah, I run into everybody, all walks of life. It's everybody's cafeteria there.

30:13Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Amazing, there you go. That's a perfect transition. Let's get a little servicey. I think many listeners will either live in New York or visit New York. They'll do art things in New York and they'll want advice about where to eat. So let's start with New York, then maybe we'll have time and we'll jump to some other cities. Let's start maybe the hardest first or complicated, Uptown, Upper East Side. You're going to the Gordon Venaclassen Gallery. You're stopping by 980 Madison, 976 now to the Gagosian Gallery. Where are you having lunch? Where are you getting drinks? What are your go-tos uptown?

30:45Annie Armstrong:Uptown, I think Dorian's Red Hand is kind of... Oh, great call. Yeah.

30:49Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Great call.

30:50Annie Armstrong:It has that feeling. Like, random is the wrong word. It's like you copy-pasted Walkers and put it uptown. I think I would tell you to go have dinner at Cafe Antomuchi.

31:00Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Phenomenal place.

31:00Annie Armstrong:If you don't know the lore about it, it was Gaetano Pache was a regular there. There's a lot of his artwork in the restaurant. I love the environment in there. I feel like there are model ships in there too.

31:12Gabi Vidal Irizarry:I just went for the first time recently for lunch. They had a great lunch special. It was like two courses for 30, three courses for 35. Very quiet room, but like still humming and amazing.

31:25Annie Armstrong:It's really, really chill. I've only been for dinner and I love it for dinner. It has a nice like kind of bright feeling. You sort of feel like you're in South of France or something.

31:33Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Yes.

31:34Annie Armstrong:And then Heidelberg. Have you been to Heidelberg?

31:36Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Oh, man. I've been to their sausage stand next door. But it looks phenomenal. I mean, it looks like one of the great old school German restaurants.

31:46Annie Armstrong:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

31:47Gabi Vidal Irizarry:What's your order at Heidelberg?

31:48Annie Armstrong:Oh, I'm getting Spetzel for sure. Yeah. Jaeger schnitzel. I love heavy winter food and that's very German. Every time I've been to the Basel, I'm very pleased with what I eat.

31:58Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Those are good ones. Those are good curveballs. I didn't expect you to go with either of those. Let's jump to Chelsea. We've already discussed a little bit the difficulties over there. But what's your play?

32:07Annie Armstrong:I, like, don't have one, to be honest. Are you a cookshop fan? Do you like it? I don't love cookshop. I don't like the energy in there.

32:15Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Well, they renovated it. This was a while ago now. It got even more crowded, and it's just, it's too much.

32:21Annie Armstrong:It's so loud. I can't handle it. I usually just go down to West Village. If I must, I am going to, there's Howe Noodle. There's, like, a noodle place that I like over there. But it's not a scene. I'm looking at my Google Maps right now. I have so many things are marked down. And Chelsea is just like this huge, glaring lack.

32:41Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Any place for drinks, Chelsea? Do you go to Porchlight? Are you a Porchlight fan? Oh, yeah.

32:45Annie Armstrong:Porchlight's nice. I like that. And then there's a few hotel bars over there that I'm forgetting. Chelsea's a blind spot for me, to be honest. I would go to West Village. I would go to Comerson if I was going.

32:57Gabi Vidal Irizarry:I almost went there the other night. And then actually, Via Corotta had a table. And so I was so happy. Is Comerson good? It's kind of old school, right?

33:04Annie Armstrong:Comerson is so good. And guess who was there last time I was there? Sofia Coppola.

33:08Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Wow. The food is like colonial New York or something, right?

33:11Annie Armstrong:It's like you would go and expect to wear a tri-corner hat. So much weird nostalgia for that kind of aesthetic right now. It's like bushels of hay on the wall.

33:21Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Kind of like Freeman's. Maybe Freeman's will have a comeback because that's sort of the vibe.

33:25Annie Armstrong:Yeah.

33:25Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Colonial era in New York.

33:27Annie Armstrong:So yeah, if you're going to Chelsea, don't go to Chelsea. If you go down.

33:30Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Well, and also your point about being a blind spot is such a good one because, frankly, there are fewer galleries there now and you don't need to be there all day. I find like you can take half the day, knock out a good chunk of streets and then you're on your way maybe to downtown, which is probably the most fun.

33:46Annie Armstrong:Just going to enjoy yourself more, I think. And then like Tribeca is having a moment. We've already talked about Frinchette. We've talked about Walkers. But what's exciting is that, okay, Keith McNally's son's restaurant called Faux is opening there, I think, in the fall. And then also a major food group, Mario Carbone and Rich Teresi's food group, is taking over the Tribeca Grill. So there's a lot of new energy coming to Tribeca. Wow, the old Drew Near Parent.

34:10Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Wow. I didn't know that. That's interesting. What are your other go-tos downtown?

34:15Annie Armstrong:I had the most phenomenal meal. I think the best meal I've had all year based on the food was Pizza Studio Tamaki, which is easy. Oh, yes. I've heard about this. It's so, so, so good. You have to go. That's a little bit far off the map from where the galleries are, I guess.

34:31Gabi Vidal Irizarry:That's a great tip, though.

34:32Annie Armstrong:I mean, King is excellent. King is so good, but that's pretty expensive and a little hard to get into. Where else is my favorite? Where do you normally go? You are good at exploring.

34:44Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Well, the Tribeca to me is tricky. Lower East Side, there are not so many galleries anymore. But for a quick eat, it's North Dumpling. They moved a block south. I also love, although it's changed, Eastwood over on Clinton, especially if it's really early. It's near Ernesto's, East Broadway and Clinton. You can sit at the bar, have a burger, have a beer. It gets crowded later on.

35:07Annie Armstrong:Have you been to Maxi's Noodle? That's so good.

35:09Gabi Vidal Irizarry:No, tell me about Maxi's Noodle.

35:11Annie Armstrong:It's on Mott Street, and it's just really perfect noodle soup, which is always what I want to eat. I have yet to go to Bubby's, which has had such a comeback in Tribeca because of the Carolyn Bessette and JFK Jr. show.

35:23Gabi Vidal Irizarry:I was trying to understand why that had become a thing again. That's exactly why.

35:27Annie Armstrong:Yeah. But I haven't been yet. I need to go.

35:29Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Let's jump to other cities. You had mentioned that when you were on the art beat, when you were pounding the pavement at art fairs, you would usually find your way. And that really is one of the funniest and best things. It's a little bit like with the Davos crowd, like the joke that, you know, these billionaires know Davos better than, you know, their own neighborhood. It's true that like the art people like have this sense of like, oh, these are the five restaurants you're supposed to go to in Venice or Paris. What were your favorites in, say, pick any city that you've enjoyed going to?

35:56Annie Armstrong:I'm not breaking any new ground here, but I've had amazing food in Paris. It's fun to like draw the New York comparisons. There's like this trifecta of different groceries that is very Dimesquarish or like what Dimesquare once was. And La Cana Tabla. It's not like I'm going there for food, really, but those places are really fun. Last time I was there, I went to Camado, which is amazing. It's seafood, the sister restaurant to this place, Septim, which I've not been to. Everybody seems to love to go to Laduck, and it's right by the catacombs. Last time I was there, everybody was talking about this place, Tarantula, which is such a tremendous name for a restaurant.

36:32Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Oh, my gosh.

36:33Annie Armstrong:And it's Mexican food by way of French chefs, which I'm so interested in and would love to go to. and then i mean i've spent a ton of time in los angeles and like kind of with the art scene out in la and one of the best gallery dinners i've ever been to is at yamashiro which is where they filmed the fight scene and kill bill have you been there are you familiar with this place no this is all news to me tell us japanese and it's on a hill in the hollywood hills and it has this sprawling amazing view of la and it's sushi boats like really garish oh wait no i think i went to a

37:04Gabi Vidal Irizarry:bachelor party there. It's kind of faded, right? It's not like glitzy.

37:09Annie Armstrong:No, it's not cool.

37:10Gabi Vidal Irizarry:I mean, it's cool, but it's cool, but it's not like Nobu or something.

37:13Annie Armstrong:No, no, no. You don't really go for quality. But yeah, I mean, Stir Crazy. Oh my gosh, Stir Crazy, which is run by a galer's named Harley Wertheimer, who runs Castle Gallery. And Stir Crazy is fabulous. It's so, so, so good. It's like natural wines. I spent my summer in Los Angeles and I would reliably see any New York art world person at Sir Crazy if they came into town. It's that kind of spot. And they have really good food there too. It's very small plates, California, like healthy produce. Gorgeous. He has rotating art in there too, which is really great. London, I had one of the best meals of my life at a place called the Pum Sal.

37:53Pub food, they have like these like amazing little tiny

37:55Annie Armstrong:little sausages that are so salty and good. You go to St. John? No, I've never been.

38:01Gabi Vidal Irizarry:I was just in London. And of course, that's where I ran into, well, keeping a blind item, I ran into a noted MoMA curator and a noted artist at one of the St. John locations. Amazing. And it's so like art world in the sense that, right, it's stripped down. It's just white walls, basically. Incredible cocktail and wine list. And just like really tasty and sort of aggressive food, like all sorts of organ meats, but still really pleasurable and easy. Oh, great meal. And then I also did in London, Toklas, the new Frieze place. From the Frieze founders. Yeah, yeah, which was great. It was just really solid, like Italian.

38:40Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Chill, the sort of food you want to eat. Kick back, relax, a good green salad. I think we get some pasta. It was delicious. And you can sit outside on the deck. You're right by the Courtauld. Just a very civilized experience. This is maybe the final thing I want to talk about is there has been this funny trend in recent years of dealers, artists, art people opening restaurants, right? So it's Amanda and Matthew from Freeze opening Toklas. You pointed out Lucian Smith. Gagosian has his restaurant. Are you a fan of any of these?

39:09Annie Armstrong:Have you been to like Capamasa? I have never been to Capamasa, but it's on my list to go. I mean, it's prohibitively expensive, right?

39:16Gabi Vidal Irizarry:I think it's like comically, yeah. It famously shows up in the Epstein finals, right?

39:21Annie Armstrong:Yeah, Woody Allen's order.

39:21Gabi Vidal Irizarry:They're like, Woody's coming over and he needs his like three rolls.

39:25Annie Armstrong:Yeah, it's a beautiful room.

39:26Gabi Vidal Irizarry:I sat at the bar and had like a sparkling water or something before. Manuela in New York. There's one in Los Angeles. Of course, they have their hospitality group that does things around the world. I'm just going to say, Manuela, I don't love it in Soho.

39:43Annie Armstrong:It's not even fine, personally. It's like a crazy environment, too. I think it's just like everything we've been talking about with like kind of what the ideal place for their art world to go to. it's the opposite of where it's just like there's so much art on the walls like it really tells you what to think about when you're in there yeah i love the mika rutenberg bar i almost just wish that that was the whole entire conceit of the restaurant was that it just has this like kooky like flower bar or like if it was just the louise bourgeois spider but like because there's so much

40:14Gabi Vidal Irizarry:you just kind of can't focus on anything yes and the food is okay the food's okay they have really

40:19Annie Armstrong:imaginative cocktails. I wrote about this really early on with K-Perth and it felt like such a wet paint-y item. They have like a black box theater in the basement that they're activating now. And she did cabaret singing down there one time.

40:33Gabi Vidal Irizarry:And she was great. She was really great.

40:36Annie Armstrong:It was so fun.

40:37Gabi Vidal Irizarry:It's all just very Swiss. Everything about this. The room, even like the little theater. Annie, I basically want to discuss this all day with you, but we should close out. And so maybe the final question I'll ask you is if you can leave our listeners with just one great recommendation for a restaurant in a food neighborhood, what should we order? Where should we go? Guide us. Plan our trip out.

41:05Annie Armstrong:Oh, my gosh. The most fantastic restaurant I have ever been to in my New York career is Cafe Kestrel in Red Hook. So it's off the beaten path. Go to Pioneer Works. Start at Pioneer Works. Have a reservation ready. Walk over there. It's across the street. It is a perfect little jewelry box. It's so, so, so pretty in there. I feel like I'm in London. Like, I feel like I'm in a really, really nice place in London. If you go in the summer, go in the backyard, they have this incredible chicken with carrots on top that tastes like it was made by like a French grandma. It feels like home cooking in a way.

41:40Annie Armstrong:Every bite surprises me. They do this steak that has like a giant beefsteak tomato on top. And And it's kind of just like, it's not a joke because it tastes really good, but it's like the joke is that it's like a beefsteak tomato on your beefsteak. And it's delicious. It's so succulent. And like every detail of this place astounds me. And it's just a beautiful restaurant. And this is for my thrifty listeners. They have a special happy hour meal, which is$30. Their burger is fantastic. And you get a martini and they have it every week. You just have to get out to Red Hook. I mean, you can have a perfect day there.

42:14Annie Armstrong:Go to Pioneer Works, go to Cafe Kestrel and end up at Sunny's. That's just like, it's amazing.

42:19Gabi Vidal Irizarry:What a note to end on. Perfect high note. That is awesome. Annie, it is so fun to do this. It's so good to be back. Thank you for having me. You're welcome back, of course, anytime. Hopefully we'll see you out and about and everyone should go read Annie's column.

42:34Annie Armstrong:What date does it come out on? What date does it drop? Mondays. But I think that's going to probably rotate pretty soon. But for the future, Mondays, yeah.

42:41Gabi Vidal Irizarry:Subscribe to Kaper and you'll get it.

42:43Annie Armstrong:Yes. Thank you so much.

42:44Gabi Vidal Irizarry:have a great one and we'll see you out there at the bars and restaurants and galleries

42:48Annie Armstrong:see you out there

42:50Gabi Vidal Irizarry:that's it for this week's episode The Yard Angle is produced by Sonia Manalili with contributions from Ben Davis and Caroline Goldstein thanks for listening and see you next week