Chilled excellence
Penny, Cafe Mado, McAtlas, Massara, live events, Bánh by Lauren, Penn District dining, worth-it printer, MORE
RESTAURANTS • First Person
High summer
On one of those sweltering high summer evenings last week, I found myself in the coolest seat in Manhattan: at the bar of Penny — the new seafood spot upstairs from sister restaurant Claud, on East 10th Street — three feet away from an oyster-shucking staff member building Ice Boxes.
In Penny parlance, the Ice Box is an artfully arranged platter of raw seafood. On my visit in March, soon after the restaurant opened, my dining companion and I opted for the standard Box — four oysters, a few clams, shrimp, mussels, and scallops for $36. But on this visit, entranced by the craftsmanship on display in front of us, we went big: Ice Box Plus ($98 per) — all of the above, plus a bowl of periwinkles, lobster lettuce bites, razor clams, and (crucially) vichyssoise.
I’d been tipped off to the soup by Ruth Reichl, who lauded “the best variation on vichyssoise I’ve yet encountered” in a recent edition of her newsletter La Briffe. It took us a minute to realize that the two small silver cups at the bottom of the Ice Box tray were in fact chilled soup. But once we did, we tipped our cups back, and, as the roe hidden in the Vichyssoise hit our tongues, we experienced its rapture. On a tray of chilled excellence, it is the quintessential summer sip.
Stepping outside a few mornings later, a different weather vibe: Is that a hint of crispness in the air? (Mark it down: July 18, 2024, the first day of fall in New York City.) And a different dining plan: a leisurely Friday lunch with an old friend at Cafe Mado in Prospect Heights.
The new restaurant, opened just before Memorial Day weekend, is another sophomore effort, this one from the team behind (wonderful) wine bar Place des Fêtes in Clinton Hill. An open kitchen up front gives way to a bakery (serving pastries from the group’s new Laurel Bakery on the Columbia Street Waterfront). At the back of the restaurant, a dining room flooded with light from windows facing the enticing back garden and a large skylight overhead.
“It’s the all-day café NYC needs,” one FOUND subscriber emailed us recently. Sitting at the bar in the dining room (above), it was hard to disagree.
As at Place des Fêtes, the food is surprising, different, and delicious. The Tony, a tribute to Anthony Bourdain’s favorite sandwich, is constructed of mortadella and provolone, served on a house-made English muffin. It split apart as I ate it, unfurling its glories in the best way. Even better was green tomato toast smothered in a nduja gravy. The rest of our meal arrived backwards: First, the pasta dish, long strings of pici coated with pesto genovese, a pleasure of the season. Then, pea leaves with sesame, followed by french fries dusted in herbes de Provence. (Finishing a meal with fries: another revelation.)
On our way out the door, they handed us a bag of Laurel pastries for the next morning, perfect for whatever kind of summer Saturday the weather gods would dole out next. –Lockhart Steele
→ Penny (East Village) • 90 E 10th St • Mon-Fri 5-1030p • Reserve.
→ Cafe Mado (Prospect Heights) • Wed-Sun 12-8p, coffee counter daily from 830a • Reserve.
NYC RESTAURANT LINKS: The summer of Frog Club’s discontent • East Village bar watch: International Bar reopens, Boulton & Watt shutters for good • Farewell to Neary’s, legendary Midtown Irish bar • Cobble Hill’s Clover Club debuts new Saloon next door, opening to public on weekends in August • Williamsburg’s Lella Alimentari plans Greenpoint outpost • Why halfway decent is the new great for cocktail bars.
WORK • Tuesday Routine
McRoutine
GARY HE • photographer and writer • McAtlas
Neighborhood you work in: Williamsburg
It’s Tuesday morning. What’s the scene at your workplace?
I mostly work out of my home office, which is both a blessing and a curse. The privacy and quiet is amazing when I need to focus and there’s a large chunk of text to write, or dozens of photographs to tone. But during the research and administrative phases of my work, I’m prone to accidentally spending hours in a rabbit hole on YouTube or eBay, so I like going to a cafe like Win Son Bakery.
What’s on the agenda for today?
I’m self-publishing a 420-page book about McDonald’s localizations around the world called McAtlas (available for pre-order, thank you!), and I’m really close to sending the files to print. The proofs of the pages and fully bound samples have been coming in, so I’m reviewing them. If something is unsatisfactory, I’ll need to figure out what exactly in my digital file needs to be changed. There will be one more chance to make adjustments when I’m on the printing floor, but those are more like slight tweaks. So this part of the process is super-important.
Any restaurant plans today, tonight, this weekend?
These days I leave my weeknights plan-free in case I need to work late, but also because I love a last minute plan, especially with my friend Robert, a restaurant critic. Recently we really enjoyed Kisa, a new Korean spot in the Lower East Side, and [and FOUND Restaurant of the Summer] Massara, the new hotness from the team behind Rezdôra. And I’m really fortunate to be friends with the people that run Roscioli NYC, the excellent import from Rome. Every weekend I’ll try to rope a friend that I haven’t seen in a while and grab some pasta and wine.
How about a little leisure or culture this week?
Anyone who tells you they have time to do this when they are self-publishing a book is a liar, lol. But I loved every minute of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. Planning a European summer vacation around one of the remaining tour dates — ticket prices there are a fraction of the resale of the remaining North American shows — would not be a bad idea. (Please take me with you!)
What’s a recent big-ticket purchase you love?
I love working on a laptop, but seeing photos and page spreads near full-size on my Apple Studio Monitor has been so helpful in determining if something actually looks good or terrible. Similarly, since the final product is going to be a book, seeing things on paper is helpful for making quality determinations. The Canon ImageCLASS color laser printer was pricey but worth it.
What NYC store or service do you love to recommend?
Browsing bookstores is still a real source of joy for me, and we have so many of them in the city to choose from: from the iconic Barnes and Noble in Union Square to the sexy McNally Jackson outposts, to the more indie ones (Spoonbill, Kitchen Arts & Letters, and The Strand). There’s something so magical about being able to touch and hold these reservoirs of information that were our longtime way of exchanging and preserving knowledge before the digital era.
WORK • Events
Keynote addresses
Four years ago, after Covid wiped out the in-person events calendar for the media company I was running, we wondered whether events would ever come back. A flurry of digital events companies emerged to help companies like ours fill the void. (The future was Hopin!)
Eventually, as we inched back into gathering IRL, we allowed ourselves to believe that big events would play a central role again. That people would get on planes, sit in ballrooms full of their peers, stroll through exhibit halls during cocktail hour with a bagful of swag. But it wasn’t a sure bet.
This year, with business travel having almost fully rebounded, industry conferences are leading the way. Sixty-three percent of corporate travelers expect to make at least one trip to a conference or exhibition in 2024, more than any other travel purpose, per a Deloitte survey.
Events are hard to execute. Want to distract your entire team for a quarter or two? Plan an event. But there’s no better way to prove your audience is real (and engaged) than by asking them to show up in person somewhere. And if you can keep them engaged once they’ve arrived, well, then you’ve really got something.
We can’t risk the blinding distraction right now, but, someday, there will be a FOUND event. Hopefully, it’ll be somewhere glorious, and you’ll be there. In the meantime, prices go up at the door! –Josh Albertson
WORK LINKS: Salesforce makes RTO push (at least 3 days); expect more workers in Bryant Park • White-collar jobs cooldown is coming for recent college grads (interns aren’t safe either) • How Mark Patricof is connecting athletes to private equity.
GOODS & SERVICES • FOUND Shop
Putting down roots
Bánh by Lauren may sit in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge, but it’s New York’s shiniest new bakery, with an already-loyal fanbase due to its origin as a pandemic pop-up.
Like many others, pastry chef Lauren Tran lost her job when the pandemic hit and halted the restaurant industry. One day, she worked at Gramercy Tavern; the next, she found herself at a crossroads. The jarring transition didn’t stop Tran from baking. It wasn’t long before she and her then-boyfriend, Garland Wong, launched Bánh by Lauren, a pop-up bakery out of their apartment. The product: completely original pastries, informed by Lauren’s French training, Vietnamese heritage, and American imagination. An early creation that remains on the menu today is the pandan coconut chiffon cake, a fluffy, multi-layered concoction that tastes as good as it looks on Instagram.
Since 2020, much has changed for Tran and Wong, including getting married, and last month, opening their first brick-and-mortar spot. The space is soothing and sleek, with glossy appliances, a quartz countertop, and bluish-green accents. There’s a case devoted to Tran’s signature chiffon cakes and macarons, and another with a worthy supporting cast of pastries, including a Chinese sausage, cheddar, and chive scone and a slice of springy pandan honeycomb cake. The coffee menu also holds its own. After deliberating for too long, I opted for the Cà Phê Muối, an excellent iced espresso drink topped with frothy, salty-sweet cream.
Bánh by Lauren’s conception and recognition were major silver linings of the pandemic. The brick-and-mortar rendition is a reward for all of us on the other side. –Phoebe Fry
→ Bánh by Lauren (Two Bridges) • 42 Market St • Thu-Sun 8a-5p.
GOODS & SERVICES LINKS: Streetwear brand Staple Pigeon opens first US store on Mercer St • Whole Foods planning mini-store for Hell’s Kitchen • Arc'teryx coming to 114 Crosby (with bonus coffee shop) • Robot massages at Lotte New York Palace: $75 per • Welcome to the LVMH Olympics… one of many excuses to drink more Veuve Clicquot.
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RESTAURANTS & BARS • The Nines
Penn District glow-up
The Nines are FOUND's distilled lists of NYC's best. Additions or subtractions? Hit reply or found@foundny.com.
Roberta’s (W33rd between 7/8, above), sizable new outpost complete with roofdeck and R Slice to go