For the dogs
Canine Styles, best dog boutiques, Lundy’s, Santi, LA benefits, Movement Gowanus, winter Fridays, MORE
GOODS & SERVICES • FOUND Shop
Shiny coats
Super-stylish dogs have trotted their owners to Canine Styles since 1959. The store releases its own collections twice a year, and their cashmere coats (for dogs) are stunning. If you’re wondering just how practical this fabric is for dogs, worry not. “You shouldn’t dry clean cashmere — just hand-wash it in mild soap, squeeze out the excess water, and lay it flat to dry. It’ll last a long time,” the store manager explained to me. “Besides, cashmere is the softest and warmest fabric, and dogs love it because it’s not scratchy.”
Canine Styles’ selection of other clothing and bedding — couture plaid wool coats, silver down puffer jackets, Mary Jane anti-skid socks, sleep teepees — is so enticing, you’ll want to adopt one more pet to spoil in style. –Karen Moline
→ Shop: Canine Styles (Upper East Side/Upper West Side) • cashmere coats from $325 • Mon-Sat 9-6p.
See also our Dog Boutiques Nines, below.
GOODS & SERVICES LINKS: City’s pop-up ice rinks are very good business • Rough Trade opening new record store at Rock Center in spring • Birkin buyer confessions, part II • Ready-to-wear suits are better than ever • Should you be brand aware in your 50s?
RESTAURANTS • First Word
Revivalist spirit
The reincarnated historic restaurant is a rich subgenre of New York City’s dining scene. Be it Minetta Tavern, Gage & Tollner, or (more recently) Le Veau d’Or, it’s clear that New York remains infatuated with its past. To wit: Recently opened Lundy Bros. in Red Hook is a reinterpretation of the original Lundy’s, which operated in Sheepshead Bay for several decades beginning in the 1920s.
That restaurant’s years were flecked with condemned buildings, shootouts, fires, embezzlement, and a couple of murders. It used to be one of the largest restaurants in the United States, having fired about a million seafood plates a year at its peak. The reborn Lundy’s is not quite as large or, hopefully, colorful.
The bar-side entrance tracks more tavern-y than most (the space having been previously Irish pub Rocky Sullivan’s). Walking into it from the Ikea across the street, you might think it was an exposed brick and distinguished wood mirage. Around back, the dining room feels (and looks) like a wedding reception for someone you neither hate nor love enough to have any drama with. (It’s carpeted!) Lundy’s incongruous marriage of unvarnished intentionality is refreshing.
Lundy’s food also achieves textbook comfort. Imagine fried calamari — that’s precisely the one on offer here. Raw bar notwithstanding, seafood isn’t overrepresented, though there’s also a market-price catch of the day on the menu. As for the rest of it, conjure the image of a creamed spinach, the leafy green’s most decadent preparation. They have that, too, and it’s delightful. Likewise, the enormous porterhouse ($125 per), a winning medium-rare, and the chicken, an herbaceous, lemony half bird that might be among the best in the borough.
Lundy’s isn’t exactly a Minetta Tavern-level revival. Lesser-known, lower-profile, and of a lineage from far deeper New York, it’s imbued with its own spirited nostalgia. Its pleasures may not be particularly distinct or surprising, but maybe that’s the point: The familiar is an indulgence on its own. –Amber Sutherland-Namako
→ Lundy Bros. (Red Hook) • 46 Beard St • Wed-Mon 5-11p. • Reserve.
RESTAURANTS • Intel
→ PASTA POWER LUNCH: Chef Michael White’s excellent new Italian restaurant Santi (Midtown) is open for lunch as of yesterday, Mon-Fri from 1130a-230p. It’s a 2- and 3-course prix fixe ($59 or $72 per) from a somewhat more tightly edited menu than at dinner. Reserve.
→ ALL SQUARE: Hell’s Kitchen transplant Corner Slice is soft-opening in Maplewood, NJ, Saturday 12-9p. Walk-ins only for slices and pies in an emergent restaurant micro-neighborhood (see also Perla Oyster Bar, Porta Rossa, and Artie’s).
RESTAURANTS • The Ticket
Nowon Bushwick's Seollal Feast • 4-course traditional Korean tasting menu served family style with optional cocktail pairing • Nowon (Bushwick) • Wed 1/29 starting @ 5p, $87.60 per with pairing
New York for Los Angeles Fundraiser to Benefit LA • food, wine, and spirits from Claud & Penny, Estela, Hometown BBQ, Mitsuru & Sunn’s, 63 Clinton, and Parcelle, with all proceeds to CA charities • 632 Hudson St (West Village) • Thur 1/30 @ 6p, $300 per
ETI Fundraiser to Support LA Fire Relief • 1-night pop-up featuring 5-course, seafood-focused tasting menu with wine pairing • Sommwhere (Lower East Side) • Thur 1/30 @ 6p and 830p, $300 per, email to book
NYC RESTAURANT LINKS: The tropical party that is Gitano coming to South Street Seaport • Top-tier pizzeria Mama’s Too expanding on Upper West Side • Crane Club-adjacent pizzeria Mel’s to shutter in Chelsea on Jan 31 • How the East Village’s Bar Snack makes its Phish Food Old Fashioned • Why apres-ski, minus the skis, is everywhere.
WORK • Tuesday Routine
Pushing that boulder
MATT GROSS • vp, digital initiatives • Archetype
Neighborhood you work in: Wall Street
Neighborhood you live in: Boerum Hill
It’s Tuesday morning. What’s the scene at your workplace?
For years, I worked exclusively from home — a desk with a big monitor right next to my bed. My company was based primarily in Los Angeles and outside DC, so there was nowhere to go except, very occasionally, if I felt like it, a WeWork. But about a year ago, we bought an NYC-based media company, one that happened to have a ton of office space on the 26th floor of a tower right next to Bowling Green, so I started going there regularly — it’s two stops from home on the 4/5! The views are inspiring: New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty, the canyon of skyscrapers up Broadway. And I even claimed for myself a proper office.
I’m the head of digital for Archetype, this weirdly sprawling media company, which means I’m responsible for figuring things out on the tech side, on the editorial side, and on the business side. It’s intersectionality, but for capitalism, yay! Mostly, that means I’m Slacking with colleagues around the country — writers, editors, marketers, finance folks, tech people — trying to answer their questions, make their lives easier, and keep this business organized and functional. Still, actual living human beings do pop by to say hi, sit on the couch, and chat. I love that.
What’s on the agenda for today?
We’re moving all our magazine subscription systems over to a constellation of software centered on Shopify, and it’s a huge project. For a lifelong journalist, all this is a bit of a turn, but I’ve always liked solving problems and making things work. And, after so many decades worrying about the words, the stories, and the headlines, it’s almost relaxing to focus solely on form and structure. Almost.
Because now, still, in the back of mind, is this personal newsletter I launched, called Trying! It’s an attempt to make myself write again, with essays and reportage on how to hold a grudge, the most important emoji, and, in general, the absurd, infuriating, Sisyphean experience that is life in modern-day America. And because I am a masochist, I’m writing this thing daily, including weekends, so a part of my brain is always trying to figure out what tomorrow’s email is going to be about. I don’t know how or when or why, but at some point this afternoon I decided — no, I realize — it’s going to be about the No Reservations Facebook page.
Any restaurant plans today, tonight, this weekend?
Just before I’m about to go home, I get a text from my friend Kevin asking me to meet him for a drink. I need to get back and cook dinner (a Moroccan chicken tagine) for my family, but Kevin lives in our Brooklyn neighborhood, so we go somewhere nearby: Anaïs, the newish wine bar from the owners of Rucola. Anaïs is going for a “literary Parisian” feel, and it’s getting there — it needs to be a bit more worn-in first — but that’s clearly ambiance for a pretentious snob like me. I drink the Martini Deluxe, Kevin has a glass of Champagne, and we talk about stories he wants me to write for the magazine he just joined. Wait, am I becoming a writer again?
How about a little leisure or culture this week?
Friday I’m meeting another old friend, Devra, for drinks — do we go to Public Records, which is super-hip but maybe too hip, or Mercado Central, the new Spanish-style standing wine bar? Saturday I’ll go bouldering at Movement Gowanus with The Brooklyn Teacups, the motley crew of climbers I’ve assembled over the past couple of years. Most likely we’ll grab brunch after, but I don’t know where — maybe Rana 15 for a huge Turkish spread. Sunday’s run day: I’ll meet early with my running crew, the Not Rockets, for 10+ miles that could take us all over Brooklyn or into Manhattan.
Next Saturday we’re going to see the annual musical at my daughter’s high school, LaGuardia — you know, the one from Fame, whose alumni include Timothée Chalamet and Nicki Minaj? These shows are stellar, just a bare step down from Broadway, and I’m surprised more NYC visitors and residents don’t buy tickets.
And somewhere in there, every single day, I’ll find time to write 2,000 words about… something. I’ll let you know on Monday, or you could always just subscribe.
WORK • Employee Benefits
Endless summer
Legend has it, there were no summer Fridays before Don Draper. Or, at least, his real-life 1960s ad agency counterparts, who (per the NYT) were so eager to be Hamptons-bound that they’d shut down the office by noon on Friday.
Other industries (even those nowhere near the East Coast) eventually followed, and a vague office tradition was born. By the time I entered the Indianapolis-area workforce in the ’90s, “summer Fridays” were listed as a perk in job listings for everything from drug company executive to insurance agent to orthodontic assistant (my then-career, long story).
During the tech booms, the pendulum eventually swung back toward the virtues of the non-stop grind, and calls, emails, and deliverables crept back on many warm-weather Friday calendars. The pandemic pushed it even further. What even was summer Friday if you never left your house in the first place? Besides, closing your laptop to doom scroll on your phone didn’t feel like much of a perk anymore.
But the pendulum may have finally swung back. Go to a gym, beach, or restaurant on any Friday, and you’ll see exactly how far. With fewer official Friday afternoons being freely given by their employers, many remote workers are reportedly taking them all. Slack from a 3p Friday yoga class? Don’t mind if I do.
This may be part of the inevitable March toward a four-day work week. Or maybe it’s just a little post-pandemic worker flex in response to benefits lost. There’s only one way to find out: make it official, and bring back that Draper-era summer Fridays spirit. –Eve Batey
WORK LINKS: Even class-A office space in West Chelsea is a hard sell • Bloomberg, TPG headline top 10 Manhattan office deals of 2024 • Seaport development stalls • Can Midtown become the next FiDi? • Why law firms won’t give up the billable hour • Sell the corporate improv trend.
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GOODS & SERVICES • The Nines
Boutiques, dogs
The Nines are FOUND's distilled lists of NYC's best. Additions or subtractions? Hit reply or found@foundny.com.
Canine Styles (Upper East Side, Upper West Side), stylish bedding and clothes, including their own collection of cashmere sweaters