Beef & Burgers & Bone Marrow
A Rapper's Delight
Oof, ya girl’s had a big week! I moved my company into a new office last week (all by myself 🥲) and everything went surprisingly smoothly. It’s as if I actually know how to do my job or something, who knew? The move left me absolutely exhausted and with a few lingering to-do’s, so here we are a tad late.
We’ve also got a lot of new readers here who came over from Julia’s newsletter! I have been following Julia on Instagram for years now and I love how insightful her content is - she truly shares information for all walks of life. She specializes in career strategy and personal brand management, so if you’re looking for a career change, wanna spruce up your resume, or just need help figuring out what the hell it is you even do, she’s your girl!
Since we’ve got a bunch of new folks here (and I actually finally figured out how to turn on the paywall), I’m gonna throw up the 15% discount again. That means a yearly subscription to read my words is only $42.50! If that feels like a lot to drop at once, you can also grab a monthly subscription for $5/mo. Paid subscribers will receive all 5 sections of the newsletter every week and you can also reach out to me anytime to help you plan a fun day in NYC - date night, museum day, dessert crawl, whatever. If you all become paid subscribers, then maybe I’ll never have to do another office move ever again (and if you’re my boss, you didn’t read that).
1. Noshing 😋
Another month, another Beef Fancy Dinner! I told Beef I was taking him to eat the best hamburger in the city, so off we went to Minetta Tavern! Actually let me backtrack a bit - I can’t call any one burger the best. Different burgers are good for different occasions and the burger at Minetta Tavern is good for an occasion in which you want a thick steakhouse burger and a fuck ton of fries. Specifically, you want to get their Black Label Burger. Now that I’ve hopefully whetted your appetite, let’s talk about Minetta Tavern and this burger.
Minetta Tavern originally opened in 1937, so this bitch is nearly 100 years old and at one time it had a Michelin star. It did undergo a renovation and menu change in 2008 after ownership changed hands, but this was strictly a refresh and the place thankfully retained all of its old school charm while switching from an Italian menu to a French Steakhouse vibe. The restaurant gets its name from the waterway that is still likely running underneath - Minetta Creek. Nearby streets Minetta Lane and Minetta Place have the waterway to thank for their names as they were paved right on top of the waterway. A bunch of other streets in NY also have waterways running underneath - perhaps you’ve heard of Canal St or Maiden Lane?
Anyways enough history, let’s talk Black Label Burger. What once cost $28 is now $38 and though it pains me to say this, it’s fuckin worth it. The burger is a combination of dry aged beef cuts and it’s a thick ass burger, not like the smash burgers that are proliferating across the city at the moment (also good, but just different). The BLB comes topped with caramelized onions, which are so deliciously sweet and the perfect offset to the absolute savory meatiness that the patty packs. It doesn’t come with choose by default and tbh it doesn’t need it, but did a slice of cheddar ever hurt anybody (it hurt my delicate tummy, but I did it anyways)? The burger is thick, it’s juicy, it’s savory, and it’s balanced perfectly by the sweet onions. But you know what the best part of this burger is? The absolute mound of fries that it comes with. I’m fucking tired of restaurants serving burgers without fries and charging me extra for them - give the people what they want [fries]!
Since this was a Beef Fancy Dinner, we also sprang for the roasted bone marrow appetizer. I’m not much of a bone marrow girly, it’s just a bit too fatty and savory for me, but when in Rome, ya know? Imagine Beef’s surprise when a dish with four huge bones stacked on top of one another arrived at our table. He didn’t understand what bone marrow was so I explained to him that you could split any big bone open and eat the goopy stuff inside to which he replied “gross” but also “mmm.” The bone marrow here comes with a shallot confit, which is just a fancy way to say “sweet onion goo” and it is absolutely essential for cutting through the richness of the marrow. Scrape out some bone marrow, schmear it on the bread, and plop some of those shallots on top for a super savory bite.
I imagine anything else at Minetta Tavern is also delicious, but I’ve never been able to bring myself to order anything but the burger. It is expensive, but I promise it’s worth it. They also offer a Grand Marnier souffle for dessert that you need to order at the beginning of your meal because it takes so long to bake that I’m told is wonderful. Beef thought they offered him a “graham cracker” souffle because we are but simple people.
2. Watching🍿
I’d been hearing great things about American Fiction and finally had the opportunity to see it over the weekend. It was based on a book (as so many movies are) and was surprisingly meta in a way that I didn’t expect (but enjoyed). Please know that the irony is not lost on me that I’m a white woman reviewing a movie in which a Black man writes a novel pandering to white people. I would love to hear what you thought of this movie if you saw it - you can comment or reply to this email!
American Fiction follows author Monk (Jeffrey Wright) as he becomes disillusioned with the literary world and decides to write a book that’s a massive “fuck you” to the masses (it’s aptly titled “Fuck”). At least that’s what the trailer told us, but this film manages to weave multiple storylines that sort of intersect because they’re happening to the same man, but also have very little to do with one another because that’s kind of how real life works. We often have many things happening at once that of course affect one another tangentially, but don’t literally intersect like the carefully crafted narratives we’re so used to seeing on the screen where everything has meaning.
Don’t get me wrong - part of this story is definitely about race. Monk is a Black man and his race and culture certainly affect his beliefs, mannerisms, etc in ways that I probably didn’t understand. I will relate to this in a way that I know is not the same, but is the only way I’m personally able to. I grew up in a culturally Jewish family, but to me everything we did was normal; I had no reason to think that other families didn’t eat the same food, have the same traditions, etc until I got older and experienced other ways of doing things. My mom would, embarrassingly, come into my classroom every year and teach people about Hanukkah; didn’t everyone know how to spin a dreidel? I once spent a good amount of time searching for the perfect rock before attending a funeral, only to never have the opportunity to place it on a gravestone for fear of being weird or disrespectful. These small practices are things intrinsic to my culture that someone one the outside may not necessarily catch or understand, but they affect how I interact with the world. We all have different cultural practices like these, but they’re only part of who we are. We’re also all people who have the shared experiences of getting jobs, taking care of family, and dealing with interpersonal relationships. And it’s this normal “human” stuff that this movie is about - it’s determined to give space to the moments of Monk’s life that don’t hinge on race at all.
The focus of this movie on Monk’s “normal human” story follows along nicely with the in-movie story of Monk eschewing fellow novelist Sintara Golden’s (Issa Rae) novel, ‘We's Lives in Da Ghetto,’ that he feels is pandering. He believes that her novel is full of Black stereotypes of teen pregnancy, homelessness, and violence. And indeed it does seem like that to the audience at first, but Monk later finds that him and Sintara agree on many points. She defends her book saying that she did extensive research and interviewed people to tell those stories, it’s not her fault White people love trauma porn. This is such a great point that flips the narrative back on itself because we’ve gone through this whole movie watching Monk’s non-Black-specific life only to be reminded that Black struggles do exist, just not for everyone in the exact same way.
The movie ends with a cut that finds us watching Monk pitching everything that we’ve been watching to a movie producer. We thought we were watching Monk’s life unfold but in fact we were only watching his retelling of it. I never watched The Hills because I was too busy watching cartoons, but I think about the ending of that show a lot. There’s real life, and then there’s the stories we tell about it, and those aren’t always the same thing. We want to be the hero, we want to justify our actions, and we want to weave narratives together to make sense of things. American Fiction kind of just said “fuck it” and told a story about a guy that might not have had a message deeper than “we’re all just human people who deal with things and that’s enough.”
3. What’s Good 😎
Did you enjoy building things with k’nex when you were younger? Do you have an affinity for medieval warfare? Then you might want to check out The Great Trebulation. You can take part in a competition to build the best trebuchet and launch a Lindt truffle across a bar. The first meeting is on Feb 29 at 101 Wilson Bar in Bushwick.
One of my favorite tea places, Kettl, is hosting a tea tasting and yoga session near their Greenpoint store on Feb 29. Kettl has some of my favorite tea in the city and they offer matcha subscription boxes. Sign up for the event here!
Wanna trade trash for free clothes? NYC Fair Trade Coalition is creating an art project on the High Line and they need your trash, particularly beauty/household plastic items like sunscreen, dishwashing, soap, creams, and toothpaste. For every item of trash you drop off at their Harlem shop through February, you can pick one item of clothing for free!
Brooklyn Museum is celebrating their 200th Anniversary and they’re putting out a call to all Brooklyn artists! If you are an artist who has lived or worked in Brooklyn during the last five years (2019–24), you can submit your artwork to be part of a show in the the Museum’s Great Hall, The Brooklyn Artists Exhibition. It’ll open on October 4, 2024 and hopes to bring together an unprecedented number of Brooklyn artists! Applications are open through Sunday, April 7.
I had no idea that NYC has FOUR Superfund sites, one of which is not too far from my apartment 😳 The City NYC (great news publication) is hosting a free talk about these Superfund sites and what the city is (or isn’t) doing to clean them up on Feb 27.
If you’re interested in trying your hand at ceramic making, pop into Bushwick Ceramics’ open house this weekend on Feb 25. This isn’t the ceramic studio I went to (and write about below), but I’ve been following them on Instagram for a while and they seem really lovely! Also - they say there will be tea 🍵😌
4. Exploring 🛼
Remember a while back when I said I booked myself a 6 week ceramic course to beat the NYC winter blues? Well I just finished that course and it was so freakin good! Tessa and I met up at Dirtbag Arthaus in Bushwick every Thursday night and, under the tutelage of Nia, we learned how to turn our little blob babies into cups, bowls, and other more sophisticated blobs. I also learned that there is a lot more than I thought that goes into the process of creating ceramics and it’s not quite as sexy as that scene on Ghost (or at least it wasn’t for me…at first 😉)
On the first day I was given a large square of clay and told that we’d be starting on the pottery wheel for 3 weeks and then moving to hand building for the remaining 3 weeks. The wheel always intimidated me because it’s just constantly spinning and I am a person who needs to think a lot before doing something - we seemed incompatible. And indeed at first, we were. My clay spun around so fast that some of it flew off of my wheel and across the room onto the wall. There was a big learning curve for me in ways that I didn’t expect. The wheel requires arm strength and steadiness, two things that I learned I didn’t have. Everyone’s body is different and working on the wheel means you really have to be in tune with how your body works, so this actually turned out to be a really great process that taught me to be more in tune with my body. Bonus points for making it impossible to use my phone for 3 hours because my hands were covered in clay!
I found that I wasn’t so much actively creating things as they were simply forming of their own accord as I struggled to keep my hands steady and form a shape, any shape, without disaster. Eventually I was able to consistently produce bowl-shaped things. Then I semi-purposefully created 3 little matcha cups that ended up being roughly the same size! I never quite mastered raising the height of my creations, but that did leave me with the cutest little squat vase that would honestly be a perfect vessel for some rogue dandelions. The wheel and I were definitely at odds at first, but we eventually came to some sort of understanding and I’m at least no longer afraid.
Hand building came next and that’s really just a way of saying “here’s a bunch of clay, do what you want.” Of course there were some techniques for how to make specific objects (platters, mugs with handles, big vases), but I mostly just played with the clay as if it was play-doh. I ended up making a large tray, a little clay egg, and a round-ish tray that was giving froggy vibes so I added eyes and a little face to complete the look. It’s currently on my desk at work holding my mish mash of chap sticks.
But that’s not all! Once you make your stuff, you have to trim it, bisque it (pre-cook), glaze it, and fire it again (final cook). This whole process takes a lot of time and is dependent on how dry your clay is. If your clay is too wet you can’t trim it so you have to wait for it to dry (or hit it with a hair dryer). But in order to glaze you need it to be super dry so that it absorbs the paint. It’s really a very involved process that requires a lot of oversight and planning if you want to create something from nothing.
I enjoyed learning how to make ceramics so much and part of that enjoyment came from the amazing environment that Dirtbag Arthaus created. My instructor was great and the owner was usually there, too. She also brought her absolutely gigantic dog into the studio sometimes, so that was a plus. In addition to 6 week courses, the studio also offers drop ins or memberships. I don’t have the time right now to commit to a membership, but once work slows down for me a bit I will absolutely be back. Now that I know how to accidentally make bowls and shapes, I have a few ideas in my head that I want to try to purposefully make.
5. Learning 🧠
Harlem is well known in NYC as an historically Black neighborhood, but there’s a small pocket of a neighborhood just north of Harlem’s boundaries that has a special distinction - Sugar Hill. The neighborhood came to be around the 1920s and got its name from the wealthy African Americans who moved there to live the “sweet life.” Because of its rich history and gorgeous architecture, Sugar Hill was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002. And surprisingly, it still remains a relatively affordable neighborhood.
The Duke Ellington song “Take the A Train” famously immortalized the neighborhood as a quiet enclave full of opulent mansions on tree lined streets. It quickly became a home to wealthy African Americans and played a significant role in the Harlem Renaissance. Soon renowned figures involved in jazz music, literature, and activism moved into the area including W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, and the Duke himself.
Sugar Hill continues to be a thriving arts district and is home to one of the city’s newer museums: The Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art & Storytelling. The museum was developed by Broadway Housing Communities, which seeks to create stable affordable housing, access to the arts, and early childhood education programs. Together with other community leaders, the museum was created to serve not only as location for neighbors to gather, but as a space to address the educational needs of the community’s children and families that may be challenged by poverty or lack of education. The museum’s mission really speaks to the ethos of the neighborhood, which is to lift one another up, continue learning, and form a greater community.
And while Jackie Robinson didn’t live in Sugar Hill, he recognized the importance of the neighborhood and made significant contributions to it. After being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962, Sugar Hill’s Jackie Robinson Park was dedicated to him, located on the eastern edge of the neighborhood. At the height of the Civil Rights movement in 1964, Robinson pledged to help the historically Black Harlem community find greater financial freedom. He became a cofounder of Freedom National Bank of Harlem, which would provide loans to the African Americans in the neighborhood - something they were sometimes denied from other banks. Harlem resident would refer to it as “Our Bank” because it recognized that they were worthy of respect and financial freedom.
The name Sugar Hill may sound familiar to you for another reason - The Sugarhill Gang! They famously penned “Rapper’s Delight” and although we can all agree that that song is, in fact, a rapper’s delight, this hip hop group isn’t from Sugar Hill at all. They’re NYC imposters from New Jersey of all places.
I had to force myself not to get in the car and go get one of those burgers RIGHT NOW - they look so damn good!!!! And your pottery came out BEAUTIFUL!!!!
I love the way you live and experience life! Requesting a series on things that are expensive but worth it, and/or things that are surprisingly cheap and worth it in NYC. Please and thank you!