Illustration: Sarah Kilcoyne
On the middle of Zoe Dubno’s novel Happiness and Love is the New York literary scene — a scene that she, having grown up within the metropolis, has seen many sides of. She has lived in Dimes Sq., round a now-notorious 20-something class of disaffected artists, however grew up on the Higher West Aspect, identified for a sure sort of “zhlubby bookish individual in L.L. Bean,” as she places it. Now, although, she’s again on the Higher West Aspect, dwelling in the identical constructing as her brother and usually working into the identical neighbors she grew up round. “I consider my dad because the mayor of our little neighborhood, as a result of he actually walks round along with his canine, strolling in each retailer he passes to say hello,” she says. “It actually is sort of a bizarre shtetl.” She spent this final week revisiting outdated haunts, just like the glamorous bistro Le Monde, and indulging in new obsessions, like sauerkraut fish soup, which she calls “God-tier meals.”
Sunday, September 7
I get up in upstate New York subsequent to my pal Rachel. We’ve slept over at our pal David Fishkind’s home after a e-book occasion in Rhinebeck. I’d forgotten Rachel talks in her sleep, and I’m woken up by her muttering one thing to herself about puppies, so I am going downstairs to search out David has made French-press espresso. The espresso is robust and viscous. I fill half the mug with milk. I switched to tea virtually completely just a few years in the past as a result of espresso was making me really feel anxious and drained, however I like it and by no means refuse a cup when it’s made for me.
David makes us non-dairy yogurt with sour-cherry granola that’s baked in ghee and so crispy and lightweight. The coconut yogurt is tangy and thinner than my regular Greek yogurt, so after all I spill some onto my shirt.
For lunch, we go to Membership Sandwich in Tivoli. Rachel and I share the tuna Reuben and the hen membership. The fusion of a tuna soften and a Reuben is a stroke of genius — griddled on marble rye with Thousand Island dressing and tangy, crunchy sauerkraut. I make a psychological word to place sauerkraut on tuna sandwiches at house. The membership sandwich can also be good, with massive chunks of skin-on hen, however I all the time discover the third slice of bread in a membership to be cumbersome and really feel vindicated when it inevitably falls out. David will get the Italian, however as a result of he’s found he has celiac illness, orders it in a gluten-free wrap. I say I’m sorry he’s lacking out on the bread, however he says capicola and oil and vinegar are ok on their very own.
For dessert, we cross the road and head to Fortunes Ice Cream, which is run by the identical folks as Membership Sandwich. The labneh bitter cherry is a perennial favourite, however I needed to attempt the corn blueberry and the rocky highway. The corn taste is mellow however brilliant, with the subtlety of a fior di latte gelato, however I’m glad I adopted my chocoholism to the rocky highway, as a result of the chocolate is so creamy and luscious that it has the mouth really feel of Swiss Miss pudding. Who’re these mad geniuses who’ve made the most effective sandwich and what I severely posit is the world’s best ice cream?
On the drive again into the town, we cease at Montgomery Place Orchards. Individuals upstate actually are carrying these massive hats, and I’m sort of into it. Shine on, you loopy diamonds. On the farm stand, I purchase a inexperienced I’ve by no means seen earlier than known as Spigariello, which seems like Lacinato kale blended with broccoli rabe, and an eggplant, some cherry tomatoes, a single sprig of minuscule red-currant tomatoes, and a few of the “vintage” apple varieties Montgomery Place is understood for, just like the Allington Pippin whose signal says that “though it’s of excellent dimension and of excellent high quality, it isn’t engaging sufficient in coloration to make it a promising business selection for New York.” And the Pitmaston Pineapple, whose signal says: “This apple dates again to 1780 England … Don’t let the scale idiot you. The flesh is juicy and candy and DOES fill your ideas with pineapples.” I save these for later and eat what I think about, with unhappiness, will probably be my final good peach of the 12 months.
Again at house in Morningside Heights, I watch the U.S. Open remaining with my boyfriend (technically, my fiancé, however I can’t say fiancé with out feeling like that girl on Seinfeld who misplaced her fiancé) after which roast a trout I purchased on the farmers’ market final Sunday once I appeared to have forgotten this previous week was going to be probably the most busy and hectic of my life. Once I take it out of the fridge, I fear that it’s spoiled — there’s some murky, bizarre-smelling liquid within the plastic bag, however I’m fairly certain it’s simply the melted ice it was saved in — so I textual content my fisherman/forager pal Evan who says “your nostril will inform you when one thing is off,” and that “typically fish are higher with a contact of age.” I resolve it’s most likely high-quality and put it within the oven with some shallots. Then I sautée the final of final week’s farmers’-market rainbow chard with chili flakes and garlic. I additionally make a little bit salad from a head of scraggly lettuce dressed with cider vinegar, oil, a little bit fish sauce, and that tremendous Pommery Meaux grainy mustard that is available in that massive heavy crock. The fish is totally scrumptious and my worries recede into the pleasure of watching Carlos Alcaraz win.
Monday, September 8
Again to regular: My darkish condominium, two soft-boiled eggs, and the horrors of the world piped in instantly by way of Democracy Now! I additionally eat the red-currant tomatoes from the farm which might be the alternative of what I’d anticipated them to be — paler in taste than their full-size buddies. I make a pot of Bellocq breakfast tea, which tastes sort of like a graham cracker — malty and barely smoky, very good with milk — and settle in to work on an essay.
Round 10, I am going to Le Monde for an interview with an Italian journalist. Le Monde is a brasserie close to my condominium that has been within the neighborhood for so long as I can bear in mind and is adorned in that nice classic French fashion. I’m a sucker for a leather-based banquette and an outdated film poster. I used to go there with my mother once I was youthful and watch her drink a martini and really feel very glamorous and Parisian. It’s so cozy, and it feels nice to be an everyday — my pal Peter and I’ve our weekly lunch right here; we each get a BLT, which we name “el classico.” I simply have a mint tea as we speak as a result of I’m sort of jacked up on caffeine from the complete pot of tea.
Again at house, I enter my hyperfocus time warp and emerge at 2:30 once I notice I’m ravenous hungry. My boyfriend all the time says “ravenous hungry” like “freezing chilly,” and now I say it too. I sip the final of a relaxing corn soup I made someday the week earlier than from a mug. The soup is a recipe I sort of made up during which you strip the uncooked corn from the cob, make a inventory from the bare cobs, after which flippantly simmer the kernels within the inventory for under about 5 minutes with some shallots and garlic. Then you definitely blitz it within the blender and put it within the fridge. It’s unfair to name it savory; it’s principally a dessert soup. Then I discover half of an outdated Le Monde “el classico” within the fridge, which is soggy and wan, so I discard the outdated bread, wrapping the bacon and tomato in a recent piece of lettuce.
Within the afternoon, I am going downtown to Tribeca to file a podcast. I learn Mary Robison’s novel Subtraction on the prepare, and due to my absentmindedness, I handle to do principally every part that you are able to do unsuitable on the subway — miss a prepare by a hair, miss a switch to the specific, after which, most bewilderingly, get off the prepare two stops early. I panic and take a Citi Bike ten blocks to “save time,” the docking and undocking of which most likely takes longer than simply strolling.
I am going again uptown to fulfill my boyfriend for dinner at Nai Brother Sauerkraut Fish. I want to difficulty my formal because of the worldwide college students of Columbia College for his or her unofficial position in turning my neighborhood right into a low-key second Chinatown filled with probably the most scrumptious eating places and boba tea institutions. I all the time get the signature sauerkraut fish soup. I’ve had the opposite stews, however the traditional is one thing that, since Nai Brother opened this winter, I’ve excessive weekly cravings for. We order the “double occupancy,” which is available in a bowl the scale of a school-bus steering wheel. The stew’s base is sauerkraut comprised of pickled mustard greens that has nothing to do with what you’d consider as sauerkraut, blended with some sort of sizzling savory broth. It’s loaded with cabbage, glass noodles, little textured items of tofu, and fluffy sole fish, with floating Sichuan peppercorns, chilies, and grated garlic enriching the extraordinarily tangy but richly savory soup. I load my spoon with rice, then dip the rice within the broth and enter a sort of fugue state of shoveling fish and rice into my gob.
Tuesday, September 9
I get up not hungry in any respect, however uncover my boyfriend has purchased me my favourite muffin from Silver Moon, the beloved bakery in our neighborhood that closed earlier this 12 months to a lot furor due apparently to the need of all uptown landlords to show this neighborhood right into a ghost city of empty storefronts and banks. Fortunately, Silver Moon has simply reopened just a few blocks additional south, which has robbed me of a raisin-scented stroll to the subway however is best than nothing. I’ve been making an attempt to cease consuming sugary breakfasts that make me crash after which want a nap within the afternoon, however I can’t resist the Morning Glory muffin, which is a profoundly moist and dense carrot cake filled with raisins and walnuts and still-crunchy strips of carrot with a caramelized high.
I additionally make a pot of tea from the most effective tea store on the planet, London’s Postcard Teas, which we stockpile each time we go to England to go to my boyfriend’s household. We go to Postcard so typically that we’ve befriended the proprietor, Tim D’Offay, and now typically he items us new sorts of tea to style or oolong he says is “too outdated” to promote however remains to be brisker than principally something you’d get anyplace else. Tim is a real obsessive who has personally met many of the tea growers he carries, and he’s typically deep within the Chinese language or Taiwanese countryside with tea masters. Often, I drink his London Lapsang, or the inexperienced Nokcha, or the Gianfranco’s Earl Gray, however as we speak I’m having Fiori e Sapori, the black tea Postcard made for Loewe. It’s a fittingly leather-scented Assam tea, flavored with bergamot, lemon verbena, rosebuds, and chamomile. It’s a particular version, and I’m unhappy it’s not a everlasting tea, as a result of it’s so unbelievably good and leaves attractive rehydrated roses floating within the pot.
Teddy, my little brother, who lives in my constructing, texts me asking if I wish to go for a stroll, and I soar on the alternative, as a result of even on a beautiful sunny day, my condominium is pitch-dark resulting from some Mr. Burns–esque real-estate developer who determined to place a brick-wall high-rise instantly subsequent to my window. I’m so comfortable my brother moved into my constructing, not simply because he buys rest room paper and seltzer for me at Costco, but additionally as a result of we each earn a living from home and may simply hang around randomly all through the day. He desires to cease at Cool Recent Juice Bar, the tiny good kiosk on Broadway, so so as to add some vitamins to my eating regimen, I get the Important Inexperienced, which is kale, spinach, celery, cucumber, and ginger. It tastes like scrumptious, scrumptious filth. Teddy will get what he calls “the one for teenagers” that’s carrot and apple and orange.
I emerge from my writing time warp once more at 3 and resolve to get a bánh mì from Saiguette, a tiny takeout-only place, and eat within the park to photosynthesize a bit. I get my regular, the “juicy lemongrass hen thigh” bánh mì and the home made glowing lemonade soda. I’ve been obsessive about Vietnamese lemonade soda ever since I had one for the primary time as a baby at Kelley and Ping in Soho, which turned my favourite restaurant solely as a result of soda; I don’t bear in mind what else that they had there. I sit on a rock in Central Park and eat my sandwich — so candy from the pickled carrots and radishes, however deeply savory from the sambal hen; it’s virtually just like the chocolate-covered pretzel of sandwiches. It’s a kind of meals I really feel virtually unhappy whereas consuming as a result of I do know it’s going to be over quickly.
The air has that autumnal crispness and I see so many individuals partaking in fall actions (outdated man biking with a shawl on, teenage boys working in a pack, bird-watchers collectively pointing at an owl) that it looks like I’m inside a Sempé cartoon. I then go to the library and drink a Hal’s Seltzer, which I hate as a result of monumental bubble dimension. I fall quick asleep in an armchair studying a brief story by Simone de Beauvoir a couple of lady who, fittingly, writes a diary that makes herself appear extra urbane and literary than she actually is.
Once I get up, I am going to the German restaurant and bar Heidelberg on Second Avenue to fulfill my pal, a carpenter truly named Bolt. We get a desk exterior and share a sizzling pretzel with mustard. Bolt says it’s the most effective pretzel he’s ever had. Maybe I’m inured to its greatness as a result of I get it on a regular basis and think about all of it {that a} pretzel should be, however I do admit it hits the spot. Bolt will get an infinite pilsner that’s shockingly solely the medium dimension, the big being the scale of a toddler. I order a radler, which is sort of a German shandy and interprets actually to “bicyclist,” so named since you don’t get too drunk to cycle house. As such, I Citi Bike again to my condominium.
Wednesday, September 10
For as soon as, I get up on time to go to yoga. I skip breakfast, as a result of balancing in your head with eggs in your abdomen is one thing I’ve carried out as soon as and would by no means love to do once more.
After class, I run into my pal Arabella on the road and we chitchat in regards to the new retailer she’s opening, after which moments later, I run into my finest pal, Natasha. Uptown is having a renaissance, people, as a result of low cost residences. After I drop Natasha off at her appointment close to Lincoln Heart, it begins to rain torrentially, so I am going right into a bodega to cover and order a espresso with milk. I’ve a principle that there are two sorts of espresso: 1.0, which is weaker stuff like bodega espresso, and a couple of.0, just like the jet gas you get at a third-wave espresso store. I can abdomen espresso 1.0, however I discover it’s getting more and more exhausting to search out, and even locations that ought to have espresso 1.0, like a crappy bagel place, have switched to 2.0. I’m grateful for this espresso 1.0.
I then stroll as much as Zabar’s to purchase some salt-and-vinegar chips and a kombucha. There are few locations in New York the place I really feel extra like I reside in a shtetl than Zabar’s, not least due to the heimish comestibles, but additionally as a result of the Zabars are my lifelong household buddies, which, to folks on the Higher West Aspect, is like mentioning you summer time at Balmoral with the queen. Sadly, this doesn’t imply I get to skip the fish line, and all I get for this in retailer is the glory of being flippantly bullied by Aaron Zabar, who’s often stationed on the entrance. Right this moment, nonetheless, he tells me I ought to put a few copies of my e-book within the window, which is thrilling. The pineapple kombucha is sort of thrilling as nicely.
On the stroll house, I additionally cease within the weird retailer that’s Nuts Manufacturing facility — why is there an inflatable wavy-arm man exterior? — and get myself a bagful of Dubai Chocolate Almonds out of sheer curiosity. I’ve by no means had Dubai Chocolate, so I’ve no body of reference for what the deal is with these items. This texture is sinister … What are these crunchy flakes? … I sort of hate it, however I eat the entire bag.
Again house, I notice I must get some roughage in, so I fry the Spigarello greens and two eggs, and eat it with the cherry tomatoes and an avocado. The Spigarello tastes like common kale however is unbelievably fibrous; chewing these things makes me really feel like a cow chewing cud. I most likely undercooked it.
After some writing, I am going downtown to my pal Emily’s Vogue Week occasion. Once I get there, Emily says she’s having a “writing emergency,” which is likely one of the solely emergencies I really feel geared up to reply to. I sit within the nook modifying the textual content for her present whereas the actual vogue folks have a look at the attractive garments. She offers me a mini Japanese red-bean cake and a Pellegrino. I eat the cake whereas pining for her cashmere jacket.
I stroll down Fifth Avenue and choose up my boyfriend from a lecture close to Washington Sq. Park. We’re each carrying fits, so we resolve to make a night of it. We first cease on the Belgian bar Vol de Nuit as a result of he loves the “thick” Belgian beers and I just like the dry cider they’ve on faucet. Actually each dialog we overhear is about Charlie Kirk’s assassination. I gained’t reproduce them right here as a result of my boyfriend wants a U.S. visa.
My pal, the cookbook writer/evil genius Ella Quittner, texts me that she’s made me cookies as a publication current. You write a e-book after which out of the blue everybody is sweet to you. We choose them up from her condominium and stroll throughout the West Village to Tartine, which, as a result of it’s BYOB and fairly inexpensive, was the primary restaurant I ever went to to really feel fancy and grownup. Plus, that nook of the West Village actually offers that “my life a film” really feel, as evinced by And Simply Like That … utilizing it because the backdrop for Carrie and Aidan’s breakup. We share exceptionally garlicky escargot, and I get an avocado tuna tartare that’s a bit like if guacamole had items of uncooked tuna blended in — scrumptious.
At house we eat Ella’s cookies. She’s made the “chewy malted chocolate shortbread” after which these sort of sinister raw-cookie-dough bars. The shortbread is exclusive … deliciously salty and buttery and tastes like dulce de leche, however the raw-cookie-dough bars are the actual hit. I actually catch myself going “nom, nom, nom” involuntarily as I eat them. Humiliating. Having your mates make you cookies this good is the most effective purpose I’ve discovered, thus far, to put in writing a second e-book.
Thursday, September 11
I get up, too late for yoga as regular, and resolve to stroll to the farmers’ market by Columbia. As I depart, I run into my brother within the elevator and derail his easy mission to purchase milk and make him include me. I bear in mind I’m going to California tomorrow, so I simply get a pre-bottled Vitamin Smoothie from Lani’s Farm. Kale, cucumber, celery, ginger, apple, shishito peppers, and lemon in sort of a slushy consistency.
I then see Lani’s has younger ginger, which is an ingredient I’ve by no means been capable of finding for this soup I’m hooked on, Kenji Lopez-Alt’s Rooster Ginger soup with a lot of herbs and pickled chilies and garlic. I nonetheless have the pickled chilies and garlic from the final time I made the soup, so I simply get some hen and herbs at H-Mart close to my home to make it for lunch. I’m feeling anxious about my e-book occasion at Barnes & Nobles later; I did my official e-book launch at McNally Jackson downtown and it was beautiful, however it was principally attended by literary varieties. There’s one thing in regards to the Higher West Aspect Barnes & Nobles, two blocks from the place I grew up and the place my faculty did our fourth-grade poetry readings, that’s making me really feel like I’m making ready for my bat mitzvah. That, and my mother has determined to do a “cake and wine” reception afterward within the constructing I grew up in, which has been known as “the vertical shtetl.” The soup soothes me; the broth is so brilliant and recent, and the younger ginger is like mild, much less peppery ginger which you could eat complete. I sluice the spicy, garlicky pickling vinegar liberally into the broth. My God, it’s good.
Within the night, I Citi Bike the 20 blocks down somewhat than strolling as a result of it’s hotter than I assumed it will be. I dock the bike and alter into heels and my go well with within the rest room of French Roast, a toilet during which I as soon as made out with my crush once I was 17; I additionally had my first sizzling chocolate right here as a child. All of the sudden, every part appears extraordinarily wistful. Getting into the Barnes & Noble, seeing my e-book fully occupying the entrance entrance, then seeing … a room filled with a minimum of 200 folks, starting from my preschool lecturers, to my yoga buddies, to my neighbors, to my cousins, to … individuals who truly got here as a result of they favored the e-book. This isn’t my bat mitzvah; it looks like some Scrooge-style pre-death funeral.
At my dad and mom’ constructing, of their pal Cindy’s condominium, everybody eats cheese and meats and grapes. My mother presents the large cake she acquired — a “face cake” of my e-book cowl, blurbs and all, surrounded by chocolate icing. My grandma takes many pictures of this along with her iPad. The cake is chocolate with a layer of pudding within the middle. I’ve truthfully by no means had cake this good, and I feel the reason being that I all the time want cake was simply pudding. It seems she acquired it at Wegmans.
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