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- Austin Skirts Texas Order, Will Allow Restaurants to Require Staff Vaccinations
- The Coolest Place to Drink Is Your Local Bookstore
- A Running List of Everywhere Carrie and Friends Eat or Drink in ‘And Just Like That...’
- I Miss Few Things More Than Eavesdropping in Restaurants
| Austin Skirts Texas Order, Will Allow Restaurants to Require Staff Vaccinations Posted: 13 Jan 2022 01:41 PM PST |
| The Coolest Place to Drink Is Your Local Bookstore Posted: 13 Jan 2022 11:45 AM PST  New takes on the classic college-town genre offer guests the chance to curate reading lists, sip natural wines, and eat great food A bookstore with a bar is easily one of mankind's best inventions, up there with polar fleece and those potato chips that taste like ham. There's usually a big chair, and if you do it right, you can read for hours while sipping a coffee or a glass of wine. However, bookstore bars have usually been bookstores first: The coffee is serviceable, the wine probably comes from a bag of Franzia, and the snacks tend to be mass-produced or just mediocre. But in the past few years, a new generation of operators has rewritten the story of what a bookstore bar can be by making the food and drinks as much of a draw as the book selection. If what we had before were bookstore bars, these are bar bookstores, focusing as much on fostering community and engagement over glasses of natural wine and homemade sourdough as over a great read. And the results are far more than the sum of their parts. Audrey Wright, owner-operator of Paradis Books & Bread in North Miami, says she and the store's other owners were inspired by the bookstore cafes they frequented while in college in New York, including radical queer bookstore Bluestockings, where Wright worked for a while. "Part of Bluestockings was it could be a place for people to hang out, like not just books, but a nice safe space for people to feel comfortable in," she said. Bluestockings served coffee and some vegan cookies, but Wright had a hard time finding places where she could hang out all day, and instead she and her friends would bounce from bookstore to cafe to wine bar. At Paradis, which opened last summer, she "wanted a place where people could come and use it in a multitude of different ways. Like you could come for the books, you could come just for the wine or just for the food, just for the bread and pizza." Basically, you never have to leave. Sam Brown, owner of Leopold's in Madison, Wisconsin, had the same goal. He was initially inspired by Kramers in Washington, D.C., a bookstore which boasts an all-day restaurant and live jazz music. "I just thought that was such a wonderful concept because it gave you a reason to be there at every hour of the day," said Brown, which felt like a solid business plan. "You can have a drink or if you don't want to drink, it has books." Leopold's opened last July, and creating a space where alcohol was available but drinking wasn't the central activity also felt important, especially in a college town. Yes, you can drink as many craft cocktails as you want, but no one is trying to rage in a bookstore — the vibe is just different. "We attract a customer who might not be comfortable going by themselves to a bar and is looking for something more approachable," says Brown. "I think having a place where people can come get coffee, where people can get a cocktail, and where there just isn't the heavy insistence that you drink that you'd have at a bar is really appealing to people." Bar bookstores are great places to read over a glass of wine, or bring a date to casually cover how you thought Detransition, Baby had such interesting things to say about the gendered nature of parenthood. Reading obviously never went out of style, but there's a literary aesthetic that's been trending, bolstered by social media. Bookstagram advocates for #readingchallenge, book cover reveals act as teasers for later releases, and more people are actively curating their bookshelves to look good over Zoom calls. Sometimes literary aesthetics even dovetail with food and drink — Custom Cocktails for the End Times regularly creates cocktails based on new book releases, and YouTubers like Bryton Taylor are all about making recipes based on meals in classic literature. Reading is cool. Well-crafted cocktails are cool. They just go together. /cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23166815/paradis3.jpeg) Paradis Financially, combining bars and bookstores has its advantages. Each type of business is precarious to run, but together one side can bolster the other. "Especially for indie bookstores, having this additional revenue stream is what can make a bookstore really sustainable and really profitable," says Erin Neary, owner of Book Club Bar in Manhattan's East Village, which opened in November 2019. But often, bookstore bars and cafes were run by people who had bookselling experience, for whom designing a comprehensive coffee or cocktail service was an afterthought. What makes this generation of bar bookstores different is they're run by people with restaurant experience, or at least who understand that food and drink has to be a holistic part of the business, not something to half-heartedly tack on. Not only do the two sides support each other, but they inspire creativity in the other, pushing each genre forward. Leopold's cocktails all come from books, and it makes an effort to source those books so it can direct customers toward making the drinks themselves. And Brown is looking to start a wine program that can pair bottles with books from the same country of origin. Paradis's book selection highlights works of marginalized authors, critical theory, and small publishers, and there's a small library program. The food follows that ethos — the breads and baked goods are made from cold-milled flour from sustainable producers Carolina Ground, and the wine is from small, organic producers that hand-harvest grapes. At Wild Child in Somerville, Massachusetts, which opened in summer 2020, both the wine and book offerings follow the mission of its sister bar, natural wine spot Rebel Rebel, which among other things has instituted a paid internship program for BIPOC public high school students, and donated a percentage of income to abortion access. "It was very important to me to create a space, especially with the social activism work that Rebel Rebel does, to not just offer another vanilla bookstore," says Alexandra Tennant, director of literature. Both venues strive to be affordable and accessible to support both the Somerville community and independent winemakers of underrepresented backgrounds, and at Wild Child, books by women, POC, and the queer community. "That space is a community bar, a neighborhood bar," said Christian Bruno, Wild Child's assistant general manager. "Especially following the summer 2020, I think people were looking for community spaces." Book Club Bar co-owner Nat Etsen wanted to make sure the bar bookstore fit in with the "social and outgoing" East Village. "Our intent was not to be this quiet little enclave where people had to whisper." Events like author reading series, drink and draws, and game nights help Book Club from feeling like a library, and further Etsen's goal to foster "getting together and gathering and sharing our love of books." The design of the bar itself facilitates that — the bookstore is bookended (sorry) by the bar at the entrance and the outdoor patio in the back. This is a place where customers are meant to stay and socialize. The bar bookstore business model — what Brown describes as giving customers a reason to be there all the time — is difficult to navigate. Natural wines and ethically sourced baked goods tend to be more expensive than a Bota Box behind the counter, and these bar bookstores must balance their ethics with providing goods their community can afford. But again, having two revenue sources means profits don't hinge on a glass of wine being $11 instead of $7. There's also the fact that, because both independent bookstores and restaurants are precarious businesses, there are people incredibly dedicated to seeing them thrive. Over the pandemic, communities banded together to order from local bookstores instead of Amazon, and to buy gift cards and takeout from beloved local spots. Combine those energies and you have a community hub, where locals specifically seek out the ability to drink and eat and read and party all in one spot. If you don't want a book about intersectionality, you can get a flatbread. If you don't want a glass of wine, you can have a latte. You can sit alone and read, or take your book home, or chat about your new purchases with friends over some beers. No two things inspire connection more than good food and the love of a shared piece of art. Truly, why would you leave?  |
| A Running List of Everywhere Carrie and Friends Eat or Drink in ‘And Just Like That...’ Posted: 13 Jan 2022 11:29 AM PST  Coffee Shop is closed and they can no longer go to Bed (what's the point without Samantha, anyway?), but the characters of "Sex and the City" are still swapping puns across the tables of New York restaurants There was a time long ago when gargantuan tour buses — splashed with pink and stock images of girlfriends sipping on cocktails — roved the isle of Manhattan. They transported women, mostly; huddled masses from across the middle America, all yearning to breathe free and drink a cosmopolitan cocktail at the same bars frequented by Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte, the characters of HBO's Sex and the City. But much like the once ubiquitous "going out" top, such tours have become a rare (albeit ongoing) sight. Many of the restaurants featured on the original show, which ran from 1998 to 2004 and somehow never addressed 9/11, have long been closed. The women's favorite hangout, Coffee Shop in Union Square, closed in 2018 and has been replaced by a Chase bank. City Bakery, where Carrie re-encounters "the face girl" Nina Katz, has also permanently closed its doors, denying the city its top-rate chocolate chip cookies. The New York we enter in And Just Like That..., the Sex and the City reboot on HBO Max, is not the New York we left in 2004. We've experienced hurricanes, market crashes, and a deadly pandemic that we're still contending with. The lavish lifestyle demonstrated by the series' main ladies has taken on a grotesqueness, especially following the Trump presidency, which further laid bare the inequities inherent in capitalism. Bisexuality can no longer be written off, as Carrie once did, as a "layover to Gaytown." But still, there are bars and restaurants. Bars and restaurants on the brink of doom, sure, but they're hanging on all the same. No pandemic or death of a loved one by Peleton (for the best, it seems) will stop Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte — sans Samantha, as actor Kim Cattrall who declined to return to the series due to friction with lead and executive producer Sarah Jessica Parker — from dining across the city. Want to pretend like it's 2004 again? Well, throw on some low-rise jeans and Manolos and hit the town (masked and boosted, or better yet, maybe just in your imagination). Here, we'll be charting every restaurant, bar, and cafe that makes a featured appearance on And Just Like That... for your touring convenience. Obviously, there will be some spoilers. Episode One, "Hello It's Me"This premiere was obviously dominated by one major controversy, which has little to do with food and that's Carrie not attempting CPR or calling 911 as Big flopped around on the floor of their gigantic shower and died. Clee, a.k.a the Whitney Cafe, 99 Gansevoort StreetBut before that, there are some restaurants. In fact, we're reintroduced to Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte as they wait for a table at Clee, a fictional restaurant that was filmed in non-fictional restaurant the Whitney Cafe, part of the Whitney Museum. The real star of this meal is Carrie's stupid little Robin Hood hat, which she is not pulling off nearly as well as that sexy cartoon fox. Also, great news! In this alternate reality, COVID is over. How nice for them, their fellow patrons, and the staff of "Clee." Smith's Bar and Grill, 701 8th AvenueBefore her first class at Columbia where she's enrolled to get her master's degree in "Human Rights," Miranda stops for a drink at this theater district mainstay and while she's there, we're introduced to an exciting new character: Miranda's Alcoholism! She tries to order a glass of chablis at 10:45 a.m., which, yes, is pretty early for wine, but more concerning is why she'd stop at a bar on 8th and West 44th Street, which is nowhere near her townhouse in Brooklyn or Columbia University, which is all the way up on West 114th Street. In Manhattan, there are plenty of bars to get lost in and most of them, fortunately, are not next to Times Square. Episode Two, "Little Black Dress"This episode is mostly taken up by Big's ugly and sparse funeral at the Greene Naftali Gallery and not so much on the streets of New York City, which, as everyone knows, is the show's other leading lady. Carrie does however stare wistfully at a couple eating on the patio of the East Pole, located on the Upper East Side. The couple remind her of her and Big, because the woman is blonde and the man has dark hair and is wearing an expensive suit. Understandably, this makes grieving Carrie sad, but she shouldn't be. As far as she knows, that guy works for the Blackstone Group or makes his money developing property that displaces poor people. Maybe Big did that, too. Anyway, lunch looked nice and we'll be revisiting the East Pole later. Episode Three, "When in Rome..."Did you know that even Charlotte's best friend Anthony got into sourdough during the pandemic? Only he turned it into a bustling business called Hot Fellas (did the writers even try on this one?), where the bread is delivered by... hot fellas. This scene is largely marked by Anthony's dismissal of Charlotte's child's trans identity, stating that kids are confused and Charlotte should ignore it. Good to know that, in addition to making bread, he's up to date on Jesse Singal's Substack. Anyway, I will not be ordering my bread from Hot Fellas in the future. The East Pole, 133 East 65th StreetI had to send a lot of screenshots of this dining room where Charlotte, Miranda, Carrie, and Stanford gathered for lunch in order to identify the restaurant even though, as noted above, the show has already visited the exterior. Thankfully, Eater NY's Bao Ong came to my rescue, even providing the following Instagram from the restaurant: More fun than the restaurant itself, though, is Stanford (played by the late Willie Garson) telling Charlotte that he used to work at the iconic Tribeca bistro Odeon, and that's how he knows a three-top can always become a four-top. Many servers will disagree! Starbucks, 72 Spring StreetCharlotte, Miranda, and Miranda's many bottles of airport cart Tito's wait for Carrie at this Starbucks in SoHo, right across the street from Balthazar (once featured in Sex and the City under the name Balzac). In a TV series full of necessary belief-suspension, this one will put you over the edge because that Starbucks location has never had less than 700 people stuffed into it at one time, and that's an official statistic. Also the barista brings Miranda a muffin to her table and it's even on a plate. In real life, the overworked barista would have shouted "MORGANDA?" and hurled it at her from the register. Chalait UWS, 461 Amsterdam AvenueIt's at Chalait, a cafe specializing in matcha drinks, that Carrie is finally able to corner Big's ex-wife Natasha by accidentally walking in on her while she's trying to take a piss in peace, but with the door puzzlingly unlocked. (What's unbelievable here is that there's a New York coffee shop where you don't need a special code or key to get into the bathroom.) In the fumble to close the door, Carrie spills hot coffee and burns herself, so maybe Chalait is actually good... The bar at Webster Hall, 125 East 11 StreetCarrie, Charlotte, and Miranda go to see Carrie's colleague Che Diaz (Sara Ramirez) shoot their standup special at venue Webster Hall. Afterward, Miranda, her sexuality re-awakened by Che's wit, sticks around for the afterparty. Che, not disinterested, shotguns a mouthful of weed vape into Miranda's mouth. DeBlasio's New York, baby! Episode Four, "Some of My Best Friends"Cafe Kitsuné, 550 Hudson Street, and Parliament Espresso and Coffee Bar, 170 Central Park WestThis episode begins with everyone in New York City indulging in their favorite coffees, and while Carrie — dressed in a petticoat and striped crewneck, a return to her old self — chooses a dark roast with no sugar from her corner store, Charlotte is ordering lattes at Cafe Kitsuné to share with new friend Lisa Todd Wexley (Nicole Ari Parker). Meanwhile, LTW, as she's known, is ordering Charlotte a coffee at Parliament Espresso and Coffee Bar (revisited again later in the episode), which is inside the New-York Historical Society. The women exchange their javas in front of their kids' school, the exterior of which is actually the City Museum of New York on 5th Avenue, right across the street from Central Park. (Fun-ish fact: the City Museum is also used as the exterior of the school in Gossip Girl.) In reality, Cafe Kitsuné is in the West Village, right around the corner from the shooting location of Carrie's brownstone and nowhere near the Upper East Side where Charlotte and her family lives. Similarly inconvenient is the distance between Parliament Espresso and the City Museum of New York. These details are not to nitpick the show, which can rearrange locations as it sees fit. Rather it's to help you maximize your inevitable And Just Like That... walking tour. Sant Ambroeus, 1000 Madison AvenueI struggled to identify this location where Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte have brunch and discuss Carrie's plans to sell the apartment she shared with Big. Thankfully, Karli Mullane, who runs the Instagram account Celeb Map, reached out over email to tell me she had identified it as the Upper East Side location of Sant Ambroeus, a Milanese-inspired restaurant and wine bar. Funny because Carrie soon shares a cocktail with her realtor at... Sant Ambroeus, 265 Lafayette StreetHaving befriended the outgoing, Samantha-esque Seema Patel (Sarita Choudhury), Carrie joins her at the Soho location of Sant Ambroeus, which is, in real life, a great place to spot models, actors, and the paparazzi who follow them. (Sarah Jessica Parker is a regular.) Here, the fast friends decide to split the cacio e pepe, even after Carrie rudely gives kudos to Seema for continuing to "put yourself out there" on dating apps. Luckily, pasta heals all wounds. Boutros, 185 Atlantic Avenue, BrooklynMiranda meets up with her professor, Dr. Nya Wallace (Karen Pittman), at a very trendy-looking, dark restaurant with a vertical garden behind the bar and rustic lighting made from thick rope and Edison bulbs. I couldn't figure out where it was, but I put it to the good readers of Eater and one delivered in a big way. Thanks to Elisa Zuritsky, a "frequent peruser of Eater" and freakin' EXECUTIVE PRODUCER/WRITER on And Just Like That..., we now know it's Boutros, a Middle Eastern and new American restaurant in Brooklyn Heights, conveniently located near Miranda's brownstone. I hope Dr. Wallace either A.) picked the location or B.) lives around there, too, because that's a long trek from Columbia. (They already share a train stop, though, so my guess is it's a location of mutual convenience.) Episode Five, "Tragically Hip"There was plenty of action in the kitchen (that's right, I'm talkin' sex) during the fifth episode of And Just Like That, but only one scene in a restaurant. Freehold, 45 S 3rd St, BrooklynFreehold is a cafe, bar, events space, and workspace in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It is also where Charlotte, Miranda, Carrie, and Anthony have brunch after Carrie learns she needs hip surgery. Later in the episode, Carrie pees in an empty Snapple bottle. Not a restaurant scene, but it does feel worth mentioning. Episode Six, "Diwali"Joe Coffee Company, multiple locations throughout New York CityWhen Miranda is fantasizing about having sex with Che Diaz — "Oh, yeah, yeah, I get that," even Charlotte admits — she's having a leisurely coffee with her professor-cum-friend (but not, like, cum friend, as we must clarify for shows like this) Dr. Nya Wallace. The pair walk through the park carrying cups of joe from the NYC coffee chain Joe Coffee Company. There's a location conveniently located at Columbia University, though it's been temporary closed probably because of the pandemic, which in the world of And Just Like That..., has all but disappeared. Good for them! Bistrot Leo, 60 Thompson StreetAnother big thank you to Karli Mullane of Celeb Map, who tipped us off to the location of the brunch spot — Bistrot Leo — where Carrie tells Miranda and Charlotte that she sold the apartment she shared with Big and bought a downtown apartment that looks like an Apple Store instead. And she doesn't even like the new apartment! Money, like these picked-at meals in beautiful spaces, is wasted on the rich! Le Crocodile, 80 Wythe Avenue, BrooklynNya has bonded with Miranda thanks to her own uncertainty about motherhood and Miranda's no bullshit approach to the subject. Unfortunately, Miranda can't help her when Nya and her husband meet up with another couple, who are expecting their third baby, for dinner at Le Crocodile, a restaurant inside the Wythe Hotel in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Fun little bit of history: While in the show, Nya mentions that the restaurant was once a shoe factory, the actual Wythe was built in 1901 as cooperage, or barrel factory. Episode Seven, "Sex and the Widow"McGlorick Park, Russell Street &, Nassau Ave, BrooklynMiranda runs into Nya and her hot husband at a greenmarket at McGlorick Park in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn. Don't rush out now — it's a seasonal farmers market that doesn't pick up again until spring. Still, the park is beautiful and you can always stop at the nearby outpost for Variety Coffee, which has gone from a singular coffee shop that opened in Williamsburg in 2009 to a citywide chain that has now appeared (on to-go cup branding, at least) multiple times in And Just Like That... Allow me one moment of sentimentality: I used to sit at the original Variety in 2009 and 2010 as an unemployed person, sending out resumes and freelance pitches to anywhere I could think of. I lusted after their hot baristas, got their coffee on the way to the train when I was a desperately hungover after a night of being a 24-year-old idiot, and became friendly acquaintances with the fellow regular who'd come in to watch wrestling on his laptop all day. And just like that... my lil' roastery is all grown up and starring on HBO. I could cry! Au Cheval, 33 Cortlandt AlleyAfter turning in her book on widowhood, Carrie's publisher suggests she go on one date for the purpose of writing an epilogue that would make her readership — which craves fun and frivolity over grief and husbands killed via Peleton — hopeful that she might find love again. She ends up going on a date at high-end burger outpost Au Cheval — once described as a "meaty, retrograde misfire" by Eater NY critic Ryan Sutton — with a math teacher from the school Charlotte's daughters attend. The date starts out kind of nice. Similar to Carrie, this is his first date since losing his spouse, and the widow and widower decide to get blotto because life is short. This too ends up being a meaty misfire as it ends with them both blowing chunks on the street outside the restaurant. Now we're talking! The next morning, Carrie considers the date a total misfire, hope be damned, but the math teacher isn't so easily deterred by acts of public vomiting. He ends up bidding $1,050 for a date with Carrie during a school benefit auction and Carrie ends up being kind of happy about it. It's the hopeful epilogue she needs to make it into Oprah's Bookclub. More hopeful to me, however, is that a math teacher (even a private school math teacher!) could afford to bid a full grand to save the pride of the woman he barfed on. This list will update on Thursdays and Fridays following new episodes of And Just Like That... |
| I Miss Few Things More Than Eavesdropping in Restaurants Posted: 13 Jan 2022 07:40 AM PST  The looming specter of COVID has ruined my favorite hobby: being in everybody else's business I am, by nature, an exceedingly nosy person. I am the type of individual who reads hundred-comment-long Facebook threads involving people I've never met, and I absolutely cannot resist an in-public spat between lovers. For better or worse, if there's a conversation going on within earshot of me, I need to know what it's about. My insatiable desire to be in everybody's business is a skill that serves me well as a journalist, sure, but lately, it's also been a source of real frustration. There is perhaps no better place to overhear a conversation than in a restaurant, and given that indoor spaces are associated with higher rates of COVID-19 transmission, I've mostly stayed away from them. And so now, more than two years into the pandemic, I pine for the days when I can get back to my favorite hobby: eavesdropping. Before the pandemic, restaurants were a place where eavesdropping was easy and abundant. Under the influence of a few glasses of wine and empowered by a night out on the town without kids or any responsibilities, people tend to drop their inhibitions and dish — sharing everything from the juicy details of their own divorce to the story of how their neighbors got arrested — at volumes that would not be appropriate in basically any other context. There's even good dirt in quieter situations, like sitting two stools down the bar from a guy who's just been dumped, or thinks he's about to be. Even when I do go to the occasional restaurant, I've found that COVID-19 has stolen that simple pleasure from me. It's hard to hear anyone else's conversations when the tables in a dining room are spaced six feet apart, and nigh impossible if diners are still wearing their masks. Outdoor patios make it a little more possible, but there's something about the loud din of a restaurant, with its perfectly curated playlist pulsing in the background, the hum of conversation, and the essential sounds of service, that makes people feel more comfortable spilling their secrets in a room full of strangers. More than that though, my own concern over contracting the virus compels me to stay as far away from other people — and their delicious conversations — as humanly possible. And if I do have the opportunity to listen in on someone else's gossip, I'm too busy worrying about my own discomfort at being that close to another human to hear what they're saying about their ex-sister-in-law's recent arrest. Of all the things I look forward to in the eventual "new normal" — after the Omicron wave subsides, after there aren't thousands of people being hospitalized with COVID every single day — sitting at a cozy bar for a nice eavesdropping sesh ranks right up there with going on an island vacation, not ever having my glasses fog up again from mask-wearing, and of course, not potentially dying from a scary virus. I spend an inordinate time thinking about the day when I can sidle up to a bar alone, maybe on a work trip or solo vacation, order a negroni, and just sit and listen. Maybe I won't hear anything interesting, just the mundane details of some traveling businesswoman's recent trip to a conference on sprockets or cryptocurrency. But it would be enough to simply immerse myself in the ruminations of a brain that is not my own. Or maybe I'll get lucky and butt my way into a fiery debate over whether or not it's acceptable to skip your cousin's kid's third wedding. To quote the late, great Olympia Dukakis in her portrayal of Clairee Belcher in the seminal 1989 film Steel Magnolias: "You know what they say: if you don't have anything nice to say about anybody, come sit by me." |
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