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New World Mall is amazing. Particularly the food court in the basement, with its 26 or so regional Chinese and East Asian food stalls. The best dish I’ve had here is Chong Qing Xiao Mian’s (look for stall 19) braised rib noodle soup with peanuts. It lights a gemlike vermilion flame inside you. Mala red and torn-coriander green. It makes your whole body tingle.On your way home from New Earth, pick up a brown sugar pearl milk from Tiger Sugar’s stand by the subway. Tiger Sugar represents the bleeding edge of third-wave Taiwanese boba shops. They claim to have invented pearl milk: delicious, painterly cups of warm tapioca pearls, caramelized syrup and sweet cream. So much sugar it gives you a real body high, it spins you out.
Jun 15, 2021
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So many different kinds of Chinese food to choose from! Go with some friends so that you can try more things.
Feb 15, 2024
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Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao Is one of the best to do it. The trek from Brooklyn to Flushing is absolutely worth it.
Dec 10, 2023
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It’s at 100 Bowery, more on the fringes of Chinatown and not on one of the major tourist streets. Genuine Cantonese “hole-in-the-wall” kind of place. You will not find a single non-Chinese person in there at any given time (except the handful of friends I’ve turned onto it). Sweet hardworking staff, super affordable, probably in danger of going out of business like a lot of the other old school Cantonese places in Chinatown. If you go, order Mushroom E Fu Noodles (Yi Mien) and Snow Pea Shoots with garlic.
Dec 11, 2023
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The most magical view of the most beautiful city, for me, is the quiet overlook from the top of Parc de Belleville, below the painted and mosaiced arches. Few things are better than waking up on a clear summer’s day, picking up a coffee and a pain au chocolat, or an éclair, or Paris-Brest, from one of the neighborhood patisseries high up on Rue de Belleville, and strolling along Rue Piat until, by the Belvédère, the whole of Paris and the day opens shimmering up under you. There are guys selling weed, half-naked people sunning by the fountains. It’s a good place to have breakfast. Or, for lunch, a carrot salad from the Franprix, or at night some vin rouge.
Jun 15, 2021
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A new version of an old song; an old song, “L’Amour Toujours” by Gigi D’Agostino, made slower and more lethargic by a teenage Lithuanian DJ. A song about dreams, about the things you’ve been waiting for, coming down to you, but only in your mind. A tale as old as time!In London in the Noughties I never went to Italo disco clubs. But my buddy Joel, a fantastic furniture designer, did. He told me the first time he went, as a teenager, he was standing in line outside, hoping to get in, and an elegant lady stepped out of the club wearing a silk gown, smoking, walking a ferret on a leash. That’s how he knew he was in the right place.D’Agostino wears a lot of hats. Often he dresses like a pilot. He’s been a mega Italo disco star since the Eighties, his music gives the feeling of driving around Tuscany at sunset in a sports car. His “Bitter Sweet Symphony” is sublime. The sound of Italy and England in perfect romantic harmony; Byron swimming to Shelley across the Bay of Poets.
Jun 15, 2021
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Nestled in the heart of old Padua, a short train ride from Venice, the Cappella degli Scrovegni is a “thin place”, a place where our world grows closer to others; so close we can feel them, might reach out and touch them. Thin places are good, like blue flowers.The chapel’s an unprepossessing medieval stone building of modest size. Before you go inside, you have to wait for 15 minutes while your body humidity is lowered. It’s important that you reserve a ticket in advance because they’re always sold out. Though when I visited I didn’t know this, and was able to sneak up to the chapel doors through the Augustinian monastery, where the guard kindly took pity on me. Inside is the most beautiful room in the cosmos. If you go now, right now, this summer, only ten visitors are allowed in at a time. You’ll never have such an opportunity again.Painted by Giotto, the great Pre-Renaissance painter, maybe the greatest artist, its frescoes tell the story of Christ’s life, and of his mother Mary’s life, her role in our salvation. In this room you’re floating with the angels. You’re caught between worlds, out of time. The ceiling is blue and full of stars.
Jun 15, 2021