Kernels is my monthly column in which I write about all the random stuff I’ve been up to: movies, cooking, eating, drinking, reading, and other -ings. It’s more or less an external-facing diary but don’t believe everything you read…
The weather here in New York has been so weird. With multiple rounds of fake springs/second winters, I kept holding off on exchanging the winter coats in my closet for shorts and tees. With temps breaching the 90s this week, it would seem a safe time to make the transition… except it’s been so rainy and cold this weekend. My closet remains in suspended animation.
I’ve also been dealing with Cannes FOMO, as I’m sure many cinephiles have been. If you or someone you know attended this year, I’m conducting an informal survey of the best/worst movie and meal you experienced at the festival. A very quick five questions, get in touch if you’re interested in submitting something when Cannes is over:
I’ve already got some great responses, including this choice quote: “The French restaurants in Cannes fucking suck.”
As usual this column got absurdly long even though I moved all the California stuff to another post, but if you’ll believe me this excludes about a half of what I actually did.
In this edition:
Five notable dinners in New York
My favorite songs of the Spring season
Notes on The Drama and wedding food
Cool exhibitions in Chelsea
It happened to me: I won the Shakespeare in the Park digital lottery
Mỹ Documents Paperback Release at Orion Bar
My cousin Kevin’s novel got a paperback and he threw a party to celebrate the occasion. The whole family got involved: Amanda designed the flyer. Brian photographed the event. Eric came up with a food menu that featured “the absolute best fried catfish sandwiches,” which I hope we can bring out again. Olivia and I were line cooks. It was my first time on the fryer since my high school stint at Wendy’s; I think I acquitted myself well.
Mesa Ăn Tối at home
The third installment of my Viet-Latin collaboration with John Carlo. (Formerly titled The American in Me… the new title is the Spanish word for “table” mashed with the Viet phrase for “dinner.”) Best menu yet!!! But the night itself was a blur. I wish I had better photos!
Pan de Bono (with rhubarb & guava compote) + Banh Mi Crostini
Shrimp Butter Arepa (with nem nuong and pickled cilantro stem)
Thịt Kho Tàu (Coconut-Braised Pork Belly and Eggs) with Papas Criollos
English Pea & Asparagus Ceviche (with bánh tráng and lemon verbena broth)
Cumin Crusted Pork Chop (with gai choy)
Fruit plate: Mandarins, black plum, guava
Sweet corn pastry in banana leaf tamale
I went out to eat five times in the past week and a half which is really quite rare for me.
I had been a couple times for dessert but never for dinner. My experienced companions steered me away from the burger (which is by all accounts mediocre—what’s the deal with that? If your restaurant is called Superiority Burger, the burger should be superior).
I really enjoyed the Yuba-Verde sandwich (tofu skins, chickpeas, broccoli rabe, mayo) as well as the house salad. But the sweets remain the star: that pearl pie is a thing of beauty.
Very expensive and the space is a bit too crammed to fully feel luxurious, but all hangups went out the window when I took my first bite of the showstopping pithivier. You may have heard about it. I’m a believer that if you’re gonna go to a French restaurant, you might as well ball out because the wallet-friendly places tend to be pretty bad and/or uninspiring.
Everything I ate was good (I love Basque cuisine) but the arroz meloso (with uni, wild shrimp, and enoki) is the one dish I’ll remember for some time. Txikito and Shukette singlehandedly make Chelsea a good dining destination.
Once I saw that the New York Times officially deemed it the #1 restaurant in the entire city, I knew I had to get a reservation ASAP otherwise I’d never be able to go. My only regret about dining solo was that I didn’t get to try more dishes.
The format is prix fixe and you pick three dishes. I went with pepper shrimp, goat shoulder confit, and bolo di cashupete. Wholeheartedly recommend them all! The bread course is a buss up shot (Trinidadian roti) with an assortment of chutneys; the palate cleanser was a tamarind pod.
Usually “elevating” an ethnic cuisine means evaporating the big flavors and fiery spiciness that made it notable in the first place. Fortunately, nothing here strays too far from the more casual Caribbean fare that I’ve had before. The difference at Kabawa is that everything is extremely dialed in. The better descriptor is that this is calibrated.
I was influenced to come here by Hannah Berman’s newsletter. Very glad I took up the recommendation!
The quirked up Italian restaurant switched over to an all-itameshi menu this month (Italian/Japanese fusion). I haven’t dined at Bad Roman but it’s what I imagine it to be except the food is actually good and instead of twentysomething TikTokkers there are thirtysomething Tweeters/Skeeters.
The impression I got from Hannah’s piece, plus another friend who dined here last week, was that the menu can be hit or miss and that was borne out. While nothing I ordered was outright bad, a few things were just fine. But everything was interesting and it’s thrilling to encounter such risk taking in an unpretentious setting.
The overall experience is just so fun! You get a welcome pour of shiso kombucha! Martinis are served as jello shots! When you order the Tofu Time, things happen! The check comes in a greeting card! I recommend Café Mars for this alone. I’ll need to check out the usual menu soon.
There’s only a week left but my standouts were the ankimo mousse (with strawberries????) and kasuzuke asparagus (with a tofu made from pine nut milk????). We also really dug the pastas: a triple yuzu girelle and waves mentaiko with snap peas. These types of buttered noodles threaten to overwhelm but there was plenty of acid and sansho pepper to balance it out.
I didn’t host any big dinners at home, and travel disrupted my usual routine, but here are a few good things I cooked:
This Chile Lime Roast Chicken recipe is now part of my rotation.
I missed out on most of ramp season because I was in California (woe is me!) but I managed to make my favorite springtime frittata that combined the allium with asparagus and nettles.
I want to organize a Couchella party where each room is a different “stage” but I don’t know anyone who lives in an apartment large enough to support this. With enough distance from the initial discourse I think we can all agree that Justin Bieber’s headlining set was a nifty piece of performance art that mines digital native nostalgia and the parasocial relationship his fans have with him. It felt personal, or at least as personal as singing in front of 100,000 people could ever be.
Lots of great new releases this spring! Here are twenty new songs that were frequently in rotation. As usual it’s a diverse mix including emo revival, Arab-Asian funk, and bookended by two Olivia Rodrigo songs.
Selected Notes:
“Home” – Charlie Puth (feat. Hikaru Utada)
I greatly enjoyed this conversation between Fran Hoepfner and Larry Fitzmaurice about Puth’s new album, which takes the keyboard crooner’s music far more seriously than most. (Poptimism is alive and well on Substack!) It’s not about “why isn’t Puth a bigger artist [but] should Puth be a bigger artist.”
Also if you mostly know Utada as the “Simple and Clean” singer… listen to BAD MODE because you are in for a treat.
“All of My Friends” – Jack Harlow
I know someone who is really into Harlow’s R&B era. Similar to Bieber’s SWAG in adopting a slow jam sound recorded in the world’s most expensive bedroom, but with fewer great songs. “All of My Friends” is a bop though.
“Bandar Batavia” – Ali and Charif Megarbane
This comes from my favorite album of the season. Tirakat is a collaboration between an Indonesian funk trio and a Lebanese multi-instrumentalist, put out by the aptly named label Habibi Funk.
“Berlin” – Quiet Light
My favorite new-to-me artist in a long time. It’s not too baseless to speculate that she is now repped by the same PR firm that launched Geese, because she snagged plum press hits to promote new album Blue Angel Sparkling Silver 2. (Pitchfork review, Perfectly Imperfect, NTS guest show, Pigeons and Planes…) I have no insider info.
But I don’t really care because the music is great: Eurocoded electropop that taps into her Texan upbringing. And she’s been paying her dues over the past few years. She’s described by her new label True Panther as “a classically trained prom queen turned medical school student who draws as much inspiration from Shania Twain & Imogen Heap as Angelo Badalamenti & Harold Budd,” which is a hook almost as irresistible as the one in standout track “Berlin.”
You, you used to be obsessed with me and now you don’t know / You call me from Berlin on your sister’s phone
Thanks to the DICE waitlist, I snagged a ticket to her show at Public Records a few hours before it started. (Great venue btw, terrific soundsystem in that concert room.) After getting through a technical hiccup, she launched into a set that spanned her so-far brief discography, singing to tracks cued from her laptop. Though her production is the main draw, her live vocals were quite strong, as evidenced by a cover of “Brooklyn Baby” that closed out the show.
In April:
The first movie I saw at home: New Directors/New Films Shorts
The first movie I saw in a theater: The Drama at AMC Empire
The last movie I saw at home: Clue (1985)
The last movie I saw in a theater: The Slow Business of Going (2000) at 2220 Arts + Archives (Hosted by Acropolis Cinema. Q&A w/ filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari moderated by Julie Delpy)
In May:
The first movie I saw at home: Spaceballs (1987)
The first movie I saw in a theater: Shanghai Express (1932) at Los Feliz 3 / American Cinematheque — happy AAPI Heritage Month!
The last movie I saw at home: The Bride! It sucked!
The last movie I saw in a theater: I Love Boosters at AMC Lincoln Square. What a hoot! There is an unforgettable eating scene that doesn’t involve food…
Less of a drama than it is a contemporary comedy of manners, The Drama skewers liberal societal norms through Kristoffer Borgli’s Nordic eye. Bang-up marketing job by A24 to enshroud “the terrible secret that will ruin Robert Pattinson and Zendaya’s engagement” in mystery so that audiences would flock to the cinema to find out what the fuss was all about. It’s funny because knowing the specific premise beforehand really doesn’t matter because it’s not about what Zendaya did (or as it turns out, almost did but actually didn’t). It’s about how the people in her life respond to this revelation.
The inciting drama of The Drama occurs while the couple-to-be are at their wedding venue to taste test the dinner menu. They’re accompanied by the best man and maid of honor (who are also a couple… which is quite rare, at least from what I’ve experienced). The wedding planner is free-flowing with the orange wine while the foursome sample mushroom risotto… it’s in that environment where the trouble starts.
It is almost a truism that the food at American weddings will be serviceable at best. To be fair, it’s really difficult to serve individually plated meals to hundreds of guests while accommodating both dietary restrictions and restrictive palates. (No coincidence that all of the best wedding food I’ve had was non-European cuisine served buffet style.) But perhaps it is for the best that the dinner doesn’t outshine the couple. Always more memorable is the post-nuptial nosh: Cup Noodles offered outside the dancefloor, a late night trip to In-n-Out.
I don’t recall there being any insert shots that really show off the food being served, at both the menu tasting and the reception itself. But based on the limited information given and fleeting glances at what was on the table, it struck me as typical American wedding fare: seemingly refined but ultimately boring—much like the characters at the center of this Drama. And yet—milquetoast the meal may have been, that unhinged toast given by Alana Haim was anything but.
It’s been a long time since I went to a bunch of gallery openings, which is always a great way to spend an evening without spending any money. These were the shows I dug the most, roughly sorted in an uptown direction:
Lisa Yuskavage – Through June 26 – David Zwirner 19th Street
Seems to be the show of the season. I like that you can see sketches and iterations alongside the finished works.
Gerhard Richter – Landschaften – Through July 10 – David Zwirner 20th Street
Richter’s gauzy landscape paintings feel like gazing back at a blurry memory. As sequenced in this exhibition, they give way to progressively glitchier abstract expressionism, the memories corrupting into a cacophony of noise and color.
Doowon Lee – Doowon Arrives in New York with Too Many Animals – Through June 20 – ACA Galleries
As the whimsical title suggests, this show is an absolute delight. Mixed media (mostly paint) on wool canvases depicting frogs and tigers and fish and much more.
Macarena Rojas Osterling – In The Whitewater – Through July 10 – Praxis
Meticulous linework interrupted by intrusive thoughts.
Hyegyeong Choi – Tethered, Untethered – Through June 20 – Harper’s Chelsea 512
Judging from my Instagram stories, this is a very popular show.
Firelei Báez – feet squelching on wet grass, nourished by uncertainty – Through July 31 – Hauser & Wirth 22nd Street
Annihilation (the movie version) plus colonial critique.
Hélio Luís – Before the Light Fades – Through June 27 – Kutlesa
The night is purple.
Kawayan de Guia – Excavations from the land of not so plenty – Through June 27 – Silverlens
Mixed media painting and sculpture from this Filipino artist contends with his country’s legacy as an outpost of the American empire with a cheeky sense of humor.
It’s Tony season! I haven’t seen enough of the contenders so I have no Tonys Takes besides rooting for Jellicle Ball to sweep. Shows I really liked are bolded.
Thursday April 9 Cats: The Jellicle Ball w/ Kenji
Saw the initial Off-Broadway run a couple years ago and I’m glad that it’s now on Broadway, where it will hopefully live a long Jellicle life.
Sunday May 3 Moby Dick w/ Elle
Got what I came for: avant-garde rock opera equally indebted to German Expressionism as it is to Herman Melville. I didn’t not dig it. Chasing transcendence in art is its own white whale.
Tuesday May 12 Fallen Angels
Excellent physical comedy from Rose Byrne and Kelli O’Hara. Delightfully hammy at times but you can smell the dust on this century-old Noël Coward farce.
Saturday May 16 Hamlet (National Theatre at BAM) w/ Ben
Really makes the case that Shakespeare should be heard, not read. Kind of weird towards the end with Jessie Buckley rushed to the front of the stage and reached out with her hand and the rest of the audience joined her.
All jokes aside, I really dug Hiran Abeysekera’s cheeky approach to the Prince of Denmark.
Friday May 22 Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare in the Park) w/ Brian
Two Shakespeares, both alike in modern costuming…
I won the Shakespeare in the Park digital lottery! For the first performance! I didn’t know this was possible!
Director Saheem Ali firmly sets his Romeo & Juliet in the here and now. Specifically at a border town of Nueva Verona, with two statues of the Virgin Mary imprisoned on the other side. (The set design, by Maruti Evans, does a lot of work to cement this contemporary setting.) Consequently, the Montagues and Capulets are warring Hispanic families, one aligned with empire, the other protesting it. Across this divide the classic tragedy plays out in both English and Spanish.
Given that it is in previews, I’ll withhold my criticisms until I get to read reviews and see how much (if any) has changed. For now, my off the cuff thoughts:
Francis Jue, as the Friar, is the MVP of this talented cast
There’s one specific line said in Spanish that is actually more legible than Shakespearean English—even if no habla español.
Specifically, it’s “Wherefore art thou Romeo?” the most misunderstood line in Shakespeare’s oeuvre. It’s easy for laymen like myself to think Juliet is asking “where are ya, Romeo?” but “wherefore” means “why” or “for what reason.”
So when this production’s Juliet instead asks “¿Por qué eres Romeo?” the meaning is crystal clear to the contemporary audience. Even if you don’t know Spanish, you know “por qué.”
How Bad Is Plagiarism, Really? by Anthony Lane, The New Yorker
How to Measure the Good Life by Becca Rothfeld, The New Yorker
A pair of book reviews I enjoyed, the first for its prose, the second for its withering takedown of Arthur C. Brooks’s reinvention from conservative pundit to self-help guru.
Was F.W. Murnau A Giant? An Investigation. by Marya E. Gates
Memorial Park: An interview with writer and curator Minh Nguyen by Terry Nguyen
Minh Nguyen curated last year’s series of Vietnamese cinema that ran at Metrograph, which I sadly missed completely, but reading this interview influenced me to buy her book.
“Rate Your Happiness” (Fiction) by Catherine Lacey, The New Yorker
Very fun to have read this short story while in San Francisco: “Someone was always pitching their startup to someone else, and people were always on a jog, but almost no one was ever walking to a particular destination, and those not jogging were isolated in their hermetically sealed S.U.V.s, forever trying to park. …while all the men appeared ergonomically outfitted to climb a cliff face but were instead commuting to their office jobs.”
Tony Leung’s Smoldering Cool: The Hong Kong–born icon on drinking with Wong Kar-wai and what he wanted to change about Marvel’s Shang-Chi by Bilge Ebiri, Vulture
There have been a lot of Tony Leung interviews from his Silent Friend press tour. I read a handful of them and this was the most wide-ranging and insightful.
I Found It: The Best Free Restaurant Bread in America by Caity Weaver, The Atlantic
Another Caity Weaver banger!!! Her writing is just such a treat. Do not skim this!
Keeping track of the day’s first alcoholic drink.
Plus two Wine Time gatherings: Best Supporting Grape (hosted by Byron) and Park Wine (on a sunny but not humid day in Fort Greene Park!)
Barbichette Nuit Blanche 2023 at home
To Øl Snuble Juice at home
Tonello Marachelle Frizzante 2024 at Byron’s (Wine Time)
“La Danza del Fauno”, Rosso Toscano, Podere Gualandi 2022 at Dan’s
Maine Beer Company Spring Kölsch at Eric and Diana’s
Nothing
Soju and Terra at Orion Bar
Indeterminate white wine at MoMA (ND/NF Opening Night Party)
R&Daiquiri at Oddball
Nothing
Titos at Liane’s
Viet 75 at home
Cedric Garreau Garo’Vin Lunatic 2022 at home
Nothing
Collective Arts Life in the Clouds Hazy IPA at an airport bar in LGA
North Coast Scrimshaw at Airbnb (Citrus Heights)
Heineken at dad’s house (San Jose)
Regale Chardonnay 2022 at Regale Winery (Los Gatos, Pauline’s wedding)
Gin & elderflower cocktail at Wendy’s (SF)
Brooklyn Kura Kita Shizuku at Dorothy and Lester’s (SF)
Green Curry martini at Tallboy (Oakland)
Fieldwork Blackberry Parfait at Fieldwork Mission Bay (SF)
Nothing
Precision Circumference Chardonnay 2024 at Terra Mia (Paso Robles, Sangeet)
Woodford Reserve at Terra Mia (Paso Robles, Groom’s cabin)
Flor de Luna at Neat (Los Angeles)
Tej at Messob (Los Angeles)
Alain Girard & Fils Domaine des Brosses Sancerre 2023 at Sravya and Akshay’s (Los Angeles)
Brewyard Citra Bang IPA at Park’s Finest BBQ (Los Angeles)
Nothing
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