We Made a Steak House

Cake friends,

Magazines are shipping out this week, and we’ve been having a blast celebrating the launch of Steak Zine. Last Thursday, we gathered over twice-baked potatoes, towering ice cream sundaes, and slices of sneakily vegan choco-mint pie at Superiority Burger in homage to chef-owner Brooks Headley’s wonderful piece in the issue (which we shared in this newsletter last week, if you missed it).

On Sunday, we took the steakhouse fantasy to the max with a night of readings at Funny Bar—which was just covered in New York Times Styles. We spent months and months working on the issue, but listening to a story read by its author always makes it feel totally fresh, especially in the context of a restaurant dining room. The rest of the evening was a blur of steak frites, jazz, martinis, and crayon doodles on paper tablecloths. Thank you to Liz Mydlowski for the production design, and our producers Diane Ng and Kacie Paganelli for joining Aliza in bringing the event to life.

A huge thank you to Julia Khoroshilov for taking incredible photos of the night for us, shared below.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Cake Zine event without opulent dessert. The talented chef Lo Alalay reinvented the steakhouse staple lemon meringue pie by layering 150 lemons with white chocolate lemon mousse, salted brown butter graham crumble, and burnt marshmallow. It was a true fever dream.

Thank you to our friends at Farm to People for providing the lemons and eggs that made this dessert possible. If you have a need for massive quantities of citrus, a normal amount of steak, or anything in between, they have you covered: Use code STEAKZINE for $25 off your first seasonal produce or cook’s box.

Another highlight of the night was everyone who showed up dressed in their steakhouse finest. There was a lot of red, cow print, ties, and sexy suiting—shout out to JCrew, who sent over some clothes to help our team fully commit to the bit.

If you couldn’t join us at this event, we’re already scheming up some more opportunities to gather IRL this spring and summer. Keep an eye on your inbox—we’ll be sharing excerpts from Steak Zine and more good things soon.

Listen: A special Steak Zine episode of the TASTE podcast features Aliza and Tanya pulling back the curtain on how the issue came together.

Register: The New York Public Library is launching a free workshop series, The Public Critic, where participants attend and write criticism of cultural events led by notable critics Niela Orr, Doreen St. Félix, and Vinson Cunningham.

Read: To-Go Zine is a new magazine about the food of Los Angeles. All copies sold through May 31 will have 100% of the profits support CHIRLA.

Subscribe: Our friends at Stack, the independent magazine subscription club, have launched a weekly newsletter showcasing stories from independent publications around the world: The Mortar. Think of it like a curation service for indie journalism, complete with original art. You can sign up for a free month of The Mortar until midnight on Friday with this link.