New York does not do the British pub well. It tends to do a version of it: the dim lighting is right, the beer list is acceptable, and then something slips. The food arrives and reminds you where you are.
Dean's is the exception. The room is warm without being heavy, the kind of space that takes a few visits to fully read. Dark wood, close tables, the sound of a room genuinely enjoying itself. The menu is short, which is a good sign. The roast on Sundays is the reason to plan ahead, but the scotch egg and a pint on a Tuesday evening is its own argument.
What makes it land is the consistency. This is a place that has decided what it is and holds the line.
Most galleries are rooms with white walls. Amant is a campus, which sounds grand until you see it: three buildings on a quiet block in East Williamsburg, connected by gardens and a logic that takes a moment to understand.
The programming here is slower than the gallery circuit. Residencies, long exhibitions, artists who have time to think. The result is work that feels considered rather than produced. The current show is worth the trip on its own, but the real reason to go is the building itself. The architects made something that earns attention.
Plan for longer than you think. The garden catches you on the way out.
Design festivals have a reputation for being a lot of standing around in showrooms. NYCxDesign is better than that, if you approach it with some patience for the programming.
The independent events are where it gets interesting. Studios open their doors, and the conversations that happen in them are different from anything you'd find in a gallery or a shop. This week the city is paying attention to the things that surround it: furniture, objects, materials, space. That kind of attention is worth joining.
Pick two or three events and let the rest go. The ones worth your time are the ones in small rooms.
This week: afternoon tea in the room Darren Waterston painted at the newly reopened Frick. A brand-new wing that arrived so quietly the city has not caught up yet. And the cookbook shop the food world found before the rest of us, on 13th Street, with a dog named Olive.
As ever.
Westmoreland is the café inside the Frick Collection on the Upper East Side. The museum reopened last April after a long renovation, and the café had already become a quiet favourite for lunch. What is less known is that they also serve afternoon tea.
The café looks over the restored 70th Street Garden. For $65 you get five tea sandwiches, a scone with butter, clotted cream and jam, and two sweets. The tea list is short, only six options, but you are really there to admire Darren Waterston's painted walls.
Delight yourself in the two murals: Fugue wraps the vestibule floor to ceiling, and Arcadia runs as a frieze around the dining room. He worked from Bellini, Whistler, Corot and Japanese screens.
The afternoon tea still feels like a little secret. The garden is at its best right now, and the room looks directly onto it.
Served daily from 1pm, closed Tuesdays. Book on Resy or reserve same day at the Admissions Desk. frick.org
The Tang Wing opened ten days ago, and the city has not fully caught up with it yet. Robert A.M. Stern added 71,000 square feet to the 1908 building without breaking the line of it. The granite came from the same quarry in Deer Isle, Maine as the original, the same stone, a century apart. You have to look twice to find the seam.
Walk through to the sculpture garden. Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton stand there at their exact dueling distance. It is a strange, quiet thing to be between them.
The Weitzman Shoe Museum is on the first floor. The American LGBTQ+ Museum occupies the top floor. But the building itself is the argument.
The second weekend since opening. Still early enough to feel like a discovery. It also marks the 250th anniversary of American democracy, and the current exhibition reflects exactly that.
Tue–Sun, 170 Central Park West. nyhistory.org
As a long time fan of Three Lives & Company, it was a delight to discover that Troy Chatterton, who ran the shop for fourteen years, had opened his own place. Wild Sorrel opened on 13th Street in April, a cookbook shop devoted to the home cook, with new books, used books, a few rare ones, some housewares and Troy's dog Olive usually somewhere underfoot.
The shop is small and carefully edited. There are browsing benches, which is rare. The selection feels personal rather than comprehensive, the kind of place where every book on the shelf has been chosen by someone who actually cooks.
Wild Sorrel only opened in April. The food world has already found it, but the rest of the city is still catching up.
How this started.
For as long as I can remember, friends have been asking me the same questions. Where should we go for dinner this weekend? Is that exhibition worth seeing before it closes? There's a new shop on Crosby — have you been? I always had an answer, because finding these things is something I do anyway, quietly and constantly, out of genuine love for this city.
At some point it seemed worth writing it down. Not as a guide — there are plenty of those — but as a letter. Three things, each week, that I would tell a close friend over a coffee if they asked me what was worth their weekend. Honest, specific, never sponsored, always timely.
That is all this is. I hope it is useful.
— Elena Matsuura, Seen & Savored
Free, always.
This issue isn't available yet. Back to the site.