Hangover Cure: Make Your Own Kind of Music
A newsletter that will *take you there* throughout the NYC restaurant scene; a comedy podcast with a sweet core of food & drink nostalgia; and a song to help you dance into this weekend.
Hey, hi, hello, Happy Friday. If you’re getting this in your inbox, you’re a paid subscriber of Hugging the Bar, and let me just say, I appreciate you so much! And one of the ways I’m saying “thank you” is with this little weekly round-up of fun, non-beer recs. So, without further ado…!
[By the way: I’ve been experimenting with this feature, with sending out free previews to non-paid subscribers…and not doing that…basically I want to find the right balance between providing fun content and not jamming up inboxes. But I also want to find the right balance between giving a special thank you to paid subscribers and including everyone in on the party. So, going forward, I think these will go out to all subscribers a month after they go to paid subscribers. If anyone hates this, let me know, I’m open! The good thing, most things I recommend are pretty timeless, and if you do want to get that first access, consider upgrading!]
READ: The Year I Ate New York, by E. Alex Jung
New York Magazine’s Grub Street continues its “Year I Ate New York” in newsletter form with E. Alex Jung at the helm and the result is something I eagerly anticipate in my inbox. The arrival of each issue has the ability to derail any progress I’m making on any work task, because I will abandon it to get lost in wherever Jung has been eating this week—Pomodoros be damned. This, I believe, is because of a variety of factors, but the two most important ones are: one, the actual content. I’m not sure how collaborative the process is of steering the newsletter ship each issue to different venues and trends that Jung will explore, but the topics are the kind you want to feast on, the kind you’ve been wanting to learn about, the kind you have an earnest curiosity in or a morbid curiosity in. The slow, leisurely, messy, communal joys of hot pot, how it becomes your entire day and how absolutely perfect that is. The nuances of drag brunch in 2023, how it’s wonderful that, at least in places like New York, it’s so embraced by so many different people, but that, a sort of Disney-ification of drag misses the point. And, most recently, a search for “the most New York restaurant in LA,” with vibe checks that provided me with the kind of giddiness I guess some people get from reading juicy celebrity gossip.
The second factor is, of course, Jung. He is an expert at his craft, with a rare kind of culinary and, specifically, restaurant knowledge he doesn’t even have to work at revealing in his prose; it just flows from every word. He’s fucking funny, and eagle-eyed—no limp cavatelli, strange comment from the host, or pin on the lapel of a sommelier gets past him. His writing absolutely takes you there—I feel as though I’ve suffered a breakdown from chaotic try-hard over-stimulation at Bad Roman, and savored a Vesper martini at Horses (yes, as Jung emphasizes, that Horses). You’ll never regret this subscription.
LISTEN: Off Menu Podcast
This one comes from two comedians I followed and really enjoyed long before I realized they had this little ol’ smash hit podcast together, James Acaster and Ed Gamble (both appeared on previous Hangover Cure rec “Taskmaster” and I’m sure will pop up in future recs, too). The premise of Off Menu is that the podcast is a restaurant, and so the interviews are structured with the ordering of a multi-course meal, meaning that most of the conversations revolve around food and drink and nostalgia and all that good stuff. They get fantastic guests you’ll definitely know from the comedy and entertainment world, who then get to pick their ultimate dream order from still or sparkling water all the way through to dessert. So, for every course and item, you get to hear them remember this very special thing their grandma made for them growing up, or the most incredible thing they ate at a fancy restaurant when they got their first good paycheck, etc. Oddly enough, as the concept is rooted in true British comedy absurdity, this podcast is the most earnest and straightforward exploration of the special emotional connections we have with food and drink, the way a bowl of soup or piece of sashimi or cocktail or brownie can be seared into our minds forever because of the experiences around it. OOOH, this podcast is just so fucking good.
LISTEN: “Make Your Own Kind of Music” by Cass Elliot