Nomads & travelers
Heroes, Pearl Box, Chez Margaux, Soho House, digital nomads, Sendo, Brooklyn Thanksgiving provisioning, Feyrouz, MORE
THE ASK • FOUND Contributors
We’re seeking to add to our excellent group of contributors to FOUND NY (and LA, SF, and Miami). These are very flexible freelance roles that don’t necessarily require a professional writing background — mostly passion and impeccable taste. (We’re also looking for contributors for our forthcoming Paris & London editions.) Is that you, or a friend? Drop us a line at found@foundny.com.
RESTAURANTS & BARS • First Person
Meet your heroes
Among the crop of new restaurants gracing New York City this fall, perhaps what’s made me happiest are the number of spots that have come out of the gate fully themselves, doing something different on arrival — and doing it extremely well.
On West Broadway in Soho just below Broome, two new establishments tucked into the same townhouse recently joined this select group. I knew right away when we walked into the ground-floor restaurant Heroes that we were in for a novel experience. The decor is replete with lavenders and blacks, starting with the curved bar up front that gives way to a dining room ringed with banquettes in the back. Throughout, tall open racks display hundreds of wine bottles all tagged around their necks, a modernist wine cellar. This is a sexy date-night spot for post-daylight savings evenings.
Then come the drinks and food menus, each playful in fonts and colors without being on the wrong side of it. We started with a glass of Aurélien Laherte blanc de blanc ($40 per), a choice recommended to us by proprietor Ariel Arce, and well worth it. Arce teamed with Roman restaurant Roscioli on its Manhattan debut last year, and is an expert on bubbles dating to her first NYC spot, Air’s Champagne Parlor. Cocktails with names like Celery and Apple feel right out of the fields at Stone Barns. We loved the Chef’s Garden, a gin cocktail with pickled cherry bomb peppers, and the Corn, pairing bourbon and sherry with, spectacularly, charred corn.
The food menu is also fun, and even more ambitious. Our first plate out, a lacquered brioche with black garlic butter (described on the menu as merely “bread and butter”) offered serious wow factor, as did the scallops that followed. Served individually in a buttery bacon dashi, they’re worth the trip alone. Finally, a beguiling peekytoe crab crêpe, an airy dish with a subtle curry note, rounded out our excellent starters.
The mains at Heroes are designed for two people to share. When chef Aaron Lirette emerged from the kitchen to bring us the 12-day dry-aged turbot with African spice mix that he’d just grilled for us over charcoal, his enthusiasm was contagious: “I cut into it to debone it, and it just exploded!” The result is a nearly perfect dish, one where the aging really comes through, a star of stars among NYC’s year of dry-aged fish (see also Il Totano, Massara, and Theodora, to name three).
Following a decadent dessert of chocolate ganache with whipped cream and pistachios, we headed upstairs. After passing through the cool-looking private dining room on the second floor — holiday party bookers, take note — we found our way to the top floor cocktail bar, Pearl Box (above). Here, Arce unabashedly set out to create 1970s-Playboy Club vibes. Surveying the room’s red glow from our two-top by the bar, it’s hard not to believe she succeeded. A final round of cocktails closed out our night, though if you’re coming in for more than a nightcap, there’s a separate small plates menu here, too, not to mention a roving caviar cart.
Pearl Box and Heroes operate as separate establishments, with separate reservation books. They’re great paired together, but also very much their own spots, as they begin to tell their own distinct New York City stories. –Lockhart Steele
→ Heroes (Soho) • 357 W Broadway • Mon-Sat 5-1030p • Reserve.
→ Pearl Box (Soho) • 357 W Broadway • Reserve (or both, via reservations@heroesrestaurantnyc.com)
RESTAURANTS & CLUBS • Intel
A few follow-up notes to last week’s FOUND item on the NYC private club scene:
FOUND reported on a discounted $1000 offer to join Flyfish Club spotted on the reservation app Dorsia. Flyfish Club says the offer is a discount on the $1500 initiation price, and that the club’s standard $3500/year annual fee remains in effect. FOUND regrets the error.
A FOUND operative emails, “Soho House is discounting renewals for OG members who ‘express dissatisfaction with the state of the club.’ Soho House knows they have a lot of competition, but they believe they’ve fixed a lot of the service and food complaint issues since that damning analyst report, and that their unique value proposition is global access, and scale — ‘We are everywhere you go’ — and tentpole events (‘our Halloween and NYE are better’).”
The clubs keep coming. Reports Emily Sundberg: “New York’s newest members’ club, Chez Margaux, is open. The club is in the old Spice Market space in Meatpacking (RIP), and a friend who went recently told me, ‘I know New York is overrun with clubs, but it feels like this one might actually be good.’ Michael Cayre, the landlord of the building, is the landlord of Soho House and Casa Cipriani. Chez Margaux is $1,800 a year if you’re 31 or under, $2,600 if you’re over.”
NYC RESTAURANT LINKS: On the tearing down of Balthazar’s outdoor dining shed: ‘surprisingly emotional… several servers cried’ • Clemente Bar and the emergence of fine dining casual spinoffs • Danji in Hell’s Kitchen to reopen 18 months after fire • Chambers Street Wines owners opening a bar across the street • On Upper West Side, Cafe LaLo will not reopen • At Bridges, Penny, and beyond, great artists steal • What’s the cost of drinking bargain natural wine?
WORK • Field Report
Remote control
We’ve officially rounded the corner on autumn: Daylight Savings has come and gone, and a late Thanksgiving will soon slam us right into December (i.e. holiday party season). If you live in certain cosmopolitan environs — and if you’ve ever been on Instagram — you know damn well what this all means: An entire class of white-collar professionals attempting to sublet their places for winter, planning remote work anywhere from LA to Lisbon, from great surf to great skiing. And it begins… now.
Per an August 2024 MBO report, ‘digital nomads’ now constitute one in ten American workers, their numbers growing 147% since 2019. Their economic effects continue to be profound: Italy, Japan, and Thailand all introduced digital nomad visas this year, joining a slew of other countries who already have them on offer (along with, occasionally, economic incentives). Haven’t you heard? Digital nomads are great for the world. They’re also — haven’t you heard? — solipsistic, selfish perpetrators of a global housing crisis ruining regional cultures everywhere, who the locals openly detest. To be fair: Go to Mexico City in January, throw a rock, and you’ll hit a mezcal-sipping creative director from East LA or North Brooklyn.
But as the Great RTO Wars rage on, with companies trying to compel (or force) workers into the office with various levels of success, and those aforementioned local backlashes against nomads coincide with nomads’ burnout, depression, and anxiety from permanent destabilzation, it’d seem the unmoored hordes may start to ebb.
I recently tried my own hand at international remote work for the first time, staying two weeks with someone working to open a hotel in Greece. On paper, it sounds phenomenally cool, and in some ways, it was. Ferrying to a long weekend in Sifnos was amazing, and in Athens (where they’re still adjusting to digital nomads), I’d spend mornings going into the city center, grabbing coffee, lunch at Feyrouz, walking through a city park, browsing record stores, seeing art — but then, at 3, it was back to the hotel for work, just as New York was waking up, breaking for dinner around 8, checking my phone throughout, sometimes not finishing meetings until midnight or 1.
Admittedly, less glamorous than it sounds. It’s hard to imagine keeping this schedule much longer than I did, especially somewhere I don't speak the language or have a network of friends on the ground.
Then again, I’d be lying if I weren’t hoping for either the FOUND London or FOUND Paris bureau posting when launch time comes — at least for a week or two. —Foster Kamer
WORK LINKS: Having closed on Breuer building, Sotheby’s taps Herzog & de Meuron to renovate • How Union Square Ventures built an AI brain for venture capital • Why does NJ Transit keep canceling trains? • Amazon workers 'appalled' by AWS CEO’s return to office remarks, urge policy reversal • ETFs are where the fun is.
WORK • Tuesday Routine
Nomadic trails
MATTHEW KEPNES • travel writer • Nomadic Matt
Neighborhood you work & live in: Upper East Side
It’s Tuesday morning. What’s the scene at your workplace?
After eating a heavy protein breakfast and brewing a big pot of tea, I sit down at my dining table, papers everywhere, and start working on this week's newsletter. Every Tuesday, I send out one to my subscribers that includes a little life update, upcoming events, updated blog posts, travel stories I liked, and an inspirational quote. That takes about an hour. When that’s done, I open my big to-do list — which usually consists of small tasks like updating content or reading over edits from my editor — and work until lunch.
Tuesday is my main work-from-home day as I like to start my days early, but don't want to commute down to a co-working space or coffeeshop. After lunch, I try to bring order to the chaos that are all my papers and notes that end up on random sheets of paper and condense them into one page. After that, I go to the gym before coming home and finishing the one pager to-do list!
What’s on the agenda for today?
I’m writing new blog posts and updating travel guides. I'll make a salad for lunch before going for a walk and to the gym in the afternoon. After that, I'll reply to any emails or messages from my team before heading somewhere to sit, drink a glass of wine, and read a book for an hour before cooking dinner and catching up on Only Murders in the Building, which I just started.
Any restaurant plans today, tonight, this weekend?
This week, I'm going to try Sendo, the new sushi spot in Koreatown that my friend opened. It's getting good reviews! I'll also head to Flex Mussels for seafood (I love oysters) and Tha Praya for Thai food, which is right near me in the Upper East Side. It's one of the best Thai restaurants in the area.
How about a little leisure or culture this week?
As a member of The Met, I go once a week to wander the exhibits and stare at the Impressionist paintings for far too long. With fall here, I also like to spend a lot of time wandering Central Park, dining al fresco, and taking advantage of all the art fairs that come through the city. I may not purchase anything but it's inspirational to look at (I'm a big fan of the Affordable Art Fair that happens at the end of September). Additionally, I try to do one "tourist activity" each week. We live in the greatest city in the world and there's so much to do here that I always feel like locals never explore their backyard so I make it a point to go to one thing a week. This week, I'll be visiting Theodore Roosevelt's birthplace in Nomad.
ASK FOUND
Hit reply or or email found@foundny.com with questions and/or answers.
Three FOUND subscriber PROMPTS that require your immediate attention:
Can you recommend a good place for lunch with a group (5) of women to celebrate the holidays. Festive and something for everyone!
What warm weather winter getaways can I still book for the holidays?
Any new and interesting ticketed NYE dinners this year?
GOODS & SERVICES LINKS: How fashion houses and jewelers are giving Swiss watchmakers a run for their money • A (potentially) definitive leather shoe buying guide • How to wear skirts • ‘It’ shoes from the spring shows you’ll soon see everywhere • Why do people line up outside luxury stores?
GOODS & SERVICES • The Nines
Thanksgiving provisioning, Brooklyn
The Nines are FOUND's distilled lists of NYC's best. Additions or subtractions? Hit reply or found@foundny.com. Coming Friday: Thanksgiving provisioning, Manhattan.
The Meat Hook (Williamsburg/Carroll Gardens), turkeys from Oink & Gobble Farm in Interlaken; pickup, pre-order