Psych 101
F&F Restaurant and Bar, Sorbara’s, Musette, The Pink House, Rodeo Labs bikes, Valentine's Day reservations, FOUND Advertising, MORE
RESTAURANTS • First Person
Friends & family
F&F Restaurant and Bar opened its doors in Carroll Gardens in mid-December after a good run as Franks Wine Bar (and, before that, Germanic chophouse Prime Meats). With the flip to F&F, I expected to find an even more pizza-forward restaurant than the wine bar, which served personal-sized pies and a short menu of whatever amused the kitchen that day.
But when I sat down for an early dinner with my wife and two little girls last Friday, we discovered a larger, more interesting menu — with pizza, of course, but also offerings ranging from Rhode Island squid a la plancha, to spinach gnudi, to braised pork braciole.
Our server, catching our surprise, stepped up to explain. “We just moved the pies to the right side of the menu two days ago,” he said. “It’s a psychological shift.”
It worked! The best plates we experienced on this night weren’t pizzas. That spinach gnudi surprised us, each piece floating atop a gorgeous gorgonzola sauce. That braciole, a tender hunk of pork served atop mirepoix and polenta, and gone in a flash, decadent and delicious in the extreme. Rest assured, the pies are still great, including classics from their next door slice joint F&F Pizzeria, and a few restaurant-only numbers, such as guanciale and leek.
F&F’s namesakes, Frank Falcinelli and Frank Castronovo, have been serving their trademark take on Italian-American cooking in this neighborhood for more than two decades. But whereas their pioneering Frankies Spuntino a few doors down traffics in (well earned) greatest hits, at F&F, the Franks are cooking a little more adventurously, and so far the kitchen is making the most of it.
Also making the most of it when we were there: Frank C. himself, who — when not popping magnums of a bewitching Spanish white and a premier cru Burgundy for by-the-glass consumption — dropped by our table and told us that he’s in the house every night, driving the offerings. He’s obviously having a blast.
The fundamentals of the space haven’t changed much since the Prime Meats days, and why should they? The restaurant remains neatly divided between its narrow bar room and sizable main dining room, now with some new lighting and art but still the same dark-wood Peter Luger-esque feel, the din growing as the dining room fills up with multi-generational families.
As our girls dug into arancini and the “Lil Franks & Beans Cassoulet,” I reflected on the fact that there’s no place they’ve dined out in NYC more often than the Franks’ Court Street complex (indeed, they’ve been eating here since before they were born, with both their baby showers taking place in the Spuntino’s backyard). They can move the pies, even play with our psyches, but we’ll keep coming back — for the old, and new. –Lockhart Steele
→ F&F Restaurant and Bar (Carroll Gardens) • 465 Court St • Mon-Thurs 11a-9p, Fri-Sat 11a-10p • Reserve.
RESTAURANTS • The Ticket
Bangkok Supper Club Presents The Bar Residency • one-night cocktail residency with Thi Nguyen of DC’s Moon Rabbit • Bangkok Supper Club (Meatpacking District) • Wed 1/22 @ 5p, $75 per
Woody Allen & His New Orleans Jazz Band • seated cocktail reception with curated food and drink, plus live jazz • Maison Barnes (Upper East Side) • Mon 1/27 @ 6p, $450 per
The Studio at Clemente Bar x Chef Shuichi Kotani • 5-course plant-based tasting menu with cocktail pairings and Soba noodle-making demonstration • Clemente Bar (Flatrion) • Tues 1/28 @ 830p, $275 per
NYC RESTAURANT LINKS: Red Hook Tavern’s Bill Durney planning fine dining restaurant on Billionaire’s Row • Italian American stalwart Nino’s set to close in June on Upper East Side, seeks relocation • A pastry crawl to take in the East Village’s new bakery era • Espying the cocktail offerings at Midtown’s recently reopened Four Seasons hotel • So long, chilled reds: the Big Red renaissance is upon us.
WORK • FOUND Advertising
More like Q fun
FOUND Advertising kicked off in earnest last quarter, with campaigns from our friends at Corcoran, Jolie, Gotham, and Vital Farms & Black Seed Bagels. For getting in early, each earned the added value of a special place in FOUND lore.
If you manage or represent a brand that would like to reach our very attractive audience here in NYC (and also in LA, SF, Miami, and soon, Paris & London), there’s no time like the icy depths of Q1 to start a conversation. A reminder on just how attractive FOUND readers are:
55% have HHI of $250K+; 7% are above $1MM
58% have net worth of $1MM+; 12% are above $10MM
32% are 35-44, 25% are 25-34, and 20% are 45-54
Top work fields: technology (21%), media (17%), law (9%), finance (8%)
46% expect to take at least five leisure trips in the next 12 months
94% recommend products/services/experiences to friends/family/colleagues
At FOUND, we subscribe to the theory that the right kind of sponsors — from top-tier real estate firms to innovative direct-to-consumer brands to high-end local retailers and service providers — can make media better. So far, so good! We’re excited to welcome the next wave of on-brand brands to the FOUND family.
Drop us a line at sales@foundny.com and we will get to work on your next great campaign.
WORK • Tuesday Routine
The good ol’ days
ELIZABETH DUNN • writer & co-founder • Consumed
Neighborhood you work & live in: Harlem
It’s Tuesday morning. What’s the scene at your workplace?
My workplace is also my living space. Since I have three young boys and I’m not a morning person, weekday mornings are like being shot out of a cannon. I’m slinging oatmeal, listening to the dulcet tones of my 10-year-old practicing his trumpet, and negotiating with a three-year-old who refuses to put on pants. After I drop everyone at school, I close myself in an office on the top floor of our townhouse. It’s full of ratty old Ikea furniture, and there are piles of papers and books everywhere, but it’s sun-filled, quiet, and high enough that I look out the windows through the treetops. I love it.
What’s on the agenda for today?
I’m a freelance journalist. I’ve written about food — specifically, the intersection of food, business, and culture — for over a decade. Every day looks a little different. Sometimes, I’m booked solid on phone calls reporting a story; others I’m hunkered down in ‘do not disturb’ mode, writing. No matter what’s on the agenda, I like to have a jigsaw puzzle on the go that I can chip away at when I need a break because it keeps me from checking social media and spiraling. I’m currently working on this one, and it’s a real bitch!
Right now I’m working on a newsletter that I recently started with my friend and colleague, Jane Black. It’s called Consumed, and it’s a research-and-reporting-driven guide to the wild world of food and nutrition. There’s so much marketing out there now, and so many influencers spouting information that’s just not based in fact. We’re trying to help people cut through the noise to make food decisions they can feel good about. We’ve been at it for a couple of months, and I’m here to tell you that newsletters are hard work! It’s gratifying work, though, and I feel lucky to be able to do it.
Any restaurant plans today, tonight, this weekend?
I’m old enough to predate Eater’s restaurant heatmaps and, in the early aughts, was known in my friend group for the detailed Excel sheet I used to obsessively track new restaurant openings. Life has changed since then, though, and I’m not chasing the hottest reservation anymore. The place I go to more than anywhere now is a wine bar around the corner from my house called Musette. It’s super cozy, and inviting, like something out of a Nora Epron movie, and I love running into neighbors there. They do coffee and pastries in the morning, wine and small plates in the evening. Aside from that, some of the best meals I’ve had lately have been at Bangkok Supper Club, Koloman, and Sailor.
How about a little leisure or culture this week?
On Friday evenings we usually pack up the car and head to our house in Litchfield County in the northwest corner of Connecticut. We often stop on the way at The Lantern Inn, in Wassaic, for their insanely delicious wood-fired pizzas, local beers, and the rotating selection of B-movies always playing behind the bar. It’s walking distance from the Wassaic Project, an artist-run gallery with tons of cool events.
At some point over the weekend I usually find an excuse to head into Salisbury, where the bakery Sweet William’s makes some of the absolute best pies, cakes, and pastries I’ve ever experienced (they also pull a mean cortado). For a date night dinner, next on my list to try is The Pink House, in West Cornwall, which is currently the talk of our extremely small town.
Aside from all the eating, weekends usually involve at least one soccer game, and if I’m lucky, a hike or run on one of the area’s many beautiful trails.
What’s a recent big-ticket purchase you love?
I recently bought my husband a gravel bike from Rodeo Labs. I love it because I love him, and exploring the wilds of northwest Connecticut early on a Saturday morning makes him so happy. His bike is a custom job; I’m no expert, but it sure is pretty.
What NYC store or service do you love to recommend?
It’s not technically in New York City, but does deliver to New York City! Marlene and Dan at Beavertides Farm sell the absolute best pasture-raised beef, goat, and lamb, and they’ll deliver it to your door.
WORK LINKS: In waning days of Biden administration, Port Authority nabs $1.9B loan for new terminal • Mosaic’s AI financial modeling for Wall St: ‘14 hrs of work into 15 min’ • Fifth Wall bets on proptech’s return after ‘extinction event’ • Almost a quarter of last spring’s Harvard Business School grads are still unemployed.
GOODS & SERVICES • FOUND Shop
Two-for-one special
Kathleen Sorbara has refashioned her two popular Chickee’s vintage stores (one for men, one for women), into a combined space, simply named Sorbara’s.
Sorbara’s soft-opened in October and stocks hand-selected luxury vintage for men and women. The new shop is notably refined; Sorbara herself called it “more elevated than a typical vintage store.” This is true of the space itself — a Phillip Glass concert poster from the ’70s hangs framed on the wall, a book of Carlo Mollino Polaroids sits on a varnished wood coffee table, and a chestnut leather sofa grounds the otherwise airy interior. There’s also a more discerning edited selection, which makes for easier browsing.
On the racks, a mint-condition Prada evening dress hangs alongside a perfectly worn tee from 1982’s Cannes Film Festival. The tailoring Chickee’s was famous for still registers here — trousers by Armani or Narcisco Rodriguez, overcoats by Barney’s and Bottega. And the store’s intentionally sparse layout seems to incentivize shoppers to become regulars, routinely checking in to see which new pieces Kathleen and her sister have steamed and hung up to be discovered that day. –Caitlin Pangares
→ Shop: Sorbara’s (Williamsburg) • 326 Wythe Ave • Daily 11a-7p.
GOODS & SERVICES LINKS: Sag Harbor gallery Keyes opening in Tribeca Hardware space • The best vintage and retro shopping in New York • Trending: haute spreads • Fur-collared Mackage puffer is this season’s it coat • All the rumors about the iPhone Air.
ASK FOUND
Hit reply or or email found@foundny.com with questions and/or answers.
Three FOUND subscriber PROMPTS that require your immediate attention:
What new fitness/wellness trend/class are you taking on?
What’s your new winter bar?
Tell us a secret about your favorite ski mountain!
RESTAURANTS • The Nines
Valentine’s Day, bookable
Nine places to make a reservation this Valentine’s Day. Additions or subtractions? Hit reply or found@foundny.com.
Daniel (Upper East Side), 4-course Valentine’s Day lunch, $235 per (wine pairing $135 per), reserve