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Dinner last night at Carne Mare, Andrew Carmellini’s new Italian chophouse down on the waterfront - an almost rudely premature visit, as the restaurant has barely been open a week. I was drawn by my Instagram feed, actually, currently packed with the restaurant’s very Instagrammable appetisers, principally the High/Low combo of mozzarella sticks with caviar. I quite liked them, but the caviar gets lost in the architecture of the dish, as the salty, crunchy crust of each little cheese log camouflages the delicate salinity and texture of the caviar. The king crab lettuce cups, however, I felt were a waste, the sweet crabmeat annihilated by a blast of trendy Calabrian chile crisp. I was settling in for a slightly disappointing night, cursing myself for my rush to try out the place (I think Carmellini is one of the best cooks in town) when my steak arrived. Sweet Jesus! My 12 ounce Gorgonzola-cured Wagyu strip loin was one of the best steaks I have ever had – deeply meaty, exquisitely marbled, beautifully cooked. Literally just perfect. And I loved the sides, a slightly sweet Bordelaise-y sugo, a brightly herbal salsa verde, a Parmesan fried potato dish and mixed mushrooms in a porcini cream. Seriously: that was a GREAT fucking steak, and I will be going back for that as soon as I can. I suck for not taking a photograph, but, here, let me try to draw a picture in words: a brown piece of meat the size of a blackboard eraser on a white plate. There, you’re welcome. The greater crime, really, was not taking a photograph of the fantastic chocolate layer cake, which was the platonic ideal of that dish. I can’t wait to go back; I’ll skip the mozzarella sticks, and I’ll get the proper cracked king crab legs instead of the lettuce cups, but I’ll be returning time at again for that steak and that layer cake. The room is very chophouse-themed, the service was impeccable, particularly considering this is a new team, and the prices are in the grandly extortionate steakhouse tradition – $72 for that Gorgonzola-cured Wagyu, for example. But it really was fantastic; if you are a serious carnivore, you must go. https://www.instagram.com/p/CQXI5y8D0uU/?utm_medium=tumblr

I love the way the colours glow at twilight. https://www.instagram.com/p/CQSAxkDtQKt/?utm_medium=tumblr

A fantastic day! Thanks to COVID, the scaffolding across the street (erected for NYC’s 101–07 law, mandating facade repairs every 5 years) has been up for two years. I’m very fond of this building, the 1892 Holland House Hotel, with its pale Indiana limestone and decorative flourishes, effusive to the point of vulgarity. I’m delighted it’s exposed again, and I can return to my normal delightful view. https://www.instagram.com/p/CP56E4rj7_J/?utm_medium=tumblr

Yesterday, worried the folks at @lamerceriecafe are bored of me invariably ordering the crêpe complète, I instead had the oeufs en cocotte grand-mère - shirred eggs, served with little brioche buns smeared with minced mushrooms. This felt a little abstemious, so I also had a croissant, with their excellent butter and the marmalade I’d brought with me - La Mercerie has superb housemade strawberry preserves, but a gentleman insists on bittersweet orange marmalade at breakfast. (Thanks to @seabirdbakery for the assist – the glass pot in which last weekend’s wonderful white chocolate panna cotta with mango arrived was the perfect vessel for transporting marmalade on a hot New York summer day.) After breakfast, I strolled around Soho and then the East Village. It was ridiculously warm, so I gave up, retreating to the ténébrous cool of the almost empty Bowery Hotel lounge, where I dawdled over an ice cold lemonade until my body temperature returned to baseline. For lunch, I went to @eldiablitonyc next door and had one of their fantastic birria tacos, wolfed down standing in the feeble shade of a nearby bicycle stand. Back through Soho, with a bonus sighting of Philip Glass in front of his townhouse, to Burdick for a dessert of iced milk chocolate hot chocolate. Then home to relax and rehydrate. A little wiped out from the day’s trek through the inferno, I stayed in the neighbourhood for dinner. I love that @leonellinyc offers pasta in half portions, because theirs are so good, and you don’t have to try just one. I started with the excellent spaghetti cacio e pepe (The real deal, with pecorino Romano, as the Romans make it, not with Parmesan cheese as the people in Indiana make it), then had the seafood casarecce, one of my favourite pasta dishes in town right now. Home past the Empire State, with a quick visit to the new apartment, where I remain paralysed by sofa upholstery colour choice. In all, a good day. https://www.instagram.com/p/CPy2IWLj5s2/?utm_medium=tumblr

I know you’re sick of COVID, but I’ve recently certified two COVID deaths in vaccinated men who hadn’t yet received their second doses, and I am concerned. Listen, I understand that you may not have enjoyed that first shot, but you NEED to get the second. The Delta variant that is crushing India is now exploding in the UK, with the country, which had done so well in getting people vaccinated, seeing a Third Wave of cases and hospital admissions that is threatening the promised end of lockdown on June 21. The Delta variant is estimated to be about 50% to 60% more infectious than the standard UK variant (which already sucked), and there are signs that the resulting illness may be more aggressive. The UK policy of giving only single shots until they have enough vaccine to give second doses to all may or may not be a contributory factor here, but having seen deaths in vaccinated people, I am worried. In the US, we have the luxury of having more vaccine than we even need: GET THAT SECOND DOSE. The Delta variant is here, and rising quickly. https://www.instagram.com/p/CPvfu85DETj/?utm_medium=tumblr

We’re now in the last couple of weeks of this. Here’s the current state of the kitchen; next up, marble counter and backsplash, then touch up paint and finally the cabinet hardware. The hardest part now (as long as you’re not the stonemason) is the crown moulding. This is the sixth and final pattern I’ve tried, and it involves two elements. Here the upper layer, a stepped moulding on the ceiling, has been installed. Tomorrow, they’ll put up a low cove at the top of the wall, which will hide the base of the ceiling moulding to create a smoothly stepped contour. Or so I hope. After 130 years, the ceiling is pretty uneven; the finish carpenter had to grind into the ceiling to fit the moulding evenly. Even so, irregularities in the ceilings and walls mean that the fit of the crown will not be immaculate; I’m hoping that it will just seem engagingly old. https://www.instagram.com/p/CPrMBRnj10b/?utm_medium=tumblr

I spent my holiday weekend very happily at the movies, the first time in almost a year and a half. The new Guy Ritchie on Saturday, and CRUELLA today - neither brilliant, but both were thoroughly satisfying as experiences, and I enjoyed them both tremendously. I have signed up again for the AMC Stubs A-List program ($24 a month for up to 3 movies a week, nationwide). The theatre was about one third full, with some kind of social distancing algorithm that prevents booking of seats adjacent to yours. All of the cinema employees and guests wore masks in the common areas, but people took them off once in their seats. The concessions are fairly tightly controlled, and the water fountains are still turned off. All of the best bits about moviegoing were just as I remembered, as was the asshole who answered his phone during the Jason Statham movie, and carried on a long conversation, pausing only to call out, “Hey, fella! What’s the name of this movie?”, at which point the opprobrium freely expressed by other audience members drove him from the screening room. It was a good feeling to be back to this – you know what I mean. https://www.instagram.com/p/CPjbx-Kjj6_/?utm_medium=tumblr

NEW YORK IS DEAD. DONT COME BACK. is a kind of art action/nationally distributed installation celebrating the idea that many people have left because they believe the city is dead, allowing a street level cultural Renaissance for those who choose to stay. This is exactly how I see life in New York, and our prospects going forward; I think this piece is fantastic. I believe this image, “South Beach, Miami II”, is by the photographer/filmmaker Dada @dadazito , and the project itself is under the aegis of @thelockerroomnyc , an art space/collective in Brooklyn. This slogan was displayed in billboards and banners in Miami, Los Angeles and NYC; I couldn’t love it any more if i tried! The installation will be celebrated by a show at the Locker Room running from June 3 to June 13. https://www.instagram.com/p/CPeJoW3DeGn/?utm_medium=tumblr

Aléa iacta est! Let the cutting, grinding and honing begin! (For the persnickety: I know the typing isn’t straight. It’s just a rough guideline for the stoneworkers, who will cut according to precisely measured, predetermined areas.) https://www.instagram.com/p/CPbAw8ZDIRA/?utm_medium=tumblr

On my day off, I went to the stoneyard and picked out marble for my endless renovation. I enjoy stoneyards, these weird arenas filled with serried ranks of massive slabs of marble and granite and soapstone, caught on the brink between raw and finished. Watching several ton slabs of marble swaying perilously from the gantry overhead is a rare treat. I chose a piece of Carrara that I liked a lot, and then we marked it up with tape for the various counters and backsplashes that will be its fate. Poor old rock! Formed millions of years ago, forged in the Crucible of Time out of molten limestone, and now doomed to spend eternity bearing the indignity of bathroom cup ring stains and errant squirts of Crest Whitening Toothpaste! https://www.instagram.com/p/CPZEyyIDL_t/?utm_medium=tumblr

Figuring out the pocket shutters, kind of out of my depth. https://www.instagram.com/p/CPUOSU9jR6U/?utm_medium=tumblr

I had an odd dream last night, striking in that the entire dream lasted barely five seconds. There was a deeper narrative, the context of which was already known to me. An elderly woman is watching TV with her white poodle in her lap. The newscaster announces that her favourite singer’s dog has been stolen. Wildly upset, the woman leaps up and howls, “Mr. Djimboo! Oh noooo! Not Mr. Djimboo!” Next she is on the ground, and the poodle has eaten her lips. Notes: 1. The celeb’s dog’s name is spelled Mr. Djimboo, and the terminal O‘s are sounded like “bamboo“. 2. Her collapse and her death are due to natural disease – her poodle was not involved in her death, just in gnawing her lips off her face. https://www.instagram.com/p/CPR5zGBjoh4/?utm_medium=tumblr

Joy Williams is the best fiction writer I’ve ever read, just terrifyingly good. The first of her short stories I ever read was “Dimmer” from 1969, published in the Paris Review when she was 25. Torn from its context, this passage may be a little hard to scan, but when I read... “No one was immune. The wilderness snapped and glided like a varmint. He could hear it at dusk, whirring and wheeling, hooting in his ear. The oceanic desert. The jungled march. Didn’t she know? There were rabid foxes and loose tie rods. Current rattled up through the bidet. Sails luffed. Brain pans bent and burnt.”… I was just floored. SO beautiful, lyrical and opaque but at the same time lapidary and exact. I mean, my God, how can a writer be this fucking GOOD? For me each of her stories is like a canister of radium, crackling with threat and catastrophe, shrilling with all the dazzling secrets of the universe. https://www.instagram.com/p/CPOzCQID8DB/?utm_medium=tumblr

Last night, in the mood for what we used to call a "slap-up dinner" in my little country house prep school in Sussex. I went to @leonellinyc , the little sister to Jonathan Benno's (freshly Michelin-starred) fine dining restaurant Benno in the Evelyn Hotel. It was a beautiful evening, so I scuttled myindoor reservation and sat instead at an outdoor table, putting together my own tasting menu from the Happy Hour (5PM - 7PM) and dinner menus. From the former, the cacio e pepe croquettes - a kind of arancini approach to c e p pasta, deep-fried to a magnificent golden brown, but I think I prefer the glossy richness of the pasta dish - and the tigelle with eggplant tocco, which was wonderful. Tigelle are soft, pattern-stamped mini flatbreads, and the tocco an ethereal eggplant cream, with sumac and sesame and yogurt - one of the best things of the night. Then I had the seafood salad, a summery chilled antipasto mix of shrimp and clams and mussels and little pickled peppers and fingerling potatoes, which was also great. You can order half portions of pastas, which I LOVE, so first I had the seafood casarecce, a wildly spring-y collision of shrimp and garlic butter and ramps and Meyer lemon and bread crumbs and (most of all) mint - just fantastic, the best dish of the night. Then the lamb pappardelle with English peas and more mint and pecorino. I finished with a chocolate pudding drizzled with caramel and sprinkled amaretto crumbs. It was kind of a perfect meal, with immaculate food, smooth service and a lovely, fresh evening. All in, including two Cokes but not service, well under $100. https://www.instagram.com/p/CPMFOhzjxwO/?utm_medium=tumblr

Slow progress overall this week, but some subtle successes. All of the doorstops are in now, and all the doorhandles. What this means is that my bathroom door now shuts with the satisfyingly solid close you might feel when shutting the door of a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow, a feeling of mass and finality. More importantly, when the bathroom door is locked from the inside, as you leave, all you have to do is turn the handle and the lock miraculously opens itself - just like in rich people’s houses! The most important development this week, though, was that I finally figured out my moulding. I swear, I’ve been sweating this decision so hard – I checked my notes, and the first moulding image I saved for this project was on September 9th 2019. Early after demolition, I was offered the option of having a skilled plasterer rebuild all the mouldings, and I declined because of the fairly considerable expense. In retrospect, since my budget has gone completely off the rails, I wish I’d agreed. In any case, you can see two trial moulding samples above the windows by the bathroom door – both failures, as was a more elaborate, still period-appropriate egg and dart moulding. My final choice – second photograph – is not elaborate, but has the particular advantage of being fairly short in height on the wall but stretching out onto the ceiling, a bit like the original moulding in my bedroom in my studio. This will work nicely. I hope. https://www.instagram.com/p/CPKB9PGDFuK/?utm_medium=tumblr

A special lunch today at Frenchette! A celebration of my friend Hugh Howey’s fantastic success: Apple TV today announced that they’re moving forward on production of a series based on his WOOL trilogy, to star Rebecca Ferguson and budgeted at over $100 million for 10 episodes. Fish soup with saffron aioli, steak tartare showered with fresh horseradish, a mango confection with labne and sesame - perfect. The restaurant’s design is clever – modern and a little clubby, but it still feels traditional. A memorable meal, on many levels. (at Frenchette) https://www.instagram.com/p/CPHFEZSjH-C/?utm_medium=tumblr

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