Dwell

"The buzzer sounded then to announce Ms. Chiminazzo’s arrival at the loft, a rectangular box with a bed in full view of the kitchen and where a Diptyque Feu de Bois candle sat on a counter near a vase of Leonidas roses and where some white phalaenopsis orchids were arranged beneath portraits of models managed by ARC."

Sanctimony and the City (2)

"We stop at an outdoor cafe, Nowheres, on the Upper West Side, debating which movie to see, maybe just a walk, she suggests the zoo. [...] We discuss plans for dinner tonight, maybe. Someone who looks like Taylor Preston walks by, waves at me. I lower my Ray-Bans, wave back. Someone on a bike pedals past. I ask a busboy for water."

Food in General (3)

"She wound up leaving her gusanos de maguey untouched, and before dessert had arrived (vanilla ice cream with a flourish of cayenne-spiced and agave-syrup-sweetened mealworms), she and her husband had dashed back to the West Village to relieve their baby sitter."

Food in General (2)

"The menu included a ceviche abloom with the cross-pollinating flavors of jicama, papaya, sweet potato, jalapeño and crickets. 'Wax moth larvae taste like bacon, and mealworms sort of taste like pumpkinseeds,' he said. 'But crickets taste like crickets. They have their own distinct animal-ness. It’s sort of like goat. It’s strong.'"

School's In (4)

"The only detail of Scott and Anne's life that seems even remotely suggestive to me is that they adopted a Korean boy of thirteen the year after they married, named him Scott J. and sent him to Exeter, where Scott had gone to school four years before I attended."

Food Preparation (4)

"So when I went up to my place on Cape Cod, alone, for an extended end-of-summer visit, I realized that, with the exception of a couple of dinner invitations, I would be cooking for myself for an entire week, something I haven’t done in at least 10 years, and possibly never. It seemed worth recording."

Wine (2)

"We found other problems as well. Some of the wines lacked sufficient concentration, and tasted diluted. Others were oddly simple, lacking even the slightest degree of depth. Often, we sensed a disconnect between the aromas, which might resemble the classic scent of gewürztraminer, and the flavors, which seemed muted.

'If you’re going to make gewürztraminer, you know you’re not going to make money on it,' Rebecca mused. 'So why bother if you’re not going to do it right?'"