Why This New $18 Plate of Bread Might Just Be Worth It

Everyone should have an art. That is to say, something they care about enough to dedicate hours to, distract one's mind from the inevitability of death, the pain and suffering that is the stuff of life, and New York Times trend pieces. But no one, and we repeat "no one," should play any role (or shall we say roll?) in putting to market an $18 plate of bread.

But that is what the twee-masters at Bruno Pizza in the East Village did. $18 bread. But what else would you expect from two clowns who named their fancy pizza joint for Giordano Bruno, a Dominican friar burned at the stake in Rome's Campo de' Fiori in 1600 for his curiosity about the world? (See what they did there? Wood-fired oven...burned at the stake. Cute!) Just as you would carefully work on a bread starter, read slowly so your anger does not boil too-too fast:

This bread itself, which will hit the menu on October 1 as a composed $18 dish with fermented Caputo Brothers mozzarella, buttermilk and "ambrosia" honey complex (a mixture of the honey propolis, pollen, and royal jelly), has been in the works since before the restaurant's opening earlier this summer. It's the brainchild of chef de partie Phil Marokus, who previously had no bread-making experience. "After I left my previous job, I had two and a half months before Bruno started up, and I was just super bored," he says. "I'd done a lot of research online and read Tartine Bakery's books to learn about how naturally risen bread works, but this has been a real headache! Why is the bread doing this, and not this? What do I have to fix to make that happen?"

Did your anger rise like the dough for the majestic $18 plate of bread? Take a thirty-second breather and read on from aspiring society page subject Sierra Tishgart (who sounds like she could be an exotic appetizer of baby lentils and Komodo dragon tongue):

The dark, seedy bread is rich and satisfying on its own, but Bruno's chefs also serve it with a bone-marrow-and-herb-infused compound butter. They also add pine oil, nasturtium flowers, and Jacobsen salt (and that's before plating it with the cheese). It's a nice accompaniment to vegetable-forward dishes like the fairy-tale-eggplant appetizer with black-cashew paste and blistered shishito peppers (and the pizza with smoked ham, Pawlet cheese, and peaches, for good measure). 

"When we started, none of us had any pizza experience," Marokus says. "But making the pizza dough helped me with the bread: I can see how adding more or less water or flour makes an impact. We've all worked together to figure it out."

Can you hear the mellifluous notes of self-satisfaction? They worked together for a year, folks, to design a plate of a few pieces of bread that would cost, after tax and tip, $20. Like NASA engineers or Supreme Court litigators devising legal strategy, they got together to figure it out. Someone had to, right? And we thought a $20 burger was still the ne plus ultra of the excesses of the New York food scene. We delight in being proven wrong but we're gonna stick with this one for now.

Cheaper than your co-pay

Harvard Students ‘Devastated’ About Yogurtland Closing

We pride ourselves on being equal opportunity trollers at the Weekly Hate Read, pursuant to the strictest EEOC regulations. Thus we have no qualms including an article from that august institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts whose acceptance rate hovers around only 5.9%. The 5.9% are very sad that a self-service frozen yogurt store has closed.

Up and coming cub reporter Sharon Yang, who has previously covered on a talk by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and a prestigious awarded given to noted economist Roland G. Fryer Jr., shifted her focus to the Harvard Square self-service yogurt beat, a perennial favorite in sleepy New England:

A small but passionate and vocal group of longtime student-patrons who frequented Yogurtland while it was in business described themselves as heartbroken over the closure.

Ms. Yang elicited some choice quotes on the closure, not least from the daughter of deranged law professor (or is professor of deranged law?) Amy Chua, author of Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother:

"I was actually devastated. I was genuinely devastated. Yogurtland for me as a freshman, was a place of solace,” said Lulu S. Chua-Rubenfeld ’18.

Somebody call student health services! Though Ms. Chua-Rubenfeld claims here to have survived just fine standing in 20-degree weather at the age of three for having disobeyed her mother, we think this obsession with yogurt betrays a hint of PTSD. (By the way, what's the statute of limitations on child abuse?) Another student provided a more dispassionate assessment of Yogurtland's superiority:

“Pinkberry is not self-serve, you've got all these complications of lines, you don't get immediate access to the yogurt, it's hard to sample,” Jon D. Young '16 said. “The same issues plague the Berryline, the J.P. Licks, and what have you.”

Not to be outdone, however, Mr. Young added:

Young is a platinum level member of the rewards program, a distinction he earned after consuming more than 240 ounces of frozen yogurt over the course of his frequent visits to the store. 

“Yogurtland was the holy place for me,” Young said. “My temple, if you will.”

Pulitzer prize-winning material, my friends.

The nightlife in Cambridge, Massachusetts

At Hawaii Resort, Yoga by Day, Party by Night

We are hypocrites at the Weekly Hate Read. We denounce the parochialism of the Real Estate section while greedily indulging our need to deride it. That is why today we venture forth into its companion section, which the New York Times insists on calling “Travel.” We prefer the appellation, “Summer Homes and Places I Go Only First-Class.” We prayed for a piece that let us move beyond Williamsburg and the Upper East side, finally receiving a 2,000-word article detailing the Lollapalooza or Burning Man analogue for yoga devotees, set in beautiful, postcolonial Hawaii. Hallelujah.

Written by the Times' hard-hitting "primary Olympics writer" Lynn Zinser, the article grapples with the phenomenon that is Wanderlust, a three to four day festival combining various forms of yoga (what?) with all-night raves. It has now spread, like a rare tropical disease, to fifteen cities. We were unable to obtain a demographic census of the event, but we have our suspicions:

“When we first came up with the idea of a festival, people said, ‘No one is going to want to do yoga all day and party all night,’ except we knew that’s exactly what they would do,” said Sean Hoess, who founded Wanderlust with Jeff Krasno and Mr. Krasno’s wife, Schuyler Grant. “We would go to these yoga retreats, and that’s exactly what they were already doing.”

Exhibit 1: when there is a “Schuyler” involved, you are no longer dealing with garden variety WASP, but true Philadelphia Main Line or Greenwich, Connecticut WASP. (The same goes for Piper.) As such, Wanderlust joins other businesses in the now-familiar vein of daycare facility for putatively able-bodied wealthy adults. It is best in these situations to run for the hills or, as one would do at Wanderlust, up the coconut tree:

The tightrope walker fit in swimmingly with the impromptu human pyramids or the people hand-walking on stilts, the laughing circles of people bruising their hips in hula hoop yoga or splashing into the water trying to do Warrior 1 on a stand-up paddleboard. There is yoga with dancing, D.J.s spinning tunes to the downward dogs. There are the fabric hammocks hanging from trees for something called aerial yoga. At regular intervals, you could find someone shinnying up a 30-foot coconut tree. Just because it was there.

The business acumen of Krasno (who has been "incredibly" inspired by Williamsburg), Hoess, and Grant consisted of putting together this goofiness just as goofiness became the latest fad in papering over structural violence, while “Just be cool, man” became the most eloquent defense of its apologists:

“Our timing was just really, really good,” Ms. Grant said. “Just as the music industry was starting to nose-dive, the wellness industry was starting to catch its wings. There is such a broad interest in wellness, and there are so many different ways and different depths of how to practice that. It is starting to approach its mass appeal moment.”

Never fear, however, we are in the hands of the New York Times—an eminent and critical news source. Even the yoga-practicing journalist, engaging in a bit of participant-observation, smells something fishy here:

“Wellness,” as it turns out, can be a rather fungible idea, stretched to include eating poke bowls and kale salads by day and enjoying inebriating substances while the music pulsates late into the night. The wellness part of that being that, well, people were enjoying themselves.

Whatever concerns Ms. Zinser has are dispelled once she finds out that the trio of yogapreneurs made sure that those unable to attend the $440 entrance fee for the four-day festival and the $269/night Hawaii hotel (before fees and taxes) could enjoy a taste of this "community" for one day close to home. For those without PTO (paid time off for those not in the know), Wanderlust offers a one-day cocktail of yoga, road race, and Molly-fueled gyration to Prodigy, just in time for work on Monday:

Last year Wanderlust 108 made its debut: a one-day “mindfulness triathlon” combining a 5k run, a yoga class and a guided meditation. After two successful editions of that last year, it will reach 15 cities in 2015. That includes one in Brooklyn — Wanderlust’s headquarters — on Sept. 13 and one in Washington on Sept. 20.

“Those are just a taste of Wanderlust,” Ms. Grant said. “Some people can’t afford to do a three- or four-day festival. These are more of a community event. It’s a happening.”

If that doesn't sound like a recipe for a fatal combination of schizophrenia (run, yoga, DJ?) and class resentment writ large, we frankly don't know what is. Ms. Zinser, however, leaves reassured that there is a place for first-generation, good ol' yuppie Orientalist wisdom in this new-fangled space:

Ms. Phelan told the class that Yin is her favorite yoga because it involves the willingness to look within.

“All the answers are there,” she said. “The past is just a memory, and the future just a thought. There is only now.”

In that minute, everything seemed to make sense: the circuslike atmosphere, the party-till-dawn vibe, the stretch-and-be-seen scene, the idea that people traveled thousands of miles, or just a few dozen, to discover the one thing that is true everywhere. It is always now.

Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon: eat your heart out. The future is worse and weirder than you ever imagined.

Medicare will be defunded while you practice aerial yoga