Best of 2021: GOAT

Photo by Shawn Michael Jones, from Hannah Goldfield's "Tables for Two: We All Scream for Ice Cream"

Here are my favourite “Goings On About Town” notes of 2021 (with a choice quote from each in brackets):

1. Hannah Goldfield, “Tables For Two: We All Scream for Ice Cream,” August 2, 2021 [“There are pints to take home, too; availing myself of an insulated bag outfitted with ice packs ($7), I toted several on the subway, including Panna Stracciatella, flecked with dark-chocolate shards, and Somebody Scoop Phil, the brainchild of the sitcom producer turned food personality Phil Rosenthal, featuring a lightly salted malted milk-chocolate base, dense with chunks of Twix and candied peanuts, plus swirls of fudge and panna caramel that oozed obscenely when I peeled off the lid”].

2. Richard Brody, “Movies: Despair,” August 2, 2021 ("In the crude and vulgar beauty of a society on the edge of violence, Stoppard’s ping-ponging witticisms freeze in the air with a ballistic grimness").

3. Hannah Goldfield, “Tables For Two: Fan-Fan Doughnuts and El Newyorkino,” March 15, 2021 ["But it’s the basics I crave: Gerson’s yeasted, brioche-style dough, which contains flour, butter, and eggs and is fried to the color of honey, is a marvel in itself, not much heavier than cotton candy, and is perhaps best coated in an inky slick of Valrhona chocolate or braided and lightly lacquered with the simplest white icing. Chocolate comes in hot-beverage form, too: a rich, velvety Belgian-style mix of melted Guittard (both milk and dark), not so thick that you need a spoon, but thick enough that it’s nice to use one, to more easily consume the doughnut croutons and house-made marshmallow bobbing at the top"].

4. Michaelangelo Matos, “Music: LSDXOXO: ‘Dedicated 2 Disrespect,’ ” May 24, 2021 ("The Berlin-based d.j. and producer LSDXOXO makes spiky, near-iridescent house music, full of distortion-heavy riffs and buzzing percussion that cuts through a room like a silver suit").

5. Hannah Goldfield, “Tables For Two: Peter Luger Steak House,” March 29, 2021 ["At my table, in the shadow of the historic Williamsburgh Savings Bank building, I ordered another wedge salad (rapture, again) and a burger, a beautiful mass of luscious ground beef whose iodine tang played perfectly off a sweet, salty slice of American cheese, a fat cross-section of raw white onion, and a big, domed sesame bun"].

6. Andrea K. Scott, “At the Galleries: Lee Lozano,” August 2, 2021 ["Lozano blazes through subjects, from the X-ray intensity of charcoal self-portraits, made during her student years, to cartoonish near-Pop (such as the untitled 1961 work pictured here), absurdly priapic gags, and muscular renditions of hardware and tools that strain at the edges of the paper on which they’re drawn, as if to say, Screw this"].

7. Anthony Lane, “Movies: Senna,” ("Asif Kapadia’s 2011 documentary, which should reward the attention even of those who would never dream of watching cars on a track, is filmed as an homage to velocity—it’s stripped of narration, talking heads, and anything else that might threaten to slow it down. What remains is a self-propelling drama, and the abiding image of Senna’s oil-dark eyes, gleaming through the letter box of his helmet").

8. Johanna Fateman, “Art: Becky Kolsrud,” March 8, 2021 ("In another, smaller landscape, bordered by a band of sky blue, a neon-pink skull rests on the curve of a green planet as a lemon moon blares from the corner").

9. David Kortava, “Tables For Two: Bathhouse Kitchen,” December 6, 2021 ("For the lovely butternut-squash salad, Sousa served the squash raw, thinly sliced, and tossed with golden raisins, pecans, onion, tarragon, and blue cheese. It was easily the funkiest dish I’ve ever consumed in a bathrobe").

10. Richard Brody, “What to Stream: Thomasine & Bushrod,” March 8, 2021 ("When, during a shoot-out, Bushrod—in a majestic closeup—reloads his revolver, the whispered click of metal on metal resounds like righteous thunder").