September 24, 2018 Issue

Notes on this week’s issue:

1. The newyorker.com version of Hannah Goldfield’s “Tables For Two: Sofreh” features six images by my favorite New Yorker photographer, William Mebane, including a wonderful portrait of Sofreh’s chef and owner, Nasim Alikhani, that is sure to make my 2018 “Top Ten Photos” list.

2. Great to see illustrator Angie Wang back in the magazine (see “Goings On About Town: Modern Dance” by Brian Seibert). Her portrait of the singer Nellie McKay, in the December 13, 2010 issue, is one of my all-time favorites.

3. Neima Jahromi, in her “Bar Tab: Apothéke,” mentions an alluring drink called the Devil’s Playground (gin, absinthe, local dragon fruit, prickly pear) I’d love to taste.

4. What’s the most interesting line in this week’s issue? Three contenders: (1) “His late-July set for the Australian radio station Triple J’s ‘Mix Up’ series is a sauntering, slow-burn disco workout, highlighted by a reëdited version of the Jimmy Castor Bunch’s eternally goofy ‘Troglodyte (Cave Man)’ ” (Michaelangelo Matos, “Night Life: Tim Sweeney”); (2) In a saffron vesper, mixed with gin, vodka, and Lillet, it’s too intense—like taking a glug from a perfume bottle in your grandmother’s bathroom—but in desserts it’s more subtle, an intoxicating footnote” (Hannah Goldfield, “Tables For Two: Sofreh”); (3) “The picture has time in it, the residue of innumerable side-to-side shifts of scrutiny” (Peter Schjeldahl, “Only See”). And the winner is: Hannah Goldfield for that inspired “like taking a glug from a perfume bottle in your grandmother’s bathroom.”