February 16 & 23, 2026 Issue

Notes on this week’s issue:

1. Helen Rosner, in “Tables for Two,” manages (with help from “a very fancy friend”) to snag a reservation at the “mega-swank” steak house The Eighty-Six in the West Village. She has a blast. First, she has an apple-wood-smoked Martini, “theatrically poured tableside atop a stalagmite of ice grown, science-fair-style, from hyper-chilled water.” She says it was “excellent, and potent as hell.” I mentally sipped it right along with her. Then she has a steak dinner, which she delectably describes as follows:

The exterior, salted and peppered, crackled from a hard sear; the inside was tender pink from edge to edge. The sauces I’d ordered alongside were hardly necessary: an eggy, vinegar-tart béarnaise, and a wiggly, wobbly gelée-adjacent steak sauce made with veal demi-glace. I dipped my fries into them, at least, and enjoyed a whole phalanx of steak-house sides: garlicky spinach; butter-laden mashed potatoes; a strikingly photogenic creamed-corn potpie with a swirly croissant top; snappy green and yellow long beans, dressed in a sharp lemon vinaigrette that sliced through the density of the rest of the food.

That “I dipped my fries into them” made me smile (and salivate). It’s exactly what I’d do.

2. Rebecca Mead’s “The Landscape Artist,” a profile of British artist Andy Goldsworthy, is excellent. See my post yesterday.

3. One of the best New Yorker book reviews I’ve read recently is Hannah Goldfield’s “Daily Bread.” It’s a survey of food diaries – a genre or subgenre I’ve not paid any attention to. But I will now, as a result of reading Goldfield’s illuminating piece. She mentions three books I think I’ll check out: Nigel Slater’s The Kitchen Diaries; Ruth Reichl’s My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life; and Tamar Adler’s Feast on Your Life: Kitchen Meditations for Every Day. 

4. I enjoyed Zachary Fine’s “Monster Mash” – a review of Pierre Huyghe’s “Liminals,” showing in Berlin, at Halle am Berghain. Fine calls “Liminals” “an absolutely terrifying work of art.” But he doesn’t stop there. He asks why: “Why is this so terrifying?” That question is a sign of a true critic. He’s not content with just stating his response. He digs into the underlying reasons for it. Fine’s answer made me smile. “Well, first of all,” he says, “there’s the missing face.” I also like Fine’s mindfulness of beauty. In the concluding lines of his piece, he writes, “But the film persuades with its frightening beauty: the shimmering flesh-colored rocks, the throbbing soundtrack, the smoothness of the creature’s skin. It’s all too human, but not.”