By Yayoi Kusama, at The Broad.

I mean, honestly, all we really want to do here is keep writing about David Bowie and what he meant to us, as it’s all we can think about or talk about or cry about. But we’re trying to keep it together here and get some shit done as we secretly continue to mourn under it all.

So, in that spirit…we just added some new web work we completed recently to our portfolio. The client was Fogarty Finger, a New York City architecture + interiors firm that focuses on the commercial, residential, and multifamily realms and just does some really great work. Our first priority for this work was to elegantly showcase the deep and impressive body of work the firm had to show for its years of practice—the prior site structure was pretty inflexible and really just a  poor framing for such visually impactful interiors and exteriors; it was throwing up barriers to appreciating the firm rather than presenting it with clarity and grace.

Our final design—beautifully put to work and developed by the team at Pel yet again—presents the firm in the light they deserve.

You can see more images below, yet more and a detailed write-up in our portfolio, and visit the site itself.

We just did some art and an invite for Positive Tails, a non-profit dedicated to helping the animals of New York. They’re throwing a fundraising celebration February 11th to celebrate the successes of their past year of work and help create even more in 2016.

The group works with Brooklyn’s Veterinary Emergency and Referral Group (VERG) to fight animal abuse, help displaced animals and over-populated dogs and cats, and give support to individuals and families who can’t afford veterinary emergency or illness care for their companion animals. So, good stuff.

If you’re in New York February 11, we’d recommend attending. The event’s being held at 501 Union in our old neighborhood, Carroll Gardens, and will feature passed hors d’ouvres from vegan chef Jay Astafa, desserts from one of faves, Vegan Treats, and an open bar of wine, beer, and signature cocktails along with a silent auction, raffle prizes, and music. Fun night, great cause.

Tickets and more information on the event via their Eventbrite page; more on Positive Tails and their noble work via their site + Facebook.

Our new studio in Los Angeles’ Arts District is coming together slowly but surely.

Our most recent addition—custom made shelves Katie built from wooden planks, 1/2″ steel piping, and steel flanges. Katie stained the planks with a walnut stain and then built the unit and assembled it laying down. We then stood the whole thing up against the wall and attached it with some long screws. Simple, elegant, and effective.

Next up, hammock chair!

We recently added some new work to our portfolio—book cover designs for Los Angeles author Christina Garner‘s young adult fantasy series, The Gateway Trilogy.

You can read more about the books themselves and see more images of the covers we design in our portfolio, but we wanted to write up a little bit about the process here.

After we worked with Garner to come up with a symbol for the series—something that plays into the plot of the books and needed to stay consistent with existing text—we worked with her to come up with a cohesive look and brand for the whole trilogy. In addition to focusing on the protagonist on the covers, we decided to create imagery that tied into the idea of a portal to another dimension.

To come up with the ethereal, cloud-like forms, we added drops of food coloring into swirling water within a white ramekin, photographing at high speed as the motion of the water moved the colors into swirling forms. We then chose some of the better shots, brightened the images, and selectively omitted the walls of the ramekin while brightening the overall white in the image. We then integrated the Gateway symbol with a slightly altered image of the protagonist (the model original had blonde hair) and chose color palettes for each of the three books that make up the trilogy.

With all of this rainy, cold weather in Los Angeles (finally!), our nighty menus are shifting accordingly. One of our favorite warming, homey  go-to cuisines for such chilly weather is Indian. Rather than relying on our usual favorite Indian cookbook though, we instead recently employed another favorite, Tender by British chef + author Nigel Slater. The cookbook is far from vegan, but, with its heavy reliance on vegetables—all stemming from Slater’s desire to cook from his home’s vegetable garden—its narrative format, and its beautiful photography, its one of our favorite cookbooks for years now, hands down.

One recipe Slater tackles is an Indian korma—a dish originating in South Asia consisting of meat or vegetables braised in a spiced sauce made with yogurt, cream, nut or seed paste. Besides swapping in a cashew cream for the dairy in the original recipe, we also altered the vegetables included in the mix to better fit what was available in late fall/early winter farmers’ markets, meaning in our case bringing in pumpkin to pinch hit for some of the other, less common roots.

We recommend cozying up with a nice book, a bottle of red, and embracing this thing we call El Niño. Here’s what you need:

• 2 medium yellow onions
• 1 piece of ginger (the size of a fat thumb)
• 3 cloves garlic
• a mixture of fresh pumpkin, carrots, parsnip, and sweet potato (2.5 lbs. in total)
• 2/3 cup cashews
• 6 green cardamom pods
• 2 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 tbsp coriander seeds
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tsp ground turmeric
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 2 small green chiles
• 1.5 cup cashew cream (see below)
• cilantro

So, first off, peel the onions and chop them into large pieces before blitzing them in a food processor or blender until coarsely minced (not blended into a purée). Peel and coarsely grate the ginger and peel and finely slice the garlic, set both aside. Depending on the pumpkin you get, you may or may not need to peel the skin from it. Common pumpkins at southern California farmers’ markets like kabocha and red kuri can be steamed with their skins on as they tend to be absorbed into the flesh, giving a more complex and fulfilling taste overall; others, like common pumpkins and acorn squashes are usually preferred skinned. So, figure out which you have and take the skin off or don’t (ask your farmer at the market too—they usually have great ideas on what can be used how). The main thing you want is a sweet pumpkin with dry flesh, ideally. Cut it and the rest of the unpeeled root vegetables into bite-size chunks—maybe 1″ or 2″ square, understanding that they’ll break down a bit as they’re all cooked; set aside. Now coarsely chop half of the cashews and set aside.

On to the spices—open the cardamom pods and scrape out the black seeds, then use a spice grinder or mortar + pestle to crush them. Likewise, grind the cumin and coriander seeds (individually if you’re using a manual grinder or mortar + pestle, so you can better control the particle sizes and get them all to a fine powder).

Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed pan like a cast iron and add the onions, cooking over medium heat to soften and brown but not blacken at the edges; they’ll become very fragrant as they caramelize. Stir in the grated ginger and garlic, bringing the heat down to medium-low and cooking for five minutes or so, then add all of the spices—cardamom, cumin, coriander, turmeric, paprika, and the cinnamon stick whole. Continue to cook and stir, as it all becomes fragrant, and then add the vegetables and cashews after five or so minutes. Throw in the chiles, sliced very thinly and added as you see fit depending on the desired spice level.

Stir in 3 cups of water or vegetable broth and cover with a tight lid, letting the mixture simmer for 45 minutes to an hour, until the vegetables are all tender to the fork. Toast the remaining whole cashews in a dry pan, browning and then setting aside.

Now carefully add the cashew cream, which replaces the dairy cream and yogurt in the original recipe. Basically, all you need for the most basic of cashew creams is raw cashews and water. It’s best to submerge and soak the cashews overnight for the creamiest end result but, with a great blender, sometimes that’s not even necessary. Blend the cashews with a little water and, if you like, a little rice vinegar, nutritional yeast, salt, and/or a fresh garlic clove, all to taste, for a little more flavor and life in your cashew cream. Keep an eye on total liquid level, adding as you go rather than ending up with something that’s too runny in the end. You want to aim for a creamy, fairly thick cashew cream, more viscous than a sauce. We encourage experimenting with cashew creams if you’ve never made them before though, and they’re great to freeze if you have excess you’ll want to use later.

Cook the mixture with the cream for another ten minutes or so, stirring and testing the seasoning, adding salt or pepper as you see fit. Once you’re happy, plate, garnishing with the whole roasted cashews and chopped cilantro. Enjoy!

A new studio + a new year = some much-needed spring cleaning; the latest victim—this old AS 3.0 Lomo 35mm Camera from Supersampler.

I came across it as we were unpacking some studio equipment and was immediately brought back to the year or so I was obsessed with this while living in DC, some 12 years back. The camera’s operated by the ripcord on the side which, when pulled, “samples” the subject infant of the four separate fixed-focus lenses on the cameras front.

Things like Instagram and, in a larger sense, digital photography in general have made this camera and others relatively obsolete for us (which is great since digital means not relying on gelatin-based, not-so-animal-friendly prints), but the spontaneity and lack of control inherent in the photos is compelling and fun in a way we can’t as easily revisit…like a lot of life looking back on life past.

Below, some shots from DC and a trip to Hawaii. And yes, Katie was a member in good standing of the Fig Newton Federation.

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

– Tolkien

Happy new year, all.

We started our monthly mixtape series at the start of this year in an effort to curate + share the myriad new songs we’ve come to love at raven + crow studio. Some have come from tried and true artists who have seen the music scene and industry change massively over the years, but a lot of it’s come from fledgling musicians who have grown up in this Internet age of music and blossomed with it.

Regardless of where the music’s come from though, one constant has always remained—these are songs we love, traversing genres and styles (but trending pretty heavily toward the orchestral pop and melodic electronic) and coming from bands from all over the world.

To craft a great song is admirable; but to create an entire portfolio of songs that call to you, many of which tell a story from start-to-finish, that’s worthy of high praise. So here we have our top ten albums of 2015, all great, all highly recommended.

It’s an inherently imperfect list considering the impossibility of being able to hear every album that came out this year, but these are the favorite ones we—and specifically me (Troy)—have heard. Doubtless, if my wife + partner Katie were curating the list, it’d definitely include Leon Bridges‘ soulful debut, Coming Home, and—though I’d argue against including a tribute album—maybe even Ryan Adams‘ awesome start-to-finish cover of Taylor Swift’s 1989.

Doubtless too, as is the case every year, I’m sure there will be albums we won’t hear until well into 2016 that we’ll love that came out this year.

It’s also imperfect and random to choose a number like ten for the best albums, but we felt like it made sense to downsize our usual mix of 15 new songs that we do every month to focus on the best of the best from 2015. That said, there are many great albums that nearly found their way into our final top ten; among them, Jaime XX‘s debut; White Men are Black Men Too from Scotland’s Young Fathers; the debut full-length from Vegas’ Shamir; Petite Noir‘s severely under-appreciated La Vie Est Belle; the superb debut from London’s Georgia; the new one from Melbourne’s Dick Diver (who we interviewed earlier this year); the debut from Grecian disco goddess Monika; and a minimal, beautifully weird new album from Archy Marshall, AKA King Krule, that just came out a few weeks ago (a great example of why these kinds of lists should come out at year’s end, not in November or early December).

So, yeah, hard to narrow such a long list of great albums from great musicians. But we gave it a go. Below, the result. I highly recommend every one of these albums. They all made me really feel something deep down, which is really what good music should do—make you feel it fundamentally in some hard-to-explain, primal, gut-level way.

We’ve linked through each artists’ names to their band page or Facebook page and, for the sake of simplicity, each album name to its place on iTunes in case anyone’s got a holiday gift card burning a hole in their pocket. We’d encourage you to go through the artists and purchase the albums directly from them or through their label though as that’s the best way to get them the most money possible and keep them doing what they do best for as long as possible.

Just below, our playlist of highlights from each of the ten albums; below that, a write-up on each with links through to the bands and their 2015 albums.

Enjoy.

1 . Braids . Deep in the Iris . Artubus Records
I’ve long been a fan of this band, but their sound changed massively and beautifully when they went from a four-piece to a three-piece a few years back. I liked their sound previously—somewhat drone-y and jammy, but highly melodic—but what they turned into with their third album, Flourish // Perish, it’s soooooooo what I am into. Crazy complicated, layered, high-paced melodies that now showcase singer Raphaelle Standell-Preston’s strong vocals. When we saw them live earlier this year, it was honestly hard for me to keep it together the show was so good and so perfect. And the new album, Deep in the Iris, sounds like it was somehow written just for me. Easily my favorite album of the year. 

2 . Joanna Newsom . Divers . Drag City
I’m a longtime fan of Joanna Newsom’s beautiful chamber-rock-folk-whatever-it-is and this new album from her showcases the best of her songwriting and instrumentation while also presenting an amazing cyclical narrative that’s gotta be one of the best examples of putting out an album—not just a set of songs. As others have already written, it takes the massive scope of her previous four-record, 18-track release, Have One on Me, and boils it down and condenses it into something just as huge, but so much more succinct, showing a remarkable level of skill in Newsom’s craft.

3 . Boxed In . Boxed In . Nettwerk
This is a band and album that came out of nowhere and floored me, taking tight, clean, crisp electronic music and building it out into a beat-driven, highly rhythmic, full-band sound that’s catchy as hell. It’s a great debut and it has us excited to see what the British band will give us next.

4 . Foals . What Went Down . Warner Music Group
Oxford’s Foals is a band that would likely really have to go out of their way to do wrong by me. I’ve loved every album they’ve done since their 2008 debut, Antidotes. This fourth record presents the band at their most diverse, sprawling from heavy, roaring arena rock to dark, quiet, melodic pieces informed by a more emotive, math-rock-y past. It might strike some as too disparate, but I love its scope and look to the guitars and vocals of frontman Yannis Philippakis for a common thread to bind the songs.

5 . Hop Along . Painted Shut . Saddle Creek
Philly’s Hop Along is easily one of the best new live bands we’ve seen this year and their most full-length, Painted Shut, does a superb job of capturing both the nuanced melodies of their music and the blaring wildness of their rock. And, with her raw, powerful voice, Frances Quinlan has our vote hands-down for the best vocalist of the year. Add to all that the fact that Hop Along crafts songs worthy of Springsteen’s playbook and you’ve got one of the best albums of the year.

6 . Christine and the Queens . Chaleur Humaine . Because Music
Like Hop Along, we caught French musician Héloïse Letissier—AKA Christine and the Queens—at Los Angeles’ Echo, and we feel lucky to have seen both bands in such an intimate venue before their mutual inevitable rise to stardom. Letissier owns the room when she’s performing her poppy, 70s-and-80s-informed electronic music and her debut full-length somehow expands on her live sound, making it even more subtly beautiful and hook-filled.

7 . Purity Ring . Another Eternity . 4AD
Though I truly love Purity Ring—they’ve long been my favorite band, only recently being dethroned by friends and fellow Canadian Angelenos, Braids—I originally didn’t think this album would make the cut. Though it’s really awesome, it doesn’t exactly cover a lot of ground or evolve the band’s sound from their excellent 2012 debut, Shrines. But…it’s really awesome and, in the end, I couldn’t bring myself to not include it. It’s a great set of songs, all of which I really love, and I’d far prefer the same amazing sound and style than some new lesser version of Purity Ring.

8 . Tall Tales and the Silver Lining . Tightropes . Other Music Recording Co.
Like the aforementioned Monika, LA’s own Tall Tales and the Silver Lining was singed by the record label arm of one of our favorite record stores, Other Music. Very much unlike Monika, Tall Tales channels a easy, laid-back, rootsy rock that personifies a beautifully deep, panoramic California sound full of sage-filled breezes and mountain-to-ocean views. It’s the perfect album for that picturesque sunset ride down the PCH.

9 . Little Simz . A Curious Tale of Trials + Persons . Age 101 Music
Our only true rap album on the list, the self-released A Curious Tale introduces us to the smart, quick, edgy song-writing of London’s Little Simz, née Simbi Ajikawo. This album sounds more fresh and experimental than anything we’ve heard in this genre in a long, long time with songs full of nimble rhymes and undeniable hooks. If you’re looking for something new and bright and sparkly in rap, this album is definitely it.

10 . Eskimeaux . O.K. . Double Double Whammy
Finally, we have Brooklyn’s Eskimeaux and their beautiful, folky, poppy, honestly bare album, O.K. We interviewed the band’s founder and front woman Gabrielle Smith last month soon after first hearing the album and falling in love with it. As with other newcomers on this list, they’ve got us really excited to see what’s to come from such young talent, especially with the storytelling we hear in the songs that make up this record.

We severely fucked up on our recent trip to New York—with the craziness that generally is our work lives come fall-winter, we failed to make a reservation at Dirt Candy, the inventive Manhattan vegetarian restaurant that usually books up weeks in advance. I myself hadn’t had a chance to check out Dirt Candy’s new(ish) location and expanded menu, so I was especially bummed when we made the realization. Luckily, Katie happened to check availability while we were out one night and we were able to snag a two-top last minute. The result—one of our favorite dining experiences in a long, long time.

Being longtime fans of her smaller former iteration and (now) huge fans of the new one, we reached out to chef + owner of Dirt Candy, Amanda Cohen, to find out more about the move and the restaurant in general.

raven + crow: What brought on the move from your former space to your current location? Was it just a desire for a larger space overall or did you want to transform your diner’s experience somehow?

Amanda Cohen: Both! The original Dirt Candy only had 18 seats, and that meant a lot of restrictions. There was nowhere to wait if you showed up early for your reservation, there wasn’t a bar if you wanted something besides beer or wine, there wasn’t room in the kitchen to really cut loose and experiment with more complicated dishes, and there wasn’t storage space to offer a larger wine list or a bigger menu. The new space conquers all those problems.

Kudos on all of that, especially the wine bit—loved your offerings in that department. Do you know if your former landlord has a veg-friendly-leaning though? Superiority Burger’s in there now, right?

My former landlord is money-friendly-leaning. I arranged for Brooks and his guys to take over my old lease. Brooks is a friend, so I was happy to help him get his place up and running.

Well, I think we can all safely say the world thanks you for that. Totally love Brooks’ food and take on the scene in general. In the new space, the bar/counter stands out as very central in my mind—was that intentional?

Absolutely! Some restaurants hide the kitchen, as if they’re somehow ashamed of the work that goes into their food and the people who perform that work. They want to pretend magical elves are secretly preparing your dinner. I want the cooking and my cooks to be front and center of my restaurant. I want people to see Hector, and Alexis, and Nin, and Kyle, and Julia, and all the people whose hard work goes into making their dinner.

Nice. Yeah, I love that, especially in this age of more transparency and intimacy and familiarity with our food. It makes you feel like your more a part of it all, all Anthony Bourdain-esque. Back to the booze, when we were in, I ordered an amazing natural red wine that I curse myself for not taking note of…something in the description about an earthy forest floor; I absolutely loved it, but I was unaware of the world of natural wine before. Can you speak to what that is and how it differs from our common wines or organic wines?

That’s the Clos Fantine Faugeres, and you’re right—it’s pretty great! At the original Dirt Candy I didn’t have much room for wine, so there were only four whites and four reds on my list. As a result, I wanted to make sure they were funky, strange, exotic wines you couldn’t find in other restaurants, rather than just the same old Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays. My wine reps got the picture and one of them, Camille Reviere, started bringing me bottles of natural wine, which were a huge trend in Europe at the time but weren’t well-known here. Natural wines are made with nothing more than the grapes. That’s it. There are absolutely no additives—even organic certification allows some additives in the winemaking process. So what you get are these wines that are very volatile (the taste of the wine can differ from bottle to bottle), very delicate, and very fresh. They taste exactly like the ground where the grapes grow, and a lot of them have a funky edge to them which makes them taste a bit fermented and very alive. Having a natural Chardonnay was a revelation to me because I had previously always thought I hated Chardonnay when what I really hated was how most winemakers made it.

Wow. That’s awesome. And THANK YOU for the name of that red. I’ve gotta look for that one. Back to the space now, I have another, very important question—what the hell’s behind the double-danger doors across from the bathroom? Dragons? Uranium? Tiger pits?

Mountain Lions. Radioactive Mountain Lions. They keep out the Ultra-Mice at night.

FUCKING KNEW IT! For any poor soul who hasn’t experience the menu or dining gestalt of Dirt Candy, how would you describe what you hope to have achieved with the restaurant? Your dishes alone stand out in such a stunning, unique way from other vegetarian restaurants.

That’s really, really nice of you to say.

Shucks.

All I want is to cook vegetables and have fun and to surprise people. I want you to eat a dish at Dirt Candy and say, “I never thought about eggplant this way.” Or, “I didn’t know celery could be so good in a cocktail.” I like to take chances and experiment, and while not every dish is a home run every time, I hope people come along for the ride.

I know it’s tough to pick a favorite, but what dish has got you most excited on the current menu?

Right now it’s the large format dishes for two people. We didn’t have the room to do these at the original Dirt Candy but at the new place it is so…much…fun. I’ve got Brussels Sprout Tacos that come out on a sizzling stone, a Cabbage Hot Pot that comes with all kinds of accompaniments, the Corn Boil that arrives with a bib and a bucket of bourbon milkshakes. I watch tables order these dishes and they’re hesitant at first and then they start fooling around, and sharing stuff, and talking, and arguing, and getting messy and I think, “Yes! This is what dinner should be!”

Bucket of bourbon milkshakes? I think I severely mis-ordered on my last visit. I wonder if it’s tough at all when—it seems to me, at least—you get so much hype around your hush puppies with the maple butter, something that’s been a mainstay for a while now. Those things are truly crave-worthy, but are you ever like ‘Hey, man, I’ve put a TON of work into, like, a hundred other dishes too!’

On the one hand—yes. It’s heartbreaking to spend a lot of time and energy on a dish and really feel like you hit it out of the park, and then have diners reject it while sucking up mountains of hush puppies with maple butter. On the other hand, it makes me step up my game. The hush puppies taught me that you have to have variety on a menu. There have to be craveable dishes like the hush puppies, or the KFB, or the Carrot Sliders, then there need to be the calmer more complex dishes like the Eggplant or the Cauliflower. And there have to be earnest, straightforward dishes like the Shanhai Shoots or the Forager’s Salad. They’re not all going to appeal to the same people, but your menu has to have them all, and hopefully they’ll let people construct a really interesting meal with them.

Well-said. I’m told the pups are featured in the cookbook you did, which I, sadly, have yet to pick up. Was that fun to do? Hair-tear-out-y? Both?

Writing a cookbook is not for the weak-hearted. I’m proud of the work we all did on the cookbook, and I’m really happy with how it ended up, but it was a struggle. Writing a cookbook and doing all the recipe testing is hard enough, but then, after we sold it to our publisher we sat down for our first meeting with them and they said, “So does it have to be a comic book? Why don’t we do a cookbook with photos? Won’t that be fun?”

Oh my god, that must have been pretty crushing. What made you want to do a graphic novel-style cookbook in the first place though?

People had been asking me to do a cookbook and I’d been avoiding it because the world has plenty of really great cookbooks already. My house is full of them.

Agreed.

If I was going to add another to the pile, I wanted to make sure I was contributing something worthwhile and different, not just some more vegetable recipes. My husband and I were walking down the street arguing one day and he said, “You may as well do something stupid, like a comic book cookbook.” And we both stopped in our tracks and said, “That’s it.”

That’s awesome. To follow up on a question you say is answered in the cookbook—DOES Martha Stewart like Dirt Candy?

She seemed to, but I swear, that woman is inscrutable!

Your design sensibility extends beyond the cookbook though—we LOVED your menu’s infographics, they were well-done AND super-funny. Is all of that really true?

Absolutely. There were a few things I had to guesstimate, like how many customers fell out of the three-legged chairs at the original space, but otherwise it’s all as accurate as I can make it.

I’m assuming the customer babies weren’t deliver AT Dirt Candy, but did the 12 couples married get engaged there?

No, but a lot of them had their first dates there, so we’re a lucky charm. Then again, we’ve all witnessed several relationships break up at Dirt Candy, too, so maybe not. Hey guys, here’s a tip: if you want to dump your girlfriend, don’t take her out to a nice dinner to do it. I can assure you that it doesn’t turn out well.

Happy to see Step Up: All In got a shout-out too.

It’s a great movie. Not as great as Armageddon, but still pretty good.

So, this might dredge up bad blood, but I remember back when we still lived in New York and you opened your first restaurant, you got a lot of flack from some vegans for making the restaurant vegetarian instead of vegan. Was that tough to deal with at the time?

Actually, at both the original and the new Dirt Candy, every dish can be made vegan. I was a vegan for a while and I know how tough it is to navigate a lot of menus, so to me it was just common sense to have a vegan version of everything. Somehow that made some vegans angry. I’m still not sure what happened exactly, but it was a pain in the butt to exert extra effort to make vegans feel welcome and then get blasted in really vile ways by people claiming to represent the vegan community.

We were always so put off by that public reaction—it always seemed so detrimental to the movement and to popularizing more animal-friendly food. Do you feel like the vegan community has accepted your restaurant and food over time though?

You know, people are strange. I have so many vegan customers and regulars who I absolutely adore, but at the same time I still get the occassional phone call or email from someone telling me I’m participating in the holocaust because I use eggs, or someone who is angry that I don’t support the same causes they do. I want dinner to be fun, not a poltical campaign, and there are so many other great restaurants that advocate a lifestyle or political choice, but I’m not them. Also, as a Jew, telling me about the egg holocaust doesn’t elicit a lot of my sympathy.

I’m guessing that wouldnt, no. Do you have any plans for expanding beyond New York? I feel like you’d go over pretty awesomely in Los Angeles.

I’d love to! Do you know any investors???

Man…actually, maybe. I’ll get back to you on that. But any other exciting future plans you can talk about or are you happy enjoying things the way they are for now?

Right now, I’m so happy with the new restaurant that I’m focusing on just being there for the duration. I’m planning on spending 2016 getting things really locked down and I have some awesome events to unleash. Solo Diner’s Week will return, we’ve got a great event coming up in April, and starting in June I’m starting a series that’s going to kick butt and might be the most fun I’ve ever had in my restaurant. Details to be unveiled when the time is right and the moon rises in the seventh house and the stars are all aligned.

…That’s February, right?

If you’re in New York any time soon, seriously, plan a trip to Dirt Candy. It’s one of the most inventive restaurants on the scene right now and its new space is beyond inviting and gorgeous. Below, Dirt Candy’s façade; the Celery Cheese Cake Roll with Raisin Caramel, which can be done vegan and which we can vouch is fucking spectacular; the (not vegan) Rainbow Monkey Bread that’s served to every non-vegan table (dyed with vegetable juices; vegans get less exciting but still good bread); and our receipt, which points out that Dirt Candy pays its employees fair wages and eschews tips, which we think is pretty cool. All photos minus that last one and the Danger Doors courtesy of Dirt Candy.