A huge thanks to all the friends who came out this past Saturday to help celebrate my 40th, and an even huger thanks to Katie, who planned the whole shindig, held at Kombucha Dog, complete with DJ + dancing, food from Blue Window, liberal libations, and a beautifully vulgar peanut butter chocolate cake from Clara Cakes.

I’m officially wise! Or wizened. Either one.

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.

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 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.

The other day, we were driving down Melrose on our way—admittedly—to the Christmas-ed out Grove (mainly to get a laptop repaired but also to see their nightly fake snow show) and we drove past a surprisingly familiar site—work by Brooklyn-based artist Juan Miguel Marin. The surprising part was that it was in gigantic form, splayed across a billboard thousands of miles away from the artist’s home.

We know Juan through his band, LEGS, who we’ve been fans of since we first heard them last year. We interviewed Juan about the band and their debut LP earlier this year and were well-aware that he was a visual artists but were nonetheless shocked to see his work roadside in Los Angeles.

Turns out, Juan was one an elite group of 33 artists chosen to be part of a city-wide, billboard-based art show in the form of The Billboard Creative, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that takes unused and remnant billboards and turns them into public art.

Starting with a single billboard by LACMA in 2012, this most recent iteration and second city-wide project debuted on December 1st with 33 billboards across the city from 33 different artists, doubling the inaugural outing. Curated by photographer Mona Kuhn, the show is described as “public art, displayed in a quintessential Los Angeles medium.”

As TBC puts it:

“The Billboard Creative is the antidote to the inbox-choking, often empty and expensive pitches from art expos and pay-for-play venues. We’ve participated in many fee-based programs and competitions. Some of them were great; some less so. (Look up Alan Bamberger’s article in artbusiness.com on whether or not art competitions will help your career.) But the bottom line is that many competitions are more about making money than making art. We understand this – everyone has to make a living, but it inspired us to create a program that actually is all about the art. Our goal is to get new, interesting, innovative artwork of all mediums in front of people, lots of people, and for considerably less cost to the artist.”

We’ve loved Juan’s work since we first saw it, comprising intricate, hand-drawn lines that, together, form abstract, movement-filled shapes. The work in and of itself is compelling enough, but, for us—people who spend most work hours in front of a computer screen—the process appealed to us too; as he puts it on his site, “a study in a meditative process of sentient creation, each piece representing part of the artist’s past or envisioned future.”

In addition to the billboard, which is only up until the end of this month (i.e. – two more days), Juan recently told us about a new piece he recently completed—”Untitled 3″, pictured above and below. Juan has a limited, numbered edition of 50 prints, framed + unframed, available for sale via his website.

Merry Christmas + happy holidays, from us to you.

Pictured, a wreath we made from foraged native plants in our neighborhood and Griffith Park, the making of which has now become an annual tradition.

One last New York piece before year’s end—if you happen to be in NYC this and next week, we highly recommend checking out this new breed of specialized seasonal commerce—the holiday pop-up bar.

While back east, we visited two: Miracle on Ninth Street, which has taken over Mace‘s space at East 9th + C; and Sippin’ Santa’s Surf Shack in Boilermaker at 1st + 1st (AKA, the nexus of the universe).

The former celebrates the more traditional aspects of Christmas, with decor, musical selections, and drinks like a pine needle cordial gimlet and the Christmopolitan—Fig leaf-infused vodka, St. Germain, lime juice, spiced cranberry sauce. They even give a shout out to the chosen with an appropriately decorated Hanukkah corner and the Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel—Chocolate gelt-infused reposado tequila, Pedro Ximenez sherry, maple syrup, and black walnut bitters garnished with, yes, a dreidel (note to fellow vegans: It’s actually cocoa nib-infused and dairy-free).

The latter, Sippin’ Santa’s Surf Shack, is, as you might guess, is more of a Christmas in Hawaii, Elvisian Christmas themed bar, with tiki trimmings, some great surf-holiday tunes, and the cheekier side of the drink menu with libations like I Saw Mommy… (vodka, grapefruit juice, Branca Menta, Hershey’s syrup, chocolate bitters, with mint [not vegan]) and warmers like the Sexy Santa (brandy, cabernet sauvignon, cinnamon, Angostura bitters, grapefruit essence; served hot).

Both pop-ups are run by the couple that runs Cocktail Kingdom (high five to couples running multiple businesses together), so, along with the music, decor, and drinks, you’ve also got some great, custom-designed barware, like you see below.

Our picks at each establishment: The Grinch at Miracle (a smokey concoction of rye, Pedro Ximenez sweet white wine, pine bitters, and frankincense smoke that was hands-down the favorite among our five-person table) and A Snowball’s Chance at the Surf Shack (scotch, pineapple cordial, allspice dram, and a dash of absinthe poured over a snowball of crushed ice).

You’ve only got a handful of days left to enjoy these places, so get thee there and get there early (they get packed quickly). Just watch out for a few of the drinks, vegans—the bogs are off limits, some come with actual hot butter, and there’s one drink at Miracle that’s got beef jerky bitters. Ah, boy.

Top photo of The Grinch, courtesy of Miracle at Ninth; all below, us.

Alright, who’s old-school enough to remember the pre-think-about-your-Google-searchability shop, Shop, in the lower east side?

We employed this tote at the studio today and it brought back fond memories of the long-gone women’s boutique and an era of pre-crash economy when New York was rich with small, independently owned shops like Shop. They’re all too absent these days, in New York and in many other urban centers, but their spirit lives on in many forms…like this tote, I guess.

Less so in the Web site—iloveshop.com is being parked by (sigh) buy.internettraffic.com.

For anyone who doesn’t already know, Pantone—”the global authority on color and provider of professional color standards”—has been choosing colors of the year since 2000, the intention being to both predict and guide trends in the coming year.

Today, Pantone announced the 2016 colors, marking the first time ever that the color experts have chosen two colors to brand a single year. It also denotes what may be a much more socially conscious, politically aware decision-making process for that choice. Or good PR. Or both.

According to Pantone, the two new colors—Rose Quartz + Serenity—”demonstrate an inherent balance between a warmer embracing rose tone and the cooler tranquil blue, reflecting connection and wellness as well as a soothing sense of order and peace.”

They continue, via press release:

“The prevalent combination of Rose Quartz and Serenity also challenges traditional perceptions of color association. In many parts of the world we are experiencing a gender blur as it relates to fashion, which has in turn impacted color trends throughout all other areas of design. This more unilateral approach to color is coinciding with societal movements toward gender equality and fluidity, the consumer’s increased comfort with using color as a form of expression, a generation that has less concern about being typecast or judged and an open exchange of digital information that has opened our eyes to different approaches to color usage.”

Though the tone and verbiage of the announcement might verge on pretentious over-importance and the video that accompany it (below) strike me as very Scientology (or at least yoga retreat-y)…I like the idea and welcome some serenity and peace in the com in year, especially after so much sudden violence close to home.

Now to order yet another new set of Pantone books….

If you happen to be looking for an escape from the family togetherness this holiday week, or are just looking for a new show to binge-watch, we highly recommend that you check out Aziz Ansari‘s new Netflix show, “Master of None”.

Even if you’re not a fan of Ansari’s stand-up or you think Tom Haverford’s “treat yo self” persona is a bit much on Parks and Rec, you should still give “Master of None” a go.

Not only does Ansari play a more grounded, tamer version of his stand-up and Haverford selves, and not only is the primary cast of “Master of None” wildly diverse (Ansari, playing Dev + Taiwanese-American friend, Brian + African-American lesbian, Denise + giant, white, muppet-like Arnold) but the writing’s intelligent and funny without going over-the-top (thanks mostly to Ansari himself + writing partner/co-creator Alan Yang).

For instance, there are all of these moments you have watching the show where you can suddenly see where it would go as a typically, get them laughing at all costs show, and it never takes the easy way out. Ansari’s character gets wasted at a bar with a bunch of women and doesn’t cheat on his grind but instead discusses feminism with them and talks himself out of a job…that kind of thing. And it still totally works. Better than that, it’s a refreshing departure from what we’ve come to expect in comedies, even the best of them these days.

So give it a try if you trust our taste. We’re wagering you’ll like it. Trailer below. Ansari’s also got a good article in the Times on acting and race in Hollywood.