five favorite christmas markets

but first, a personal note in honor of my alma mater about finding light in darkness

we were so close to being out of the woods with 2025. this year will forever be bookended by traumatic tragedies in my two homes: the LA fires on january 8 and the mass shooting at brown university on december 13—the day before the anniversary of sandy hook. two brown students who survived this shooting already survived shootings at their high schools. they chose brown for college because of its infectious environment of security, community, and intimacy. they thought it would be statistically impossible for them to experience another school shooting…

my year in music

unwrapping my spotify wrapped and gifting my recommendations!

spotify wrapped dropped last week, and it’s always a day I look forward to. spotify is a flawed platform and company for many reasons; they underpay artists, but they give hyper specific recommendations, often for artists I wouldn’t have otherwise discovered. they also developed the first algorithm of its kind that rewards users for interacting with art. many other media tracking and productivity apps have since followed suit; beli, letterboxd, and goodreads all provide their users with personalized data to show off how many restaurants we ate at, movies we watched, and books we read in a given year. these types of apps have really become their own niche kinds of social media, which can be equally fun and insufferable. for better or for worse, I’m more addicted to them than I ever was to Instagram…

the zest's edinburgh

the perfect cozy winter getaway

my sister hannah studied abroad last fall in edinburgh, so she helped me craft this city guide. this time last year, my mom and I met her there for thanksgiving. it was the perfect destination for a cozy girls’ trip as winter descended upon autumn. we were just reminiscing about our scottish adventures while hannah and I were both home last week. my mom and I lodged our yearly complaints about the lack of mulled wine in the US and began withdrawals about our first festive season in three without european christmas markets. more on that in a near-future newsletter…

how to: fall

timing is everything!

fall is my favorite season, but it’s also a very distracting stretch of three months. september is transitional and seasonally confusing; I spend most of it getting back into a routine and mourning the loss of summer, even though deep down I’m always ready to let it go. october comes and goes in the blink of an eye, and while I’ve definitely outgrown halloween, october may objectively be the best month of the year. I’m not yet worried about the impending doom of winter, everything is pumpkin flavored, the leaves begin to turn, and the dozen light jackets taking up space in my closet are finally released off their hangers for their brief moment of glory. I’ve grown to love november, but it’s become normalized for christmas décor to go up november 1st, which feels wrong. it effectively shortens the fall…

from calder to kahlo to klimt

debriefing and demystifying marquee week at christie’s and sotheby’s

onto this week’s dive into private art becoming public (for a limited period of time). for two weeks in november and two weeks in may, christie’s and sotheby’s display all the art they’re about to auction off for millions of dollars (some for tens and hundreds of millions) and allow the public to visit it for free. marquee week is the most underrated free exhibition of some of the most incredible art in the world—the majority of which is never to be seen publicly again…

the best burger I've ever had was at PA bacon fest 2024

a retrospective on its loaded political context and the state of food in america one year later

the sunday before the 2024 presidential election, two friends and I canvassed for kamala harris in easton, pennsylvania, a quaint town in northampton county about 90 minutes from new york city. the coach bus picked us up outside zabar’s on the upper west side, which was indicative of the attendees we’d be spending the day with: sweet middle-aged new york jews ready to save democracy… or so we so naively thought…

the zest's providence

the greatest little city in new england!

the only thing better than new york fall is providence fall. the foliage is reliably otherworldly, the neighborhood décor is tasteful but homemade (unlike the professional pumpkinscapes that adorn west village brownstones), and the sunsets blend the most perfect hues of orange and pink. I miss new england around this time of year! it feels like the perfect time to offer a guide to my favorite little city where I got to spend four years. if you’ve never been, I highly recommend visiting, especially during the fall or the spring…

parcels and morsels

two bites from my weekend that altered my brain chemistry

back in april at coachella I did something I’d never done before: in the middle of watching a set I went on my phone and purchased tickets to the same artist’s new york concert, which in april was six months away. I was enchanted by parcels’ performance and needed to see more. I crossed paths again with them a few months later at primavera sound in barcelona, but I had to leave that set early to see someone else play…

side quest to charlotte

reconnecting with singing, adult hobbying, and always saying yes

I’ve found that one of the most difficult transitions out of college into adulthood is the loss of inordinate amounts of time I used to pour into hobbies. I know I’m not the first person to say this. I still read a ton; I joined a book club last year to recreate some semblance of an academic environment in which to discuss books and build community through a shared hobby. hobbies like writing and filmmaking naturally transitioned into my post-grad professional life, but others, namely singing, have been left behind…

from pakora to cachapas

feasting around the world at the queens night market

since moving to new york, journeying to the queens night market has been at the top of my bucket list. it took me far longer than I anticipated to actually get it on the calendar with two foodie friends I knew would love exploring this mecca of local food vendors. in anticipation of our visit, I tried to research our best plan of attack, but I was shocked to find very few articles, reviews, and even social media posts covering the market. hopefully this week’s zest can be that resource for others who visit the market in the future!…

bluebird (round three)

a dining pop-up passion project that grows with its founders

in 2022, three members of the varsity men’s crew team at uchicago took their love for cooking each other elaborate after-school meals to the next level. they founded the crescent, a weekly pop-up restaurant. every wednesday night they offered a five-course dinner to three lucky tables of two. word spread quickly around campus, and soon their waitlist grew to 200+ students who were eager to snag a seat at the chef’s table.

the founders were inspired by the opportunity to explore new recipes and expose fellow college students to unfamiliar dining experiences and flavors—all at an accessible price point of $45 per person. they never intended to make a profit. at times they lost money, when they refused to compromise the quality of their ingredients or charge their friends more for the experience…

welcome to the zest!

a belated introduction and pause for reflection

a few months and 100 subscribers later, now feels like the right moment to make a proper introduction to you all. thank you for reading and sharing the zest with others! I hope you continue to do so. It’s not a competition, but if it was… my grandmother would win first prize for number of subscribers recruited.

noni may not know this, but she is also the inspiration behind the name “the zest.” a couple of years ago she told me that she always describes me to her friends as having a zest for life that she admires. life is much more fun when I’m experiencing new art, new cultures, new restaurants, and new perspectives…

the ice cream dilemma

why is NYC a warm weather dessert desert?

as summer breezes turn crisper and temperatures begin to drop, it feels appropriate to lodge a complaint about summer sweets in the city. one qualm I’ve had with new york during warmer months is how lackluster the ice cream scene is, specifically with regard to accessibility. in new york you’re supposed to have everything at your fingertips at any time of day, but if you’re craving decent froyo or gelato on a weeknight past 10 pm, you’re kind of shit out of luck…

one year of eating in nyc!

my top 100 restaurants since moving here

I’ve officially lived in new york for one year! more importantly, I’ve eaten here for one year. I’ve gotten to know the landscape of the city from the geography of its restaurants. I know which express train gets me to my favorite meals in fort greene and which restaurant owners are taking over the vacant storefront on my block. when I find myself in astoria or harlem, I pull up my beli bookmarks on a map to orient myself and select a place I’ve already shown interest in trying. restaurants are how I acquaint myself not just with the city as a whole, but also with the culture and flavor of each individual neighborhood…

tv talk

shows I’m watching, giving up on, and hoping to start

the emmys are coming! technically, they are already underway… daytime emmys have already been awarded. the creative arts emmys took place in LA yesterday and the day before. but the primetime emmy awards, the big one, will take place on september 14, and I probably won’t even watch. it’s the lamest awards show of them all, but it provides a good excuse to check in about the highs and lows of 2024/25 television…

36 hours in new hampshire

what going back to camp for a weekend taught me about being an adult

on the second to last weekend of summer I commuted eight hours each way to central new hampshire for my all-girls sleepaway camp’s 105th reunion. I’ve never been a “camp girl” in the traditional sense of living and breathing it; it’s not my entire personality, it didn’t make me want to join a sorority in college, and I keep in touch with fewer than five friends I met there. the five summers I spent in new hampshire were special and formative, though not in the way most people’s camp experiences tend to be…

the zest's los angeles

a guide to my hometown for daisy <3

my friend daisy is leaving brooklyn for LA—absolutely devastating—and asked me for recommendations, which of course spiraled into this project. I hope she loves LA but not enough to stay!

I don’t like comparing LA and new york. they’re great for different things. people constantly ask me when (not if) I’m moving back… and while I firmly believe that new york is for now—my early 20s—it may not be for forever (but it might!). LA, on the other hand, is firmly for settling down and taking things slow. LA vs. new york is a false choice comparison. they are so completely different from each other on pretty much every level…

red hook reset

the perfect escape from the city without actually leaving

if your instagram/tik tok algorithm feeds you nyc recommendations at the frequency mine does, you’re bound to come across a mini-itinerary for how to spend a day in red hook, a neighborhood on a peninsula in western brooklyn just southwest of carroll gardens. the area was originally a waterfront shipping yard and a thriving port through the 1920s. it was later ridden with crime and violence, as warring italian and irish mobs competed and the neighborhood helped fuel the rise of the mafia in new york. today, its quaint cobblestone streets connect piers that have transformed into outdoor breweries to a stretch of vintage and home goods stores. red hook is also famously home to the only ikea store in all of the five boroughs…

beach reads

an homage to my mom’s weekly book column

most people don’t know that on top of working full time, parenting full time (more than full time these days), serving as co-president of our temple, and doing a host of other things I don’t understand how she finds time in the day for, my mom writes a weekly column for the groton long point news during the summer. it’s a print-only paper in the summer town of around 6,000 people where my mom grew up spending summers with her family. she now gets a week or two there each summer if she’s lucky, but she’s pen pals with the community from the west coast via her “beach reads” column, where she recommends a list of new books each week…

the harsh reality of playing pretend

lydia riess’s “rocks and geodes”

I was incredibly honored when my friend lydia riess offered to comp a ticket to her new play in exchange for me writing about it on my substack. writers supporting writers—a dream!

I’ve known lydia since early on in college, when we co-led a team of passionate yet often recalcitrant fellow students in a chaotic exercise that entailed sifting through 50+ screenplays in one weekend and selecting ten to pitch to the brown motion pictures executive board. I can’t say I miss those days, but I’ve loved watching lydia’s creative pursuits blossom since then…