Bacon naan in Manhattan, Eggs for your brain, and a $500 million sidewalk 🍳

I’m on Fifth avenue and its A LOT.

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Ok, we’ve had had two coffees and have strong opinions. A lot is happening this coming week. Let’s get into it.

This week

→ Frieze Art Fair opens Tuesday- your 5 min primer on exactly who to look out for

→ The Venice Biennale opened and immediately became a protest

→ Dishoom is coming to NYC (yes, really, finally)

→ Meta is opening a flagship on Fifth Avenue

→ Health news: Eggs, knees, and depression

QUICK BITES:

Art

Frieze Art Fair opens Tuesday at The Shed in NYC this week. It’s the world’s top contemporary art fair, and also the one event per year where you will see a €40,000 painting next to a man in Balenciaga asking his assistant to “pull the car around.”

Fifteen years in. Over 65 galleries from 26 countries. Strong Latin American presence this year.

The Whitney Biennial is running in parallel, so the whole city becomes one big overwhelming art moment from Tuesday onward. If you are reading this from NYC, go midweek if you can.

The weekends are for the people who are there to be seen rather than to see. Tickets only online: theshed.org.

Italy

The Venice Biennale opened this week and within 24 hours there were protests outside the gates.

The exhibition is called In Minor Keys and was designed by Koyo Kouoh- a Cameroonian-Swiss curator who died last year before she could see it open. Her team carried it forward exactly as she planned.

Today there’s a full 24-hour artist strike over Israel’s participation. The jury resigned last week. The EU pulled funding over Russia’s return. it opens to the public tomorrow and it is going to be A LOT.

Kouoh’s whole idea was that art should be emotional and sensory- not just political commentary. The opening week has been nothing but political commentary.

She would have had thoughts!!

Food:

Dishoom is coming to New York. Officially confirmed. Manhattan location, sometime this year. If you’ve been to London you already know- it’s the Bombay-café-inspired restaurant with the bacon naan that has a fanbase, the black daalpeople love, and a queue outside every single morning regardless of the London rain.

Their pop-up at Pastis last year sold out in about four minutes. It arrives as part of a whole wave of serious Indian restaurants crossing from London- Ambassadors Clubhouse is already open in NoMad, Darjeeling Express is coming. NYC’s Indian food scene spent the last decade building the audience for this moment.

Dhamaka and Semma laid the foundation.

Culture:

Meta- the company that spent billions convincing us the physical world was optional- just signed a 10-year lease for a five-story flagship store on Fifth Avenue, right next to the St. Regis.

I’m not sure what they’re selling exactly. VR headsets? the concept of connection? the audacity? all of the above, probably, at $800 a piece.

The street itself is having a moment: Moncler opened a flagship here earlier this year. Rolex is finishing its new US flagship a few blocks down. And there’s a $402 million city-funded redesign approved that will widen the sidewalks, plant trees, and cut car lanes. The first major change to the avenue in 200 years.

Standing here right now it is impossible to imagine but apparently in a few years this whole stretch will feel like somewhere else.

Health:

Three things from science this week that are actually useful:

→ Eating eggs regularly- daily or near-daily- was linked to significantly increased health.

Your grandmother was right about the eggs. She was probably right about other things too.

Business Eye