Music & Food | A site about music and food.
August 11, 2026

Cel Ray

Cel Rayzer

I discovered this new punk band recently called Cel Ray, and they’re pretty fun and interesting, landing well into the egg end of the egg punk > chain punk continuum. They’re egg punks at heart, that play with the energy and abandon of chain punks. They’re a hoot, big energy, they’re probably a fun group of friends to have.

But then I was wondering, “What kind of name is Cel Ray?” Weird name right? A quick search led me to learn that they took their name from Cel-Ray, a celery-based soda pop from the Dr. Brown’s root beer brand! I love those Dr. Brown sodas, but I don’t remember ever seeing Cel-Ray! Apparently there was a bit about it in Seinfeld once. Fun and weird; I don’t love celery, but I thought I’d try Cel-Ray next time I stumble on it.

Then like I dunno two days later, I’m at Day Boat Cafe in Waldoboro, and there it is in their fridge! Cel-Ray! The timing was truly remarkable!

So I sat down with my hoagie and my Cel-Ray. I like it! To be honest I could barely taste any celery in it; it really tasted more like a Sprite with just a slightly different edge, maybe a bit less carbonated. But that’s fine by me, because as I said, I don’t love celery to begin with. I wish I had headphones with me so I could listen to Cel Ray while drinking it, but nobody’s perfect, y’know?

Anyway, this might have to be the final Music & Food post. I finally did it.

 

 

August 11, 2026

The Mountain Goats

Days

I won’t go too deep into reviewing this album, because it is precisely as good and not-good as every other Mountain Goats album of the last oh 12 years. Like, it could be their best or worst album of the decade depending on what you ate for lunch.

But there’s this really amazing moment right near the beginning of the album that I want to call out. See it’s a themed collection of songs (again, like most of his work in the last oh 22 years), all about, essentially, the Grunge Era. The first song is called “Song for Layne Staley”, about the tragic singer of Alice in Chains, but you knew that.

So the song starts almost like an old-school Mountain Goats song, just John Darnielle and his acoustic guitar and a microphone, singing about a character wanting to start a band, being disenchanted and terrified by the specter of stardom, and wanting out. It’s a nice tune. But then halfway through, you start to hear bits of other instruments preparing to join in, some keyboard, a drum pokes and prods and “asks questions” as a British soccer announcer might intone. Then right as it crescendos towards a climax, the drums burst in and play what is unmistakably the opening Dave Grohl drum fill from “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” And then we’re off on a full coda-outro of distorted guitar and “I don’t want this, I don’t need this,” less-unmistakably but still noticeably sung to the same rhythm as “with the lights out, it’s less dangerous, here we are now, entertain us.”

It’s a legitimately surprising, magical moment. Amazing that it happens right off the bat on the album, that someone understood this needed to be track #1. Just to hear those drums go “tchu-koo, k-thcho-koo, k-thcho-koo, k-thcho-koo” sets off some powerful chemicals to the nerve receptors of a listener of a certain age (my age). That I’ve never heard that particular fill referenced—interpolated—in another piece of music, is pretty amazing. And that it was the Mountain Goats, doing it here in a concept album about the grunge era, in a song titled not for Kurt but for Layne; holy cow it works.

Nothing else on the album really hits that hard, but don’t worry about that. It’s their best album of the last 12 years.

August 8, 2026

Sam and Louise Sullivan

Love & Devotion

The best brother and sister indie rock group since the FF’s.

Also the most Tusk-inspired music I’ve just about ever heard. Funny, you hear some of Lindsey Buckingham’s weirdo Tusk shit, and his Law & Order album, and you think about how he seemingly presaged the entire idea of lo-fi indie rock. And yet when you actually go through the last couple decades of lo-fi indie rock, you don’t seem to actually hear much Tusk. Nobody tried to do it. Nobody sounds like that.

This Sam and Louise Sullivan duo is probably the closest thing I’ve heard to Tusk-as-genre. Don’t even ask me to describe how or what, but yeah, these two get it.

August 4, 2026

Primus

Pork Soda

I can barely believe this is happening, but I’m currently listening to and enjoying Primus.

Was this band actually good this whole time?

July 22, 2026

Steve Lacy

Oh, yeah?

Oh, no.

July 10, 2026

Star Moles

Highway to Hell

Songs!!!

July 9, 2026

Beth Orton

The Ground Above

I finally appreciate Beth Orton as much as every music critic for the last 20 years has wanted me to.

Plus this album has guitar solos on it, which adds a half point to its score.

June 25, 2026

Tierra Whack

Whack's Museum

I thought this was going to be really great, but it’s just pretty great.

June 25, 2026

YHWH Nailgun

Magazine

YHWH Nailgun is one of the most legitimately unique new bands I’ve heard in a while. Just cool weird sounds, super tight, not really like anything you’ve heard before, unless you’ve heard Battles I guess. Forget about that.

So their debut album last year was cool AF, and now they’re back with their follow-up! Already! And in true YHWH Nailgun “fuck you we do what we want” fasion—it’s 12 minutes long.

Yes, this album is 12 minutes long. This album. This full priced, not-an-EP, LP. 12 minutes.

That’s a pretty cool move on their part. But also: there’s no reason for this to be only 12 minutes long. They could literally double the length of every song, still be a little bit “fuck you” with a 24 minute long album, and not piss off me, the listener.

These songs are so short! They just end! Why do they just end?? Play more of the song! The last track actually fades out! It’s ridiculous!

Cool band.

June 23, 2026

GOREWORM

Miasmic Solitude

Pretty sick.

June 20, 2026

Iceage

For Love of Grace & the Hereafter

Iceage has been, I guess, hot shit for like 15 years now. I wouldn’t know though, because sometime around that 15 year point I simply read “Danish teen punk band” and decided they weren’t for me.

But it turns out they’re great? At the very least, they’re adults now, and writing great songs, and it seems they’ve been doing this the whole time.

Anyway, I listened to this album non stop for a week, and it was cool. I think I’m getting over it, so it won’t necessarily be topping my lists at the end of the year. Although, “Star” may very well to my favorite songs list. Honestly “Star” is all I need from this whole album.

Cool band, Iceage. They got me.

August 8, 2026

Chelsea Hotel

Manhattan

Drinks

Manhattan

August 8, 2026

Shukette

Manhattan

Hummus, labneh, kebabs, chicken wings, bad broccoli

Manhattan

Shukette is the younger louder TikTokier sister restaurant of Shuka. I have a whole story about how Lizzie wanted to go to Shukette, but I thought she said Shuka, so I got a reservation for Shuka only to find out that she meant Shukette, and had already been to Shuka and didn’t like it enough to go to again, so we changed plans and got lucky and snuck into Shukette anyway, even though it’s seemingly packed to the seams every night with 27 year olds.

Big menu, cool menu, I wanted one of everything. But we only got like 7 or 8 things instead.

The broccoli was bad. The labneh wasn’t for me but Lizzie liked it. The lamb was okay but I’ve had better at random kabob joints. The hummus and salad and chicken wings were shucking excellent.

I’d go back solely for the wings honestly. An intense dry rub, baked not fried, harissa dipping sauce—catch them on the right night, if they can get them cooked just right, I’d put them up on a Best Wings In NYC list.

Real talk though, not many great wings in NYC.

June 23, 2026

Cervo's

Manhattan

Oysters, peas, peri peri chicken

Manhattan

A lot of years ago, I walked by Cervo’s and thought “that place looks like a great place to have a nice dinner. I should check it out.”

Then a few years ago, the [stupid neighborhood name redacted] neighborhood where Cervo’s is just became so [too exhausting to think of an adjective], that I never tried too hard to get there. Plus it’s mostly seafood and shellfish, and I wasn’t so into seafood and shellfish.

Then, this year, I’m finding myself to actually be cool and excited with seafood and shellfish, and also wondering “It’s been a lot of years, why haven’t I gone to Cervo’s yet?”

So on our week in the city last week, I decided to go finally get a reservation for Cervo’s.

And it was great. Loved it. Everything I hoped it might be. Oysters were good (though not better than the local Maine ones up here, natch), the grilled peas with manchego were surprisingly good, and the peri peri was some of the best fancy-restaurant-chicken I’ve ever had, surpassing the notorious Chicken Ceiling theory of dining. Have I told you about the Chicken Ceiling theory? Another time maybe.

Cervo’s. It’s dreamy.  Even if it’s in that neighborhood.

May 30, 2026

Sarge's

Manhattan

Pastrami

Manhattan

So you’ve got Katz’s of course, and you’ve got Pastrami Queen. And maybe if you’re in-the-know (or you’re 50 or older) you’ve got 2nd Avenue Deli. If you’re really in the know, maybe you’ve even got Liebman’s up in the Bronx. That’s your New York pastrami Mount Rushmore.

Except there’s one more, hiding in plain sight over there on 3rd Avenue in Midtown. Sarge’s. It’s been around nearly as long as the others, it’s got a cool sign and nicely aged wood paneling, and it’s good as hell.

It also was such a gigantic pile of meat that I was almost embarrassed to sit there with it.

December 29, 2025

Atoboy

Manhattan

Ribs, other Korean stuff

Manhattan

Atoboy has been around for a while now, and on my New York list for nearly as long as I’ve been there. Modern, upscale Korean, maybe on the experimental side, prix fixe, but possibly most famous for its fried chicken that you can add on to your prix fixe. Although, at this point Atoboy might be most famous for being the progenitor of its younger sister restaurant, Atomix, which is often placed right in the top 2 or 3 of all restaurants in NYC. So when my birthday rolled around this year, maybe I really wanted Atomix, but that wasn’t happening. Atoboy, however, is still comfortably in the “happening” range.

Loved Atoboy, it was great. I have notes, but it was great. The first note is that they should ditch the prix fixe; everything was good, but truthfully the best part of the meal was when the final course, the galbi ribs, came out along with all the banchan sides, and it just like getting a good dish at a Korean restaurant, rather than the final course of a whole prix fixe thing.

Those ribs though. Absolutely excellent ribs, so so good. Far and away the best dish of the night. Just let me go to your restaurant and get these ribs and some sides, you know?

December 29, 2025

Benji's Buns

Manhattan

Cinnamon bun

Manhattan

It was my birthday, and I was meeting Lizzie at the Whitney to see some art like an adult does on their birthday.

Crisp cold night, a delightful walk from an errand I had to run in Greenwich Village, listening to some black metal on my headphones, enjoying the dark wintery pre-holiday charms of the West Village, when I walked past this place Benji’s Buns.

So I got myself a cinnamon bun, like an adult does on their birthday.

This place offers some different West-Villagey “takes” on the cinnamon bun, but I wasn’t fucking around. I just got a regular one. It was basically a gentrified Cinnabon, but really what could possibly be wrong with that? Dang good cinnamon bun, can’t wait to accidentally walk past it again in the future.

December 29, 2025

Raku

Manhattan

Udon

Manhattan

Three days into our Japan trip, I was already sick of Japanese food so we decided to get pizza. A week into our Japan trip, I was fully over that hump and happy to eat any noodles and miso broths and dried seaweeds you were ready to throw at me.

When we got back to New York, we went out for ramen.

Then a few nights later we went out for udon.

The ramen was at Botan, which I’ve already told you about because it’s great. The udon was at a place in Hell’s Kitchen called Raku. I think Raku is a real hot spot, tough to get into but we managed. It shares a space with a bakery, which is interesting.

Point is it wasn’t as good as the udon in Japan. Sorry Raku.

(Botan, however, is better than most or all of the ramen we had in Japan. Sorry Japan.)

 

November 11, 2025

Yellow Rose

Manhattan

Tacos, hot fudge sundae

Manhattan

I had Yellow Rose on my list for a handful of years. It’s an East Village Tex-Mex restaurant with an emphasis on Tex, a sort of hipstery re-creation of a divey Texas taco joint. It always looked delicious, and oddly enough the concept was rare enough that I don’t feel like I’ve seen this sort of “Texan cuisine” anywhere else before. It took a while, but I finally made it.

The tacos were surprisingly just okay. Nothing to write home about.

But the chocolate sheet cake sundae. One of the best things I’ve eaten all year. Unreal good.

May 14, 2025

The Gyro Project

Manhattan

Frozen yogurt baklava sundae

Manhattan

I don’t know much about The Gyro Project, but after a softball game (well after a post-softball-game pizza slice), I walked past and saw they were making a big deal out of their froyo. Greek style froyo, with honey and cinnamon and olive oil! Like a baklava sundae! Hell yeah, sounds amazing.

Problem is I forgot I don’t really like Greek yogurt.

Even then, it had that soft serve fro yo issue of just being too melty and inconsistent, just the wrong temperature. If it was thick and creamy and luscious I’m sure I could’ve gotten past the whole Greek thing.

Maybe I’ll try one of their gyros sometime.

April 4, 2025

Shopsin's

Manhattan

African green curry

Manhattan

I already wrote a long thing about Shopsins. It’s a remarkable place that used to be more remarkable, and now appears a bit more ordinary, but is, in fact, remarkable.

Something that’s always stood out to me when I daydream about their menu is their African green curry. They have a lot of random silliness on their menu that doesn’t make much sense, but African green curry makes about the least sense of all of it. This doesn’t seem like the kind of place that just casually whips up an African green curry in between plates of biscuits and gravy and blueberry pancakes.

This time I went ahead and got the curry. It was fantastic.