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Altro Paradiso

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Altro Paradiso

Article

Altro Paradiso is a recurring venue in the Collected Agenda archive, appearing 3 times across 3 issues between December 16, 2024 and January 19, 2025. The archive places it in contexts such as “Natasha and I go to Altro Paradiso for dinner… Altro Paradiso is a well lit restaurant”; “At Altro Paradis[o]”; “At Altro Paradiso at 3pm, they are saying goodbye to the head chef… it’s the best food I’ve had in New York in a while”. It most often appears alongside David, Gonzo’s, Madelyn.

Metadata

  • Category: Venues
  • Mention count: 3
  • Issue count: 3
  • First seen: December 16, 2024
  • Last seen: January 19, 2025

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Moral Framework
December 16, 2024 · Original source
Monday, December 9 A busy day. One quickly finds this to be the solution to all malignant indulgences. Before a comedy show at Jean’s, Natasha and I go to Altro Paradiso for dinner. It’s an early dinner in the rain. Madelyn works here, and I’ve been meaning to visit for a while. I’ve been meaning to apply for a job here, too, but the list of things I’ve been meaning to do on that front continues to pile up. We order many things on the menu. The house specialties that we did not order somehow seem to keep materializing on our table as well. It’s like magic. It’s a special night. Rumor has it: Marina Abromovic was dining here this afternoon. Rumor has it, she’s dined here twenty times. Altro Paradiso is a well lit restaurant - I read something I liked about well lit restaurants this week and now I can’t recall where. The premise was: enough of this haze. Some people want to see their food. Some people want to see and be seen. Tonight, I drink Ciro Picariello. It’s like white wine but it sparkles. I drink a cocktail with peach purée and peach liquor. I drink a dirty martini. I eat olives, bread and ricotta, finocchio, another salad with fig and orange, mushroom pasta shaped like pillows, lemon pasta shaped like thick noodles, branzino, gelato. It’s a winter feast. I haven’t had a feast like this in my recent recollection. After, the rain has stopped but the evening is still misty. We hail a cab. We’re too late for Jean’s. Natasha is good at spotting famous people. Rebecca Black walks by. EmRata’s ex husband. Some other people, too. We go the The Nines, which is very festive, but where everyone is very rude. We go back to Jean’s. The show is over, they let us in, but there's no point in lingering now. I loved tonight, I say when I get home. A sign of mental stability is drinking alcohol and not hating every second of it. I know for some people, it's the opposite, but this is how it works for me. Tuesday, December 10 The line to get into the Richard Kern book launch is too long and it's raining. I see Annabel and Ellie outside. I see that Berlin blogger who only wears all black or all white and her TikTok DJ boyfriend. "I need to become someone who's 'list me or miss me'", a girl in line sighs. We're still waiting in the rain. She said this in a way like she was kidding, but I repeat the sentiment with no humility to David later. "We should become 'list me or miss me’,” I say. David has a tendency to bludgeon his way through lines. "We should become 'list me or i'm going to fucking kill you’,” David says. After I abandon the Richard Kern line, I go to Lucien. I run into a few people there. The expected and the unexpected. There are things I'm very excited about these days. Excitement is risky - it's unwise to tempt fate and it's destructive to celebrate accomplishments you are yet to achieve, but I am excited. Full of ideas again. Everyone at Lucien is an actor. That must be so cool, I say. I'm so full of sincerity, I think. This time of year can be so full in general that it begins to feel uneasy. This type of luxury isn't mine to claim and it's certainly not sustainable. The hedonism feels truly hedonistic today, though. It's energetic, not coated with something darker. I'm having so much fun. David wants to go to Frog Club for banana chiffon pie. "Why am I so broken up about Frog Club closing?” asks David. "You've never been to Frog Club," I say. "Yeah, that's probably why," says David. Risotto David made for me + prints from Paris Wednesday, December 11 I went to the Russian Baths on Wall Street on my first day in New York. I still go often now. It’s not really of my own volition. It’s a family tradition. It’s still pouring today. It’s been pouring all week. I used to think the Russian Baths were all liminal space and Russian mob, but now it feels less secret. The Doritos are from Israel. Russian Jews and Russian Gentiles, I hear someone explaining in line behind me. The building is huge. The pool area does feel kind of like The Backrooms. I have night terrors every night. In my dreams, I am never stuck in places like this. My aunt likes the cold plunge. She can stay in it for seven minutes, far beyond the recommended time of three. The Wim Hof method recommends rapid bursts of breath coupled with exposure to the extreme cold. I’m in the Infrared Sauna. On Christmas, I will swim outside in Walden Pond. Wim Hof (the man) lost a finger, an ear, something detached in the retina of his eye… I can’t recall the specific injury but something bad happened swimming across an icy lake. He took it too far. When I get back to New York, I will swim off Orchard Beach. There’s a group that goes every morning. My aunt tells me you have to go to Orchard Beach in the winter. It’s like Siberia in the Winter. It’s finally getting cold enough to swim. On my Wednesday at the Russian Baths, I lose my keys. I lose the big rubber slippers that they give you on arrival. I can’t last very long in the extreme heat or the extreme cold. An actor in the infrared sauna is talking about how he can only memorize lines in the cold plunge. I’m thinking about how I’m in an infinite feedback loop where everyone I meet keeps being actors. We go to dinner at the Russian Restaurant at the spa. It’s called Matryoshka like the dolls. I only learn this later David and I split potato pancakes, salad olivier which is the one with mayonnaise and egg and chicken (delicious), beef stroganoff, steamed chicken pelmeni. More stroganoff and borscht and red wine is also passed around the table. I can’t drink red wine, so I drink ginger juice and ginger vodka instead. Afterwards, too full to continue. There are other plans tonight - a film, a party, I promised I would go and I never cancel plans but sometimes I do just neglect to show up. A very bad habit. Inertia ultimately breeds pure evil! Time doesn’t pass at Spa 88. Still pouring but dark now, when we emerge from the underground. Thursday, December 12 My abridged review of Dimes Square (revival) today. I didn’t see it the first time around - I wasn’t here. I was in Boston. I was in a sorority. I arrived in this godforsaken ecosystem after it was already dead. I’m kind of being facetious. I think people try to qualify eras too concretely. Concretely: Dimes Square (the play) is indeed a period piece. In the vein of all Matthew Gasda’s plays, it is emotionally rich, lucid, kind of yearning, which catches me off guard but I think adds depth. The thing I like most about Dimes Square is this: it’s not self serious but also it is not sneering. The best satire is actually quite sincere. This is why most satire is generally and particularly in contemporary culture, bad. Dimes Square (the play) is excellent. I will be publishing a stand alone review of the play here shortly. I already wrote the review but then I realized I was far too stuck on historical accuracy and far too personally tortured. In the meantime (from my notes) -- “The main fault of the characters in the play is that they are cruel, but the main critique of this scene in real life is that it is (was?) (is?) full of people who are pathetic”
Inline links: Richard Kern, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!gXs4!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a0a08cc-f0bf-4529-82bd-40b8e59712aa_4284x5363.jpeg
Life before inositol
January 13, 2025 · Original source
Wednesday, January 8 Meeting with Beckett and Jonah this morning at Caffe Reggio to discuss Tense - Reggio is full and so Beckett suggests Dante. It’s not like he remembered it, now. It’s a coffee shop, he says, but it’s a cocktail bar now. Expensive green and red martinis in thin glasses whirling through the room even now, at two pm. They still let us sit for coffee. I have an interview after. Madelyn texts me. At Altro Paradiso at 3pm, they are saying goodbye to the head chef. I’ve gone to Altro Paradiso a few times recently, because Madelyn works there mostly, although even independent of that it’s the best food I’ve had in New York in a while. Today, I was in a rush, the plans were last minute. I'm still wearing my workout clothes and their ‘archival lululemon’ - hand-me-downs from a closet of a friend of my mothers when I was about thirteen years old. The shirt is striped and black and white and a small band bearing slogans like “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” folds up or down at the hem, depending on how flagrantly antisocial you feel like being on that particular day. I’m keeping the band folded under today. I’m wildly underdressed but it’s afternoon, the restaurant isn’t even technically open yet. There’s a toast to the chef and I’m the only outsider in attendance and so I stay at the bar while the group of staff and friends and family assemble. It’s very special, even to bear witness to as someone uninvolved. There’s a heart and soul to food and drink and service that other industries, even creative industries, really don’t have in the same way. I’m a tiny bit tipsy, now. I need to start hostessing again. I make this note on my phone: “NEED TO START HOSTESSING AGAIN!!!!” We stay at Altro Paradiso til dinner starts, and we continue to stay till it feels like dinner is about to end. Everything is magical - the alla prima cocktail, wine, dirty martini, pane e ricotta, salad with figs and dates, octopus, olives, oysters under beds of thinly sliced veggies, malfatti (which is pasta that is like little pillows), linguine al nero (which is pasta with squid ink and cuttlefish and basil), a few deserts - pistachio ice cream and the pear cake. The afternoon turns to a sparkling evening. I walk home. I go elsewhere, after - fun too, but I probably shouldn’t have. I should probably learn when to call an evening. Decadence in excess, turns all that sparkles sour. Thursday, January 9 It's been the same day on repeat so far this year. The same three days, really. Rinse and do it again. The year has only held nine days. I can't view my stagnation with too much harshness. Decadence, in contrast, should be viewed with harshness. Los Angeles is burning up and it feels uncouth to talk about this here as this tragedy is not my life, but I can't stop watching. Most emotions are triggered through all five senses - it's a strange feeling of muted horror to see destruction of places and lives you know on a screen, detached from your physical experience but visible in real time in your cognizant mind - peripheral vision. I accidentally get stuck in the Louis Vuitton x Murakami line in SoHo. I accidentally steal a pair of Split sweatpants from the gym. I accidentally read all the books on the 4chan 2024 Top 100 Lit Board list. I'm on tiktok watching videos of the apocalypse overlaid with Lana del Rey audio. I’m browsing r/lainfluencersnark and they have a lot to say about the way their parasocial relationships are handling the apocalypse. I tried to write something about phones and chaos and end times but it was silly. These are resources / writing from people in LA. The Angel - L.A. Fires — How to Help
Inline links: Tense, Altro Paradiso, The Angel - L.A. Fires — How to Help
January continues
January 19, 2025 · Original source
David and I go to Estela for dinner. It’s our anniversary. He tells me not to say anything online about it. Private life should stay private, he says, but I’m writing it anyway. Estela is nice. It’s the sister restaurant of Altro Paradiso. My friend, Madelyn works there. Estela is smaller, cozier, you have to buzz to get into the building and then it’s up some steps, it feels like you’re in an apartment, it feels like you’re in Berlin. I’ve never been to Copenhagen, but I imagine it feels a bit like Copenhagen, too. “I like more old timey restaurants,” David says. “Me too,” I say. “But sometimes isn’t it nice to be in a restaurant that feels like Copenhagen? David agrees. He’s never been to Copenhagen either. Altro Paradiso is brightly lit, whereas Estela is dim. Stella - Latin for Star. Etc. The distinction feels a little obvious, but then, I’m being a little particular. Estela is small plates. Romantic. You can tell because you have to buzz the door to get in, and because the lighting is really dark. They put us in a little alcove by the shelves and shelves of wine. We order iberico ham, bread and butter, endive salad, crab with celery root (the best dish), squid ink fried rice with little bits of squid, steak with elderberry sauce. I order a Tito's martini, but I’m told they don’t serve Titos here. I’m told they have one martini with vodka that “tastes like smirnoff” ($22) and another with vodka that’s way better and far preferable (paraphrased) ($30). Our waitress is peppy. “We’ll take the Smirnoff,” David says. “She’s nice,” I say, later. “Domineering,” David says. Later, the waitress rolls her eyes a little when she asks me how my martini is. She smiles when I say good. I believe she is sincere in her hope that I’m happy as I guzzle up the fruits of my lowbrow taste. It really is a lovely meal. I don’t mean to be cynical. I tell David he should tell them it’s our anniversary so we can have something free, and he tells them “it’s our anniversary, can we have dessert on the house.” Then, I’m embarrassed, but they bring us dessert (with a price) and champagne (on the house). Tuesday, January 14 I’ve been working on maintaining constant motion. “An object in motion will stay in motion,” I’ve been telling anyone that will listen. I walk in place all day, and then I walk through Washington Square Park at night, freezing. I make sure to do an extra lap to circle under the arch, all sparkling and illuminated and icy. I’m thirty minutes late to the Post-Doomerism talk at Gonzo’s, and this feels like an important one to me because I used to base my entire framework of thought around mitigating dread through a surrender to the inevitability of fates worse than death. It’s a terrible way to view the world - juvenile if nothing else, but also aesthetically and morally barren, limiting, a nihilistic obsession with the present does lead to destruction (yourself and others), no matter how many delusions you harbor about enlightenment, and about time and therefore preservation as false constructs. You can’t be nihilistic if you believe in good and evil, and I do believe in good and evil, so it was never going to hold up. Post Doomerism The lecture is just starting when I exit the elevator. The talk is between Chris Small (founder of Amazon Labor Union), PradaHorseShoe (founder of Russian Cosmism Circle NYC), Joshua Citarella (Doomscroll Podcast), and Geo Yankey (Comedian) “Russian Cosmists think that Marx doesn't take it far enough,” Amana explains. “Marxism wants to abolish capitalism, religion, the family…. but what about abolishing the OG bummer - death.” The point of the talk seems to be to present a sort of leftist vision of tech accelerationism. Capitalist Realism, the parts of the industrial revolution deemed actually good, nuclear fusion (clean and limitless energy which imitates the sun) instead of nuclear fission, fossil fuels , etc etc etc. The audience, on the other hand, is mostly composed of people I recognize from other downtown events - this one taking on an uncharacteristic and somewhat academic sincerity. “Hypothetically, heat death could occur before we run out of fuel,” a girl sitting next to me murmurs at one point, evidently at least somewhat convinced by technology’s capacity for limitless good. I try to conjure a sense of what she’s imagining in my mind's eye - create enough clean energy, and you could be driving your car one day when the whole universe just implodes. This isn’t aspirational to me. Longevity even, has never been particularly aspirational to me, although increasingly moreso, I’m increasingly less cynical. I appreciate the sincerity of the lecture. I appreciate some of the ideas they put forward, too. It’s an irony-pilled audience and they're sitting in a deeply earnest room. I slip out during the Q&A - overwhelmed, honestly, and I’m late to another function. I’m handed a gin and tonic in the Lower East Side. I’m talking about the Russian Cosmism lecture. “Lenin tried that and 20 million people died,” I am told. “I don’t really know enough,” I say. I’m sent a documentary about The Tyranny of Scientism. I order some things like the books by Nick Zurnig and Mark Fisher. It’s good to be objective. The night slips onward. It’s rude to talk about accelerationism at a party. Wednesday, January 16 It's slightly warmer in New York today. It's still cold, but it's less frigid, I'm walking through Soho typing, I'm walking to Equinox, I'll finish writing this on the treadmill, I had such a fun night last night although I do feel terribly guilty about squandering my health and my beauty and my soul every time I get drunk. I was such a good drunk, though. I adore my friends so deeply. I adore my new friends. I think they are my best friends. I’m trying not to quantify everything. There are names of people I love spinning through my mind, now. Why order things. Some people exhaust me, and then there are other people who don’t. I’ve found new friends who live artfully while occupying a natural state that is absorbed with the physical world, recently. How lucky for me. I don’t want to use my volatility as a bludgeon with which to bend people to my whims. Good thing I don’t feel particularly volatile this week. It’s best to consider these while outside of them. Objective introspection: am I doing a good job? WHAT YOU SHOULD DO Gofundme + LA Fire Resources here. Sunday, January 19 From 6pm - midnight at EARTH — Jordan Castro and Cluny present SILENCE. An evening of silence. No speaking, no phones.
Inline links: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!XxFb!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F59a8c887-c1bc-4090-9568-92185cc4e0c1_1412x1420.png, Amazon Labor Union, PradaHorseShoe, Russian Cosmism Circle NYC, Doomscroll Podcast, Geo Yankey, Capitalist Realism, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!kDE6!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd7220533-39ee-4944-a185-b7983b1500e9_1600x1066.jpeg, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!abSY!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fcb12cd88-f058-4032-ba7f-a91514034d33_1600x1066.jpeg, here, EARTH, Jordan Castro, Cluny

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