Anna B. Albury Likes a Long Sunday Lunch “Dessert served as a great excuse to extend the afternoon into a round of dominoes.”
By Alan Sytsma
Illustration by Margalit Cutler
In 2020, Garrett and Anna B. Albury had an idea: They wanted to share a running list of favorite spots with their friends. “We always trace it back to a ride on the M train,” Anna says. They launched Coolstuff.nyc that February. Soon after — perhaps you heard about this! — everyone had to head inside for a while. The newsletter pivoted to something more community minded, and it kept growing from its initial list of 40 people. “Now it’s back in full force,” Anna says. (You can read last week’s right here.) By day, the couple works in design — “Jobs we love that are sort of disconnected from media or the newsletter” — which comes in handy when putting together the newsletter themselves. “Garrett’s the tech brain,” Anna says, “and I’m the color — like, ‘This is how it should look.’”
Wednesday September 13
This morning began, as they all do, with my usual iced oat-collagen latte. If you’ve made it this far, I’m not ashamed to admit that this latte worked its way into my wedding vows.
A major perk of writing Coolstuff.nyc is finding out early about all of the new collaborations across the city: For lunch I had Popup Bagels dipped into pesto butter from Bowery Farms.
The rest of the afternoon’s projects, emails, etc., made the day fly by until we were off to meet our friends Shea and Connor at Chelsea Market for the annual Anne Saxelby Legacy Fund Benefit.
The event brings together some of the best of the New York restaurant scene that employs a diverse group of young people who are interested in apprenticing at sustainable farms across the country. I tried maybe a third of all the food, but some of the things I really loved were:
• A perfect radish with salted butter by Chez Pannise
• Comte quiche topped with ham and truffle from Frenchette
• A slice of laminated baguette from Alf Bakery
• Spicy chile-oil-topped jook from Leland Eating and Drinking House
• Beautiful marble-glazed sugar cookies from the Rounds
There were also many … beverages along the way, but we don’t need to get into that.
The closer of the night was a large bottle of Smart Water with the sippy attachment from Gourmet Deli on 15th and Eighth, the perfect thing to drink on the way home, riding a 2 train with a broken AC.