Another whirlwind month. It’s always going to be like this, isn’t it—I’m going to be doomed to say “Time is just marching right on along” in every opening paragraph for all eternity, probably.
I traveled home for 48 hours on Easter weekend, which felt like disembarking the plane and then immediately boarding again. Mom and I harvested ramps from the woods and Dad fired up the pizza oven for dinner—ramp season, while probably overhyped at this point, is something I have been waiting patiently to participate in. My favorite edition of WM Brown has a whole section dedicated to them, with a recipe for ramp pizza and a ramp gimlet, but the best part about ramps is the harvest. I would be content for hours, parked in the middle of the woods, digging them up by the bushel.
I grabbed a breakfast sammie from PBagel for breakfast one day and my cat and I spent 20 out of 24 hours of the day together. Easter Sunday, the family came over for a heaping Easter brunch—honey glazed ham and olive oil cake and carrot juice from a recipe my mom weaseled out of the staff at some hotel in the Cotswolds. Quick as it was, the trip was the perfect soul fuel.
Dad came down the next weekend to attend High Water music festival with me and the Knowles, where we swayed along to Counting Crows as the sun set and Flipturn played my favorites off their newest album, Burnout Days, like “Juno” and “Rodeo Clown.” I’ve seen a significant amount of live music while living here which was a huge goal—it cannot be understated how nice it is to live somewhere with smaller music venues, where a ticket will set you back twenty or thirty, not three hundred. As summer approaches, I am meant to be listening to a Grateful Dead cover band, outdoors, beverage in hand, on a weeknight.
Before High Water, my dad and I trekked over to Mount Pleasant to check out a little event I’d heard about through the grapevine. For the past five years, there’s been a Land Rover convention of sorts in Charleston called the Lowcountry Series; I think there’s one in Nantucket called the Vineyard Series as well. Vintage and new, purpose-built and showy, Rover owners drive from near and far to show off these classic British cars. This was a blast—steaks smoked on a grill, live music was playing, and everyone roamed around to ogle at leather interiors and the perfect green paint job.
Work has been busy, fulfilling. I’ve written up a couple of MITSA promos and recipes, with some digital pieces I’m super psyched about coming later this month (among them a piece on companion planting and a chat with a mega-cool beverage director). This kind of access is completely new to me—like I get to ask bartenders and chefs about their establishments and which vermouth is their go-to. I recently interviewed a couple of guys who run an oyster festival in Alabama for an Agenda piece I’m writing, and we talked away about salinity and aquaculture and oyster conservation.
In addition to our intern chats with all of the editorial staffers, we’ve been talking to all the incredible women on the marketing and design teams, too. Every time I leave a conversation with a creative director or an events designer, having flipped through illustration mock-ups and brand books, I wish I’d gotten an art degree or something. I want to do it all.
Nobody warned me about this! I’m especially lucky to be part of a generation that understands and takes advantage of job flexibility and the unique trades available to them, but given how much I love my chosen track, I never particularly anticipated feeling overwhelmed by all the careers I’m not heading towards. With the job search well underway (again), forging ahead seems the only answer, in addition to throwing myself into various unpaid creative projects that I “swear will look good in my portfolio.” Side quests abound. Now, how to add ramp harvesting to my resume…
Feeling like I was twelve years old again, I gleefully devoured Suzanne Collins’ newest installment in the Hunger Games series, Sunrise on the Reaping, a prequel that recounts Haymitch’s games. This was everything I ever wanted from another Hunger Games novel (I had mixed feelings about Ballad), from the name drops to the way she wove in context that fans didn’t know they were missing. It was so good that I nearly (nearly) forgave her for the sellout behavior of announcing this book and its movie counterpart simultaneously.
The Library At Mount Char by Scott Hawkins was a trip. Almost nothing about this book makes sense, hard stop. I will not bother to try and explain the premise, beyond the skeleton basics: There exists a group of “Librarians,” who grew up in a kind of cult-y group under a god-like figure they call Father, who learn to master “catalogs”—some study languages, while others study the art of war, and still others learn to reanimate the dead. Father goes missing. Chaos ensues. The twists and interconnections are phenomenally worked. This kind of fantasy, grounded in reality but following a whacked-out logic, is my absolute favorite to read, and comparable to Kelly Link’s Book of Love, just significantly weirder.
Jeanette Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle, made me furious; not towards Walls, but her parents. I felt like I was reading Educated all over again. Walls recounts a nomadic childhood, living on pennies, with parents whose destructive habits genuinely made my jaw drop. Walls’ father, somehow both the villain and a kind of flawed hero, was simply impossible to feel sympathy towards; her mother is almost worse. This is a memoir of redemption and finding goodness even in a dysfunctional family, but a tough read.
Emily Henry’s newest novel, Great Big Beautiful Life, came out last week and my library dutifully supplied me with a copy. This is the first EmHen that has actively disappointed me—but not because it was bad! It just wasn’t the romance I have come to expect, and was, instead, women’s fiction. The romance plot takes such a backseat and I think as a result falls into some of the traps that Henry is usually quite adept at avoiding. As per usual, her writing is beautifully easy on the eyes (and brain), but if I wanted to read women’s fiction, I would turn to another author. I just wanted to read about lovey-dovey people with book-related careers in peace.
Last and least, I reread The Topeka School by Ben Lerner. I have put true time and effort into reading Ben Lerner and he simply is not for me, though I certainly understood and appreciated much more of this book at 23 than I did at 19. It flicks back and forth between several perspectives to create commentary on politics, adolescence, toxic masculinity, and marriage, but it is so impossibly dense and experimental and I can’t stand reading entire pages in italics (sue me). This is literary fiction in its final form and beyond recognizing that it’s crafting an important cultural commentary, it just misses the mark for me.
The beginning of April was softie season, which I learned quickly was a very big deal. Blue softshell crabs make their way into every single Charleston restaurant’s specials, so I hightailed it to Herd Provisions one day after work for theirs, a softie atop a steaming bowl of fresh ramen with a crab broth, with truly one of the best flavor profiles I’ve experienced. Their wine special was a chilled red from the Piedmont region, a 2022 La Miraja Grignolino D’Asti, with a dry bite and notes of rhubarb, rose, strawberry, and mint. I’ve been thinking about the growing popularity of chilled reds amongst young people ever since our Hungary wine trip, so whenever I see one I’m keen to try it out.
My dad and I went to Southbound for dinner one night, where we had a pretty phenomenal foie gras with brioche and creme fraiche and I had softies again, but our post-dinner stop at Roseline took the cake. Roseline is an itty-bitty wine bar in Elliotborough, so dim you can barely see the menu, with floral wallpaper in the back room and these candles that made the whole place smell like we were inside a fir tree. I love it there.
I found myself at 167 Raw Sushi Bar, the sister restaurant to Bar 167 and 167 Raw, not once, but twice this month. Holle and I went early in the month and I knew I had to bring my dad back, so I’ve sampled everything from the spicy hamachi to the dumplings to the oysters to the tuna crispy rice. If you’re seated at the small bar, you’ll watch the chefs plate each gorgeous dish with immaculate precision, and the whole restaurant feels clean and cohesive despite the small space.
Daps has been a recent breakfast favorite, and it’s not just their breakfast mimosas talking. Officially called Daps Breakfast & Imbibe, they are the only place I’ve ever seen offer a mimosa growler, which I will be procuring for a beach day in the near future. I love their massive fruity pebble pancake and their hash with potato, onion, cheese, and toast is damn near perfect.
My dad, the Knowles, and I had lunch at Home Team BBQ and my dad proclaimed it the best rib he had ever eaten. Dad chefs up a mean smoked meat, so this is high praise and I, a pretty ambivalent meat consumer, am really inclined to agree with his assessment. The spread also included incredible pulled pork, those melt-in-your-mouth ribs, and plenty of fixings like a standout mac and cheese. Home Team has assumed top ranking over Lewis and Rodney Scott—anywhere else I need to go for barbecue before the clock runs out?
I dragged Madeline with me to see The Dip at Music Farm, which was so much fun that I never wanted it to end. The Dip have a great new album out, Love Direction, but their 2019 album, The Dip Delivers, remains my favorite. They have such an incredible stage presence and any band that’s jazz-inspired, with a sax, flute, and trumpet up on stage is an immediate good time.
Madeline and I also went to check out Charleston’s new vinyl bar, Groovers. Hi-Fi bars have been gaining traction for a couple of years now, but they’re a recent obsession of mine. Groovers has a superb sound system, a thoughtful cocktail menu, and get some fun DJs in there, who spin vinyl until late. It’s also right next to Sean Brock’s newest Charleston venture, Joyland, which means the night inevitably ends with a perfect, crispy smash burger.
Julia Wolf has a new album called Pressure set to release this month on the 23rd, and one of the singles, “Loser,” just came out this week. I’ve enjoyed Wolf’s grungy, hyperpop-rock takes, which blend classic and synth-focused guitar to create scathing admonitions of “Hinge men” and such, which I can get behind. Some of her singles feel like one-offs that are only popular because they’ve been played a million times on social media, but such is the world we live in. “Loser” made it onto my gym playlist regardless.
I’ve also been listening to more soundtracks this month, but nothing new: Watchmen, The Social Network, and Westworld, as per usual. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are, as I have written about before, simply the greatest to ever work together. Ramin Djawadi, who worked on Westworld, is similarly genius. Gritty, synth-focused soundtracks are their specialty.
LesserEvil Himalayan Sweetness Popcorn. I love to snack. If there’s one snack I could eat bowls and bowls of, it would probably be popcorn. Though making it fresh really is the best, I’ve been obsessed with the LesserEvil brand, most specifically their sweet and salty popcorn blend. It’s made with coconut oil, which gives it a barely-there hint of coconut that’s shockingly good, and has the perfect hint of sweetness. This is not kettle corn masquerading as sweet ‘n salty, but the real deal with the perfect ratio.
Tip Top Cocktails. I adored Tip Top’s marketing when I was an intern at Sleepy Jones and was looped into that world, but they’ve come back into my life in Charleston, where they’re quite popular and won the drinks category in G&G’s 2022 Made in the South Awards, as they were founded in Atlanta. Tip Tops are these itty bitty canned cocktails that are classy and delicious, perfect for picnicking, make creative hostess gifts, and if you don’t have a stocked bar, they make your life as easy as popping a top.
Goodnight Moon stamps. This past week, USPS released this pane of stamps that feature the artwork of Clement Hurd, the legendary artist who illustrated Goodnight Moon. I have been waiting for months to snag these. I love stationary and office supplies so much it overwhelms me, but I’m hoping to actually use some of these and not let them sit in my desk drawer looking pretty for all eternity. I plan on framing a stamp or two, which I think will turn out quite sweet.
Edit: One of my favorite newsletters, , put out a thoughtful, lovely post about these stamps.
Thank you for reading this month! Got away with a shorter one this time around considering I published late last month, and no special section because I spent a week cooking up ideas and none of them stuck. Wishing everyone a wonderful May—go listen and donate to NPR (this administration can pry Ira Glass out of my cold, dead hands, and they better not even look in Terry Gross’ direction), think about/participate in patio dinner season, and buy some peonies for your mother. Cheers!
I sometimes post on Instagram @gracerobrts!
My Goodreads is here and I am always looking for reading recommendations.
My Apple Music is @gracecroberts, where my playlists are regularly updated and cared for.
If you should need to contact me for any other reason, or just want to say hi, my email is gracecroberts@gmail.com.
See you next month!
Sincerely yours,
Grace
Loved spending that weekend with you! We certainly ate well and packed in a ton of fun!
Dad made the Mulup last night in honor of the derby, it was so good! Love how much you are taking advantage of your time in the South!