Remembrance of Things Pabst

A lot’s been written about the cultural back-and-forth between New York and London, which Montague Ashley-Craig wrote, in one of her dispatches on FeedMe, “has been speedrunning the American food canon, one hyper-regional specialty at a time.” I became, briefly, invested in London’s Americana boom after friends told me about Lenny’s Apizza, a shop in Covent Garden where a Londoner is making New Haven pizza, the Connecticut regional specialty of my youth. And for a moment, I was fixated on a video filmed at Vincenzo’s Pizzeria, a shop with locations in Bushey and Shoreditch, that serves crisp New York slices, for a collaboration with streetwear brand Parlez. It has everything: Lawn chairs outside a storefront, a red-checkered tablecloth, wifebeaters, and tracksuits that were part of a Parlez capsule collection “inspired by iconic 80’s/90’s American-Italian style.”

The current fascination across the Atlantic isn’t limited to food. All the New Yorkers I know who go to London love and envy pubs, and come home romanticizing Sunday roast and the convivial atmosphere of the (good) places. But what of the Londoners? Some go home thinking only of America’s dive bars, or at least a few New Yorkers’ ideas of them.