We went to Destroyer for lunch.
That's steak tartare, smoked egg cream, puffed rice, inoki mushrooms, sprouts, sesame seeds and mutherfucking matcha powder.
This is chicken confit, some other cream thing, riced yukon gold potatoes, hazelnuts, and shit-tons of parmesan. And dill.
This is Vespertine.
These are steps at Vespertine.
This is Vespertine's food, ostensibly.
I'm not entirely sure Jordan Kahn isn't punking Los Angeles. This is how you'd do it. Oddly enough, the food at Destroyer was largely delicious, despite being some of the weirdest shit I've ever eaten. I'd say something snarky but I spent my morning looking at half million dollar watches. The people couldn't be nicer. When the watchmaker at Vacheron Constantin heard I was thinking of going to "the Rolex school" in Seattle he threw his card at me and told me to look him up if I ever wanted to "come over to the dark side."
I've decided Van Cleef & Arpels is my spirit animal and I'm not sure what that says about me, other than I'm drinking Gran Marnier and listening to Sleep.
What is it about a watch that makes it worth half a million dollars?
It's one of the papers that lead to the buildup of Bitcoin (maybe mk can find it), the argument is made that all money is nothing more than a measure of invested time. The reason coins are ornate is partly to protect against counterfeiting, but also because ornateness implies value. Hand-carved goldsmithing simply looks valuable. When you see a piece of craftsmanship, be it a bunch of faceted diamonds in a well-tooled band or a double-tourbillon Richard Mille, you understand that it wasn't made instantly. See this guy? To you or me it doesn't look like much but we aren't within the signaling cohort. The purchasers of this watch are not trying to impress thee or me. They are trying to impress other overly-wealthy individuals that know that 4Ns are manufactured by seven master watchmakers at Audemars-Piguet over the span of four months per watch, and that there will someday be sixteen of them, but there aren't yet. 