when you want, where you want.
Youngmi Mayer Is Always Sneaking Bites
Photo-Illustration: Adam Mazur
Book people, says Youngmi Mayer — who published her first memoir, I’m Laughing Because I’m Crying, last month — are a little gentler than the crowds she usually runs with. In her 20s, Mayer opened Mission Chinese Food with her then-husband; later, she found a new kind of success doing stand-up and posting comedy online. Being a server and making jokes on TikTok share some similarities, she thinks: “There’s a perception that the people who work at a restaurant are there to perform for you.” And customers-slash-commenters feel entitled to complain when they’re not amused. “I was forged in the fire of social media,” she says, “and the literary world feels great compared to that hellscape.” Earlier this fall — during a particularly hectic five days just before she skipped town for her book tour — she indulged in Instagram-famous pasta, New York’s finest larb tod, and several hastily eaten staff meals at the Mission Chinese pop-up.
Wednesday, October 23
I wake up on the floor of my friend Chris Crawford’s living room at three in the morning. The night before was her birthday so we went to karaoke and had a bunch of martinis at Baby Grand before heading back to her place on the Lower East Side with a handful of friends. The last thing I remember before passing out is Chris telling us how boring Ina Garten’s memoir is and playing the audio version over a speaker. I didn’t want to say anything, but I found it absolutely riveting — though I still passed out within ten minutes.
On the kitchen counter, I find a bunch of half-shucked oysters, bottles of natural wine, and fancy French cheese melted onto cute ceramic plates. I spot some fried potatoes in a Le Creuset pan on the stove and eat some of those along with a slice from an olive loaf that looks like it’s from one of those artisanal bakeries in Brooklyn where you have to wait on line for two hours to get a sourdough baguette.
I love eating at Chris’s house because she’s a chef and spends a lot of money on food that I wouldn’t. She and I have known each other since 2007, when we worked at a nice restaurant in San Francisco called Serpentine. She was a line cook, and I was a server. Now Chris owns Tart Vinegar. These days, I have this shitty teenager’s attitude toward nice food, like it’s an indie band I liked before it blew up. But it’s good to have a friend who cares so much about it that even the scraps I eat off their counter while drunk at 3 a.m. are way better than anything I buy for myself.
After the late-night snack, I fall asleep in Chris’s son’s room — he’s staying at his dad’s place. Chris and I both co-parent with our former partners, and luckily her birthday landed on a day neither of us has our kids. When I wake back up at 9:30 a.m., I run out the door to make it home in time for a Zoom meeting. I stop at Dreamers Coffee House in my neighborhood for a pumpkin-spice latte — iced because it’s a terrifying 70-something degrees in late fall. Honestly, I think pumpkin-spice lattes taste like ass, but at Dreamers, they make them in-house with pumpkin purée, which gives the drink a distinctive earthy flavor that’s way more satisfying than the chemical bathroom-air-freshener–tasting one at Starbucks.
After my meeting and some work emails, I take a shower and head to the Mission Chinese pop-up at 45 Mott Street, where I work as a server part time. Mission Chinese is owned by my ex-husband, Danny Bowien; we ran it when we were married. When it was really big, there were so many moving parts, so many different people working there. Now, he’s the only boss, and there are literally three servers. Danny and I have a great relationship, and it’s a very chill working environment. I eat staff meal, which is scrambled eggs with tomato and rice. During the dinner shift, there’s a kung pao–pastrami misfire and I hover over it until I annoy the chef enough that he gives it to me. A kung pao–pastrami misfire is like winning the lottery. Back at home — I get out of work around midnight — I eat it with rice before bedtime.
Thursday, October 24
I wake up and make myself a horrible cup of coffee. I am really bad at making coffee and I could never figure out why, so now I just add a ton of condensed milk. After my coffee, I head to 1-900-BLEACH-ME with my dog, Corn, to get my hair dyed by my friend, the owner of the salon, Chansophalla Nop. My friend John deBary is also there getting his hair done. I ask him to get me a seltzer because I’m under the heat lamp, hoping he’ll bring me a black-cherry Hal’s. Instead, being a fancy-food person, he gets me a 24-ounce bottle of San Pellegrino. The fancier sparkling waters are softer with their bubbles. I prefer industrial-strength seltzer.
At the salon, I have a slice of tres-leches cake that the wife of the building’s super has been selling to the tenants. Afterward, I go to Somtum Der and order the larb tod, which is one of my favorite dishes in New York — basically deep-fried pork meatballs in the shape of a doughnut. At Somtum Der, they’re served with sliced Thai chile, red onion, cilantro, ginger, lime, and peanuts. Not to sound like a white person with dreads, but I’ve eaten this dish a bunch in Thailand, and in my opinion, the version at Somtum Der is the best.
I head straight to work after I drop my dog off at home. The staff meal is stir-fried pork belly and rice. I’m too full to have it right away, so I put my share in a to-go container. Later, in the middle of the dinner shift, I get really hungry and try to sneak a bite in the kitchen, but a cook yells at me for making a mess. I get stressed out and try to slyly pour myself a glass of sparkling wine behind the bar, but a co-worker tells me I’m not allowed to drink wine so I get scared and leave it on the bar. Basically 90 percent of my job is trying to surreptitiously eat food and drink wine, then being yelled at for it. After my shift, I go home and eat the pork belly and rice while finishing up some work emails, and I get to bed around 2 a.m.
Friday, October 25
I wake up at seven and make myself another cup of horrible coffee with condensed milk. I have a middle-school tour for my son, Mino, at nine o’clock, then I’m picking up his Halloween costume, which I asked my friends Justin Hager and Kristine Reano-Hager to make. Every year, he chooses a costume because he wants to carry a toy gun. One year, he was like, “I want to be a policeman … and I get to have a gun.” The next, he said, “I want to be a soldier … and I get to have a gun.” And every year, I’m like, “You can’t carry a gun!” This year, he told me he wanted to be a spicy chicken nugget, and I was like, Thank God, he’s over the gun thing. But then he was like, “Get this: It’s spicy because it’s gonna have a suitcase. And the suitcase is gonna say ‘Hot Sauce’ on it. And when you open the suitcase, there’s gonna be a gun.”
Justin and Kristine live in Ridgewood, so I take an electric Citi Bike there from the East Village. After I pick up the chicken-nugget costume, which is hand-painted and sewn onto a hoodie, I go to the Peruvian-chicken place Super Pollo. Whenever I visit Justin and Kristine, I make a point of eating there. I get the quarter-chicken lunch special with arroz habichuelas and a side of maduros. The lunch special is only $12.50 or so, and even with the plantains, the total is only around $17. The chicken, which I eat with a bunch of green and white sauces, is amazing as usual.
I go home and do some cursed work emails, then head to Union Hall for a show. I’ve been doing stand-up since 2018. Before lockdown, I was going out every night, first to open-mic nights and later to shows I had booked. These days, I spend more time on online content and writing my book, but I still perform two or three times a month. Justin comes to the show with our other friend Amara Dan. Afterward, I follow them to a sports bar called the Dram Shop to meet up with their friends, who are all there to watch a sports game or whatever. The bar is packed with extremely divorced and unfortunate-looking men. One of them bumps into someone from our group and then starts screaming at her. I contemplate throwing hands, but he is just so divorced and unfortunate looking that I decide he would probably enjoy any kind of physical contact with a woman too much.
Justin, Amara, the friend who got screamed at, and I are starving at this point, so we walk over to the Long Island Bar to get burgers. Sadly, it’s closed for a private event, so we Google “burger” and end up across the street at Henry Public. I order a dirty martini, and everything is sort of blurry after that. Justin and Amara both get burgers, and I know we’re probably going to end up splitting everything so I order some sort of Little Gems–esque or wedge salad. It’s all really good. I like New American restaurants. They always have the same menu that tastes identical no matter where you are. I know I sound like a hater, but I’m being earnest. I love that the half-chicken, the Little Gems, and the burger are always going to taste exactly alike and are always going to be delicious.
At some point after I’m drunk off the dirty martini, I go to the server’s station to ask for aïoli for the fries. I feel really embarrassed by my request and try to endear myself to the server by saying I am also a server, but I think it backfires and makes me seem even more annoying. Anyway, the aïoli is really good.
Saturday, October 26
I wake up around nine and order an oat-milk cappuccino at Dreamers. Afterward, I pick up my son from his dad’s place to take him to his school’s Halloween party. He has no idea I had Justin and Kristine make his costume, and I wear the chicken-nugget hoodie so he’ll be surprised when he sees me. I even put a toy gun in a briefcase and carry it over. When he spots me walking in, he laughs really hard. Ultimately, though, I decide he can’t take the toy gun out in public, so he’s just a regular, unspicy chicken nugget.
We were planning on eating at the Halloween party, but the line is really long and I eventually realize it’s just pizza from the place down the street, so we end up at this new pasta takeout counter in front of his school called Pastasole (on Google Maps, it’s called Pasta de Pasta, but the sign and the official Instagram say otherwise). They blew up on social media because they make all their pasta in a wheel of Parmesan cheese. It’s like a Chipotle situation where the base is fettuccine Alfredo tossed in the TikTok-famous Parmesan wheel, and you have the option of adding toppings.
Mino gets smoked salmon and mozzarella balls as his toppings, and I add arrabbiata sauce and garlic shrimp. The pasta is $9, but it comes out to about $16 to $20 each with all the toppings. The smoked-salmon portion is a little too big and hard to eat, but the garlic shrimp is amazing. Mino has been wanting to go to this place ever since he saw it open a few months ago. It’s kind of funny raising a kid in New York. There are so many fancy restaurants, but I always end up eating at places like the fettuccine Alfredo counter or the mac-and-cheese-in-a-skillet restaurant or Benihana or some shit like that.
After lunch, I drop Mino off at his dad’s place so I can go to work at Mission Chinese. I don’t have my usual one sneaky glass of wine per night because I was yelled at during my last shift. For dinner, I eat rice and cucumbers from the salad station in a quart container over the dish pit at 11 p.m.
Sunday, October 27
I wake up and clean the whole house in anticipation of my son coming home from his dad’s. I choke down another cup of horrible coffee with condensed milk and head to Trader Joe’s around noon to buy groceries for Mino’s school week: bread, cheese, vegetables, sandwich stuff, and fruit. I also get some lunch-salad supplies for myself as well as something called a Nantucket cranberry pie from the frozen aisle. At home, I have a weekend-brunch cocktail with prosecco and St-Germain over ice. Then I shave some fennel and add olives, Parmesan, and sardines and make a little salad. I defrost the cranberry pie and eat a slice of that, too.
When Mino gets home, we run errands in Chinatown. Dinner is guacamole, from ingredients I got at TJ’s, and chili, which I serve over rice with cheese. Mino doesn’t have any of the cranberry pie, so I eat a little more of it after he goes to bed.
More Grub Street Diets