We Survived Year One! Here's What's Next.
We Survived Year One! Here's What's Next.
Discounted subscriptions, a new perk for annual subscribers, more restaurant reviews, more guides. Also, where to eat this weekend!
We’re discounting subscriptions in advance of our first anniversary — for a limited time! Most of our columns, like The Splurge Guide, are for subscribers only.
A year later, I’m still reviewing restaurants.
I’m still here. And so are you.
Thank you.
I’m a little surprised. Food criticism, my job for the past 19 years, is expensive. Too many cities don’t have a strong group of professional reviewers. Even in New York, where there are multiple critics, certain big-deal publications have cut back. That’s tough for the hospitality industry, and tough for consumers looking for advice on where to spend their hard-earned money.
No, I didn’t have any illusions about starting my own site for independent criticism. I don’t have a staff. I don’t have access to outside funding. I don’t accept free meals. I’m an adjunct journalism professor, but I don’t benefit from a full-time time job that can help pay for all these pricey dinners.
All I have is your support.
It’s not easy to make this work. But I make it work. And I’ve loved every minute of my first year.
A lot of you seem to dig The Lo Times as well! Over a thousand of you open up my columns within an hour of publication, followed by thousands more in the days that follow. On any given month, depending on how much we publish, we attract anywhere from 25,000 to nearly 50,000 page views.
And we’ve received kind shout outs from the New York Times, Bon Appétit, Vox, New York Mag, Vittles, Eater, W42ST, and elsewhere.
So I’m happy to say we’re not going anywhere. And I’m so damn excited to keep sending you my weekly restaurant reviews, quick takes on hot new dishes, vital intel on what to avoid, splurge advice, steak advice, best of lists, chats, and cheat sheets.
So let’s keep doing this. Here’s a taste of what to expect in our second year! Also, to keep things fun, you’ll find a few great restaurant recommendations for this weekend if you scroll to the bottom.
What’s on tap for this summer?
I don’t like to release my editorial calendar too far in advance, but you can expect some pretty neat stuff in the coming months…
Early July: Best dishes of the year, so far!
July/Aug: A very fancy restaurant review you won’t expect.
Late summer: The first (of hopefully many) longer guides to edibles.
Ongoing: Summer snacking advice…like this guide!
I’ll keep this cryptic: A cheat sheet to eating out in New York.
What will year two look like?
New perks. More reviews. More guides. More edibles. More chats. More news. All in your inbox, just about every week. Let’s check it out:
More restaurant reviews!
Even with just a single critic, The Lo Times has published some of the city’s earliest and most detailed reviews on Coqodaq, Corima, Sip & Guzzle, Strange Delight, and Esse Taco. And while we weren’t the first publication to hit up Theodora, we published the most comprehensive take on that “whole fish” emporium.
So, you’ll see more of this! Sometimes, our reviews will be short. Sometimes, they’ll be long. But they’ll almost always be breezy and scrollable, with specific advice on what to get and what to skip.
New Perk: Reach out to me for personal restaurant advice!
If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ll be able to reach me via Substack chats for advice. But in addition, anyone who’s an annual subscriber will be able to hit me up for personalized restaurant recommendations once a year. And rest assured, I’ll make it worth your while lol! You’ll get a properly tailored email response, with a bunch of options and links to reviews from me and others.
More steaks and splurges!
Lots of you became paid subscribers after reading The Steak List, The Splurge Guide, or The Budget Steak List, and that makes me happy because there are lots of cool things happening right now with Red Meat and Spendy Dining in New York. I’ll keep updating those columns, which often include new mini-reviews of places I haven’t covered yet!
And every now and then, we’ll just tell you where to get a good steak or two.
More cheat sheets and best of lists
In addition to our Steak List and Splurge Guide, I’ll continue to publish other cheat sheets on where to eat in New York (and where to avoid). These are expensive guides to put together, but the effort is worth it. As I’ve said before, writing a good list has all the feel of putting together a good mix tape. I really love doing these!
Here’s a short sample of cheat sheets and best of lists from our first year:
More reviews of your favorite edibles
Our Lo Hi columns are some of our most popular columns.
Why did I launch this area of coverage? Because edibles are a multi-billion dollar market that continues to expand. Because edibles make good food taste even better. Because there isn’t enough coverage about enjoying THC at restaurants. And because there are so many untold stories about these products and the people behind them.
So I’m here to change that. Our goal is to talk about how these gummies taste, how they make us feel after a long day, and how they pair remarkably well with food. Edibles are a part of our American culinary fabric.
The Lo Hi isn’t a place for ordinary “product reviews.” And it surely isn’t a place to amplify many of the specious wellness claims some of these brands make. It’s a place for good journalism, good advice, and good times.
The return of our news coverage!
I started the Free Food news column to help shine a light on all the incredible food reporters and critics out there. It was an effort to keep folks in better conversation with one another as more publications backed off from publishing “news and reviews” roundups, which I always loved. Free Food also helped me, as a writer, to better reckon with the writings of my peers, all the more important now that I don’t have a steady group of people with whom I work every day! I loved doing Free Food so much, but…I needed a long break, because it was a lot of work!!!
You’ll see this return quite soon…
Where should I have dinner in Brooklyn this evening?
You should show up at Theodora in Fort Greene for bar seats! The vibe is date night: Melty candles, hazy wines, smoky grills, tiny booths in curvy nooks, and good f___ing food. The correct order is king salmon sashmi, hummus with spicy monkfish ‘nduja, and dry-aged trout (Contramar-style) with red and green salsas. I could eat here every night. 7 Greene Avenue, Brooklyn
Where should I have dinner in Lower Manhattan tonight?
You should check out the brand new Eel Bar on the Lower East Side — by the team behind Hart’s and Cervo’s, based on what I hear. It’s a Basque seafood bar of sorts, which means you can expect vino-friendly snacks like classic gildas, with hot peppers, anchovies, and olives.
I’m particularly curious about the dishes we don’t see in New York too often, like the restaurant’s fried mussels on the half shell, and the minnow snail pinxto. There’s also a beef burger with anchovies and Roquefort! 252 Broome Street, Lower East Side
What if I just want a quick snack?
Swing by Mercado Little Spain by José Andrés, and order the bocata de jamon iberico y queso, a ham and cheese sandwich in a tux, of sorts. Paper-thin slices of fat-streaked jamon sit underneath a layer of manchego, while the pan de cristal baguette gets brushed with olive oil and pulpy tomatoes. Chomp right in while it’s still warm, to enjoy all the cheesy, porky, nutty flavors at their peak. It costs $17, which isn’t bad in an era when a crappy airport sando can set you back $29. 10 Hudson Yards, Midtown West
Okay, back to business…what’s up with your podcast?
It’ll take a bit longer to get the Free Food podcast back off the ground, because the planning, producing, and editing process took over my life. I’m not much of a laissez-faire podcast producer; I tend to cut and condense and edit to make everything sound cleaner. But I should be able to find a way to make this work. We’ll get there, in time.
Doesn’t your website look a bit different now?
Good eye, batter! I rejiggered the site so that it’s so much easier to find your favorite cheat sheet, review, or edibles column. Please check it out!
Some of you might wonder why I’m spending any time on the website. This is a newsletter; don’t most people read The Lo Times via email? Indeed, they do. But over the past year, we’ve received over 55,000 page views from folks coming directly to the website, and over 36,000 views from folks who found us on Google Search! So it’s important that I keep things all fresh and clean on the dot com!
How often do you post?
We’ll have published nearly 70 posts by the time we hit our formal one year anniversary late next week. Generally speaking, I did two shorter posts per week when I first launched this Substack. The first weekly post was usually paid, while the second, usually a news column, was free. These days, I’ve been focusing on a single longer paywalled post per week, usually ranging from 2,000 to 3,000 words, with lots of smaller sections that help you skim and scroll.
You’ll continue to see me experimenting with posting pace and length as I continue to figure out what works, especially as I bring our news column back up to speed.
A few thoughts about subscription prices
Running this site is a…financial endeavor, lol! Eating at restaurants isn’t something I can do for free; my columns cost me anywhere from $350 to over $800 every single week!!! Just about every dollar I make goes right back into eating at restaurants. Anything leftover pays for a small portion of my student loans!
At some point, the price of these subscriptions will have to go up, just as restaurant prices rise over time. But for now, I’m going to do my best to keep things stable. In fact, we’re issuing our first annual discount at the moment!
Do you have any pipe dreams, if you had more paid subscribers?
Yes! I’d love to let freelance contributors write columns and reviews, to highlight more voices and stories. Another nice luxury would be to hire an editor to push back against my assumptions, and to copy edit my stories!
Just to put into context what this all takes: Every morning when I publish a story, I spend at least 90 minutes reading the column out loud, so my voice can catch the errors that my eyes gloss over! It’s a vital process, but it’s also a painstaking one, and a copy editor would be wonderful in that regard.
Some other Substacks and independent sites that I dig:
Presented in no particular order. You can find a number of these on my recommendations page!
Pass the Fish Sauce by Andrea Nguyen
Local Bread Baker’s Newsletter by Olga Koutseridi
Stained Page News by Paula Forbes
Sweet City by Mahira Rivers
Love and chomps to all!
Ryan!!!
Ryan Sutton is chief critic and editor at The Lo Times. He also teaches food criticism and reporting at CUNY’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. Previously, he served as the longtime food critic for Eater NY and Bloomberg News.
You’re crushing it ❤️🔥 thank you!!
Congrats on year one Ryan! Substackin' ain't easy but glad you're here.