This is a review of a restaurant with personality disorder.
"A lie is always a red flag. This will be the first of many."
Good morning everyone. This weekend I watched a lot of movies: Dead Calm with a 20-year-old Nicole Kidman, The Truman Show (Criterion currently has a Surveillance Cinema collection up right now that I’m going to try to grind through), and The Northman (I’m on an Eggers bender).
Today’s letter includes:
A dizzying review of mega-restaurant Aqua that serves a dish called David Lobster, by Feed Me’s semi-anonymous restaurant critic
.An update on the Prada restaurant in Soho
Last night, after he moderated Feed Me’s Golden Globes Substack chat,
texted me his thoughts on the Melania Trump documentary
Expense Account is a series we’re trying out on Feed Me, written by semi-anonymous restaurant critic JLee. In this report, you’ll be reading about Business Guy Restaurants — the bistros, sushi spots and lounges that are best rationalized with the involvement of a corporate card. You can read his 2025 Restaurant Buy/Sell List here.
I didn’t go to enough new restaurants in 2024 to say with any authority what the best new restaurants were, but I can say with certainty that Aqua was the worst new restaurant of 2024. It deserves its own standalone list.
Aqua is a restaurant from London that also boasts locations in Hong Kong, Miami, and Dubai. In New York, under one roof, there is Aqua Kyoto and Aqua Roma (for whatever reason the website says that Aqua Kyoto is “Tokyo-inspired”. Now why would a restaurant called Aqua Kyoto be inspired by Tokyo?). They occupy one gigantic space on Broadway, just south of the Flatiron Building. The proprietors of Aqua insist that it is two separate restaurants, despite having the same address and a single menu (the Aqua Kyoto section reads from back to front because they read backwards in Japan, very high concept!) and they force their staff to tell this lie one million times a night. A lie is always a red flag. This will be the first of many.
I think the idea is that eventually Aqua will actually be two separate restaurants that occupy one space, as there seem to be two seating areas, each with its own vibe, but I can’t imagine Aqua ever becoming popular enough or busy enough to utilize both spaces. Until their wish comes true, the restaurant is eerily vacant, and over-staffed. Throw some overpriced, confusing, and disappointing food into the mix and you have the recipe for a truly depressing dining experience.
“Aqua has a doorman, but no coat check. Aqua has a DJ booth but no DJ. Aqua has a signature lycheetini, but no lychees — and they’re not getting them until the end of the week.”
It’s a bad sign when you have to spend the first two paragraphs (I could go longer) of a review explaining the restaurant’s concept. It’s not even hard to understand, it’s just bafflingly stupid. Just act normal. You want to have pasta and sushi on the same menu? It’s not a big deal. Hillstone (my best new restaurant of 2024) does whatever they want, and they pull it off because it’s a good restaurant, with a strong sense of identity. Aqua not so much.
Aqua looks great. There’s a dramatic rope sculptural motif throughout the restaurant, which is actually quite stunning. It’s reminiscent of a restaurant from another generation, the kind of restaurant the Sex and The City girls would eat at. An excessive restaurant, for people who live lives of excess. A seat at the bar and a cosmo, could change everything, if only you could get in. This is not Aqua.
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