Yes, clients occasionally put me up in fancy-pants hotels (where amenities include loaner laptops and goldfish) for press briefings.
Yes, clients occasionally take me out to dinner in fancy-pants restaurants.
No, this hasn’t stopped me from hitting a halal street-meat cart for lamb & chicken rice platter.
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Best line from the press briefings: When asked about about the rigorous process his company has for suppliers of chemical ingredients, one of the VPs told us, “One supplier sent us the chemicals in a cut-off sweatshirt sleeve.”
Evidently, the supplier didn’t want to bother filling out proper certificates or taking care of traceability requirements, so they just . . . wrapped the chemicals in a cut-off sweatshirt sleeve and shipped ’em off to a global provider.
“The supplier was based in an, um, evolving economy,” we were told.
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Here’s a picture from the staircase in the restaurant:
And here’s a picture of Greene St., running north of Canal: