A week in January press events
From Siggi's to ciggies, it was a wild ride
One nice thing about January events is that they are often health focused. As someone who’s lucky enough to dine out a lot and is very weak-willed when it comes to turning down a cocktail, I could use the help. My first event of the year was a class at Physique57 followed by mocktails with Hilary Sheinbaum, the author of several books for the sober-curious. Given how popular Dry January has become in recent years, especially among our fellow millennials, she described this as her “Mariah month,” which made me laugh.
I am absolutely obsessed with group fitness classes, which changed my life when I first joined Equinox in 2018. Until then I associated exercise with punishment. Oh the hours I wasted miserably counting down the minutes on a treadmill or elliptical machine, barely burning the calories of a Luna Bar! Also, why was I eating Luna Bars!! Learning the fundamentals of building actual strength changed my body and my mind and I am forever grateful to the instructors who make it so fun to go to the gym. I do a different class every day now; barre, HIIT, weight-lifting, pilates, yoga, I love it all. My Equinox membership is the biggest luxury in my life, so I don’t tend to do any boutique fitness classes outside of it, unless they’re connected to a press event. I will say that even though I put considerable effort into mixing up my routine, there’s nothing like the burn of a new class. I was shakin’ and quakin’ by the end of those 57 minutes but oh, it hurt so good.
Yesterday I found myself at a breakfast with Siggi’s yogurt (sorry, SKYR) seated next to Siggi himself. I had no idea that Siggi was a real person but there he was, an absolutely ginormous Icelandic dude with an accent that can only be described as Bjork. Next to him was Emma Lovewell, the popular Peloton instructor, who was announcing her new partnership as Siggi’s “Chief Live Well Offiskyr.” (Far be it from a morning TV writer to 🙄 at a pun, but that one felt a little are-we-sure-we’re-done-workshopping-this to me.) Aaanyway. I was pretty fascinated by the gangly Siggi. He came to the U.S. for business school around 20 years ago and began making the thick Icelandic-style strained yogurt as a hobby out of homesickness. The yogurt that was popular here then was that nasty Light ‘n Fit-style stuff. I remember eating Yoplaits in chemically “flavors” like “ooh la la creme brulee” and calling it dessert without realizing that one dinky little cup could have as much sugar as a candy bar, with none of the joy. “In Icelandic, diabetes literally means ‘sugar disease,’” Siggi told me, so they were more concerned with cutting down sugar than fat while we were deep in the abyss of Snackwell’s over here. He said it was a tough sell for American palates back then and it took several years for the taste to catch on.
I remember my fratty college boyfriend eating Greek yogurt for protein years before some ad agency looking for new markets thought “What if— hear us out— bro-gurt?” He is as American as I am but I guess he was ahead of the curve when it came to nutrition. I tried it without any sweetener and found it inedible. Now it is no exaggeration to say I put it into almost everything I eat. Smoothies made with sweetened yogurt are missing a crucial tang to me. I put a dollop on top of my soup or mix in hot sauce or pesto for dipping. Protein: not just for boys!! Emma, who had a baby last year, said she started eating eggs with cottage cheese for breakfast when she was pregnant and started counting her macros for the first time. I assume she’s using skyr now AHEM.
I wasn’t all Healthy McHealthface this week. Somewhere in there was dinner with Buffalo Trace Distillery at a literal cigar club on the Upper East Side. I didn’t know those existed, but I walked through the velvet curtains and into a cloud of smoke and thought baby, we are not in Kansas any more. Buffalo Trace was one of just a handful of distilleries that were allowed to make “medicinal” whisky during Prohibition, and they are releasing a new thousand-dollar collection of five whiskies from that era, each paired with a complementary (not complimentary) cigar. I can’t say I’ll be visiting Club Macanudo again on purpose; I’ve had similar meals on an airplane— “lobster bisque” without any discernible crustacean, steak with boiled green beans. I would have thought the food at a cigar club would need to be more flavor-forward than usual, not less, due to the impact of smoking on taste buds, but what do I know. My favorite part of the event was the beautiful packaging and the lore because I am #justagirl. Dessert was fried Oreo-style chocolate truffles in an inexplicable bowl of powdered sugar. I ate them, obviously.
Siggi is a magazine cover all by hissef...
fully aware that Is Siggi A Real Person is something I could have previously Googled but I am nonetheless GOBSMACKED.