Take Me to Your Spot: The Show
Now beaming to TikTok and Instagram accounts near you
Yes, friends, Take Me to Your Spot—our editorial franchise in which we profile an interesting person through the lens of their favorite restaurant—has made its evolution from the pages of The Supersonic to the small screens of TikTok and Instagram. Season 1 kicked off two days ago, and features Sam Morril, one of our favorite comedians, East Village classic Veselka, and yours truly as the lucky host who gets to enjoy good meals and good company without having to file a coherent feature a few days later. Win-win. To bring this project to life, we’ve partnered with Gymnasium, a New York-based entertainment studio behind viral hits like “Keep The Meter Running,” “Clockwork Dynasty,” and their latest, “Boy Room.” We’re hoping TMTYS, as we refer to it around the office, will soon join those ranks, racking up views, likes, and shares across socials. Episodes will drop every Tuesday, and we’ve got a slate of exciting guests and spots lined up — do follow along.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
A bit of backstory: in Blackbird’s nascent days,
and I brainstormed some content franchises we could lean into once things got off the ground. Ben is one of those rare founders who doesn’t view content as solely an SEO strategy. He believes in good storytelling (having done a fair share of it himself), and we quickly landed on the concept of profiling people we found interesting through the POV of their favorite restaurants. Restaurants reveal a lot about someone’s character—what they like and how they behave—and, in turn, a true regular can reveal a lot about a restaurant. What moves to make, what secret hacks to adopt — the dance one should do and all that. We wanted to profile people who have relationships with restaurants, in the old school and analogue sense of the word. The type of people that Blackbird might make its users feel like if we got things right. And so “Take Me to Your Spot” was born, albeit under my working and far less catchy title of “Restaurant Larping with Regulars” (thanks for the clutch edit, ).One of those early guests was Gymnasium co-founder Adam Faze, who took Ben to Balthazar. Were we suspect? A little. What could this kid, this California transplant, teach Ben, a man who had his wedding at Balthazar? Turns out, Faze did have a trick, that of “chaser fries,” best enjoyed post seafood tower. Ben returned beaming, and, I believe, has added the move to his repertoire. A few days later, I met up with Faze in front of Balthazar to snap some photos for the story. It was one of those crisp, late September days with the city jumping all around you, and Balthazar packed to the gills. People kept scurrying past, cluttering our photos. When we finally got the shot, Faze departed, but not before leaving me with a bit of catnip: “This could be a TikTok show — great title.”
Needless to say, his soft pitch worked. I won’t spoil the season by name-dropping any guests, but I will say it’s going to be a good one. We hope you enjoy.
James Jung
VP, Content
Blackbird Labs, Inc.
Café Chelsea's Petit Plateau with the chaser fries is definitely a play... didn't realize it was a thing and make it a usual order! I highly recommend.