There are several rules you are tacitly agreeing to just by swinging open the vault-like door of the snow-white, ice-cold crypt of design that is Moss. The first rule, of course, is that you will not, under any circumstances, touch anything. Your children—and please take a moment to hang your head in shame for bringing them along in the first place—must be held at all times. And do remember that you are risking possible ejection should you even think about eating or drinking anywhere near items like Melissa Dixson’s taxidermied canis lupus.

Murray Moss has been known to bend the rules on that last one for his parties, serving only innocuous, quarter-filled glasses of white wine (which I whined about during the Los Angeles store opening). Still, each time a glass falls to the concrete floor—even with the design-conscious it’s bound to happen—I see him wince, or perhaps that’s the secret signal to dispatch the team of minions who quickly sweep away all memory of shattered glass, Men In Black-style.

Last night at Moss it was, at first blush, the same old scene. Philippe Starck and Sam Nazarian were there to hype their new SLS Hotels, in which Moss will have a store. Starck smiled, Nazarian shmoozed, glasses shattered, Moss winced, minions dispatched, but something was…different.

Moss served food.

Of course, this being Moss, he still wanted to curate the experience. That’s why if you wanted caviar wrapped in proscuitto, chef José Andrés had to prepare it for you.

Which meant placing it directly on your tongue.

We were allowed to self-administer other items like black squid ink olives. (No idea if these were actually olives or ink, by the way.)

Scallops in yuzu were delightfully citrusy without being too scalloppy.

Little plastic pouches of watermelon juice had grilled shrimp attached. Like a ceviche injection?

They called this a Spanish omelette. Eggs whipped to the consistency of clouds.

They said: Bagels and lox. I said: Caviar ice cream cones.

“Airbread” was balloons of dough, stuffed with some pretty intense cheese and that mouth-watering proscuitto.

And of course, your own personal mojito atomizer for a spritz between bites.

Moss even ventured into drinks of color, serving these orange gelatinous martinis. Some klutz near me ended up breaking one of those. After roughing her up a bit, they let her stay.

On the way out I was sure to thank the lovely Gita, who does PR for Moss. The food was amazing, I told her, and I took lots of pictures. “Good,” she said. “Because it’s never happening again.”

The signage at Rockefeller Plaza is probably some of the most amazing lettering I’ve ever seen in my life.

Commendably, it looks like they’ve managed to keep a lot of it intact.

The escalators are old and super tiny, and from so long ago that people actually used the word ‘grasp.’ Thanks to CJ for the great tour.

More shots.

Who knew when you combined the OXO vegetable peeler, farfalle pasta and a rump roast it would create a fragrant bouillabaisse infused with literary delight? Last night was the latest of SVA’s D-Crit design criticism reading nights at KGB, presided over by the program chair—and my dear friend—Alice Twemlow. (You can read more about Alice and D-Crit in a new interview at Subtraction.)

Akiko Busch almost brought me to tears with her touching meditation on the OXO vegetable peeler, which she says was created out of an act of tenderness from a industrial designer to his potato-peeling wife. Then the adorable Paola Antonelli read her deconstruction of pasta design, in which she revealed the true beauty of such readings: You can revert to the original version of your piece, without the “nasty edits.” And then Paul Lukas brought down the house with his survey of butcher charts, which included two changes of costume (one, his Meats shirt above; later, a shirt of a cow slicing itself into perfect t-bones) and a packet of expressly prohibited visuals, which included this gem I like to call Meathattan:

I must admit got a little googly eyed being in the room with so many famous design writers. I sat across from the lovely Karrie Jacobs, met Ralph Caplan, saw hot pants-wearing Emilie Baltz from Core77, was surprised to see one of my editors from Fast Company, David Lidsky, and ran into Keira Alexandra (who I first met in Hawaii, of all places). Not to mention all my old and equally famous good friends. Maybe this is just how New York is; a constant state of googly eyes?

Predictably starving, and craving some kind of beef pasta with exquisitely shaved vegetables, we settled on Congee Village where heaping plates of most of the above cost less per-person than some drinks I’ve purchased in Manhattan. From our spoken word appetizers to watermelon wedge desserts laid over a rice-flecked table: It was an extremely satiating night. But I almost debated stopping here on the way home. Burgers Gelato? Talk about a marriage of food and design!

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So it appears that I have my work cut out for me. If you have a moment, I’d appreciate it if you could take a look at my architectural hit list and let me know if there’s a must-see I’ve forgotten. Or perhaps you know of some supersecret locale you can only divulge via email. I’m especially in need of design-y eateries.

Or, on a more personal note, places that serve really good gelato.

Here’s a direct link to my Google Map.

What is probably my most favorite article I’ve ever written was published in the LA Times on the same day I took a flight home to St. Louis. I waltzed from vendor to vendor in the American Airlines terminal, pausing to admire the various shelving systems upon which the LA Times was displayed. While all my copies of the piece were filed like federal documents in my carry-on, it was amazing to see hundreds more copies stacked haphazardly in every store, awaiting their readers. After I took my seat in the waiting area I squirmed with delight as the man across from me opened the Calendar section and totally read my piece! But that was nothing compared to the swelling of my chest a few minutes later when he got up and threw it away!

It’s an awesome feeling to know your words are so widely distributed that they’ve become, well, disposable.

Such is the humbling nature of today, when I have four pieces published in the LA Weekly’s annual People issue. Except that the LA Weekly is free. It’s so free that for the next week, LA Weeklys will fall over the city like a light dusting of snow. My stories will be abandoned on bus seats, stuffed between Champagne flutes in moving boxes, wrapped around a dozen pink tulips at the farmers’ market.

So think of me sporting this wide, goofy grin when you come cross an LA Weekly this week. But before you use it to Windex your car windshield, be sure to read my pieces on Mathew Cullen and Javier Jimenez of Motion Theory; Ben Goldhirsh of GOOD; Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim of various Awesome Shows, Great Job; and Jonathan Wells of Flux.

And please recycle.