Somsack Sikhounmuong Always Breaks for Lunch

“No matter how busy it is in the office, we make it a point to eat together.”

The temperatures in New York this past week have hovered in the mid-80s, but Somsack Sikhounmuong is thinking about winter. As the creative director at Alex Mill, he’s prepping the company’s holiday line while looking to the seasons ahead. It’s his sixth year at the fashion brand — he previously spent 16 years rising through the ranks at Madewell and J.Crew — but he balances the workload with hobbies (like a ceramics practice he picked up during the pandemic and his aptly named Somstack newsletter), dinners with friends, and long, relaxed lunches at the office that are always, always followed by dessert like Greenmarket pies, cake spreads, and Fudgie the Whale deliveries from Carvel. “There’s a big dessert culture at Alex Mill, thanks to me,” Sikhounmuong says. “Dessert brings people together.”

Wednesday, July 17
I have a trainer twice a week. He tells me that I need to eat breakfast before I get there so that whatever we’re doing, I have some level of carb fuel. Listening to his advice, I made a smoothie. I used to do a specific oatmeal-and-peanut-butter thing, but now it’s just like oatmeal with whatever I have in the freezer: pineapples, spinach. Using a handheld blender has been a huge revelation for me. It’s just so much faster. I always thought it would be hard to clean, but they’re actually much easier than I expected. I drink that and head out. I have a coffee-maker, but I never use it. I just hate making coffee for some reason. It never tastes as good. Luckily, my favorite coffee is this coffee cart right outside my subway stop. I’ve been going to this guy for the past few years. For a while, I think during COVID, he went missing. I was really worried; he was a little bit older. But he showed back up, thankfully, and said he had gone to Egypt to stay with his family for three months. Phew.

I get a large iced coffee, black. Every time I see him, he sees me, and he starts making the coffee before I even get there. The price went up maybe two years ago. It was $2. Now it’s $3. I always leave a dollar tip, considering it’s just probably one-eighth of what a Starbucks coffee would cost. Or worse … Ralph’s Coffee. What in the world? Seven-dollar iced coffee that’s the size of a Dixie cup? I’ve been doing iced coffees black for a long time after reading something about oat milk being not that great for you. Before that, I would be drinking four iced coffees with oat milk a day, and I thought, Damn, I may be killing myself a little bit.

I worked out for about an hour. Afterward, I was hungry still. Probably even more hungry, so I dropped by the Pret on Union Square. Sometimes, I get a breakfast sandwich, but, being an Asian immigrant, there’s something about not eating “breakfast” for breakfast. We eat anything for breakfast. I love that Pret has all its lunch sandwiches already out in the morning, and so sometimes I’ll just grab a tuna sandwich for breakfast or an egg-salad sandwich. That day, I grabbed a chicken bánh mì. It was half-size, so it didn’t seem so scary for breakfast. I also got another iced coffee. I left and went to the pie stand at the Greenmarket. I picked up what I thought was going to be a strawberry-rhubarb pie until I got to the office, cut into it, and discovered it was a peach pie that had been mislabeled.

I had tons of meetings. We’re always so busy. We just opened a new store in East Hampton. We got the lease ten days ago, and it opened this past weekend. No matter how busy it is in the office, we make it a point to eat together. The idea of sitting down, taking a moment, and busting out all the food is nice to me. Everywhere I’ve worked, we’ve always eaten together, sitting and talking for an hour about what we did last night or what we’re about to do, where we went or what we watched the night before. It’s the equivalent of the water cooler, but this is the lunch table.

Obviously, the size of the table has grown with the size of the company. Some people bring food from home. Our production assistant, Belle, was like, “Hey, you know what? What we haven’t ordered in a while? Popeyes,” I was all in, immediately. I ordered a three-piece chicken lunch, which I hadn’t had in forever. Hands down, I think it probably has the best mashed potatoes in the city. Then, I shared the pie with everyone. By the end of the day, there was nothing left, maybe a tiny sliver. People just chip away all day. Sometimes, if there’s ice cream in the fridge, we’ll scoop some of that out, too.

I left and had dinner with my friend Andrea, who I’ve known for years and years and years. We go to the Amalfi Coast together every summer, and this is the first summer we are not traveling together. I think she was a bit sad. I love it there because of the water and the food, the beach and the food. There isn’t that much to do other than that. She’s going, though, and so we had dinner to talk about what she was about to do without me, more or less. We went to Hart’s in Brooklyn, which I had never been to. It was amazing. I loved how small it was. I loved how the vibe was just a bunch of girls running the whole place. You can see the kitchen, and the food was so good. We got clams on toast, pork Milanese, and prawns and rice. We also got two desserts, berry clafouti and an olive cake with blueberry compote.

Thursday, July 18
I got a breakfast burrito delivered from Two Hands. I could have gone to pick it up, but it takes five minutes to get it delivered to the office. I love that they put hash browns inside — a nice crunch. They have this tomatillo sauce, which adds a bit of spice, and I love spice. And I got an iced coffee.

For lunch, we did a group-order situation from Kyu Ramen. It was a spicy ramen. When I order my ramen, I always get an extra egg, extra bamboo, and extra spice. When I say I love spice, I really love spice. One of the first pictures of me ever is me, as a baby, sitting eating a Thai papaya salad. Very strange that my parents would be giving that to me, but I was eating spice from a very young age.

We ordered a Carvel Fudgie the Whale for dessert. I always have these cravings for sweets and cakes, so I order various cakes during the day. I saw Carvel was on Seamless, so I knew we had to order it. When Fudgie arrived, everyone freaked out. We all took a piece, and it was gone in five minutes. It wasn’t as big as I remembered Fudgie being. Fudgie has gotten smaller, or maybe I’ve gotten bigger.

That night, I went to a Ben Howard concert at Brooklyn Steel. My friend Micah came with me, even though he didn’t even know who Ben Howard was, but I had had the extra ticket. which then meant dinner was like, Do we eat before? Do we eat after? Do we have enough time? I ended up eating after. It was a super-late dinner, which I usually hate doing.

Court Square Diner is a block away from my apartment, so I ordered steak and eggs and had them delivered to my place. I’ve been in that area for probably ten years. It’s changed a lot in the past few years. It’s like Hong Kong now, with all the high-rises, and the traffic, and all the people. We got a Trader Joe’s last year. It’s not even the same place anymore, which is a shame. The convenience of having stuff is nice, and new restaurants are always nice, but I liked how quiet it was. It’s not that quiet anymore.

Friday, July 19
I had to be up early to be at a shoot in Bushwick. For breakfast, I ordered a sandwich, the Hangover Cure, from Dépanneur directly to the location. I wasn’t hungover from the concert. I didn’t have much to drink, but it’s my favorite sandwich there. It’s turkey with avocado, egg, and sriracha. We have our holiday collection coming up, so we have to get these shoots done in the summer in time for November. It’s crazy, horrible, and fun to have to plan for the winter in the summer. We were shooting, like, shearling coats in the middle of a heat wave last year. I am always working on four seasons at once. We’re thinking a year ahead.

We were at the shoot all day, so for lunch we did a group order from this great falafel place in Bushwick called Queen. I got the chicken shawarma platter with extra falafel. I love the crunch. I love spice and I love crunch. Then, we ordered some dessert from La Cantine, which is a tiny little bakery around the corner. We got a few different cakes to share. There was a chocolate cake, an olive oil cake, and a carrot cake. It was a good afternoon snack. There’s a big dessert culture at Alex Mill, thanks to me. Dessert brings people together.

The shoot ended around 6. I went for a workout, then, on my way home, I dropped by the Sugarfish in Flatiron. I tried to get a table, but you can never get a table at Sugarfish, especially on a Friday night, or even on a Monday night. You walk up, and they’re like, “Oh, you’re the 25th person in line.” I’m like, “Don’t tell me that. Just tell me that I can’t get in.” To hear that number? Come on. Even just for a single person at the counter, I couldn’t get in. I ended up getting a to-go order of the Nozawa Trust Me to take home. I like their stuff. I like how it’s packaged.

I got home, and for dessert, I ate my Italian cantaloupes. They are incredible, so sweet and so orange. I got them on Natoora, which is a site that provides vegetables and fruit for restaurants and chefs, too, but you can order it as a layman. These melons are so crazy. If you look them up, they are $50. They dropped them off, and my doorman noticed the invoice. He saw me when I came in and was like, “Hold on,” holding up the receipt: “I think something happened. It’s missing a lot of stuff because the bill is like a hundred dollars, but there are only two melons in here.” I was like, “Oh wow, that’s crazy.” But then I told him that was right because my crazy friend told me to order them.

The friend is my sister. She is the one who has gotten me into the habit of ordering produce from this site. She discovered it first, because she is always on the interweb. She’ll make reservations at restaurants that are hard to get into just to have them and then decide the day of. She’s always looking for things to eat and places to go. She and her husband are huge foodies.

I still order the melons, though, because they are so good. It’s my one vice.

Saturday, July 20
I had my trainer again, so I woke up and made my smoothie. Afterward, I had family coming into town from Connecticut who I hadn’t seen in a few months, so we went to this new place my sister found called Café China in midtown. It’s the same people that do Birds of a Feather in Williamsburg, which I love, but that’s another one of those places you can never get in. At Café China, there was no one. There were probably four tables that were busy.

Between myself, my sister, her husband, my two aunts, my uncle, and our cousin, we needed a lot of food. We ordered this huge, family-style Chinese lunch. It was a whole big thing: lobster with ginger and scallion, noodles, fried rice. Being a single person in New York, you don’t really get an opportunity to have a huge meal like that.

I went home afterward and dropped stuff off, then went to my ceramics studio at LIC. I do ceramics on the side. I try to get there twice a week for a couple of hours. I started in 2021, post-COVID. Like so many other people, it was an opportunity to do something different with different people, with other people I’d never seen or known or talked to in my entire life. Before that, the last time I’d played with clay was probably in seventh grade. It felt good to exercise different brain muscles and be creative. It’s helped my sanity.

There are two different approaches: the wheel and hand building. I was horrible at the wheel. But then I tried hand building, and it was the perfect thing. With the wheel you just have to be so much more focused. This and that could all go wrong at any moment, and I was not interested in that at all. I just wanted to be free to play and do weird things.

Eventually, I was making all this stuff, and it was just sitting on my window sill. I didn’t have any more room, and so I was like, “I got to sell this.” It’s become a fun thing on the side. I make plates, I make vases. I have an Instagram account where I post things. I sell some stuff in our Alex Mill store once in a while. I have some wholesale accounts here and there. I’m lucky that people have liked them. I remember a friend telling me as I was about to start selling them, he wanted to reassure me, “Well … just be okay with not selling anything.” I was like, “Ouch, okay.” But now they’re selling. He’s like, “Wow. Look at you.”

After the studio, I went to a Korean barbecue place in Flushing called Chilsung Garden with Micha. I love it because it’s huge and the food is great. I especially like that I don’t have to wait that long there. We got two aged sirloins and grilled them up with all the banchan. The great thing about Micha is that he has a car, so I got chauffeured to dinner. With the air-conditioning, I just put the seat back and relaxed.

Sunday, July 21
I woke up and ordered French toast from Court Square Diner. I always order French toast with strawberries just to break up the breadiness of that meal a little bit. I got bacon, too. Then I futzed around a little bit and eventually went to the gym. I was hungry again after that, so I went to Obicà in Flatiron and got a caprese salad with tomatoes and mozzarella, and pasta carbonara. I love carbonara.

I ended up going back to the ceramics studio for a couple of hours, then I went to this Thai noodle shop that I love in Queens called Pye Boat Noodle. I got a papaya salad and their signature dish, the boat noodles. It’s with beef in a brown broth. They put blood in the broth sometimes. I always order with no blood because it changes the consistency a little bit. It’s traditionally served with the blood, but I prefer it without. I don’t think a lot of people eating it know there’s blood, but I know.

Craving something sweet, I made myself a peach and frozen-strawberry protein smoothie out of the freezer. I drank that while I watched the Jeopardy! Masters tournament. It’s been the same six people for the last few tournaments. At this point, I’m like, “Wait, don’t we have any new people?” But they’re the Masters, I guess.

Monday, July 22
I had a doctor’s appointment for my annual physical, so I started my day in midtown. I got out at Bryant Park and went to the Breads Bakery kiosk there for an egg sandwich. I love their egg sandwiches because they’re so simple. It’s just a boiled egg sliced with cucumbers, tomatoes, and mayo on a roll. I also got an iced coffee. I purposely didn’t drink too much coffee — the last time I’d gotten a physical, I’d had a ton of coffee and my blood pressure was off the charts — so I just got a small (which was ten times smaller than the “small” at my coffee cart and ten times more expensive), but my blood pressure was fine. They did blood work, however, and the doctor was like, “Your blood sugar … you might want to tone it down and keep an eye on that a little bit.” I love desserts so much. It’s a small price to pay.

We do this funny thing in the office called Alex Meals. We have one Crock-Pot in the office, and you have to make a meal for everybody. It’s not mandatory, but people sign up each week. Our head of production, Sun, who’s Korean, made a huge japchae noodle dish. I think she may have made it at home and then just dumped it in the Crock-Pot to heat it up. It’s never enough food for me. I’ll always have to order something as a side.

I got chicken falafel and a side of vegetables from Miznon to fill out my lunch. I think their vegetables are just as good as their meats. They have a steamed green-bean dish with lemon and oil and a roasted sweet potato that is just so good every time. With the physical on my mind, the dessert for the afternoon was frozen yogurt from Culture instead of a cake or Fudgie. I tried to pull it back a little bit. We got two kinds, strawberry with balsamic vinegar, which is a total “wow” flavor, and a key lime with lime curd and graham-cracker crunch.

For dinner, I went to Rosella in the East Village. I know Jeff, the owner, through his fiancée. I’ve worked with Kelsey forever; she’s Mickey Drexler’s assistant. She hooks me up with a reservation any time I need it. The place is great. I got a spot for one at the bar.

Every time I’ve gone there, they ask me what I want and I let them decide. “Are you hungry? Are you really hungry?” That night, I was really hungry. The one thing I specifically asked for was their avocado roll with the red, spicy Rosella sauce. They brought out shrimp sushi, Wagyu sushi, a ceviche that they do with coconut milk with corn nuts, a watermelon-and-raw-tuna dish, a dish of grits with shrimp and goat cheese, and spices. The dishes just kept flowing in, and it was the perfect meal. I also got cantaloupe sorbet for dessert. Jeff told me they use the same melon that I ordered from Natoora. I’ve had it before, and I’ve always been blown away by how strong the melon flavor is in it. Now I know why: They use the $50 melons.