Delia Cai

👗 Depop, 📖 Light Years by James Salter, 💘 Setting your friends up on a date, and more.

Perfectly Imperfect is a newsletter offering “A Taste of Someone’s Taste” from guests like Ayo Edebiri, Charli XCX, Michael Imperioli, Rayne Fisher-Quann, Matty Matheson, Molly Ringwald, Mac Demarco, Lena Dunham, Dasha Nekrasova, Julian Casablancas, and Jeremy O. Harris. Full archive here.

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Cool people like cool things, which is why we asked Delia Cai to share a taste of her taste on Perfectly Imperfect.

Delia Cai is the New York City-based writer behind the newsletter Deez Links, which is “a culture and online fixation report” that will deliver you “cool and worthy links—links that make the daily dredge feel worth it—and we will observe the passage of time and art and algorithmic ridiculousness together.” In 2022, Delia wrote a lovely profile on Perfectly Imperfect for Vanity Fair that captured the true spirit of what we’re trying to do. After several years at VF as the senior vanities correspondent, Delia relaunched her Substack Deez Links with a new column called Hate Reads as well as 2-3 weekly dispatches (and you can subscribe here.) Also be sure to check out her brilliant debut novel, Central Places. Lucky for us, Delia is here to tell us what she’s been into.

Without further ado

Delia Cai (instagram, twitter)

🍜 The Spicy Cumin Lamb Hand-Ripped Noodles + the Spicy Asian Cucumber Salad at Xian’s Famous Foods

Xian’s is like my personal Starbucks, and this is my happy meal. (Imperfect metaphor but you get me, right?). There was a period of my life when I would go get this once a week, which says less about the state of my emotional health at the time and more about the convenient spread of Xian’s locations throughout New York. I hate hate hate feeling hungry in a less-than-familiar part of town and spending half an hour evaluating spots on Google Maps. Xian’s is a bona fide life hack, because there’s almost always one nearby, the noodles are consistently delicious, and you only ever spend like $25, tops. Plus they’re never that crowded. It’s quite possible that this all makes Xian’s the best restaurant in New York?

👗 Depop

My stuff is not cool enough to get the Buffalo Exchange (much less The RealReal) types to even look me in the eye. As a result, I’ve found Depop to be a weirdly efficient place to make a few bucks here and there off clothing that I’d otherwise donate. It’s also the only shopping app I’ve seen with an algorithm that actually picks out good stuff for you to look at. There’s so much fun and weird vintage on there; I just bought this amazing old prom dress for $50 to wear to a wedding. Yes, we should all deeply question the way things like Instagram and perma-nuptial season make it seem like we should always be wearing something new to the function, but being part of the Depop ecosystem at least feels more practical (and aesthetically interesting) than running off and buying another unwashable Reformation dress yet again.

📖 Light Years by James Salter

The perfect summer novel with the most gorgeous lines: “Dead flies the size of beans.” “Lunch is not a meal; it’s a profession. It takes your whole life.” “He was waiting for things to resolve themselves while he ate, to form into something unexpected and interesting like the coat of fine bubbles on one’s leg in the bath.” Light Years is all about romanticizing domesticity (and then pulling it apart like taffy), like a kind of grownup’s version of Little House on the Prairie. Make it your July read. Then, for August, get a copy of Salter’s A Sport and a Pastime for something a little sexier and eurocore.

💘 Setting your friends up on a date

I love being set up, and I love setting people up. What else do you think this is all about? Why wouldn’t you be deeply invested in helping friends and casual acquaintances find love? I think plenty of people are afraid that their friends have bad taste, which is certainly a risk. You shouldn’t get involved with set-ups if you’re going to take things so personally. But it’s objectively lovely when someone you trust thinks of a person for you and vice versa. When I set people up, I like to show each person a single photo and describe what I like about him/her/them to each other (No IG profile sharing! That’s too much info!). Once I figure out a time and location that works for both parties, I’ll introduce them via a group text that includes the date details, so they don’t have to plan that first date. They just have to show up! Talk about some white glove fairy godmother service. Mutuals, feel free to do this for me :)