Well-rested
ALEXANDRA ZATARAIN • Eight Sleep
WORK • Tuesday Routine
ALEXANDRA ZATARAIN • co-founder & VP of Brand and Marketing • Eight Sleep
Neighborhood you work in: Flatiron
It’s Tuesday morning. What’s the scene at your workplace?
I’m at Eight Sleep’s New York office, usually by 9a. The brand, growth, and digital product teams are primarily based here, while much of our hardware and engineering work happens in San Francisco, so my mornings tend to begin with the East Coast team before turning into a long sequence of calls west.
The office never looks particularly pristine, which I like. There are Pods being tested, pieces of packaging, fabric samples, prototypes that are not supposed to be photographed, and marked-up creative work everywhere. Someone is inevitably lying on a bed for a perfectly legitimate business reason. I normally start with a coffee from Eataly (RIP Ralph’s Coffee Flatiron location!), look at how the business performed overnight, and then walk around chatting with the team rather than immediately disappearing into a conference room. You learn much more from 10 minutes of unplanned conversation than from another scheduled status meeting.
Any restaurant plans today, tonight, this weekend?
A recent discovery I’m very excited about is Son del North. They make Tijuana-style burritos, which immediately felt personal to me because Tijuana is where I grew up in Mexico. These aren’t the oversized, overloaded burritos most people associate with Mexican food in the US. They’re simpler, more precise, and completely dependent on the quality of the tortilla, meat, and a few very good ingredients. Son del North gets that exactly right.
I also love Semma. The food is exceptional, but what I appreciate most is how specific and confident it is. It doesn’t dilute the flavors or try to make the experience overly accessible.
How about a little leisure or culture this week?
I travel so much that, when I’m in New York, my idea of leisure is often simply experiencing the city without an agenda. I love walking the West Side Highway early in the morning, particularly before the city becomes loud. I don’t listen to a podcast or try to make the walk productive. That is the point.
I had really wanted to see ABT’s performance of Don Quixote at the Met in early July, but I couldn’t be in New York on the dates it was running. It’s a ballet that’s so joyful and so technically demanding at the same time. The music is vivid, the staging is full of color and movement, and the choreography has a kind of confidence and theatricality that makes it immediately engaging, even if you do not regularly go to the ballet.
What’s a recent big-ticket purchase you love?
A Pilates reformer for my home. I travel more than 200 days in some years, and I finally realized that making exercise dependent on a class schedule was an unnecessary source of friction. Pilates is one of the few things I have done consistently for years, so having a reformer at home means I can fit in 30 or 40 minutes even on a day full of calls. It was expensive and takes up an absurd amount of space, but I use it constantly.
What NYC store or service do you love to recommend?
Facials at Aida Bicaj in Tribeca. I’ve tried treatments in many places around the world, but this is the only place I trust for deeper, more intensive facials. They’re extremely knowledgeable, never overly aggressive, and tailor every treatment to what my skin actually needs rather than following a standard routine. I also buy essentially all of my skincare from them.