• The Radicchio Salad at Franny’s

    The Radicchio Salad at Franny’s

    We all get hammered over the head so often about fresh ingredients and using the best ingredients (“Use a really good olive oil,” says The Barefoot Contessa; “I make my own toothpaste,” says Alice Waters) that sometimes it’s easy to dismiss it all as snobby nonsense. Then you go to Franny’s, which is quickly becoming…

  • February = Onions

    Popping into Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks in the West Village is a dangerous proposition: Bonnie is so likable and easy to talk to and the store is so charming and packed with fascinating vintage cookbooks, you can’t leave without buying something. In fact, I have a souvenir from every visit I’ve made to Bonnie’s: there’s Claudia…

  • Roasted Shrimp & Broccoli

    Roasted Shrimp & Broccoli

    Remember that broccoli post I posted a few months ago? The Best Broccoli of Your Life? It kind of took the world–or, rather, the web–by storm. To prove it, do a Google search for “best broccoli recipe” and marvel at the #1 result. If Google says it’s the best broccoli recipe, then it has to…

  • Chickpea Salad

    Cheap and easy: that’s my new motto (and reputation), especially at lunch. Yes–times are hard, even for your friendly Amateur Gourmet. “But you just went to Momofuku Ko,” you might say and I’d say back, “Yes, and wiped myself clean!” Especially now that I’ve done my taxes: to quote my rabbi, “Oy!” No more lunches…

  • Server Switch

    You know how sometimes you go to high school and you’re the world’s biggest nerd and you only have three people to sit with and you still drink juice out of a juice box? But then in 4th period English class you say something really funny and the cool kids ask you to sit with…

  • Patty Eats Thailand

    Patty Eats Thailand

    [Note: My friend Patty is awesome. She’s so awesome that I won’t let her go to Thailand without writing a guest post, so here it is! Thanks Patty. Oh, and check out her website: PatriciaJang.com.] After consuming untold amounts of green papaya salad, pad thai, and red curry at our local Thai restaurant haunts, Lauren…

  • Candy Heart Banner

    A round of applause, please, to my followers on Twitter who wrote most of the text for the candy hearts in this month’s banner–brilliantly illustrated, as usual, by Lindy. (Can’t see the banner? Clear your cache and re-load the site.) A special shout-out to my friend Katy who contributed THOUSANDS of ideas and to Amanda…

  • The Books in the Bathroom at Momofuku Ko

    Back in May, when Robyn Lee wrote on Serious Eats about the books in the bathroom at Momofuku Ko, the picture she shared showed just a stack of vintage cookbooks (“African Cooking,” “The Cooking of Italy,” “The Cooking of Japan”) and a few fancier books–Michael Bras’s “Essential Cuisine,” Roger Verge’s “Vegetables in the French Style”…

  • Momofuku Ko

    Momofuku Ko

    If you live in New York and you’re a food blogger who writes about restaurants, it’s inevitable that, at some point, you must visit and write about Momofuku Ko, David Chang’s most celebrated and impossible-to-get-into restaurant. So many food bloggers, in fact, have visited Ko–among them, The Wandering Eater, Food in Mouth, The Girl Who…

  • True Adolescents To Premiere at SXSW

    Many of you know that my boyfriend Craig (whose birthday is today) is a film director who wrote and directed his first feature, True Adolescents, two summers ago in the Pacific Northwest. Now–at last!–the movie is having its premiere: it was announced today that Craig’s movie is one of only 7 movies (out of 750…