Category

NYC

  • Perry Street

    Perry Street

    If you leave a restaurant happy, does it matter if the meal itself was anything but perfect? Yesterday I had this very experience at Perry Street, Jean-George’s oft-ignored Greenwich Village outpost where savvy diners can enjoy a three-course lunch for $24. I’d been meaning to try Perry Street for a long time–ever since it opened–but…

  • Seasonal is the New Pink (An Essay with Visits to BLT Market, Park Avenue Summer and Blue Hill Stone Barns)

    Can you imagine going to a restaurant 10 or 15 years ago, sitting down at the table, glancing at the wine list and enjoying the surroundings, only to have the server set down a plate–no, not a plate, a wooden box–with spikes jutting out and on the top of each spike a tiny tomato? That’s…

  • A Queens Odyssey: Lunch at S’Agapo with The Daily News

    A Queens Odyssey: Lunch at S’Agapo with The Daily News

    A few weeks ago, when the new design arrived to my site, I received a comment from a reader named Eric who couldn’t believe, when perusing my new Restaurant Reviews section that I hadn’t yet been to Queens. Eager to remedy this, I wrote him an e-mail and asked him where I should go. He…

  • Brunch at Flatbush Farm

    Brunch at Flatbush Farm

    Brunch, more than any other meal, celebrates abundance. We don’t want one pancake when we go to brunch, we want a stack of glistening, syrup-coated chocolate-stuffed pancakes. Yet one pancake–a solitary, singular pancake–is one of the peculiarities you’ll find on the brunch menu at Flatbush Farm, a lovely neighborhood gastropub in Park Slope.

  • Feeling Grand on Grand Street at Pho Grand

    Feeling Grand on Grand Street at Pho Grand

    I finally did it. I’ve lived in Park Slope for 10 months now and every time I take the D train into the city I promise myself that one day, when it stops on Grand Street, I will get out and eat lunch. You’d thing that a food obsessed person like me would’ve done that…

  • Why Annisa Should Have Three Stars

    Why Annisa Should Have Three Stars

    Earlier this year, Keith McNally–owner of Balthazar, Pastis and the newly opened Morandi–wrote an open letter to New York Times food critic Frank Bruni accusing him of sexism. McNally wrote: “Bruni has never given a female chef in Manhattan anything more than one star, ever….On the two momentous occasions that Bruni saw fit to hand…

  • My Lunch at the Condé Nast Cafeteria

    My Lunch at the Condé Nast Cafeteria

    Psssst… don’t tell anyone, but I’m about to sneak you into the Condé Nast cafeteria. That’s right. This is where Anna Wintour (you know, Meryl Streep’s character in “The Devil Wears Prada”) goes to eat, alongside the fine people from Gourmet, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and so on. People are fascinated with the place-they’re…

  • A Tale of Two Burgers: The Corner Bistro & Prune

    A Tale of Two Burgers: The Corner Bistro & Prune

    Clotilde just completed her book tour (I love the video of her giving a talk at Google) and I am honored to say that Craig and I were co-Chairmen of the Official Welcoming Committee, ushering Mme. Clotilde to her first American nosh-spot on a tour that would take her through Boston, Chicago, Seattle, and San…

  • Get Saved at Di Fara

    Get Saved at Di Fara

    When people talk about food in religious terms, I often feel like a documentary filmmaker interviewing a member of a cult. Their eyes bug out of their heads, their hands gesticulate wildly: “I saw the face of God in the Pearl Oyster Bar lobster roll.” Granted, I’ve been guilty of the same thing. I get…

  • Stand Makes Me Stand In The Place Where I Am

    Stand Makes Me Stand In The Place Where I Am

    Have you ever had a truly forgettable meal? A meal that makes you scratch your head when someone asks, “Have you eaten at X?” Well that’s how I feel about the meal I had a few weeks ago at Stand, the new burger place on… on… see, I’ve totally forgotten where it is. I think…