NYC

You may recall that last week my parents sent me a gift certificate for Williams Sonoma in celebration of my 27th birthday. I decided to parlay this gift certifiate at the Time Warner Center location since the one in Chelsea isn’t as lavish and I wanted the full lavish Williams Sonoma experience. On departing for…

Sometimes you eat gourmet pizza because you’re in the mood for gourmet pizza. Other times you eat gourmet pizza because you’ve gotten student tickets for Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful,” it’s 6:30 PM and freezing outside, and the restaurant closest to the theater is too expensive for you and your companions. That restaurant would…

I had a song for you Thursday night. It was in response to a meal Lauren and I ate at Craftbar: Specifically, it was in response to my first course: Sweetbreads. The song started like this: “When a person’s mostly meat-fed they can’t avoid a sweetbread but from sweetbreads I obstain. Yet if I were…

Context matters. You can eat the best food ever made, but if you’re eating it in bicycle shorts surrounded by mimes playing Kenny G music on kazoos it probably won’t rock your world. That’s because the trappings that surround a dining experience often play a bigger role than you’re willing to acknowledge. Take, for example,…

Patty and I haven’t seen each other in ages. We made a lunch date for Thursday and Diana tagged along. They were going to see a movie at the Sunshine that started at 3 and they asked me to suggest a restaurant close by. At first I was going to push Fatty Crab, but that…

When I think vegetarian, I think my friend Lisa. Our debates about vegetarianism have gone on for the entirety of our seven year friendship. You can meet her on Saturday if you come to our 2nd year anniversary party and she’ll espouse the benefits of a meat-free existence as I mock her over her shoulder.…

For those who missed high school, the history of Rome began when three brothers–Romulus, Remus, and Mario Batali–were raised by a wolf who promised one child the mightiest city in the world, the other a future restaurant empire and the last certain death. We know it’s not called Reme, so Remus died. Romulus built his…

“What is an empanada?” This question lingered over Lisa and I like a thought bubble in a New Yorker cartoon. “I think it’s like a doughy packet,” I said. “Stuffed with stuff.” “Like an eggroll?” Lisa queried. “Yes, sort of like an eggroll.” This was the talk on the way to Empanada Mama, just a…