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1. It must be dark, like you’re underground. The consumption of red meat is such a primal, bodily act that darkness–like darkness in the bedroom–opens one up to experience pleasure with reckless abandon. 2. There must be a piano player with a bad toupee singing Neil Diamond songs or a cheesy duo of guitar player…

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…

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…

Some people are haunted by ghosts, others are haunted by a sense of meaninglessness in a vast, expanding universe; but me? I’m haunted by food. Restaurant dishes, dishes I make I home: it doesn’t matter. I crave them, I want them. Lately, I’ve been haunted by a dish I ate two weeks ago with my…

Nick Calzada is Craig’s film school friend who lives in Miami. Anytime we go to Florida, Craig says: “Let’s go visit my friend Nick in Miami” and inevitably we never have the time. This trip, though, we made a point to schedule a day with Nick; not only to hang out (he and Craig had…

The bagel you see in the picture above is the result of Twitter. To wit: I announced on my Twitter feed that I was in Boca Raton for Thanksgiving (that’s where my family lives) and Shuna of eggbeater responded: “You’re in Boca?! Will you make a stop at Way Beyond Bagels? Have an egg onion…

On October 3rd, 2003, I shared my very first piece of food writing ever on a forum called eGullet. The post was called Charlie Trotter Superdud and it set off a storm of comments from hundreds of subscribers, some of whom were well known entities in the food world (Anthony Bourdain among them.) After that…

If Gourmet Magazine ever invites you to a party–and I’m still not convinced Gourmet Magazine’s ever invited ME to a party, they must think I’m someone else–three words of advice: go go go! First comes the fancy cardboard invitation in an envelope with erotic Chinese drawings; then there’s the event itself at the new Lower…

It’s a nice thought: eating Sunday brunch in Central Park’s boathouse, overlooking a peaceful lake, watching the yellow and red leaves fall from the soon-to-be-naked branches. Certainly, it’s not an original idea; certainly, lots of tourists will be there. But can’t it still be enjoyable? How crazy can it get?