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Veselka in the East Village is a New York institution; NYU students stumble in there late at night to sober up. During the day, it’s an eclectic mix of East Village hipsters and older Eastern Europeans. I first went with my graduate class at NYU and stuck to standard diner fare–a burger, a salad, something…

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I don’t want to call myself a muse–that’d be overstating my case–but for a year I lived with my friend Diana, a fellow graduate of dramatic writing school who spent her time there studying screenwriting even though, from day one, I thought she was a world class playwright. “You should write plays!” I would constantly…

I swore off restaurant reviewing a while back, and yet I really like talking about restaurant experiences. Unfortunately, a singular experience can somehow morph into what seems like a review and that’s not my intention. With that in mind, here are simple facts about a meal I had last week with Craig and my friend…

The West 4th stop of the D train has two exits: one on Waverly Street and one on the actual West 4th, in front of the IFC movie theater. These two exits, for me, mark two very different moods, two very different frames of mind. To exit on Waverly is an act of self-denial, a…

Do you have a favorite restaurant where you go again and again and always order the same things? We do. That restaurant is Grand Sichuan on St. Mark’s and I can’t believe I’ve never written about it. Our meal always begins with the dish you see above: pork soup dumplings. “Can’t we try something else?”…

I once read that to be a successful blogger, you have to be nimble. So yesterday, while reading The New York Times Dining section $25 & Under column about Rhong-Tiam in the West Village, I was struck by Julia Moskin’s claim that it’s “one of the best Thai places in Manhattan.” And I thought: hey,…

On family trips to EPCOT, as a young lass*, I would insist that my parents visit the countries alone and let me and my brother spend our valuable time in Future World. The countries, I thought, were boring: who wants to shop around England and France, when you can ride up the giant globe with…

A few weeks ago, when I went to visit my family in Florida, I re-read Frank Bruni’s Top 10 Restaurants Outside of New York and excitedly told my parents that one of those restaurants was right near us in Miami. That place, Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink, was, unfortunately, booked for that whole weekend (I…

The original title of this post was: “The Best Pulled Pork Sandwich In New York is at The Gramercy Tavern” but I didn’t want to give it all away in the title; so now I just gave it all away in the first sentence. Yes, that picture you see above is the pulled pork sandwich…

Two weeks ago, I was invited to dinner at the James Beard House. My date was The Wednesday Chef, Luisa Weiss, and the meal was a Chilean feast prepared by Chilean chef Pilar Rodriguez.