Travel

We all have a list, somewhere in our brains, of things we mean to do–of places we want to eat, things we want to cook, people we want to kill. Sometimes we forget what’s on those lists so that when mom calls and says, “I’m coming to New York with dad for that cruise we…

You may smack me in the head and say “stop repeating yourself!” when I tell you my favorite place in New York to go a’wandering for dinner is the West Village. Specifically: Bleecker and Carmine. But you know that. I won’t bore you. So the other night we were a’wandering on Bleecker and we turned…

Going to see “Proof” the other night on 17th and Broadway, my companion and I were in the Tom Collichio district: Craft, Craftbar, the former home of ‘Wichcraft.* [*Hey! You know how I’m also raving about how much I love ‘Wichcraft? Well it’s not there anymore. Sure it’s in Bryant Park and somewhere else but…

[restaurant review as IM chat] Me: What do you think of eli zabar James Felder: Zabar was never my thing. I used to go to EAT as a kid, and even being a spoiled rich kid, I thought back then “This is ridiculously overpriced” Zabar’s is a West Side Jew thing. I think I’ve been…

I almost forgot to mention that after the Indian meal and after the reading Patty and I went for coffee and dessert at The Brooklyn Diner. You know my parents really like The Brooklyn Diner: it’s on 57th Street and the food there is really good, I gotta say. Plus the service is really attentive,…

This weekend was The New Yorker festival. I had a fabulous time, especially last night when I went with my friend Ricky to see Rufus Wainwright and we totally became best friends with Rufus’s sister, Lucy. The Rufus Wainwright concert was the highlight for me (we had awesome seats right up front) and “The Art…

Lisa doesn’t love tapas. In various conversations, Lisa’s explained that when you eat tapas (small appetizer portions of food) you spend lots of money and you go away hungry. And so Tia Pol, the fairly new tapas bar on 10th avenue–part of the 10th ave. restaurant boom–didn’t seem like an obvious choice for dinner with…

If you live in New York or even if you don’t, you’ve probably seen an ad for La Grenouille. With its particular font and style, you see it in the back of Playbills at Broadway shows. You see it in The New Yorker and sometimes in the New York Times Magazine section. Such blatant commercialism…

Back in my Chowhounding days, before I lived in New York, I had a list on the back page of a moleskin notebook of places Chowhounders revered in the city. I actually still have that moleskin in my desk somewhere. The summer before I moved to New York, I stayed with Lisa and used that…

There was a time, not too long ago, when I’d have to beg my friends to eat with me at interesting restaurants–to not do the Olive Garden or whatever restaurants most people our age eat at and try something different, new, and maybe more expensive than they wanted to pay. There was a time when…