Category

restaurants

  • Tartufo at Lupa

    Tartufo at Lupa

    The Brown Bonnet from Carvel Ice Cream was a staple of my childhood. It’s hard to believe it now, but our family would ride our bikes together to the Carvel on Long Beach Road in Oceanside, Long Island, where I grew up. We’d dismount, mosey inside and place our orders and my parents’ orders were…

  • Cafe Gitane at The Jane Hotel

    Cafe Gitane at The Jane Hotel

    If you want to know the best thing about Cafe Gitane in The Jane Hotel, you’re looking at it. It’s an utterly charming space; big, bright, airy. There’s even an alligator on the wall. When Craig’s Uncle Chris, Aunt Liz and Cousin Katie came through New York a few weeks ago, they wanted to take…

  • My Favorite Restaurant Meals of 2009

    My Favorite Restaurant Meals of 2009

    This was the year of El Bulli, the year of Barcelona, the year of Austin, Texas and San Juan, Puerto Rico. In other words: this year was a pretty extraordinary eating year for yours truly, The A.G., maybe my best eating year on record. I’ve gone through my archives and studied all the restaurant meals…

  • American Italian vs. Italian Italian (Carmine’s & Sfoglia)

    American Italian vs. Italian Italian (Carmine’s & Sfoglia)

    My dad and I often have a debate about food. It usually begins when my dad says, “This restaurant sucks.” You see, my dad likes food that is familiar and when it comes to food that’s familiar he loves Italian food. But a very specific kind of Italian food: he loves American Italian food.

  • Brunch at Irving Mill

    Brunch at Irving Mill

    I love brunch but I’m always a bit perplexed when I arrive at a celebrated brunch spot–Prune, for example–and see crowds of people huddled outside, waiting desperately for eggs and pancakes and coffee, foods they can easily and much more cheaply prepare at home. Don’t get me wrong: a place like Prune can dazzle you…

  • Cacciucco at The Union Square Cafe

    Cacciucco at The Union Square Cafe

    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…

  • My Top 10 Restaurant Dishes of 2008

    My Top 10 Restaurant Dishes of 2008

    There are 15 days to go in 2008, so there’s definitely a chance I’m being too hasty with this list of my favorite restaurant dishes of 2008. But reading through my archives, these were the dishes that popped out immediately, that triggered specific synapses in my brain to fire darts into my salivary glands, making…

  • The Ultimate Reservation

    For the past four years, every since I knew about it, really, I’ve been e-mailing El Bulli–frequently cited as the best restaurant in the world–for a reservation. And almost like clockwork, I get an e-mail back a few months later stating that because of intense demand (800,000 people applying for 8,000 possible reservations, according to…

  • Perbacco, Scarpetta, & Dirt Candy

    Somehow, in the past two weeks, I’ve eaten at three new and relevant New York restaurants. Instead of typing up three separate restaurant posts, I decided to make a video summarizing all three meals. The only thing I think I got wrong is the price of the spaghetti and tomato sauce at Scarpetta; it’s $24,…

  • Madhouse in a Boathouse

    Madhouse in a Boathouse

    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?