Food Adventuring Around NYC
Brian Hoffman is a classically trained actor who is now a full-time tour guide, blogger, and food obsessive. He leads food and drink tours around New York City, which not only introduce tour-goers to delicious food, but gives them a historical context. He has written food articles for Gothamist and Midtown Lunch in addition to overseeing this blog and a few food video series, including Eat This, Locals Know, and Around the World in One City. His latest series is an international cooking show with his son which can be found on this site.
SADLY, LAST LICKS IS NOW CLOSED. I don’t know why baseball and ice cream go so well together, but it’s true. Maybe it’s because the magic of the All American sport and the sweet creaminess of rocky road are both the object of many young boys’ affections. But ice cream crosses gender lines, so shouldn’t we …
I am so close to completing this list that any little screw-up or mishap makes me really nervous. Before we went to Motorino, the hip, over-hyped pizza shop, I checked their menus online. Time Out said that the Octopus Conserva was only available at the East Village location. However, upon inspection, I learned that the …
What the hell is an aloo and why would I want to eat its balls? That was sort of my running joke with this list item. Aloo actually translates to potato and I was more than relieved to discover there were not animal parts involved. You never know with these little spots out in Queens. …
SADLY, RONNYBROOK MILK BAR IS NOW CLOSED. Upstate in the Hudson Valley at Ronnybrook Farm, cows are milked and raised the old-fashioned way. No hormones, no homogenization, no pesticides. In other words, it’s all so organic that it makes organic labeled products look positively processed. The only thing that is not eco-friendly is the commute you …
I’m getting a little bored with all the new restaurants in Brooklyn. They’re all either homey, romantic settings serving modern takes on Southern-influenced comfort food. Or they feature a menu of pub fare in an old fashioned wood-heavy locale designed to be a throwback to an era of New York’s colorful past. Of course I’m …
SADLY, SAMMY’S ROUMANIAN STEAK HOUSE IS NOW CLOSED. Oy vey! Chopped liver! I’ve never been a fan of liver. I remember (as every good Jewish boy does) growing up having chopped liver out on the table with the veggies and potato chips at a family gathering. Now ours was most likely store bought (sorry Mom!) and …
There was a time, not that long ago, that I had a dream of opening my own ice cream shop. I went to ice cream school for a weekend at Penn State. I would spend many hours at work just writing down concepts and flavor ideas. I even went so far as to think about …
If you’re ordering a corned beef and pastrami sandwich, you better be prepared for some fat. No matter how hard you try to only eat half a sandwich or order the meat extra lean (and I try both), you’re bound to clog an artery or two. It’s just part of the game. But now, I’d …
I almost hit another road block when I went to get the Number 7 dish on TONY’s Top 10 list. I have been to Ramen Setagaya on First Avenue a number of times and enjoyed their cheap, warming ramen. I know a few other locations have opened up around the Village, but I’ve remained true …
The most incredulous food fad in New York is the overpricing of simple, classic dishes. By adding lobster to omelettes, caviar to pizza, or gold leafs to ice cream sundaes, you get a very expensive gimmicky dish that becomes the most talked about thing on your menu, but probably the least ordered. The fact that …
These are a far cry from the cakes we’re used to in this country. I could not imagine sticking a candle in and presenting this to anybody as a birthday offering. They’d have to really like root vegetables. Taro is a root vegetable that most people in this country know only from healthy chips. They’re …
Some dishes are conversation pieces more than culinary masterpieces. I have a feeling that’s why The Bomb sandwich made it onto TONY’s Top 100 list. Because besides the ginormity and novelty of making a sandwich like The Bomb, there’s not much else to talk about. But I’ll manage to talk about it. The Bomb is …
New York is known for its small spaces. For lots and lots of money, you can get a tiny cupboard of an apartment. And if you have ingenuity and some design talent, you can figure out a way to squeeze out as much space as possible. That’s how skyscrapers eventually grew in this city. We …
As I waited in the 90 minute line at Shake Shack, I realized this is not the first time I’ve done something crazy like this and it probably won’t be the last. Unlike anywhere else I’ve been (except maybe Disney World), New Yorkers will wait in line for almost anything. Especially if it’s free or …
Fortunately, my parents never kept kosher. So growing up, I was allowed to indulge in things like cheeseburgers and baby back ribs. But when I’d travel somewhere with my Jewish youth group or spend the summer at sleepaway camp, I had no choice but to keep kosher for the duration of the trip. As much …
SADLY, ROBATAYA NY IS NOW CLOSED. I’ve been to izakayas, habachis, sushi bars, ramen noodle shops, shabu shabu restaurants, and the Japanese Pavilion at EPCOT. I love Japanese food. And it’s amazing to me how many different options there are within one cusine. The owners of Sakagura, one of my favorite gourmet izakayas (a Japanese gastropub) in …
Pastrami, as we know it, is made from beef. But it wasn’t always that way. In Romania, the first pastramis were probably made from some sort of fowl, like duck or chicken. And at Barney Greengrass on the Upper West Side, they make a special salmon pastrami. Pastrami really refers to a meat that’s been …
There are words, such as fish, furniture, and moose, that are both the singular and plural form of the root noun. You observe a school of fish, move all the furniture, and run from a stampede of moose. Why has this turned into a grammar blog all of a sudden? Because my next list item …
There haven’t been too many surprises on my corned beef/pastrami journey. The popular spots have pretty much been the best and the ones that don’t get as much love, aren’t quite as good. But way up in the suburban Jewish community of Riverdale, in the Bronx, I found a deli far from the crowds at Carnegie …
Episode two is finally here: Brian is forced to choose between the affections of two girls during his search for the best corned beef/pastrami in NYC.