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.
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.
SADLY, FORT DEFIANCE IS NOW CLOSED. My second trip to Red Hook brought me back to Fort Defiance. I was here just a few days earlier for another Time Out list item, the Iced Coffee. But this time, it was time for dinner, so the deviled eggs were now available. There’s a very funny moment on …
Some folks like to get away, take a holiday from the neighborhood. When Billy Joel sings those lyrics, he’s implying that no vacation is as satisfying or comfortable as being in his home state. But New York State of Mind was written long before the gentrification of Red Hook. In the last few years, this …
Ask anybody who knows anything about New York food to name the 3 most popular Jewish delis in the city and you’ll probably get the same answers: Katz’s, Carnegie, and 2nd Avenue Deli. They’re like the kosher triumvirate. Over the years though, one spot has been trying to sneak its way into that coveted group. …
SADLY, FORT DEFIANCE IS NOW CLOSED. I might be the only person out there who doesn’t drink coffee. Seriously. If there are any other caffeine-free folks out there, let me know and we should start a support group. People look at me funny when I tell them I don’t drink the stuff. I just never got …