Food Adventuring Around NYC
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. …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
It used to be a tradition every year to go to a different BBQ restaurant for my birthday. For the first 5 or 6 years I lived in New York, I’d chow down on baby back ribs. I think the tradition started when I was growing up in Florida but I made sure to explore …
SADLY, RECIPE IS NOW CLOSED. I know I read an article a few months ago in New York Magazine where they listed a handful of tiresome food trends. But now I can’t seem to find the article in my back issues or online. Did I imagine it? One of the items I remember them listing (or …
SADLY, DBGB IS NOW CLOSED. It seemed to me that the name DBGB refers to the restaurant’s East Village location. It’s just down the street from where the Ramones and the Misfits cemented punk rock into the New York consciousness. Of course, that happened at CBGB, which unfortunately no longer exists on Bowery. But if you …
My mission, should I choose to accept it is to hunt down the strangely marked building on West 48th Street close to 11th Avenue (practically in New Jersey!), call the phone number I was given by a certain hour, and wait for somebody to emerge. If I do all these things correctly, I will be …
My favorite issues of Time Out each year are the 100 Best Food and Drink issue and the Cheap Issue. It’s clear that I’m both a foodie and a Jew (a Jew-die?) So when they write articles about cheap food in the city, I am in heaven. The lunch special at Yakitori Totto, the semi-hidden (it’s …