Food Adventuring Around NYC
SADLY, THE BROOKLYN STAR IS NOW CLOSED. My heart dropped tonight. We got to The Brooklyn Star in Williamsburg to order the roasted maple-crust chicken. It sounded delicious and I had checked their website to make sure they had it on the menu. The restaurant was hidden on a quiet, unassuming street. It was rather small …
Yellow pickled eggs do not sound like a terribly appetizing conquest. But if it’s on the list, I’m gonna eat it. And so this brings me to The Vanderbilt in Prospect Heights. The Vanderbilt is not inside a hotel, but rather on Vanderbilt Avenue. It was a bitterly cold night and the bar/restaurant was pretty …
Some might call it cheating, but I call it strategy. I didn’t actually purchase this list item at Mast Brothers Chocolate Factory in Williamsburg, but rather at Bklyn Larder, where I picked up the pickled cauliflower. Now just to set the record straight, I did go to Mast Brothers a few weeks earlier and they …
SADLY, SINGAS PIZZA IS NOW CLOSED. When I walk into a restaurant and it smells like Subway (the sandwich shop – not the transit system), the only menu appears in a big bright marquee above, and the cashier gives me a number when I order, I expect the food to be fast food. And I think …
I went in to the very homey cheese and snack shop Bklyn Larder a few weeks ago in search of another list item: pickled cauliflower. The girl told me that the cauliflower was in the process of being pickled, but they had pickled carrots which I was assured tasted the same as the cauliflower since …
We had an amazing time at Oceana, the recently relocated seafood palace close to the Theater District on 49th Street. We sat at the bar and the staff was incredibly accommodating and friendly. The seafood was all fresh and pretty inventive. I especially enjoyed a sausage stuffed seafood dish, where the chef ingeniously used a …
SADLY, VELOCE PIZZERIA IS NOW CLOSED. Comfort foods are dishes that bring us back to our childhood and make us feel safe and warm. And usually have at least 500-1000 calories per serving. Macaroni and cheese, meat loaf, and middle school sloppy joes are all examples of comfort food. And just for kicks, let’s add pizza …
I went out to the very diverse and colorful Jackson Heights to track down one of the list items with the hopes of having a fun food adventure in Queens. Well, it turned out to be more adventurous than I had anticipated. Now, as usual, I had a limited time frame since I had to …
SADLY, ALDEA IS NOW CLOSED. Aldea es un nuevo restaurante fantastíco! El arroz de pato es absolutamente delicioso y creo que todo el mundo debería probarlo. Sólo desean que sus tamaños de las porciones fueron un poco más grande, pero George Mendes es un gran cocino. Aldea is a great new restaurant and if you …
SADLY, ALDEA IS NOW CLOSED. It’s fun to notice and follow food trends in New York City. And nowhere are the trends more noticeable than on Time Out’s Top 100 list. For instance, there are three fried chicken dishes, four egg dishes, and four items that contain sea urchin. I have already mentioned my very …
SADLY, SALVATORE OF SOHO IS NOW CLOSED. One of the newer pizzerias that gets talked about a lot in the press lately is Salvatore of Soho. Look as hard as you’d like in that fancy neighborhood downtown among boutique clothing stores and high end restaurants. But you won’t find this pizzeria on Prince or Spring Street or …
Back in 2000, Sasha Petraske opened up a very unusual bar. It was called Milk & Honey and in order to go there for drinks, you had to have a secret phone number, make a last minute reservation, then have the inside scoop to know exactly where the unmarked door is in the Lower East …
Well, here’s a special occasion where I can check another item off my list AND continue my search for NY’s best pizza. I was eventually going to make my way out to Salvatore of Soho in Staten Island to try their coal-oven style pizza, but after the clam pie appeared on the list, it happened …
Raw Shrimp? Seriously? Even in sushi restaurants, shrimp is generally served cooked and chilled. I had it served to me raw once in a sushi restaurant in midtown and since every other dish had been fresh, I closed my nose and ate the damn thing. So here I was faced with the problem once again. …
SADLY, MAYAHUEL IS NOW CLOSED. Tequila is one of those spirits I’ve been trying to get into lately. Besides margaritas, when I think of tequila, I think of one too many body shots at a college party. But I enjoy tasting my liquor rather than trying to get it down as fast as possible. So the …
I love New York! Where else can you find an entire bar or restaurant dedicated to a specific dish? Sure, we’ve all heard of pizzerias and taquerias but how often do you come across a cevicheria? Desnuda is a narrow bar in the East Village specializing in the citrus-marinated seafood dish. The only food this …
SADLY, KYO YA IS NOW CLOSED. I officially fell in love with Kyo Ya. It’s more refined than the izakayas (Japanese pubs that serve traditional bar food), but much more approachable and interesting than the big expensive Japanese restaurants (Megu and Nobu, I’m talking to you guys!) The second Kyo Ya dish on the list is …
SADLY, KYO YA IS NOW CLOSED. Let me just say up front that I love Japanese food. Which is weird because the one really bad food experience I remember from childhood was eating at the casual Japan restaurant at EPCOT. There was some brewed flavor (soy perhaps?) in their soup that really turned me off to …
I thought for New Year’s Eve I’d try to get as many of the drinks on my list as possible. And if I got wasted, it was all for a good cause. Well, I made it to a number of restaurants and had many drinks, but only two cocktails from the list were conquered that …
SADLY, NUNZIO’S IS NOW CLOSED. There are so many pizzerias in this city and there’s just no way I can get to them all. Unless I plan on eating nothing but pizza for the next few years. And as tempting as that sounds, I’ve got other plans. But I can hit up all five boroughs and …
