Food Adventuring Around NYC
Many consider the best part of Thanksgiving to be the side dishes, which is why I don’t understand why they are often as boring and bland as the turkey itself. Creamed green beans? Gelatinous cranberries? If only we turn to the dips of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cuisine for our Thanksgivings, Novembers would be a …
I hope Ras Plant Based succeeds on Bleecker Street, but I am cynical. It seems to me that this block of Bleecker between Sixth Avenue and LaGuardia is one of the most difficult streets to keep a small food business going. I can’t tell you how much turnover I have seen in the years that …
I’ve been trying to eat at Sofreh for years now. Every time we have plans to go to Barclays Center or BAM, it’s the first place I try to score a reservation. Somehow it’s nearly impossible to get into this hot Persian restaurant – even after it’s been open for 5 years. Thankfully, it got …
We brought our son to Coney Island for the first time this summer and I knew ice cream had to be part of the experience. You can’t be on the boardwalk in the summer without a cone in your hand. The last time I was out here, the ice cream options were not great. I …
Trying to find some really good food on Coney Island is tough. You’re mostly here for the kitsch and crappy fast food. I somehow managed to track down some decent tacos and ice cream recently, but more often than not, you’re going to want to eat at Nathan’s. If you’re a first timer to Coney …
I have been doing this food blog thing for a long time. I remember first visiting Roberta’s when it was still an under-the-radar pizza restaurant in an up-and-coming Brooklyn neighborhood. Now anybody who knows anything about the New York food world, knows about Roberta’s. In many ways, Roberta’s has peaked and cooled down when it …
My search for the best beer in New York continues…. At first this Five Boroughs beer caught my eye because of the design and then the name (which sort of hinted at a very strange combination), and then finally the low ABV. I love big IPA’s, but in my older age, I can’t drink too …
So I’ll admit up front that not every perfect variable was in place for my critique of Ogliastro Pizza Bar. I was dining with my gluten-free wife and my seven-year old son. So the pizzas may have been ordered slightly different than I would have if I was dining alone. We stopped by after a …
Am I in a bagel shop or an ice cream shop? That is the question that came up recently at Bagel Pub. It smells and feels like bagels and at the end of the day, I’ll be walking out with a breakfast or lunch sandwich and not a cone. But the colorful display of cream …
Celtuce is not a vegetable we encounter terribly often in this country, but that is our loss. I first encountered it on the menu of a hip restaurant I worked at that lasted about a minute before it closed down (not because of the celtuce dish). It’s entered my culinary world a few times since, …
For Cinco De Mayo this past weekend, I was very excited to try the newest taqueria in Williamsburg. Authentic tacos are all the rage in Brooklyn, especially in this neighborhood, so I was expecting a huge line down the block as is often the case with these hot new openings. The rain must have kept …
Surprise food stands are the best. We were visiting the Brooklyn Botanical Garden this weekend for our annual cherry blossom peeping. My son demanded a treat from a Mr. Softee truck and I got lucky by catching this new “summer house” during their soft opening. Aunts et Uncles is a Caribbean plant based café in …
Gertrude’s is the latest Brooklyn-centric restaurant with a focus on classic New York Jewish food. Of course, here it’s upgraded and refined so the prices are far from what you would have seen in the “good old days”. But I’ve more than accepted that that is the case nowadays and I understand why. Since Gertrude’s …
Smash burgers, which have infiltrated their way throughout every neighborhood of NYC, are good and all but they get a bit boring. A crisped peppery flattened patty usually topped with American cheese, onions, and pickles. And probably on a potato bun or something similar. Yes, without a doubt, simple, nostalgic, and tasty when done right. …
Perhaps the New York hot dog is going the way of the pizza and gaining influence from out west. New Yorkers know Detroit-style pizza is as ubiquitous now (if not more so) as coal oven pies and it seems like most of the new hot dog places are ignoring the sauerkraut for a drag through …
You’d think Williamsburg was a town in Texas with all the new breakfast burrito options. The latest I tried comes from a cute little bakery near the Williamsburg bridge run by a husband-and-wife team who touch on both their Vietnamese and Dominican heritages at Ceremonia Bakeshop. The pastries here, especially the mochi donuts, looked great, …
Is it me or has the “craft beer” scene sort of cooled off? I am sadly not as plugged into it as I once was, despite still following it somewhat, especially in New York. And while there were quite a few brewery openings over the last decade (I remember when there were only four in …
It’s hard not to order dan dan noodles or mapo tofu when visiting a Szechuan restaurant. Those are two familiar dishes that almost always hit home, but I have had them so many times and menus at restaurants like this are often pages long. I came to Shan, a welcome addition to Cobble Hill, during …
You may disagree with me, but I think a destination bakery is pretty rare nowadays in New York. Expert bakers with great pastries and sourdough loaves are seemingly everywhere. You don’t have to go far to find well-made croissants and cinnamon buns. Radio Bakery, however, which has been getting a ridiculous amount of hype in …
Oma Grassa is a moody romantic pizza restaurant, in the vein of Lucali or Una Pizza Napoletana, although with a much shorter wait than either of those two. Not too far from the Barclays Center or Brooklyn Academy of Music, this is a good choice for a neighborhood spot for dinner before or after an …