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White Truffle Festival at Sapori D’Ischia – Italian – Woodside
Sapori D’Ischia is so out in the middle of nowhere that when my boyfriend and I approached–after getting lost no less than twice–and I said, “I’m not sure this is the right place,” the owner, who happened to be standing outside, said, “Trust me; it’s the right place. There’s nothing else around here.” You always hear about people who haven’t been to one of the outer boroughs in ten years because they think everything worth seeing is in Manhattan. Well, I actually live in Brooklyn and get annoyed at the prospect of having to leave Manhattan, so if I’m telling you that it’s worth it to trek out to Sapori…
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What I Ate at the OC Fair
My boyfriend’s family has lived in places like Iran and Idaho and Ohio but thankfully settled in California, giving me an excuse to visit once a year for sunning, beaching, and stuffing my face with his mom’s fine Persian cuisine. This year, we happened to pass some signs advertising the Orange County Fair on one of our many drives between his parents’ house and In-N-Out and decided to go one night. We rode the skyride, just like my sister and I used to with our mom as kids at the Ohio State Fair, until the year she happened to accidentally kick off her flip-flop while we were still up in…
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BACON EXPLOSION!!
WARNING: If you don’t like appalling displays of meatiness, you’ll want to stop here. Otherwise, strap on your drooling bib and get ready to catch the drips. Profiled by The New York Times and reviled by lovers of heart health everywhere, the Bacon Explosion is one part bacon, one part sausage, and all parts belly-busting. My co-worker Adam has been talking about it basically since the day he started at our company years ago; in fact, he probably mentioned his desire to concoct one and bring it into the office to share in order to get hired. In the throngs of grilling season, he finally made good on his word…
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Skip the Sandwiches at Bouchon Bakery – Sweets – Midtown West
Bouchon Bakery is part of the Thomas Keller empire of restaurants you can’t afford. You think you can, because from the outside, it appears to be an innocuous bakery, twenty times more casual than Per Se and without the need to make reservations a month in advance. But as soon as you walk in the door of the Rockefeller Center location, you notice the display of peanut butter cups for $3 each. (And those are mini ones; the regular-sized cups are $5+.) The sandwiches are $9, the French macarons $3.25. What my boyfriend and I ordered was a little hit or miss depending on which one of us you ask.…
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Go to Big D’s Grub Truck for the Bulgogi, but Stay for the Dumplings
From the Vault: I went to Big D’s Grub Truck so long ago that it’s not really fair for me to rate it, but I also don’t want my meal to go unnoticed and forgotten. Here’s why Big D’s is great: 1) They actually come to the lower bowels of Manhattan, the Financial District, unlike so many of the trucks that hang out in Midtown or only come as far as Fulton Street. 2) Their truck is bright yellow, so I can spot it in the morning even while half-passed-out on the bus so I don’t go out in the cold later for no reason. 3) They serve tacos and…
- 4.5, great for dates, jeans-appropriate, lower east side, restaurant reviews, tapas, vegetarian-friendly
Order Everything at The Stanton Social – Tapas – Lower East Side
My friend Anthony and I were out taking photos in Chinatown one Thursday night, when we decided to consult good, ol’ Yelp for something good to eat. There were so many four- and five-star options in the Lower East Side that it was hard to choose, but the small plates and small prices of The Stanton Social appealed to us and our wannabe-struggling-artist sensibilities. Both the dining room downstairs and all of the tables upstairs were full, so we were ushered to the lounge area by the very friendliest Pennsylvania-born server ever to work in New York City. The long, low couches and tiny tables made a fine dining area…
- 5, columbus circle, french, great for dates, michelin-starred, restaurant reviews, vegetarian-friendly, wine-paired menu, worthwhile views
The Extended Tasting Menu at Per Se
Stepping through the sliding glass partitions to the left and right of Per Se‘s unmistakable and infamously nonfunctioning blue door should be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for a country gal like me, but I’m fortunate to have a boyfriend with an insatiable appetite for tasting menus (okay, okay, it’s not just him with the appetite). So when I was finally able to make a reservation for my birthday (after an hour and a half of nonstop calling and then holding), he started tossing around the idea of the extended tasting. He’d read that it was a couple hundred dollars more for a number of extra courses, and since we’d also heard…
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Three Michelin Stars for EMP and Brooklyn Fare
According to The New York Times, my good friends at Eleven Madison Park are about to get themselves three Michelin stars, up from one in last year’s guide. This means NYC is about to have seven restaurants with three Michelin stars: Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare Daniel Eleven Madison Park Jean Georges Le Bernardin Masa Per Se Crazy, right? What a wonderful time to live here. Although that means the Brooklyn Fare reservation my boyfriend and I failed to get when we tried once earlier this year is going to be even harder to come by now. one of the super-fine amuse bouches at EMP If you’re interested in my…
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Alta – Tapas – West Village
My boyfriend and I started going to Alta well before this food blog existed. We went there before we even knew about the Le Bernardins and the Jean-Georges of the city, before things like ratings and Michelin stars mattered to us, and well before I’d even consider eating seafood. It feels homey to me. Now that I’m a fish-consuming machine, we decided to go back last weekend to see what we’d been missing out on. It’s giant menu full of small plates, and every one sounds delicious in its own way. (Which is why I really should’ve tried harder to talk Dr. Boyfriend into trying the Whole Shebang: $310 for…
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Foodblog Soapbox
I love this article by food writer Josh Ozersky, which I read over at EaterNY, entitled “Attn: New York Times: How to Redeem Restaurant Criticism”: Food writing can be tough, but it’s a breeze next to restaurant reviewing. How many ways are there to say something is delicious? And how many ways can you say a steak is tender or tough? Critics don’t want to strive over such tedious tasks; they’d rather speak to the spirit of the age, make funny asides about the crowd, and position themselves as social observers with a keen and far-seeing eye. That’s why over the past few years many have used their columns to…
Reviews of the Best Restaurants in NYC
