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La Bossue, Paris
Of course we needed some treats after our pizza lunch, so we stopped in @labossueparis looking for a Paris-Brest pastry, but we had to settle for all of these canelés and financiers. ?
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Il Brigante Pizza, Paris
I'm a really bad tourist and always want to eat pizza wherever I am in the world, so during our day in the neighborhood of Montmartre in Paris, I found a pizzeria called Il Brigante, run by an Italian transplant. We walked in and nicely asked him if he spoke English (in French, of course). He said no. And then he started to tell us in French that he spoke French, Italian, Spanish, German . . . I WISH we would've asked him if he speaks Polish, since Jack does, but we just smiled, because everyone in France had been so nice to us, and we couldn't tell if he…
- flatiron, good for groups, great for dates, italian, jeans-appropriate, restaurant reviews, tasting menu
Mamma Guidara’s at The NoMad Bar
If you’ve ever thought, “Boy, I sure love Eleven Madison Park, but wouldn’t it be great if the chef instead used his immense skills to make me a chicken parm?”, Mamma Guidara’s is for you. It’s Chef Daniel Humm’s take on classic red sauce dishes, named in loving honor of his co-owner, Will Guidara’s, mom. On Sunday nights, the NoMad Bar transforms into one of those red-checkered-tablecloth joints from the 80s, and although the decor is a little chintzy (in the best way), the food is just what you’d expect from a three-Michelin-star chef. And it’s only $74 for four courses that seem more like eight or ten by the…
- american (new), food events, good for groups, jeans-appropriate, tasting menu, underground eats, west village
Chef David Santos’s Secret NYC Dinner Club, Um Segredo, at Good Stock
I’ve followed my favorite NYC chef from his West Village restaurant Louro to his taking-the-city-by-storm soup venture, Good Stock, but what made me first fall in love with Chef David Santos‘s cooking were his secret home supper clubs, which he called Um Segredo (“a secret” in Portuguese). Well, they’re back, and they’re not so secret anymore! In that they take place right out in the open at the Good Stock on Carmine Street. But the same secret feel is still there: just you and five others in the tiny store front, gathered around a table while Chef Santos cooks directly in front of you, offering insight about each of the…
- good for groups, great for dates, jeans-appropriate, michelin-starred, midtown east, restaurant reviews, scandinavian, tasting menu, vegetarian-friendly, wine-paired menu
The Tasting Menu at Agern
Had you asked me a week ago if I had any interest in Nordic cuisine, I would’ve given you something like a polite, “Sure, I’m interested in all cuisines!” And then, you know, gone back to eating my tacos. But if you’d prefaced that question by mentioning that the chef at Agern, the restaurant inside of Grand Central Terminal, has a restaurant in Iceland called Dill, I might have thought differently. I LOVE dill. And it doesn’t hurt that the owner of Agern is the same guy who helped found Noma in Denmark, which has been named the best restaurant in the world, oh, I don’t know, four times?
- good for groups, great for dates, michelin-starred, poland, polish, restaurant reviews, tasting menu, warsaw, wine-paired menu
The Tasting Menu at Senses – Warsaw, Poland
I’m not sure people think of creative fine dining when they think of Poland, so it’s not surprising that Warsaw’s Senses restaurant only has one Michelin star, even if that’s a crime. My boyfriend and his family are from the area originally, so he took me there last month to see where he grew up, and naturally, I checked the Michelin guide. There are only two Michelin-starred restaurants in the whole country, and one just received its star this year, so we decided to give the new kid a try. I emailed the restaurant for a reservation two weeks before our trip and was able to get us in at…
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Bowery Meat Company is Weirdly Worth the Money
Last year, I spent a week on a yacht touring some of the islands of Greece with my boyfriend and three of his friends. One of those friends was visiting NYC last week from Romania, so I wanted to take her someplace new and well-rated. A co-worker happened to mention Bowery Meat Company to me that very week, and not only had the New York Times given it two stars, but it had meat right in the name.
- cafe, cheap eats, jeans-appropriate, pure carbs, restaurant reviews, sweets, times square, vegetarian-friendly
Kellogg’s NYC in Times Square
I try to avoid carbs and sugar in my day-to-day life, so I never let myself have cereal for breakfast. I can’t tell you the last time I ate it, but I’m guessing it was in college, and it was probably something with “fiber” in the name so I could feel like an adult. But I secretly love cereal and was delighted to learn that Kellogg’s NYC opened in Times Square and that I’d need to eat a huge bowl of the stuff in the interest of reviewing it. The sacrifices I make, you know.
- french, great for dates, michelin-starred, midtown east, restaurant reviews, tasting menu, wine-paired menu
Gabriel Kreuther Probably Deserves More Than One Michelin Star
Chef Gabriel Kreuther left the Michelin-starred Modern a couple of years ago and took his pastry chef with him to open up his new namesake space in the Grace Building across from Bryant Park. Beloved from the get-go, the restaurant earned a Michelin star of its own in its first year, but having tried the 4-course, $125 tasting menu a few weeks ago, I can’t imagine that it won’t gain another star or even two in the coming years. It wasn’t as fussy as the three-Michelin-starred favorites in the city thanks to touches of whimsy here and there in elements like a stork-patterned wallpaper (the stork is a symbol of…
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Duran Sandwiches Brings Europe to NYC
Last week, I was surprised by a visit from to Tom Szebeni, the CEO of Duran Sandwiches with a huge box of his handmade European-style open-faced slices of wonder. I knew I was getting a complimentary taste of his creations, but I never expected that the President himself would walk over from their first U.S. location in NoMad to deliver them. But after talking to him for ten minutes, it made perfect sense. The guy just oozes passion for what he’s doing. He explained to me that he worked on the Budapest version of the reality TV show “Big Brother” for years and used to leave the dark studio (and…