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Air’s Champagne Parlor is All About the Bubbly
Beer, wine and even cider bars abound in NYC, but Air’s Champagne Parlor is one of the few area drinkeries devoted to bubbly. To be fair, the Riddling Widow briefly preceded it, but owner Ariel Arce was actually beverage director during its tenure, as well as Birds & Bubbles before that, and Chicago’s Pops for Champagne (not to mention Grant Achatz’s exclusive, original The Office) before that. Meaning her reputation as queen of Cuvèe absolutely proceeds her.
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Where to Celebrate Oktoberfest 2017
If you’re already mourning the loss of summer, Oktoberfest is a reliable way to get you over the hump. Essentially spanning the duration of fall (kicking off on September 16th this year & extending all the way to October 31st, allowing revelers to seamlessly transition to Halloween), the 16 to 18-day festival is a giddy saturnalia of German culture…
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Spotlight on the Finalists for the 2017 Vendy Awards
As a fun challenge to the James Beard Awards, the Vendy ceremony — now in its 13th year — is dedicated to honoring the very best in street food. So here’s who’s in the running during the September 16th event at Governors Island; from an artisanal twinkie baker to an upstart french toast sandwich maker, to a Chinese meat skewer purveyor, whose been tapped for the Vendy Cup…
Most Recent Dish
New York's Best Seafood Sandwiches
With the weather getting warmer, we’ve got one protein on our minds: Seafood! While New York may not be considered a seafood mecca like New England, we can more than hold our own on the fish front. And because almost anything is better in sandwich form, we’re looking forward to creative and regional renditions from some of the city’s best chefs and shops. Sure, you can get a stellar lobster roll at the Red Hook Lobster Pound or The...
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Passover Cucumber Soup
The Passover seder usually involves heavy, traditional foods of the braised meats and stuffed cabbage sorts that But with spring (and bathing suit weather) right around the corner, we’re craving a lighter holiday dish. Chef Gazala Halabi the owner and chef of both Gazala and Gazala Place — where they bake their own pita daily — is on the same page. For Passover, she’s serving a vibrant cucumber soup that you can re-create at your seder this year....
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Bunny Whoopie Pie Pan
Cupcakes jumped the shark long ago. And while everyone’s declaring pie the new cupcake, I beg to disagree. Aside from both being desserts, pie has nothing in common with cupcakes. Now whoopie pies are another story. Just like cupcakes, a whoopie pie is composed of moist cake and frosting, except the frosting is in the middle — a little like a frosting sandwich. And whoopie pies are just as trendy these days as traditional fruit pies. Seeing that Easter...
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Dish Spotting – David Burke Kitchen
Did you ever eat ants-on-a-log when you were growing up? I can still remember assembling this childhood snack, made of celery stalks (the log) smeared with cream cheese and topped with raisins (ants) at summer camp and Girl Scout meetings. (Though I don’t remember liking it.) But the very grown up version served at David Burke Kitchen happens to be delicious. David Burke is famous for his whimsical cooking style — a style I sometimes find precious or gimmicky...
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Easter Dining Out
Most people spend hours, even days, preparing a memorable Easter Sunday meal. After all, Easter’s a serious religious and food holiday with traditions, like roasted lamb, ham, and hot-cross buns. Though it’s fun to host friends or feed your family, sometimes you just don’t feel like spending hours in the kitchen while everyone else is hunting for eggs. It just happens to be a great holiday to bypass the kitchen and make a reservation. Even if you don’t celebrate...
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Q & A with Veritas's Chef Sam Hazen
Chef Sam Hazen has a history of proving people wrong. When he was first starting out at Le Gavroche in London, the French chefs dubbed him “Chef McDonald” because they didn’t think the lone American in the kitchen could cook. Six months later, he was their boss. And twenty years later, Hazen proved naysayers wrong again by successfully transitioning from the trendy, super-sized Tao in midtown to the intimate setting of Veritas in Gramercy. “People were skeptical in the...
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Sneak Peek – Coppelia
Right around this time each year, as the weather finally begins to warm up, we start cravingLatin flavors and its vibrant spices. So we were excited to find out that Julian Medina, the chef behind both Yerba Buena outposts and Toloache, had plans to open a “Latino diner.” And we’re even more thrilled to learn that it’s open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Just this week, Chef Medina flung open the doors of his funky eatery in Chelsea. ...
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Passover-Friendly Dining Out
April is a big month for holidays, what with Easter falling on April 24th and Passover beginning the evening of April 18th. Just as Christians give up something for lent, be it meat, chocolate, or whatever else they’re fond of, the Jews give up bread (and all things leavened) for eight days. In Jewish foodie years, that’s a painfully long stretch to go without fresh-baked bread, burgers, pizza, cake, cookies and anything else that rises. For Passover-abiding New Yorkers,...
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Sneak Peek – Mr. Robata
I love robata (open-fire grill) cooking. I love yakitori, izakayas, and sushi, too. In fact, I’m pretty much in love with the entire genre of Japanese food. So when Mr. Robata opened it midtown just a few weeks ago, I was eager to there. My only concern was the location. Historically speaking, the theater district isn’t exactly a dining destination. Most New Yorkers only eat in the theater district out of necessity, like when they’re seeing a show or...
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Pinch & Pour Measuring Cups
No matter what kind of cook you are, you need a set of measuring cups. Sure, you can eyeball it, but unless you’re a professional chef, you’ll likely end up with watery sauce or a flat souffle and that’s never a good thing. We don’t believe in gadgets for the sake of clever little tools to show off to guests, but these are too good to pass up. For starters, they’re collapsible, so they practically no space at all,...
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Spring Lamb dishes
Do you ever wonder why spring is synonymous with lamb? (These are the kind of things we think about it.) Like any other fruit or vegetable, lamb has its peak season. As with artichokes and asparagus, lamb has its peak season in the spring because it feeds on the first grass of the season’s. And seeing as Easter falls in the spring, it’s the perfect meat to celebrate the holiday. Thus, the tradition was born. Well, spring is finally...
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Sneak Peek At Alex Stupak's Empellon
When pastry whiz Alex Stupak announced this fall that he was leaving WD-50 to open a taqueria, the food world at-large scratched its head. Why would someone with Stupak’s pedigree leave the kingdom of molecular gastronomy (or modernist cuisine, or whatever the term du jour might be) to sling tacos in the West Village? So we sat down with him to find out what inspired this sudden and unexpected move. Stupak explains, “My goal was to open a restaurant...
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The Pop-Up Restaurant Trend
Does restaurant quality food need to be confined to the traditional restaurant model? The answer is quickly becoming no. With the influx of pop-up restaurants and roving supper clubs, the landscape of New York’s dining scene seems to be shifting. Pop-ups give temporary homes to novel ideas and unique talent that may not have the resources to plunk down capital on a permanent home. A pop-up restaurant is a temporary restaurant installation. It could be a try out for a more...
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Easter Rabbit Salt & Pepper Shaker Set
We know it’s not Easter yet, but it’s just around the corner and we think these salt & pepper shakers are perfect for the occasion. They’re the perfect gift for your mom, sister, wife or anyone else that happens take the holiday seriously, or just has a rabbit fetish. We admittedly fallen for them, especially because the ears are ergonomically shaped, so they’re easy to grip and squeeze. Squeeze the white rabbit’s ears and out comes salt or the...
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Tweet & You Shall Receive
This morning the Village Voice and Grub Street delivered the excellent news that the Girl Scouts are ingeniously opening pop-up shops around the city. Here’s what I have to say: Where were you girls when I was desperately begging for help locating Thin Mints on Twitter? Tweet and you shall receive. That’s the lesson I learned last week when I received a UPS package from a complete stranger. The package was filled with Girl Scout cookies – six boxes...
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New York's Best Sausages
With spring less than a month away, we’ve started gearing up for baseball games and cook-outs with the quintessential outdoor food, the hot dog. Or, as they call it in Germany, the saucisson frankfurt. Though we wished winter would disappear, we’re already feeling nostalgic for its comfort foods, namely hearty sausages. Sure, a basic frank has been around forever, but the city’s repertoire of sausages has boomed over the past few years. From boudin blanc to Spanish chorizo and...
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Q&A With 15-Year-Old Chef Greg Grossman
Greg Grossman isn’t your typical teenager. He’s a culinary prodigy with a career that some seasoned professional chefs might envy. At the age of fifteen, he’s already headed up a catering company in the Hamptons, launched a culinary research group, and recently returned from Spain where he attended Madrid Fusion with Gerry Dawes and ate at Ferran Adria’s elBulli just a few months before it officially became the elBulli foundation. Oh, and he’s still in high school. This weekend, Grossman showcased his...
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Best Party Reservations
Deciding where to have dinner is hard enough, but finding the perfect restaurant for a large party or a special event is not an easy feat. I can’t tell you how many times someone has asked me, “Where’s a good spot for a birthday dinner or engagement party?” And really, how many times can you throw a bachelorette at Lucky Cheng’s, or fork over your paycheck with a table at an overpriced steakhouse? So we’ve compiled a list of our favorites for all...
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