A Michelin-Starred Chef Breathes New Life into A Voce Columbus
When one of your nearest neighbors is the Italian megastore, Eataly, it takes a lot to stand out with regionally-sourced products and refined yet rustic cooking. But Roman export Obica has flourished for the last 10 years with an especially well-defined mission statement (The World’s First Mozzarella Bar). That’s why, when it comes to their new, sleekly stylish, 120-seat restaurant in Flatiron, they’ve smartly retained a distinct dairy through-line, with their prized and inarguably spectacular DOB mozzarella, flown in from Campania twice a week…
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Lincoln Square Steak Jazzes Up New York’s Pre-Show Dining Scene
There are at least two nonflexible prerequisites for a traditional steakhouse; the space must be grand and cozy, and you must source and serve a perfect steak (a killer wine list and assortment of cream and butter-drenched side dishes doesn’t hurt either!). Lincoln Square Steakhouse checks both boxes, plus a few more besides…
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Korean Stew Meets Japanese Ramen at Chelsea Market’s Mokbar
Lately, Korean cuisine seems poised and ready to jockey ramen for culinary supremacy, with newer spots, like Hanjan and Piora, exposing diners to creative, beyond K-Town fare. At Chelsea Market’s Mokbar, chef-owner Esther Choi has managed to brilliantly straddle both trends —using springy Sun Noodles as a canvas, to showcase otherwise traditional Korean flavors and dishes. Choi’s clever fusion starts with…
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At Haldi, A Michelin-Starred Chef Explores the Cuisine of Calcutta’s Jews
Haldi — an otherwise unassuming space on the corner of 29th Street — is now being helmed by the esteemed Hemant Mathur, an innovative chef who received Michelin stars for the high-end establishments, Tulsi and Devi (the very first Indian eatery to receive that honor in New York). But don’t expect fussy, high-falutin fare at Haldi either…
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King Bee Brings Acadia to the East Village
New York’s dining scene is such that it’s simply not enough to advertise yourself as an Italian, Mexican or Thai restaurant nowadays. Instead, we’ve got Venetian, Oaxacan and Isaan eateries, which plumb the hyper-regional fare of countries and cities from around the world…
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Goa Taco Is Redefining Mexican Street Food
Up until relatively recently, the basic definition of “taco” has been corn or flour tortillas, wrapped around a combination of beans, meat, and/or cheese. But as the culinary lines between disparate cuisines blur, “tacos” can now refer to tortillas wrapped around just about anything, from bulgogi beef to roasted Japanese pumpkin. Goa Taco — a Smorgasburg stand turned Lower East Side pop-up — has gone one further by doing away with the tortillas themselves, swapping out griddled discs of flour or masa and subbing in flaky, warm Indian parathas…
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At Tijuana Picnic, Modern Mexican meets 1970’s Mexico City
2015 sure has started off with a bang for Jon Neidich (managing partner of Acme) and Jim Kearns, formerly of the NoMad and Mayahuel. Together, the duo recently launched retro tiki bar, The Happiest Hour, and barely two months later, they teamed up to debut Tijuana Picnic, a modern Mexican cantina and mezcal-focused cocktail lounge on the Lower East Side…
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Hot Restaurant Openings to Watch for in 2015
While we feel like we’ve hardly even made headway in the list of restaurants we wanted to try last year, New York’s ever-expanding dining industry stops for no man. And 2015 looks like it’s going to offer another serious onslaught of eateries! From a new & improved outpost of Amanda Cohen’s Dirt Candy to the surprising resurrection of Jonathan Waxman’s ‘80’s-era favorite, Jams…
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Mu Ramen Heralds the Inarguable Arrival of Queens
Ramen is so far beyond being a trend, that noteworthy noodle openings are as commonplace as the launch of new local-seasonal restaurants, or wood-burning pizza spots. But the fact that Mu Ramen — which frequently commands several hour waits for a table — is located in Queens? That’s a pretty surefire indication that the borough has finally arrived…
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Best Brooklyn & Queens Restaurants of 2014
The outer boroughs might never be able to compete with Manhattan when it comes to their sheer number of annual restaurant openings. But that doesn’t mean there was a lack of dining excitement in Brooklyn and Queens this year. Which is why we’re showcasing some of our favorite, far-flung spots of 2014, from Semilla, a fantastic, vegetable-focused tasting room in Williamsburg, to…
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A Tasty Waterside Escape in Manhattan
As confined as we usually are by skyscrapers and subways, it can be hard to remember that Manhattan is actually an island. Which means we’re surrounded on multiple sides by cool, glistening water, and any parcel of land overlooking that beautiful, peaceful idyll immediately becomes a hot commodity…
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New York’s Best Donuts…Are in a Car Wash
One place we’d never expect to find destination-worthy donuts in New York? How about a car wash — and we’re not talking day-old, self-serve Tim Hortons, lined up on dingy racks. Believe it or not, Scott Levine, a former Chanterelle and Il Laboratorio del Gelato alum, has set up shop inside his father-in-law’s car wash (to be specific, in a formerly unused passageway, just opposite the car wash tunnel) located just steps away from the Intrepid Air and Space Museum, along the West Side Highway.
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Root & Bone Redefines Southern Comfort in Alphabet City
For a long time now, 200 East Third Street, has been home to some of the city’s best southern comfort fare. But for a good 15 of those years, the plates piled high with fried chicken came courtesy of Mama’s Food Shop, which was forced to shutter in 2012. Less than two years later, and the heady scent of pork fat is wafting through the windows once again, but this time, it’s via the building’s newest tenants, Root & Bone…
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Hyper-Seasonal Fare at Galen Zamarra’s Almanac
Galen Zamarra’s Mas (farmhouse) is basically everything you could want in a neighborhood restaurant. But Zamarra’s sophomore effort, Mas (la grillade), proved a tougher sell for patrons, who never quite got the gimmick of every last menu item being charred, fire roasted or grilled (literally every last one). So three years later, Zamarra wisely elected to go back to the drawing board, transforming Mas (la grillade) into Almanac, serving…
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A Peek at Marta’s Roman-Style Pizzas
One thing’s for sure — New York’s hardly lacking in top notch pizza spots; from cheap takeout to neighborhood trattorias and 75-year-old institutions. So there’s no denying that Marta is treading on familiar territory, but whenever Danny Meyer gets involved in a project of any sort, it’s enough to make educated area foodies sit up and take notice…
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Authentic Isan Eats at Larb Ubol
Cheap Thai restaurants are pretty much a dime a dozen in New York — you know, the kind that serves plates of sweet, limp Drunken Noodles and wan saucers of Red, Yellow or Green Curry, each utterly indistinguishable from the next. And the dim stretch of 9th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen has more than its share, which makes it difficult to pick out diamonds in the rough like Larb Ubol…
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Dish & Restaurant Spotting: Cacio e Pepe Bombolone at Mulino a Vino
There tends to be a fast and furious frenzy of restaurant openings in the fall, meaning that, invariably, a few notable spots tend to get lost in the shuffle. So in case your attention has been duly diverted by Dirty French and Marta, we’d like to direct it back to a Meatpacking District newcomer, Mulino a Vino, which quietly debuted recently in a rather under-the-radar location…
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Unique Indian Fare at Awadh
For all of the cuisines represented by New York’s uniquely multicultural dining scene, there’s never been an especially strong showing of Indian restaurants. Especially really regional ones. Sure, there’s a sizable concentration of standard, tikka masala spots in Murray (Curry) Hill as well as a more recent handful of scattered, casual eateries representing the Southern, largely vegetarian side of the country. But there have been precious few places that have examined the more nuanced, hyper-regional dishes from very specific areas of India, making the newly opened Awadh a notable addition to the Upper West Side…
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New York Fall 2014 Restaurant Preview
This year promises to be just as exciting as anticipated, with an upcoming collabo between Stephen Starr and Justin Smillie, and a Danny Meyer-less venture for Floyd Cardoz, not to mention a spate of spots from our Summer Preview, that should (finally!) open their doors come September, like Enrique Olveras’ Cosme, Geoffrey Zakarian’s redux of “The Palm Court” at The Plaza, and Dirty French from the Torrisi team…
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A Rhapsody in White: Obica Pizza e Cucina
When one of your nearest neighbors is the Italian megastore, Eataly, it takes a lot to stand out with regionally-sourced products and refined yet rustic cooking. But Roman export Obica has flourished for the last 10 years with an especially well-defined mission statement (The World’s First Mozzarella Bar). That’s why, when it comes to their new, sleekly stylish, 120-seat restaurant in Flatiron, they’ve smartly retained a distinct dairy through-line, with their prized and inarguably spectacular DOB mozzarella, flown in from Campania twice a week…
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