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bellastraniera
a.k.a. Marcy Swingle - obsessed with food and fashion.View my photography website.
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Tag Archives: American food
Lunch: Little Muenster
There’s something timelessly appealing about a grilled cheese sandwich eaten on a dreary winter’s day, especially when you’re eating it in a warm dining room with a view of the cold street.
You could go to your local diner for grilled cheese, but unadulterated American comfort food is so comforting, it could put New Yorkers to sleep. Why not improve on the original while keeping the spirit the same? That’s what new grilled cheese shop Little Muenster sets out to do on the Lower East Side.
Saxon + Parole
The Bowery was never the sort of place you’d expect to find a millionaire. Once home to brothels, flophouses, vaudeville shows, saloons and street gangs, this notoriously rough thoroughfare attracted an equally rough crowd - except, of course, for the odd millionaire or two. Peter Stuyvesant’s estate sat at the northern end of the Bowery in the 1600s, John Jacob Astor banded together with other wealthy families to build a theater here in the 1830s, and Gilded Age socialites flocked here at the turn of the last century.
There have always been a few of the one percent in the mix on the Bowery, the legendary destination for slumming it. But what’s changed is the setting – the luxe life has followed the one percent here. Now at 316 Bowery on the corner of Bleecker, you’ll now find sleek design and $15 cocktails where there used to be a hardware store and cheap hotel. (more…)
Recipe: Toasted Corn and Tomato Salad
Corn is wonderfully good right now. If, like me, you find yourself buying more than you can eat, this toasted corn salad is a great use for extra corn and tomatoes. Farmer’s market produce like this should never go to waste when it’s sweet as candy in late August. (more…)
Jeffrey’s Grocery
The past few years have seen a huge influx of “foodies” on the New York scene, Yelping, Chowhounding, and Four-Squaring about every bite. But don’t worry, New Yorkers haven’t been totally domesticated yet. For every one person jarring and pickling Union Square Greenmarket produce at home, there are probably four with nothing but a jar of pickles in the fridge.
Jeffrey’s Grocery in the West Village started out as a gourmet corner store with limited food service. Freshly cut flowers occupied the front, and the shelves were stocked with fancy pastas, olive oil and other top notch pantry supplies. Then the store closed and reopened as a plain old restaurant, with two- and four-tops where the flowers were. The lesson? As much as New Yorkers talk about food, they don’t actually prepare it themselves. (more…)
Posted in food
Tagged American food, bars, Gabriel Stulman, New York, restaurants, Southern food, West Village
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Post Office
A lot of places in the city call themselves restaurants – but because it’s easier for a new establishment to get a full liquor license when there’s food involved, they may just be mega bars with a menu. (Remember Japonais, anyone?) Rarer is the place that calls itself a bar that’s secretly a restaurant.
Sam Glinn is the chef in the lilliputian kitchen of Post Office, a Williamsburg bar dedicated to American whiskey, bourbon and rye, and named after a Bukowski novel. From a corner of the one-room space, done up with dark wood, tin ceilings and memorabilia propped on the shelves, Glinn, formerly of Brooklyn Star and Momofuku Ssam, dishes out a limited but memorable array of reinvented classics. (more…)
Posted in food
Tagged American food, bars, bourbon, Brooklyn, New York, restaurants, Williamsburg
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Summer Getaway: Asbury Park and Ocean Grove
New Jersey’s Asbury Park, the launching pad for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, has a rock and roll vibe you don’t find at many seaside towns. With lots of music clubs big and small, it draws a tattooed crowd that’s more indie than family. It’s hard to get bored here, with new restaurants opening every year, a great vintage pinball hall, hopping bar scene, touring bands and the occasional Bon Jovi sighting.
The perfect getaway for New Yorkers? Maybe, but there aren’t that many places to stay in still-gritty downtown Asbury. Fortunately, the antidote to Asbury debauchery can be found right next door in neighboring Ocean Grove, a former Methodist summer camp populated with historic Victorian houses, several of which have been turned into gracious B&Bs. There’s no booze to be had in this still-dry town, but the old-fashioned ice cream parlors and antique stores are the perfect counterpart to the nightlife next door. (more…)
Posted in food, travel
Tagged American food, bars, beer, Bloody Marys, Caribbean food, ice cream, New Jersey, restaurants, Southern food
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Best Outdoor Dining 2011
As much as we complain about the heat, it’s so nice to be able to dine al fresco when summer finally comes to New York. But what we’re looking for isn’t any old table plunked on a sidewalk next to a major truck route, but a nice setting, fun scene and preferably some good food. Here is an opinionated guide to the best outdoor dining in town. (more…)
Posted in food
Tagged American food, Asian food, bars, BBQ, burgers, fireplaces, French food, German food, guides, Italian food, New York, outdoor dining, pizza, restaurants
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Desmond’s
Ever since Gino’s closed last year, there’s been a dearth of places to dine in the tony East 60s. Upper East Siders could head up to Jean-Georges’ the Mark, but the difficulty of getting a reservation here makes it hard to just pop in for dinner. Yet again, a world-renowned chef spoils the potential neighborhoody-ness of a restaurant – sigh.
For a sceney scene and a menu that satisfies without drawing in hoards of diners from the rest of the city, Desmond’s is shaping up to be the place to be for the Upper East Side set. Fortunately Indochine co-founder John Loeffler and former chef at Soho House David Hart bring a much needed downtown sensibility with them, satisfying the desire of many an Upper East Sider: a restaurant that makes one feel as if one is somewhere cool and downtown-ish without actually having to go anywhere. (more…)
The Dutch
If you haven’t made it to Andrew Carmellini’s new place the Dutch yet, remain calm, take a deep breath and stop speed dialing the restaurant. It may be booked for the next month, but it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. In fact it could use some time to settle into itself, like a good bottle of wine that gets even better with more breathing room.
In the annals of the New York restaurant world, the Dutch represents an interesting play on Carmellini’s part. No longer just the chef with an award-winning Italian restaurant in Tribeca (Locanda Verde), he is stepping to center stage with this American place in Soho in the old Cub Room space. Like Blue Ribbon down the street, it’s open late, it serves fried chicken and it’s courting an industry crowd including Mario Batali, who sat placidly surveying the dining room the other night. It’s already shaping up to be the next late-night hang for chefs and food world insiders, who often tweet from the premises. (more…)
Posted in food
Tagged American food, Andrew Carmellini, bars, beer, Mario Batali, New York, restaurants, seafood, Soho
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Monument Lane
Like the celebrity who tries to portray herself as being “just like us,” many hot new restaurants now aspire to humility. A recent attempt to get a table at a new restaurant in the neighborhood yielded zero results between 7 and 10pm on a weekday, any weekday, for the next month. Why? Not all tables are available for reservations because, as the hostess intoned in the “fully committed” catchphrase of the moment, “We’re trying to keep it a neighborhood place.”
Exactly. That’s why there’s a celebrity chef attached! But let’s face it: Not every place can be a neighborhood restaurant. There’s a certain degree of ordinariness that can’t be faked, which is why it was a relief to walk into Monument Lane, an actual neighborhood restaurant in the West Village. (more…)
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