Tag Archives: wine
Chefs Club by Food & Wine
There’s something to be said for good bones. Restaurant decor can go a long way in transforming an odd space into a good one – see Claudette, for example – but when you start with something as architecturally impressive as the interior of the Puck Building, you have more leeway in what you can hang on the walls – and put on the menu. It’s an unusual concept to open a restaurant that’s not the vision of any one particular chef or restauranteur but a magazine. Fortunately Chefs Club by Food & Wine Magazine gets a certain gravitas from the surroundings, whereas otherwise it might seem utterly newfangled. (more…)
Posted in American, Cuisine, food, Neighborhood, New York restaurants, NoLita, restaurants
Tagged cocktails, pizza, seafood, wine, wine bars
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Cherche Midi
It was 25 minutes past our reservation time on a Tuesday night, and still our table at Cherche Midi hadn’t materialized. Aside from the wait, this can be a bad sign about a newish restaurant. Are the servers overwhelmed? Or the kitchen? Yet Shane McBride, the chef of Cherche Midi, who looks like someone you probably wouldn’t want to run into in a dark alley in Dublin, was leaning against the kitchen pass through, completely unperturbed. (more…)
Posted in Cuisine, French, Lower East Side, Neighborhood, New York restaurants, Noho, NoLita, restaurants
Tagged Cherche Midi review, French food, French fries, Keith McNally, steak, wine
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Red Gravy
Saul Bolton’s casual Italian restaurant sits on a stretch of Atlantic Avenue that used to feel desolate not so long ago, when the border between Cobble Hill, Brooklyn Heights and the wilds of Red Hook was home to only a few solitary bars and take-out joints. But now the long-shuttered Long Island Bar has reopened, Colonie set up shop across the street, and Bolton of the Michelin-starred Saul, now relocated to the Brooklyn Museum, opened Red Gravy. In the give-the-people-what-they-want school of thought, he has definitely succeeded, stepping into a vacuum and creating just the sort of approachable neighborhood place the neighborhood never knew it needed until now. (more…)
Posted in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Cuisine, Italian, Neighborhood, New York restaurants
Tagged burrata, cheese, gelato, pasta, ramps, Red Gravy review, steak, veal, wine
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El Barbapedana, Milan
If you’re ever in the Porta Genova area in Milan – after an Armani show and before a showroom visit, say – there’s an excellent place for lunch just up the street. El Barbapedana may not be jam packed with fancy fashion types Instagramming their handbags, but it’s the real deal for classic Milanese fare. (more…)
Posted in Milan, restaurants
Tagged El Barbapedana review, Italian food, lunch, pasta, risotto, veal, wine
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Pizza Vinoteca
As restaurant names go, Pizza Vinoteca isn’t the most memorable. It’s the Italian equivalent of naming a restaurant “Restaurant.” But as restaurants go, it’s one worth remembering, because it’s an oasis of pizza- and wine-induced calm in the hectic Union Square area. (more…)
Au Za’atar
Au Za’atar has already gotten a lot of press for a little restaurant in the East Village. This may be because a) it may be the only Arabian-French bistro in the city, and b) it is a new family-run restaurant on Avenue A, where just a block away a neighborhood pub was recently supplanted by the glowing specter of a 7 Eleven. (more…)
Posted in Cuisine, East Village, French, Middle Eastern, Neighborhood, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged baba ganoush, sausage, shrimp, wine, wine bars
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Charlie Bird
Charlie Bird: the name is like a catchy tune that everyone is humming. You hear it on the streets, you see it in the papers, until you too are thinking Charlie Bird, Charlie Bird, I’ve got to get there. And once you’re inside the place, the song keeps going, this time as actual music, not Charlie “Bird” Parker’s bebop but hip hop with a beat. Even the Conde Nast editor sitting next to me was bobbing her head in time, as were the post-production guys at the next table. This is a place that brings together New Yorkers from all walks of life. (more…)
Posted in American, Cuisine, Italian, Neighborhood, New York restaurants, restaurants, Soho
Tagged bars, chicken, cocktails, octopus, wine
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Le Philosophe
There aren’t many truly French restaurants in New York, but Le Philosophe is one of them. This isn’t the fussy cafe setting of Hemingway’s Paris, but a pared-down, black and white aesthetic that cross pollinated from one side of the Atlantic to the other and back again. The photographs on the walls may be of French philosophers, but the sleek open kitchen and industrial chic dining room is, as they say in Paris, très Brooklyn. (more…)
Posted in Cuisine, French, Neighborhood, New York restaurants, Noho, restaurants
Tagged dessert, duck, foie gras, French food, frogs legs, sausage, steak, wine
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Recipe: Chicken Fricassee with Mushrooms and Leeks
One blustery day in Paris I was craving French comfort food – not so much a specific thing, but the idea of it. There would be chicken and leeks and mushrooms and a very French sauce.
We were renting an apartment with a kitchen, but I didn’t want to buy a bunch of groceries we’d just have to throw away later, so the recipe would have to be simple. So this is a chicken fricassee-slash-coq au vin blanc, made without chicken broth or lots of extraneous ingredients. Instead, white wine, butter and cream do all the work. Serve with rice for a comforting meal with a French accent. (more…)
Posted in food, recipes
Tagged chicken, French food, French recipes, leeks, mushrooms, the copycat chef, wine
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