We Heart New York

Bodhi Tree

2012-01-30T11:57:00.000-05:00

Of course, Bodhi Tree isn't a destination spot in the same way that, say, Zabb Elee is. And since we don't live in the East Village, this particular Thai restaurant isn't a regular go-to for us either. But the green-inflected space is nicer than it needs to be, and the food better too. A lunch of glazed salmon cooked in a clay pot and minced pork with rice left us willing to add Bodhi Tree to our ready roster of places that merit semiregular pop-ins, an entirely invented category somewhere between "special trip" and "good for carry out while wearing sweatpants."

Sullivan Street Bakery

2012-01-29T09:05:00.002-05:00

Sure, winter thus far has been exceedingly, curiously mild, but you never know when snow might strike. To prepare for the warmth and chunk that such frigid weather requires, we stopped in at Sullivan Street Bakery for a delicious chocolate almond croissant, a moist stone fruit breakfast cake, and two perfect bombolini.

Rather Unique at Woodward Gallery

2012-01-27T14:34:00.001-05:00

Indian Creperie

2012-01-26T09:09:00.000-05:00

At this West Village restaurant, dosas come big and soft, sambar spicy and warm, uttapam chock full of onions and peas. The idli crumbled, as it should, and the vada broke crisply, as it should. The last time we ducked into Indian Creperie for a snack, the owner was giving a patron email addresses of his friends in Goa and Kerala, to help prepare her for an upcoming trip to the subcontinent. That's a side you can't sell, and one not offered in most fast-casual joints on Bleecker.

Emily Dickinson at Poets House

2012-01-25T10:04:00.000-05:00

Poets House is a two-story structure dedicated to verse. Astonished? It's incredibly difficult to believe that such a place could exist in Lower Manhattan, or anywhere in the United States in the early twenty-first century. Every time we're there, we pinch ourselves, as if only a sharp pain or purply bruise could prove that this place --- where anyone who enters can grab a book from the library of 50,000 volumes of poetry and read --- exists.

Going on right now, an exhibit devoted to Emily Dickinson, including quilts that derive their pattern from her punctuation, manuscripts, letters, and other scraps of paper ephemera, a celebration of both the 25th anniversary of Poets House and this particular poet. Here's the poet alive in print, scrawling a condolence, a take on the Bible, a recipe for coconut cake.

Once we saw this, our plans for the rest of the day were set: hustle home along the Hudson, with a quick stop at Gristedes, a few minutes of poking about the Internet, a few more minutes of mixing, and a coconut loaf, with a good moist crumb. Writing and baking aren't that dissimilar: in both activities, you take a finite amount of ingredients (letters, foodstuff), and combine. Then you wait, hoping for the best.

Modified recipe here: thanks

Serious Eats: Manolo Tapas

2012-01-23T16:10:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for Serious Eats. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there.

This week's Date Night finds us at Manolo, a winning tapas restaurant in Washington Heights [read more].

Flights to India

2012-01-22T11:45:00.002-05:00

Many more here.

Melville House Books

2012-01-20T15:20:00.001-05:00

For people with as many degrees in English as we have between us (uh, five, roughly half the number of bookcases in our house), we hardly ever talk about books on this blog, let alone small presses (recent trips to bookstores around town notwithstanding). But some gift cards to the Strand led to an hour of browsing, which led to the discovery of Faithful Ruslan, about a decommissioned guard dog in Siberia, the best book we read in 2011.

Hooray for browsing! Hooray for hard copies! Hooray for good design! We were drawn first to the novel's cover: a dog's head against a blue background. As it turns out, a profile in white against a colored background is the design trademark of Neversink Library, an imprint of Melville House Books, which reissues books that "have been overlooked, underappreciated, looked askance at, or foolishly ignored." Founded in 2001 and based in Brooklyn, Melville House Books recently published its 200th title; 20 books / year is a better track record than some of the conglomerates. Now that we've discovered this publishing house, we're particularly excited to read more Neversink as well as those in another imprint, Melville International Crime. If we could purchase such titles at our favorite mystery bookstore, well then our minds would really be blown.

1000th Post

2012-01-19T06:15:00.000-05:00

For our 1000th post, we were all set to talk about what the city means to us as individuals and as a couple, to describe what we've learned over eight years of living in this maddening, marvelous place, to go totally sentimental about why we love New York. And then we realized that such a post would be but a crude summary of something we've been trying to do since we started this blog in September 2006. So we decided to put up a Roz Chast cartoon instead.

Well, two out of three ain't bad. Thanks for reading!

Image: thanks

Prune

2012-01-18T08:28:00.000-05:00

Prune, Gabrielle Hamilton's labor of love in the East Village, serves the rustic, gut-pleasing food you can't help but crave throughout the autumn and winter. There on a blustery night not too long ago, half the city seemed to be crowding into the tiny space (and poor Roger Ster--er, John Slattery got turned away), seeking its gustatory comforts. We started with the tangy, gooey, salty parmesan omelette and a plate of grilled lamb sausages, accompanied by pickles, crusty bread, and a delicious mustard. Our mains included braised rabbit legs in vinegar sauce, the meat so tender and delicate you could cut it with a glance, the sauce punchy and perfect, and grilled head-on shrimp in anchovy butter, tailor-made for finger-licking. And a slice of olive oil cake gave us just that little bit of extra fat necessary to step back out into the cold.

Serious Eats: Bamiyan

2012-01-16T13:10:00.001-05:00

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for Serious Eats. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there.

This week's Date Night finds us at Bamiyan, an evocative Afghan restaurant in Kips Bay [read more].

Rizzoli Bookstore

2012-01-15T11:14:00.002-05:00

Rizzoli might just be New York's most beautiful bookstore. Across three floors, it stocks highbrow, eclectic titles, largely in hardcover, including a lovely book art version of Pale Fire, as well as lots of coffee table books that might double as coffee tables, so heavy and hefty are they. We bought our copy of The World of Downton Abbey there, which seemed about right.

The Paris Theatre

2012-01-14T16:19:00.001-05:00

Where else but the Paris could we see a silent movie made in 2011 about silent movies in the 1930s? This single-screen theater, across the street from the Plaza, specializes in foreign language (particularly French) films and evokes a time when men wore tuxes and women wore gloves, when going to the pictures was really something special. It has a mezzanine level and blue velvet-covered walls and art deco signage that says "quiet please." Last night, at least one thing remained constant from that earlier time until now: at the end of the movie, everyone clapped.

Diego Rivera Murals at MoMA

2012-01-13T16:18:00.000-05:00

The Diego Rivera Murals exhibition gathers together most of the eight murals Rivera painted on-site for the Museum of Modern Art in 1931. Although each weighs more than 1000 pounds (it took six men to move a single fresco during the original show), they are suprisingly little (only about seven feet tall). Their power comes not from size, therefore, but from didacticism --- this is art with a message, and the message isn't a good one. To put it into today's terms, Rivera painted for the 99%, even though he was usually paid by the 1%.

Photo: thanks

Cafe Katja

2012-01-12T10:40:00.002-05:00

At Cafe Katja, the arrival of the emmentaler sausage elicits snickers in female diners and fleeting feelings of self-doubt in their male companions. But amusement and anxiety stop once the crisp skin gives way to the gooey cheese inside. Joined by quark dumplings and cabbage, it's a perfect winter dish, hearty and, um, filling. Less erotic, perhaps, but no less good were the pretzel and the cheese spätzle, a seemingly never diminishing plate of firmness and moistness.

Word Up

2012-01-10T08:50:00.002-05:00

Over the summer, a bookstore popped up in a former drugstore in Washington Heights. Community members rejoiced, a deal was negotiated with the landlord, and now it looks like this neighborhood in Upper Manhattan may have its own bookstore for a while to come. We hope so, anyway, as the volunteer-run Word Up is a charming place to look for titles in Spanish, Russian, or English, on poetry or politics or New York City, to stock up on self-published graphic novels or broadsheets, or to hear writers read and see performers perform, away from publicists, press packets, and general corporate rigamarole.

Serious Eats: Nürnberger Bierhaus

2012-01-09T15:25:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for Serious Eats. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there.

This week's Date Night finds us at Nürnberger Bierhaus, a Teutonic tavern on Staten Island [read more].

Little Cupcake Bakeshop

2012-01-08T11:03:00.000-05:00

The name might be diminutive, but the flavors sure weren't. We remain particularly enamored of the Little Cupcake Bakeshop's coconut cloud, topped with a nebulous mass made from sugar and butter, sprinkled with more coconut (left). But the plain lemon pleased too, moist and cakey and balanced between saccharine and sour.

Méliès Shorts at Lincoln Center

2012-01-06T11:47:00.000-05:00

Georges Méliès, who made his last significant film nearly 100 years ago, is having a moment. Thanks to Brian Selznick's book The Invention of Hugo Cabret and Martin Scorsese's film of the same (you've seen it, right? Right? If not, go. Like now.), Méliès's delightfully inventive films, such as La Voyage dans la lune (memorialized above on a brownstone gate in our neighborhood), are finding a new audience. Kids and adults alike packed into a recent, sold-out screening at Lincoln Center of four his most important movies, and the laughter and applause left no doubt that the colossal advances in special effects since Méliès made these films have not rendered them any less entertaining.

Tulsi

2012-01-04T18:26:00.000-05:00

Just before going to India for the better part of a month, we ate at Tulsi, Hemant Mathur's upscale rendition of the subcontinent in Midtown. Given the intervening time and tastes, some dishes have faded from memory, but not the succulent lamb chops or the sweet-and-lively black pepper and coconut shrimp, which rested atop delightful little disks of crunchy papad.

ESPO's Love Letter to Brooklyn

2012-01-03T07:09:00.003-05:00

Serious Eats: MexiQ

2012-01-02T14:15:00.001-05:00

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for Serious Eats. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there.

This week's Date Night finds us at MexiQ, a southern-by-southwestern restaurant with aspirations in Astoria [read more].

Laura at Film Forum

2012-01-01T11:10:00.001-05:00

"I suspect no one and I suspect everyone." Dana Andrews' wryly tossed-off line encapsulates the spirit of Laura, a classic New York noir complete with a dizzying plot and mordant wit. The characters are amoral, the settings lavish, and the photography exquisite --- all ingredients for a delightful New Year's Eve celebration at Film Forum.

Happy 2012, everyone!

Three Lives & Company

2011-12-30T13:42:00.000-05:00

If you were to sit down and design a perfect independent bookstore from scratch, you'd probably come up with something like Three Lives & Company. Tucked into a quiet corner of the West Village, this cozy little shop comes with creaking floorboards, a knowledgeable, opinionated staff, and groaning shelves holding a well-curated selection of books ranging from current bestsellers to canonical tomes to obscure reprints. When last we were there, a woman turned to a staffer after paying for her purchase and said, "Thank you so much for still being here."

Al-Sham Sweets and Pastries

2011-12-29T08:21:00.003-05:00

A humble temple to walnuts and pistachios in Astoria, Al-Sham Sweets and Pastries crams a dizzying array of baklava into its small display case. They serve the Syrian variety ("Sham" is the old name for Syria and still the local appellation for Damascus). Unlike Turkish baklava, the Syrian versions derive most of their sweetness from the nuts rather than syrup. The diverse styles available demonstrate the importance of texture to properly made baklava and invite grazing to identify your favorite. We've only made it through about a fifth of the options, so we need to make a few more research trips.

Willem de Kooning at MoMA

2011-12-28T12:32:00.000-05:00

"The most piercing, inexhaustible, and relentlessly intense full-on career survey I have ever seen in this country," said one critic. "Exhaustively comprehensive, exhaustingly large, and predictably awe-inspiring," gushed another. "The most ambitious show New York has seen in a long time --- a lavish, knotty, and definitive tribute," opined a third. Critical consensus is rare in the fractious New York art world, but the de Kooning retrospective at MoMA is virtually impossible to fault. A massive exhibit of more than 200 works, it blasts away any doubt about de Kooning's centrality to modern art, salvages his surprisingly productive later years from obscurity, and demonstrates better than any show we've seen how an artist can continue to wrestle the same devil forever.

Photos: thanks

Serious Eats: La Palina

2011-12-26T09:53:00.002-05:00

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for Serious Eats. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there.

This week's Date Night finds us at La Palina, a bastion of Italian-American tradition in Bensonhurst [read more].

Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree

2011-12-25T08:28:00.000-05:00

Happy holidays, everyone!

i love

Miracle on 34th Street at Film Forum

2011-12-24T10:53:00.000-05:00

Unlike its contemporary Christmas yarn, Frank Capra's masterful It's a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street is not a sophisticated or even a particularly well-executed movie: the acting is uneven, the editing hopeless, and the plot full of holes you could drive a sleigh through. But seeing it at Film Forum, where it opened for a brief run yesterday, we couldn't deny that it's a lot of fun, with a great central conceit and some terrific lines ("Maybe he's only a little crazy, like painters or composers or some of those men in Washington"). It also disabuses you of the notion that the commercialization of Christmas --- and complaining about the same --- is a recent phenomenon. But most importantly, it inspires a lot of holiday cheer, making the lights outside twinkle just a little bit brighter.

Photo: thanks

Our Christmas Tree

2011-12-23T07:16:00.002-05:00

Behold, our tree, bedecked in ribbons and candy canes, sending scent into our apartment, giving the cat something to nibble in the night, protector of presents, purchased for 25 bucks on the sidewalk down the street. So delighted are we with its presence, we just might keep it up year-round.

Legend

2011-12-22T21:00:00.000-05:00

Yes, we're on the Legend bandwagon. Back in the summer, the Times blew the lid off one of the better-kept foodie secrets in town, that this seemingly unambitious, unremarkable restaurant in Chelsea, with a menu full of dull Chinese-American dishes, has a wild Sichuan streak. Though people not in the know pass by and shrug, Chinese tourists and devoted foodies have been crowding into the bi-level space to try Ding Gen Wang's ambitious and often inventive Sichuan cooking. Classic dishes like spicy cellophane noodles with pork (a.k.a., ants on a log), Chen-du sweet potato noodles, ma po tofu, and the like do not disappoint, but the reason we'd go back in a hurry is the "new style Sichuan" menu, in particular its Chongqing diced chicken with chili peppercorns. The chicken comes crispy and salty, almost like meaty popcorn, and absolutely covered in deeply flavored chilis. Some bites ignite your mouth, certainly, but on the whole it displays a controlled heat that complements rather than crushes the dish.

Dyker Heights Christmas Lights

2011-12-20T08:39:00.000-05:00

For eleven months of the year, Dyker Heights sits stolid and suburban in a part of Brooklyn most non-residents would have no reason to visit. Then, come December, it explodes into a Christmas phantasmagoria. We dare you to go and not get possessed by the holiday spirit. (Can't stop contemplating these people's electric bills? More photos here.)

Serious Eats: Bali Nusa Indah

2011-12-19T15:17:00.001-05:00

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for Serious Eats. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there.

This week's Date Night finds us at Bali Nusa Indah, the Indonesian outpost along Manhattan's foodie United Nations [read more].

Holiday Donuts from the Doughnut Plant

2011-12-17T11:17:00.000-05:00

Behold, the Doughnut Plant's holiday donuts: marzipan, star-shaped and tasting, perhaps curiously, of cherries; spiced pear, green-striped and filled with a sugary, cider-esque pear mash; and gingerbread, cakey and moist. Their all-around hyper-sweetness inspired much holiday cheer, or at least heart racing, as well as the following, sung to the tune of "Deck the Halls":

'Tis the season to get fatter

Yum ya-yum yum, ya-yum yum yum
Fill my belly with bags of donuts
Yum ya-yum yum, ya-yum yum yum

Arirang

2011-12-16T13:27:00.000-05:00

Three floors above bustling 32nd Street, marked only by a small sign amidst a riot of competing ads, Arirang serves only those people determined to find it. Its customers' persistence becomes understandable once you take your first slurp of the handmade noodles that are the house speciality. Lubricious and luxurious, they soak up the hearty broth they're served in and warm you from the inside out. They come in two main varieties --- long or flaked --- and fortunately, you can get both in the same bowl.

A Christmas Carol at the Abrons Arts Center

2011-12-14T19:00:00.001-05:00

The subtitle of this show is DICKENS: THE UNPARALLELED NECROMANCER (caps theirs), which explains much about Reid Farrington's point of view. He has taken the many, many adaptations of A Christmas Carol, edited them down to soundbites, and then restaged the performance, with live actors. It doesn't always work, but what it does do is honor the source material, Dickens' novella, a book that's easy to dismiss because of it sentimental familiarity, but that, once you sit down to read it as an adult, you realize is just about perfect.

Origami Tree at the AMNH

2011-12-13T11:18:00.000-05:00

Serious Eats: Cafe Henri

2011-12-12T14:51:00.001-05:00

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for Serious Eats. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there.

This week's Date Night finds us at Cafe Henri, a cozy corner restaurant serving classic French in Long Island City [read more].

48th and 3rd Chessboard

2011-12-10T10:52:00.001-05:00

At the corner of 48th and 3rd, great chess matches from the past get replayed on a a forty-foot board. Originally a means of covering up a bland bare wall, the board is now a New York institution and a great "What would you do next?" conversation starter.

Zabb Elee

2011-12-08T14:27:00.002-05:00

A couple of years ago, we asked a friend for recommendations for places to eat in Rome. He gave us a few specifics and one general admonishment: don’t eat anywhere that has pictures on the menu. We thought of him recently as we sat down to lunch at the newly opened second branch of Zabb Elee, a Thai restaurant, in the East Village. The menu, you see, was pretty much all pictures.

And that’s a good thing, since the Thai served here won’t be familiar to most eaters, us included. Instead of red curry with bamboo shoots, pad Thai, or other carryout staples, we ordered duck larb, gang som (papaya and shrimp in a light lime-chili sauce), and moo yang (barbecued pork), in part because the pictures looked so very appetizing. We hope ours do too, as these are dishes --- and a restaurant --- worth trying: the duck larb, in particular, offered all kinds of textures, from chewy duck to sharp red onion to springy mint and crunchy rough-ground rice, a chopped meat salad whose image is worth 1000 lip smacks, at least.

The Grocery

2011-12-06T14:36:00.002-05:00

It's been several years since the Grocery, a small New American restaurant, shocked just about everyone in the food world by getting itself named one of Zagat's seven best restaurants in New York (by way of comparison, Le Bernardin and Daniel also made that list). A recent lunch showed that only those who'd never eaten there would have been shocked by such praise: the turkey burger with mushrooms was the best turkey burger we've ever eaten. Juicy, meaty, expertly salted. The mushroom soup starter warmed us, evoking woodsy Vermont, while the BBQ duck sandwich pleased us with its spicy-fatty contrast and the gingerbread pudding had us scraping the plate for crumbs. But it's the turkey burger we're still thinking --- and talking --- about. Damn if that wasn't the best thing we've eaten all fall.

Serious Eats: Esperanto

2011-12-05T14:39:00.001-05:00

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for Serious Eats. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there.

This week's Date Night finds us at Esperanto, a dash of Latin America in the East Village [read more].

Moody at Woodward Project Space

2011-12-04T14:06:00.000-05:00

egg

2011-12-02T11:47:00.001-05:00

While in India, we ate Indian exclusively, which meant massive breakfasts of idli, masala dosa, mirchi vada, uttapam, chana masala, and other savories we'd only ever seen served at lunch or dinner. As much as we relished them, back home we had a craving for eggs, chorizo, French toast, and donuts, aka breakfast a la the U S of A. Perhaps no other restaurant in the city does the first meal of the day so well as egg, the uber-popular restaurant in Williamsburg. We got there early to beat the masses, and we ate. And ate.

Serious Eats: King Yum

2011-12-01T15:23:00.002-05:00

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for Serious Eats. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there.

Recently, Date Night found us at King Yum, a Chinese-Polynesian restaurant in Queens that conjures nights out from another era [read more].

Schenck House at the Brooklyn Museum

2011-11-27T09:32:00.001-05:00

Built in Canarsie around the time of the Revolutionary War, the Schenck House takes Brooklyn Museum visitors back to an age when most of what is now New York was farmland and a distinctively American culture was just coming into existence.

Kenny Scharf Gates on the Bowery

2011-11-25T08:52:00.001-05:00

The Sweet Life

2011-11-23T08:47:00.000-05:00

Like most long married couples, over the years our interests have melded. Case in point: when we first met, one of us believed that candy was only appropriate in movie theaters and on Halloween. Fast forward almost a decade, and together we cruise the city's sweeteries, looking for such things as softy pops, two chunky marshmallows dipped in caramel, milk chocolate, and sea salt, and peanut butter pretzel poppers. The Sweet Life, on the Lower East Side, also offered Jelly Bellys--- not the regulation 50 official flavors, mind you, but a good supply, as well as fruit slices and halwa and Turkish delight and gummies of all varieties.

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Sausage and Broccoli from the Greenmarket

2011-11-21T08:13:00.001-05:00

If Top Chef has taught us anything, it's that even non-cooks like us can make good food if we start with good ingredients --- and then don't do a whole lot. Recently we bought some pheasant sausage from Quattro's Game Farm at the Greenmarket and some fresh broccoli, roasted 'em with garlic and onion, tossed everything with rigatoni, and topped with pecorino. Less time prepping and cooking dinner means more time sitting in front of the tv and making fun of this season's cheftestants.

Overunder, N'DA, IRGH Mural

2011-11-19T09:05:00.000-05:00

Xocolatti

2011-11-17T08:19:00.000-05:00

Sold out of a tiny storefront in Soho that's decorated with interlocking rows of Xocolatti-branded boxes, these slivers and slabs aren't like your run-of-the-mill chocolate. Instead, they offer contrasts and conundrums, sharp angles and smooth finishes, full of cashews and saffron, Iranian rose and masala, pistachio and burnt caramel.

Occupy Inside Out

2011-11-15T09:03:00.001-05:00

Occupy. Inside. Out. seeks to document some of those involved in Occupy Wall Street. The folks behind this project photographed 99 people, captured their stories, and pasted posters around town, another way of representing the 99%.

Cholula

2011-11-13T08:08:00.001-05:00

Manhattanites can boast of a few good bodega taquerias --- Tehuitzingo, Guelaguetza, Zaragoza, a handful of places in East Harlem --- but our favorite might be the Cholula chainlet in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Here, actual tablecloths (albeit mysteriously reminiscent of those found in Little Italy) adorn the bright, cheery space, and the food is plated with care before it's served by a friendly waitress. They have an extensive menu of Mexican standards, like the sopes below, but Cholula's razon de ser is the taco. The pollo ranks among the best we could recall having, and the al pastor and longaniza tacos would take some beating as well. Plus, you can pick up giant jugs of Jarritos, which always warms our hearts.

The Brooklyn Historical Society

2011-11-12T08:23:00.000-05:00

The Brooklyn Historical Society, housed in a lovely building in Brooklyn Heights, may not be as vast as the city's most populous borough deserves, but what it lacks in size it makes up in charm. Particularly interesting (and endearing) is the current exhibit on the Dodgers, those legendary bums whose departure for Los Angeles more than half a century ago still smarts in some Brooklyn breasts.

Dosa Hutt

2011-11-10T08:01:00.000-05:00

As you read this, we are in India, eating our body weight in these. But when we're at home, Dosa Hutt in Flushing will do nicely. A couple of dosas, some masala vada, a bottle of Limca, and we're set.

Faile Mural at Houston and the Bowery

2011-11-08T09:12:00.001-05:00

Fifth Floor Farm Kitchen at the Greenmarket

2011-11-06T07:58:00.000-05:00

Baked goods from Fifth Floor Farm Kitchen, including a brownie, applesauce coffee cake muffin, and Hungarian fruit cake, make any morning yumtastic. We try to leave a little room in our bag for a treat or two from this Greenmarket outpost.

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McNally Jackson

2011-11-04T20:16:00.001-04:00

McNally Jackson stands as an awesome example of a neighborhood not knowing what it needed until it got something that worked. In this case, a friendly community bookstore, with nicely stocked shelves and white-washed walls, a little cafe with mobiles made from paperbacks hanging from the ceiling and a quirky, intricate machine that prints books on demand. We're happy to report that this place is always packed.

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Desi Shack

2011-11-02T13:25:00.000-04:00

In general, we're not wild about restaurants that already have their expansion plans laid out and their branding in place before they've even opened their doors. But such are the times in which we live. It's hard out there. That said, Desi Shack, a fast casual spot specializing in roti roll-ups on Lexington in Murray Hill, captivated us in part because of the owners' commitment to profit-sharing and promoting worthy employees. You go, Desi Shack!

So, how was the food? On a recent rainy Friday, we got lamb kebab, spicy and flavorful; chicken tikka, just plain delicious; and paneer, perhaps a wee bit older than we would have liked. Then we mixed and matched from the greens menu, trying the sauteed peppers and onions, and the chutneys, sampling mild cilantro mint and fiery green chili coconut. Next time, we'll try the chicken with the onions and cucumber yogurt, or aloo with corn salad and red chili sauce. These days, we should all be supporting places whose philosophies, whatever they might be, move us.

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Serious Eats: Shi

2011-10-31T13:52:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for Serious Eats. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there.

This week's Date Night finds us at Shi, a restaurant-cum-lounge or lounge-cum-restaurant, depending on your point of view, in Long Island City [read more].
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ECB Mural in Bushwick

2011-10-30T16:43:00.000-04:00

Vandaag

2011-10-28T15:19:00.000-04:00

A few weeks back, we wrote about our passion for Swedish sweets; now it's time to reveal our love of Vandaag, not the first restaurant in the city to update Northern European tastes using locally sourced products, but probably the most popular. We stopped in for a big lunch, including grilled quail, romaine and herring, pickled sausages, the world's greatest bread basket, hete bliksem, and Dansk Viking Blood, a kind of mead. Mead! Any minute we expected Grendel's mom to come charging in, or Beowulf to thurst his sword into our seaweed foccacia.

Steampunk Haunted House

2011-10-25T07:53:00.001-04:00

Normally, if we want to get scared, we'll just think about the Republican Party, thus obviating the need to visit a haunted house. But the Steampunk Haunted House, staged at the Abrons Arts Center by Third Rail Projects, is different. No blood, no gore, no chainsaw-wielding anythings. Instead, they elicit chills through disorientation and suspense, separating audience members from one another and sending individuals on an idiosyncratic route through the building's manifold chambers. We parted company in the first room, only to be reunited at the end when one of us popped out of a crate nearly into the arms of the other.

This year, the house draws inspiration from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, teasing out some of the more disconcerting strands of Carroll's novels and mimicking, through its randomized structure, the stories' topsy-turvy logic. An actual conversation we had afterward: "Did the Red Queen watch you in the mirror in that room with the French maid?" "What Red Queen? Was she near where you played chess with the animal-head thing?" "Um . . . what?" Rick Perry may be more horrifying, but he's not nearly so much fun.

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Serious Eats: 26 Seats

2011-10-24T14:44:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for Serious Eats. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there.

This week's Date Night finds us at 26 Seats, one of many restaurants in the East Village that pair classical French with flea market finds [read more].
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DBR at BAM

2011-10-23T14:12:00.004-04:00

"Symphony for the Dance Floor," an audio-biography by violinist and composer DBR, is where "the concert hall and the club hall collide," according to its Kickstarter Campaign. Less intellectual than his "Darwin’s Meditation for the People of Lincoln,” which we saw in 2008, this new group of songs blends Daniel Bernard Roumain's classical training with his love of electronica and hip-hop. At BAM's Next Wave Festival, we caught the super-sexy concert's New York debut, full of photos, hagiography, dancers, an in-house DJ, and at least one instance of violin as sex toy.

Photo: thanks and thanks
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OHNY: Grand Lodge of the Masons

2011-10-21T10:53:00.000-04:00

Sure, it's hard to visit the Masonic Hall of the New York chapter of the Grand Lodge of the Masons and not get this song stuck in your head, but that's a small price to pay for such incredible decor.

Steve's Ice Cream

2011-10-20T16:31:00.003-04:00

Steve Herrell started Steve's in the early 1970s, producing small batches of ice cream lusciously flavored with high-end mix-ins. Then he opened Herrell's, which one of us grew up eating in the sleepy west of the woody east. Now another person, named neither Steve nor Herrell, but who worked at the original Steve's, has opened Steve's Ice Cream in Manhattan, purportedly as a throwback to what Steve Herrell has been doing for four decades. Confused? Us too, so it helped that our friends are big fans.

We stopped in one night, grabbing a mint cacao chip and strawberry ricotta to go. Bites didn't take us back to the scoops of our childhood, but they did take us to a happy place.
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OHNY: Ganesh Temple

2011-10-18T14:20:00.000-04:00

We'd been to Ganesh Temple, part of the Hindu Temple Society of North America complex in Queens before, for the food, but this weekend we went for the religion. As part of OHNY, this Hindu temple was open to visitors, so we could watch the pujas (ceremonies) performed for Brahmin, Shiva, Vishnu, and, of course, Ganesh, remover of obstacles. We said "namaste" to the various sari-clad, flower-covered vigrahas (idols), and "see you soon."

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Serious Eats: Tabaré

2011-10-17T14:51:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for Serious Eats. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there.

This week's Date Night finds us at Tabaré, where we discover a day's worth of meals tucked between two slices of bread [read more].
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OHNY: Moynihan Station / Farley Post Office

2011-10-16T15:03:00.000-04:00

No matter their race, religion, or politics, all New Yorkers hate Penn Station. The destruction of McKim, Mead, and White's grand Beaux Arts building and its replacement with a linoleum-and-plaster basement ranks as one of the greatest casualties in the long war on American cities that transpired over the second half of the twentieth century. Needless to say, the prospect of moving some train operations (Amtrak, in all likelihood) to the Farley Post Office --- the companion building to the old Penn Station --- strikes everyone who has ever heard it as a fantastic idea. And if all goes as planned, construction on Moynihan Station, as it will be known, will begin next year, which means that the tour we took yesterday, part of the ninth annual Open House New York weekend, may be the last for a long while.

Led by Timothy Gilchrist and Bronson Fox of the Moynihan Station Development Corporation, the tour took us beyond the striking lobby and through the innards of the gargantuan complex. Like a company town under one roof, all the facilities necessary for daily life, including a gym and a jail, were once found inside. Now, however, it's nearly all vacant, as postal operations have been downsized and moved across Ninth Avenue. All of these blue-carpeted offices and cavernous sorting rooms sit empty, waiting for a better life.

Blossom

2011-10-14T11:02:00.000-04:00

Ah, the dangers of being rapacious participants in the city's food scene: we go out, we photograph, we take some notes, and then we go somewhere else, we photograph, we take some notes, and meals pile up and meld together and slip from the mind.

Case in point: Blossom, the perennial favorite all-veg restaurant in Chelsea, which we visited months ago. Our recollections have dimmed, but we do recall the cool crunch of the sweet potato rolls, the gentle spice of the black-eyed pea cake with chipotle aioli, the surprising heartiness of the pistachio and pepper-dusted tofu, and the roasted richness of the African peanut stew. If only we'd had some gingko biloba.

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Robots Will Kill Roll-Down Gates in Bushwick

2011-10-12T13:40:00.001-04:00

Madison Square Eats

2011-10-11T12:50:00.000-04:00

Madison Square Eats has returned, giving us another opportunity to gobble the bee sting pizza from Roberta's, dripping with honey and covered with soppressata, as well as discover some new treats, such as samosas from Kulinary Kraft (affiliated with Junoon) and nutella and bacon with maple cream cookies from Macaron Parlour. As we sang in the Brownies, "make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and other gold," or, in this case, one is crusty and spicy, and the other soft and krazy.

Serious Eats: Franchia

2011-10-10T12:36:00.001-04:00

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for Serious Eats. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there.

This week's Date Night finds us at Franchia, an all-vegan, mostly Korean, utterly relaxing restaurant in Murray Hill [read more].
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Sleuths at the New Yorker Festival

2011-10-09T13:00:00.001-04:00

Among the myriad offerings at last weekend's New Yorker Festival, one panel stood out for its what-the-heck-do-these-people-have-to-do-with-one-another quality: Sleuths, organized by David Grann, author of the wonderful Lost City of Z, and featuring biographer Stacy Schiff, ex-CIA agent Robert Baer, art historian Martin Kemp, and NYPD detective William Oldham. Grann brought them together to discuss the different ways in which they all practice detection and coax people and objects to reveal their secrets. As "fellow obsessives," Schiff's phrase, they've learned to push past commonly held beliefs, be persistent, ask questions, weigh sources, and constantly probe their own assumptions about what may or may not have happened. Sometimes the result saves lives or delivers justice, as in the work of Baer and Oldham, and sometimes it illuminates the past, as in the work of Kemp and Schiff. But taking the risk of being wrong, as detectives do, is advice worth heeding for thinkers of all kinds.
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Gourds at the Greenmarket

2011-10-08T15:24:00.000-04:00

Autumn is here, and someone is very excited.

Quilts at the American Folk Art Museum

2011-10-06T14:05:00.003-04:00

A few weeks ago we read an impassioned plea from art critic Roberta Smith in the New York Times about the troubled American Folk Art Museum. "Please. Someone, everyone, do something to save the American Folk Art Museum from dissolution and dispersal," she begins, then argues that this kind of art --- domestic, folk, outsider, DIY, whatever you want to call it --- has had a significant impact on the objects on view at places like MoMA and the Met, and should have a permanent home in the city.

One day after Smith's plea, the Times published another article about the embattled museum. It starts, "The quilts will live to see another day." As a result of donations, the museum had decided to stay in the Lincoln Square space, where it's currently featuring an exhibition of star-patterned quilts, sewn by American women in different times and regions. Who says art lacks power?

Bareburger

2011-10-05T12:09:00.000-04:00

With its focus on grass-fed beef and unusual meats (bison, elk, ostrich), Bareburger stakes out new territory in the New York burger landscape. We prefer grass-fed to corn-fed beef in any case, and this burger was very well-prepared, yielding a salty, juicy bite with a touch of char. The elk burger, though it doesn't hold together as well as ground beef does, had all of the rich gaminess we expected. Add to those a basket of crispy fries served with an array of dipping sauces and a strawberry shake, and you've got a pretty good Sunday lunch right there.

The Loneliest Planet at the New York Film Festival

2011-10-04T20:43:00.001-04:00

If you've spent much time in foreign lands with a significant other, the first hour or so of Julia Loktev's The Loneliest Planet, which premiered this weekend at the New York Film Festival, will resonate deeply: the simultaneously thrilling and frightening feeling of shared isolation comes through perfectly, as do the inevitable awkwardnesses of being dependent on people from another culture whose values you may not share. Here, the couple in question is Alex (the ever-lovable Gael Garcia Bernal) and Nica (the why-haven't-we-heard-of-her-before Hani Furstenberg), traipsing around the Caucasus Mountains with their guide, Dato (Bidzina Gujabidze, Georgia's best mountaineer and a great first-time actor). They revel in one another, trade jokes with Dato, and sink into the gorgeous scenery. Then things take a turn. What was a story about one couple becomes a story about the existential doubts that linger in all couples, a story told through eyes and sighs rather than words.

Photo: Thanks
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Serious Eats: Sage General Store

2011-10-03T12:41:00.001-04:00

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for Serious Eats. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there.

This week's Date Night finds us at Sage General Store, a bastion of Americana in Long Island City [read more].

A Separation at the New York Film Festival

2011-10-02T11:20:00.000-04:00

After sweeping the Berlin Film Festival and generating ear-splitting buzz around the world, Asghar Farhadi's A Separation finally made its American debut last night at the New York Film Festival. And the hype is all true: A Separation is one of the best movies we've ever seen at the festival and easily the best movie we've seen all year. To describe it as an Iranian Rashomon, as many have done, hints at the central issue --- we won't spoil it here --- but doesn't do the film justice, as Farhadi's sensitivity to his characters and the complexity of their motivations outdoes Kurosawa's. Farhadi, in the discussion afterward, emphasized the universality of the story, and it is indeed a movie for thinking people, rather than "Iranians" or "Europeans" or "Americans," but he also acknowledged its larger ramifications, noting that "the most political movie is the one you don't realize is political." Little wonder what an anonymous Iranian wrote in the New York Review of Books last week: "I saw it in Tehran this summer, and so movingly did it reflect what I was witnessing around me, I was surprised that the authorities allowed it to be screened."

Photo: Thanks

Apple Cider Donuts

2011-10-01T11:56:00.001-04:00

Autumn has arrived, and with it apple cider donuts, such as these, from Breezy Hill Orchard. Welcome back, old friends.

Sockerbit

2011-09-29T14:07:00.000-04:00

True confessions time: these days, our hearts belong to Scandinavia. Our love affair with the sparse, polite region began with Alexander Skarsgård, our favorite part of True Blood, then intensified through a recent lunch at Vandaag, the minamlist bakery/restauarnt in the East Village devoted to innovative interpretations of North Europe's standard fare (more on this soon). And now, to put us way, way over the edge: an addiction to the marshmallows sold at Sockerbit, a West Village candy store that gets its goodies from Sweden. The chocolates, including coconut-covered caramels and marzipan, were fine; the pretty, flavorful gummies, the salty-sweet licorice, and the fluffy, cherry-kissed marshmallows, truly wonderful. We'd write more, but our hands are otherwise occupied.

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Tight Spot by David Byrne at the Pace Gallery

2011-09-28T12:46:00.000-04:00

For the past two weeks, a mysterious hum has lured passersby into a small alley on 25th Street, where David Byrne's colossal inflated globe greets them. A little scary, a little cool, and only there until Saturday.

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Vishnu at the Brooklyn Museum

2011-09-27T14:31:00.000-04:00

It's a good time to be (or to be into) Indian art right now. In addition to Mother India at the Met, the Brooklyn Museum has a huge show about Vishnu and his many avatars (also known as "attributes"). Vishnu: Hinduism’s Blue-Skinned Savior includes work both new and old, from paintings to sculpture to ritual objects, depicting the god in all his glory, as well as his anger, fierceness, peacefulness, happiness, love of milk-ness, powerfulness, manifoldness, elegance, creativity, passion, wisdom, and colorful majesty.

Photo: thanks
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Serious Eats: Beyoglu

2011-09-26T14:08:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for Serious Eats. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there.

This week's Date Night finds us at Beyoglu, a meyhane on the Upper East Side [read more].
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Forcella

2011-09-25T16:20:00.000-04:00

If you're a decent, life-loving person, the words "fried pizza" ought to set you salivating. While new Williamsburg pizzeria Forcella serves plenty of regular (and apparently quite good) Neapolitan pizzas, it's the little three-pie list in the corner of the menu that sets it apart. Joined by our friend Howard, we sampled two from the "pizze fritte" section, the montanara (above) and the ripieno classico (below). Howard noted that the montanara tastes not quite like a pizza, and that's true: the crust, which gets deep fried before being topped and baked, is so unusual and so light, almost like an unsweetened funnel cake. The ripieno, shaped like a horn of plenty, opened to reveal a sea of cheese on which floated sticks of sausage, a bed of crust beneath. To call it a calzone would be misleading, due to the fried deep dish base and poori-like pillow above it. Aw, heck, don't take our word for it: go try them yourself.

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Autumn at the Staten Island Zoo

2011-09-24T11:27:00.000-04:00

The Select (The Sun Also Rises)

2011-09-23T11:38:00.002-04:00

The third installment in Elevator Repair Service's reconsideration of American modernist classics, The Select (The Sun Also Rises) takes Hemingway's war-rattled, drink-addled novel straight on and sparely, the way Papa would have wanted. The play lacks some of the innovation of ERS's earlier productions, but perhaps that's fitting, as the source material is openly hostile to ambition, preferring to rub readers' noses in the blasted lives and cynical scars of its characters.

Using a single bar set for every scene --- tables double as bulls in Pamplona --- ERS's version emphasizes the nearly constant inebriation of the characters as they try to chug their way out of their ennui. By the third dance sequence and billionth open bottle, some of that boredom creeps its way into the audience. Still, Ben Williams, who plays Jake's friend Bill by way of James Joyce's Buck Mulligan, stole our hearts as well as our ears (he doubles as the sound designer), and we're crossing our fingers that ERS tackles wordy, moody Woolf next.

Photo: thanks

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The Berlin Wall on 53rd Street

2011-09-21T08:35:00.000-04:00

Serious Eats: PT

2011-09-19T14:07:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for Serious Eats. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there.

This week's Date Night finds us at PT, an Italian restaurant in Williamsburg with a really great garden [read more].
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Foodaissance at the James Beard House

2011-09-17T10:18:00.000-04:00

According to our pal Donny Tsang, who co-writes Eat to Blog with our friend Howard, we're living in the middle of a Foodaissance. His photo project of the same name seeks to document the folks behind the food, the faces that make the cakes, pies, pops, ice cream, pretzels, pizza, and other artistanal, small batch goodies coming out of Brooklyn. Last night we attended the opening of Donny's exhibition at the James Beard House's Greenhouse Gallery, where we snacked on caramels from Liddabit Sweets and marveled at Mr. Beard's fully mirrored bathroom. The photos were pretty great too.

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The Elevated Acre

2011-09-16T15:53:00.000-04:00

Punjabi Grocery and Deli

2011-09-15T16:20:00.000-04:00

We didn't realize it at the time, but it's clear from the pictures that we're somewhat ashamed of the homeliness of the dishes we selected from Punjabi Grocery & Deli, a (you guessed it) Punjabi takeway and bodega on the Lower East Side. Golly, we hadn't realized we were so shallow, and we certainly didn't feel shallow as we made carb shovels out of the roti and plowed through the curries with spinach, potatoes, and chickpeas as well as dal. Still, the truth is that the stars of this particular show were the warped pakoras, fried vegetable nibblets that showed, again and again, that while beauty might belong to the beholder, the belly judges using a different set of criteria.

New York City Police Museum

2011-09-14T17:59:00.000-04:00

Located down the delightfully named Old Slip Street, in a former precinct, the New York City Police Museum features all kinds of memorabilia and artifacts, including criminal cards (above) --- which feature key details like nationality, build, and illegal specialty --- guns, handcuffs, old uniforms, and safecracking kits. Understandably, the majority of exhibition space memorializes those who've fallen in the line of duty and shows how the police force has changed over time (Hello, Hercules Teams!). Charmingly dusty and ramshackle, this museum won't give the Met or the Natural History Museum stiff competition any time soon, but it's worth a visit to honor those whose job it is, and has been, to keep us safe.

Ample Hills

2011-09-13T13:07:00.002-04:00

This summer, Ample Hills was on everyone's lips, which sounds far sexier than we intend. Unless, that is, you get off on high-quality, small batch ice cream, made from locally sourced ingredients, and sold by the friendliest bunch of teens we've encountered in a long time, in a shop decorated with ice cream-themed memorabilia from the 1950s. We'll stop here, before we reveal too much about our own proclivities, but we should add that Ample Hills was out of the famed salted crack caramel on the day we visited, so we went with peppermint patty (top, amazingly amazing) and cafe au lait (espresso mixed with sweet cream, just one amazing).

Serious Eats: Abistro

2011-09-12T14:39:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for Serious Eats. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there.

This week's Date Night finds us at Abistro, a Franco-African restaurant in Fort Greene whose fried chicken ranks as one of the top 10 awesomest things we've eaten all year [read more].
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WK Interact's Project Brave

2011-09-11T10:44:00.000-04:00

Staten Island Yankees

2011-09-10T09:32:00.000-04:00

When the Staten Island Yankees played the Brooklyn Cyclones in the final game of the season, we couldn't decide who to root for. We wound up cheering at pretty much everything that happened, especially the fireworks display at the end.

Torrisi

2011-09-09T08:58:00.001-04:00

Sure, Torrisi is best known for its prix fixe dinners that inspire hours-long waits in the street, but the sandwiches ain't so bad, either. To wit, a jumbo Italian combo, layer upon layer of ham, soppresseta, and pepporoni, along with lettuce shreds and tomato doused in the lightest sprinkling of vinegar, and the chicken parmasean, a sloppy beast of breaded breast, mozzarella cheese, and tomato sauce. In addition, a side of roasted cauliflower and one of corn. In addition to the dinner queue, we'll be waiting outside on Mulberry Street at 10.59 am, first in line for the sandwiches.