The Best Thing I Ate Last Week Lucky for me, last week’s press junket for the season premiere of Bizarre Foods included lunch at Balthazar in New York City. Did I spring for the Plateau de Mer for one??? Yes, yes I did. This restaurant is one of my favorites in New York, serving French… Read More →
The Best Thing I Ate Last Week? Dinner at Upland in New York City. By Andrew Zimmern Justin Smillie’s Upland is as impressive a dining experience as New York offers. Here, serious food intersects with a rambunctious and spirited environment in a thoughtfully designed and beautifully lit space. Credit: Corry Arnold The five lettuce Caesar salad… Read More →
Honest Puerto Rican Food in the Bronx An international community of settlers, the Bronx celebrates diversity everywhere you look. Today, as immigrant success stories become the new norm, the borough is a far cry from the symbol of decay it represented a few decades ago. And with such a vibrant and constantly evolving immigrant community, it’s easy to stumble… Read More →
Mind-Bending Combinations of Flavors & Textures By Bob & Sue Now in expanded space off First Street in the East Village, Momofuku Ko has been one of New York City’s most challenging reservations for the past eight years. With a cook centric open kitchen where diners face each other at a U-shaped counter, Chef David… Read More →
The Best Thing I Ate Last Week By Andrew Zimmern When I was about to start recording The Moment podcast with my friend Brian Koppelman last week, he whipped out a box of The Doughnut Project doughnuts for me to try. TDP is a new shop in NYC, and the beet and ricotta donuts are insane, as… Read More →
Rustic Perfection Chef Jonathan Waxman’s 13-year-old West Village restaurant is as casual and gorgeous as he is… no joke. My pal of many decades is in his prime, swarthy, and greyed out like a sexy Gandalf. In fact, Waxman just won a Beard Award for Best Chef NYC thanks to his culinary wizardry—you see what… Read More →
If Queens, NY was its own city it could lay claim to being the greatest food city on Earth. As it stands now, it’s the largest of New York City’s five boroughs, has a population of almost 2.5 million residents, half of whom are foreign-born. Queens County itself is one of the top five most… Read More →
Reimagining Bread & Butter A seasoned writer and recipe developer, Raquel Pelzel started her food career in pastry school before landing a gig in the test kitchen at Cook’s Illustrated and later moving on to Tasting Table as a senior food editor. She’s co-authored 20 cookbooks—including the James Beard award-winning Quick Recipe and the James Beard… Read More →
Beautiful Cuisine from the Italian Riviera By Bob & Sue As the sister restaurant of Michael White’s Marea, Ai Fiori has a Michelin star and an exciting Italian menu. We had a hard time choosing among the many interesting courses but started with the lobster veloute, the chilled corn soup with crab, and a crudo of fluke with American sturgeon… Read More →
Feeding the Fire When Joe Carroll opened Brooklyn’s Fette Sau in 2007, he was among the very first pioneers to bring legit barbecue to New York City. A couple years ago, the New Jersey-native expanded his operation to Philadelphia, adding a second Fette Sau to his roster of restaurants (which also includes the neighborhood steakhouse… Read More →
A Modern Approach to Mexican Tradition There’s no doubt that Pujol, Enrique Olvera’s flagship restaurant in Mexico City, is one of the most important eateries in the Americas. Open since 2000 and currently ranked among the world’s best restaurants, Pujol showcases Mexico’s pre-colonial and indigenous foods shot through a fine dining prism. Last year, the… Read More →
Whole Animal Butchery Without the Self-Congratulatory B.S. Tom Mylan is a butcher. Not because it’s trending, but because no one else in his company wanted to do it. Seven years after launching Marlow & Sons’ local meat program, the largely self-taught meat man is running one of the best butcher shops—The Meat Hook—in New York,… Read More →
Koreatown Barbecue This stretch of 32nd Street in Manhattan is known for round the clock Korean-style revelry, with great and often gritty restaurants, karaoke bars, lots of flashing neon lights and 24hr spas of all types. When it comes to the Korean food in this animated neighborhood, one of my regular spots is New Wonjo.… Read More →
Celebrating the Life of a Legendary Chef I have known Shin Tsujimura since his early days at Hatsuhana in New York City. He had come from Hatsuhana in Tokyo and after a brief run in the NYC outpost, he joined up with Nobu Matsuhisa and has been a part of that world class group for… Read More →
Eating Queens Queens-based food writer Joe DiStefano has been covering the borough’s ethnic food beat for more than a decade. When it comes to ethnic diversity, some estimates name Queens as number one in the world – it’s so rich that DiStefano has made exploring the borough his life’s work. He’s our go-to guide for… Read More →
A New York City Classic J. G. Melon is my favorite bar burger, bar none. All the fancy stuff can come and go, but this is the burger I grew up on, and it holds a special place in my heart. The restaurant may be adorned in watermelon decor and the service can be iffy,… Read More →
Inspired Cuisine From South of the Border Highly regarded for his avant garde desserts at modernist temples Alinea and wd~50, Alex Stupak surprised the culinary world when he opened a Mexican restaurant in 2010. Once the critics got over their bewilderment and tasted his creative take on this rich culinary tradition, most realized he’s just… Read More →
Masters of Xi’an Cuisine Jason Wang of Xi’an Famous Foods fame is a phenomenal young entrepreneur. The family-run Chinese food empire is a result of an amazing combination of old world techniques – David Shi, the father, is a great chef from China who opened the first Xi’an Famous Foods in the Flushing mall in… Read More →
The Man Behind the World’s Best Burger Josh Capon, the executive chef and partner of New York City’s Lure Fishbar, B&B Winepub and El Toro Blanco, talks about the importance of consistency and quality in the restaurant biz, how to make a great burger and his favorite Manhattan eats. AndrewZimmern.com: You’ve worked in several esteemed kitchens… Read More →
Celebrating a Time-Honored Classic Mindy Fox, cookbook author, food writer and food editor at La Cucina Italiana magazine, shares her tips for the perfectly roasted chicken, ways to reinvent the iconic dish and her favorite picnic-ready recipes. AndrewZimmern.com: As the food editor of La Cucina Italiana and author of several cookbooks, you obviously have a… Read More →
Budding Restaurateur Celebrates His Roots Harold Dieterle, executive chef/co-owner of three outstanding New York City restaurants, Kin Shop, Perilla and The Marrow and champion of Top Chef season one, talks about his love of Thai food, how his heritage inspired the menu at his new restaurant and his favorite NYC eats. AndrewZimmern.com: You studied Thai cuisine… Read More →
Uncommon Honesty When Gabrielle Hamilton opened her acclaimed 30-seat bistro Prune in New York’s East Village in 1999, she had worked in the catering biz for more than 20 years, but she had never been a restaurant chef, nor could she imagine that her winding culinary path would lead to successful restaurateur. Fast forward a… Read More →
