Tag Archives: bars
Chumley’s
In the dead quiet of Bedford Street at night, without even a sign to guide you, you might ring the wrong buzzer in your attempt to find Chumley’s, the historic NYC speakeasy just reopened as a full service restaurant. But just push the door of number 86, and it will open into a dark, wood-paneled dining room filled to the rafters with vintage book covers and portraits of the writers who wrote them – many of whom were Chumley’s patrons of years past. (more…)
Posted in American, Cuisine, French, New York restaurants, restaurants, West Village
Tagged arctic char, bars, cocktail bars, cocktails, foie gras, fried chicken
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Milk & Hops
Wedged between a Starbucks and a Chase Bank is an unlikely interloper among the chain stores on lower Broadway: Milk & Hops, a sliver of a market and bar dedicated to all things cheese and beer.
This space has bottled beer and packaged food for sale on one side and a long marble bar running down the other. Here you can order up various spins on grilled cheese sandwiches, plus a selection of seasonally rotating cheese and beer. On a recent visit, there were some trusty cheese standbys like Bayley Hazen Blue and Kunik, but also a few rarities like Red Dragon, a Welsh cow’s milk cheese made with ale and studded with mustard seeds. (more…)
Posted in American, Cuisine, food, Greenwich Village, Neighborhood, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged bars, beer, cheese, pretzels
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Hunt & Fish Club
There’s a glitzy newcomer in town on 44th Street, a midtown stretch that desperately needs more dining options. Hunt & Fish Club falls squarely into the expense account steakhouse category, but here the fish is just as good as the meat. Go for the macho name or the promise of wild boar on the menu, but if you end up ordering something gathered instead of hunted, you will be equally happy. (more…)
Posted in American, Cuisine, Midtown West, Neighborhood, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged bars, cocktail bars, fish, French onion soup, pasta, seafood, short ribs, steak
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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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Atrium Dumbo
Of all the neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Dumbo is perhaps the most radically changed since the bad old days of early ’90s New York. Where there once were abandoned factories, artist squats and dark, deserted streets, there’s now a buzz of pedestrian activity, luxury condos and even a fancy florist taking up two storefronts. Atrium Dumbo is a sign of the times, bringing artisanal food and $13 cocktails to a once forlorn area right by the river. (more…)
Posted in American, Cuisine, Dumbo, food, French, Neighborhood, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged bars, Brooklyn, cocktails, duck, fish, pasta, soup
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Quality Italian
Returning to New York after a long trip can be a shock to the system, like stepping out of a perfectly ordinary afternoon and into a Baz Luhrmann movie. It’s the world as you know it, but bigger, louder, shinier, like an advertisement come to life.
Quality Italian is not just an Italian restaurant, it’s a very New York Italian restaurant, with a brashness that can wow you in small amounts or turn you off in excess. It’s helmed by Michael Stillman of Quality Meats, who opened this Italian spin-off in a bi-level space smack dab in the land of big business: 57th and 6th, home base for many financial firms, talent agencies and luxury brand headquarters. Many of these banking and business power players are already in the house, probably drawn to an upstairs dining room that’s hidden to any tourists ambling by on the street, where only the small downstairs wine and espresso bar are visible. (more…)
Posted in Cuisine, Italian, Midtown West, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged bars, cocktails, Italian food, pasta, pork chops
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Lafayette
For the last ten years, one man has dominated the French restaurant scene for downtown New Yorkers: Keith McNally. It’s hard to imagine the Meatpacking District without Pastis or SoHo without Balthazaar, two highly stylized restaurants that stole Paris bistro decor and food so effectively that the trend of antiqued mirrors, subway tiles and flea market fixtures has been stolen back by a copycat place in Paris.
But with Pastis closing for nine months in 2014 as a new building is constructed above and longtime chefs Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr leaving McNally’s empire, change is afoot. Now popular local chef Andrew Carmellini (Locanda Verde, the Dutch) is throwing his hat into the ring with the opening of French mega cafe Lafayette. The old Chinatown Brasserie (and Time Cafe/Fez) space has been overhauled with no expense spared, columns covered in glossy Art Deco patterns of inlaid wood, red leather banquettes ringing the raised dining level, walls opened up with huge plate glass windows, copper pans glinting in the saucier and rotisserie station and glassware glimmering above the bar. Baz Luhrman could walk right in and film another scene for the Great Gatsby. (more…)
Posted in Cuisine, food, French, Neighborhood, New York restaurants, Noho, restaurants
Tagged Andrew Carmellini, bars, bread, cocktails, croissants, dessert, oysters, seafood, steak
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The Marrow
If it’s true that “you are what you eat,” we also are what we grow up eating. Harold Dieterle, the chef behind the Thai restaurant Kin Shop and American restaurant Perilla, has gone back to his roots with the Marrow, with a menu that highlights German offerings from his father’s side, “Familie Dieterle,” and Italian dishes from his mother’s side, “Famiglia Chiarelli.” (more…)
Posted in Cuisine, food, German, Italian, Neighborhood, New York restaurants, restaurants, West Village
Tagged bars, beef, beer, cocktails, duck, Harold Dieterle, marrow, schnitzel, seafood
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Cafe Tallulah
It was like watching a bomb explode in slow motion.
When the first piece of shrapnel flies by, you just think: that’s odd. In this case it was a mix-up with our cocktail order. Six of us sat down for dinner in the prettily decorated new French bistro Cafe Tallulah on the Upper West Side, but there were only four water glasses on the table. When I asked for water, our server said: Should I cancel your cocktail order then?
Hmmm. (more…)
Posted in Cuisine, French, Neighborhood, New York restaurants, restaurants, Upper West Side
Tagged bars, bistros, cocktails, steak
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The Rum House
In New York, when the going gets tough, the tough get drinking. Despite – or perhaps because of – the many obstacles posed by Hurricane Sandy, New Yorkers have been flocking to bars and restaurants wherever they are open. Unlike restaurants, all a bar really needs to open is ice, drinks, candles and a working bathroom, so some bars have stayed open downtown, beacons of light and a promise of community in the eerily dark streets. (more…)
Posted in American, food, Midtown West, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged bars, cocktails
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Don Antonio
Don Antonio was the first Italian restaurant I visited in New York after returning from Italy, so I wasn’t expecting much. But it has gotten a lot of buzz from pizza aficionados, and the owners are Italians Roberto Caporuscio of Kesté Pizza & Vino and Antonio Starita of Naples’ renowned Pizza Starita. It’s also located just north of Times Square – perfect for an after-theater dinner in a neighborhood that’s otherwise a culinary wasteland. (more…)
Posted in Cuisine, food, Italian, Midtown West, Neighborhood, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged bars, Keste Pizza & Vino, pizza
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Perla
I usually like Gabe Stulman’s restaurants. Fedora and Jeffrey’s Grocery are great neighborhood places with good, inventive food, even though they could have gotten by on the scene alone. At Perla, Stulman has taken over the old Bellavitae space on tiny Minetta Lane in the West Village (the location of many scenes in Serpico), redone it with the requisite Edison bulb light fixtures, exposed brick, wooden bar and antiqued mirrors and installed chef Michael Toscano, formerly of Babbo, in the open kitchen with an open hearth in back. (more…)
Posted in Cuisine, food, Greenwich Village, Italian, Neighborhood, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged bars, duck, Gabriel Stulman, Italian food, New York, pasta, restaurants, West Village
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Reynard
Reynard is the latest farm-to-table-in-a-chichi-setting restaurant to hit the city, this time by Marlow & Sons chef Sean Rembold and his partner Andrew Tarlow. The new spot in the Wythe Hotel in Williamsburg got some flak for being too slick and sceney, but the vibe here feels positively organic compared to the hyper-branded, focus-grouped type of restaurant that seems to be colonizing Manhattan. (more…)
Posted in American, food, New York restaurants, restaurants, Williamsburg
Tagged bars, Brooklyn, duck, New York, seafood
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Murray's Cheese Bar
How can a city so obsessed with cheese not have a cheese bar until now? That is the main question that comes to mind with Murray’s Cheese Bar on Bleecker Street. New York has wine bars galore, cheese stands in the Greenmarket and specialty cheese counters popping up in so many groceries, but Murray’s is the first NYC wine bar specifically dedicated to cheese. (more…)
Posted in American, food, New York restaurants, restaurants, West Village
Tagged bars, cheese, New York, wine bars
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Fonda
For chefs and diners, Mexican is often the food of compromise. It may be challenging to round up a gang for a meal of foie gras doughnuts in Bed Stuy, but I never have any problems getting anyone to go out for margaritas in Manhattan. And if the Mexican restaurant in question also happens to serve excellent food, everybody wins. (more…)
Posted in East Village, food, Mexican, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged bars, duck, Fonda review, guacamole, margaritas, New York, tacos
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