Tag Archives: bars
Veselka Bowery
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East Village stalwart Veselka has been around so long, it’s impossible for most of us to remember a time when it was not. Beginning in 1954, the original restaurant on Second Avenue operated like a club for Ukrainians until it opened its doors to the artists and musicians of the East Village in the ’70s. Now it’s a necessary stop for many a kid making the pilgrimage down St. Marks Place, but if you’re a New Yorker who’s always seeking out the latest and greatest on the dining scene, chances are the original Ukrainian restaurant falls by the wayside.
Perhaps to prove that the restaurant is more than just a piece of history, Veselka’s owners just opened an additional branch in a shiny new space on East 1st Street off the Bowery. Airy and open, with plain wooden tables, dishtowel napkins, sleek navy chairs and wrought iron chandeliers, it brings the homey atmosphere of the old Veselka into the current day. (more…)
The Beagle
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Though we try to get to new NYC restaurants as soon as possible, sometimes it pays to wait. The Beagle, another gastro pub in the vintage British vein, got a lot of press when it opened in the East Village earlier this year, including a review from the Times in which the restaurant was praised for offering some inventive food and cocktail pairings but reprimanded for withholding the wine and beer menu from diners who wanted to make their own choices.
Fast forward to now, when our server immediately pointed out that the wine list was on the table, where she left it for the entirety of the evening. The innovative appetizer and cocktail pairings are still on the menu, but now diners can opt for wine, beer, or a number of food options without any pairings at all. (more…)
Allswell
One of the best things about dining in New York is following the diaspora of kitchen talent from one key restaurant to its contemporaries. April Bloomfield (herself a grad of London’s River Cafe, like Jamie Oliver) has launched several chefs from the seminal gastropub the Spotted Pig, including Nate Smith, formerly of Dean Street and now the proprietor of Allswell in Williamsburg.
Allswell isn’t direct copy, so don’t come here looking for the Spotted Pig II. There are similarities, like the quirky British decor – cutesy mismatched wallpaper (surprisingly feminine for a male-owned pub), exposed wood beams, inexplicable bric a brac, those famously uncomfortable stools, but a bar you could really settle into. The space is populated with patrons who’ve mastered a particular brand of studied cool, like the Spotted Pig before it hit hundreds of guide books. But the menu and the setting feel personal and distinct. (more…)
Posted in British, food, New York restaurants, restaurants, Williamsburg
Tagged April Bloomfield, bars, Brooklyn, gastropubs, New York
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Chef's Table at Hecho en Dumbo: A Pictorial Tour
Mexican cuisine has come a long way in New York City in the last fifteen years, but the new tasting menu at Hecho en Dumbo is a sign that it hasn’t peaked yet. French-style service, technique and presentation meet Mexican food in this five-course meal, served at the bar in front of the open kitchen, which the restaurant recently transformed from just extra seating to a communal “chef’s table.”
Here’s a pictorial tour of the meal, which, with a few freebies thrown in for all the diners that night, topped out to seven courses for just $55. The setting may not be as fancy as a Boulud restaurant, but it’s an interesting window into the inner workings of a very busy kitchen. Chef Danny Mena, a Mexico City native who previously cooked at the Modern, manages a team of five, who quickly dish out small plates of roasted kid goat, wild striped sea bass, local beet salad and more. They’re as beautifully presented as French cuisine, made with artisanal ingredients contrasting in an inventive way, but the flavor is distinctly Mexican.
Posted in food, Mexican, restaurants
Tagged bars, Hecho en Dumbo, New York
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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…)
Posted in American, food, New York restaurants, Noho, restaurants
Tagged bars, New York, oysters, seafood
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Onegin
Though I’ve never been to Russia, visiting there has always seemed like a good way to lose weight. A regimen of sightseeing all day with nothing to eat at night except a limited menu of meat and bread could be a new sort of Zone diet. So it was quite a surprise to go to this new Russian restaurant and find that it was the traditional Russian food, not just the scene, that would tempt us back here. (more…)
Posted in food, New York restaurants, restaurants, Russian, West Village
Tagged bars, dumplings, fried chicken, New York
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The Cardinal
What is it that makes a restaurant authentically southern? It could be obscure items like Cheerwine and Nu Grape sodas on the menu, a stuffed wild turkey bursting out of a corner in mid-flight, or the fact that a gentleman waiting in the unisex restroom line downstairs actually offered his place up to a lady. But ask a Southerner, and they will tell you that the Southern food experience is all about the sides.
At the Cardinal, a new Southern spot in the East Village, there are more sides than there are entrees, including baked beans, black eyed peas, yams, greens, mac and cheese, fried okra and corn pudding, just to name a few. Order as many as possible and you’ll feel like you’re at a big family barbecue.
Le Royal Turenne, Paris
With all the tips given so far for finding a good place to eat in a touristy area in Paris, a distinction must be made: there are places to eat, and then there are places to drink. If you walk by an outdoor cafe on the sunny side of the street and see that it’s full of French people, chances are it’s popular because it is bien situé.
There’s nothing wrong with the food at Royal Turenne on rue Turenne in the Marais. We had a steak au poivre there which sufficed perfectly for the first, very jet-lagged dinner in Paris. But we returned again and again not for a meal but for a seat on that terrace, watching the world go by over a cafe au lait or a kir royale. (more…)
Chez Janou
This little Provence-style bistro on a quiet corner in the Marais is no longer a neighborhood secret. If you arrive here on a nice evening, you won’t be the only one looking wistfully at the sidewalk tables, hoping to be seated.
So if the hostess tells you they’re “complets” (the French version of “we’re fully committed”), she’s not kidding. After two failed attempts to dine at this Chez Janou on two separate nights, I walked up for the third time, at the very start of dinner service, and tried again for a table. (more…)
Robert et Louise, Paris
If you’re a stranger in a strange land, sometimes it’s better to ditch the guidebook and get lost, as former Frugal Traveler Matt Gross recently did in Paris. After all, all the other tourists are probably reading the same guide books as you are.
But when it comes to walking into a restaurant blind, what should you consider? First of all, don’t be afraid to keep walking. It would be easy to settle on the first vaguely familiar place that comes along. (Presumably this the secret of Olive Garden’s success in NYC, a city full of good Italian restaurants, and the baffling success of Starbucks in Paris.) But the best finds usually come after some investigation. (more…)
Frankies 570
Whatever x-factor makes for a successful restaurant, the Franks have figured it out. Frank Castronovo and Frank Falcinelli, owners of Frankies 457, Prime Meats, and Cafe Pedlar in Brooklyn plus Frankies 17 in the Lower East Side, have expanded again to open another Frankies Spuntino, this time in the West Village. They’re already the Keith McNally of Carroll Gardens, and now they may have their sights set on Manhattan. (more…)
Posted in food, Italian, New York restaurants, restaurants, West Village
Tagged bars, New York
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The Lot on Tap
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It may seem like just yesterday that the August sun was beating down on us, but guess what? Oktoberfest officially begins on September 22nd. Instead of hiking out to Queens this year, Manhattanites only need to go as far as the Lot on Tap, the Colicchio-orchestrated spot under the High Line. It has the feel of the real thing in Germany – but it’s also quintessentially New York. (more…)
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged bars, beer, lobster rolls, New York, outdoor dining, pizza, tacos
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Tertulia
New York tapas restaurants tend to serve as a reminder of what Spain is not. Imagine average New Yorkers drinking wine into the wee hours on a weeknight (I can’t – my job!), strolling into whatever decent restaurant happens to be nearby (Is it buzz-worthy?) and generally putting food second to the act of drinking up the wine, the atmosphere and the company.
We’re just too type A to be Spanish. So the amount of hype surrounding a new, hot tapas place by former Boqueria chef Seamus Mullen almost invalidates it as a Spanish restaurant. It’s supposed to be food without thinking – cuisine that’s tipico. (more…)
Posted in food, New York restaurants, restaurants, Spanish, West Village
Tagged bars, New York, tapas
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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 American, food, New York restaurants, restaurants, Southern, West Village
Tagged bars, Gabriel Stulman, New York
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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 American, food, New York restaurants, restaurants, Williamsburg
Tagged bars, bourbon, Brooklyn, New York
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