Tag Archives: bars
Burger and Barrel
There’s a common misconception that a restaurant has to focus on things like fish, tofu and radishes to attract a female clientele. But what New York women want is often defined by what they don’t want: multiple TVs over the bar, the smell of bleach masking the smell of stale beer, and guys in backwards white baseball caps. But red meat? Most of us are actually fine with that.
Burger and Barrel proves that a restaurant doesn’t have to go on a diet to appeal to women, since we appreciate a good burger just as much as the guys do. We just don’t want to eat one in a crap place. (more…)
Posted in American, food, New York restaurants, restaurants, Soho
Tagged bars, burgers, crab, duck, gastropubs, iceberg wedge salad, New York
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Rubirosa
Formerly the street of forgotten red sauce joints and San Gennaro tourists, Mulberry Street in Little Italy was recently declared “the city’s hottest new restaurant row” by the New York Post. This surprising renaissance began after local diners had pretty much abandoned it, then Torrisi Italian Specialties sprang up out of the ashes. The lines outside there continue to grow (even at lunch), and underground drinking den the Mulberry Project adds even more caché to the street. Rubirosa fills in the last piece of the puzzle, the Italian pizza spot. (more…)
Posted in food, Italian, New York restaurants, NoLita, restaurants
Tagged bars, New York, pizza
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Vandaag
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Vandaag may not be a German restaurant per se – the name is Dutch for “today,” and the staff will only categorize the food as “Northern European-inspired” – but Germans would probably be surprised at how popular this type of cuisine has become in New York now. During a recent trip to Berlin, our Danish and German friends pled with us after we took them to the third German restaurant in a row: Please, no more German food! In Berlin, it seems they’d much rather go out for Italian.
Not here. New restaurants Edi & the Wolf, Heartbreak and Vandaag are all serving variations on German food within a six block radius of one another – and generating a lot of buzz. Fortunately, there’s substance behind the fad at Vandaag, which brings real craftsmanship to the idea of a modern Northern European restaurant. (more…)
Edi & the Wolf
We weren’t sure what to expect from Edi & the Wolf, a new Austrian place that opened on Avenue C. The stein-pounding din of Zum Schneider across the street? The restrained elegance of Kurt Gutenbrunner’s Wallsé?
Neither, as it turns out. Edi & the Wolf introduces New York diners to a different breed of Austrian restaurant, the type that’s usually attached to a wine cellar and serves typical Austrian fare like schnitzel and spätzle. It’s the brainchild of Eduard Frauneder and Wolfgang Ban of Seäsonal, an Austrian place that was overlooked by many New York critics until it earned a Michelin star. (more…)
Posted in Austrian, East Village, food, German, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged bars, beer, gastropubs, New York, schnitzel, wine bars
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Empellon
FOMO: fear of missing out. It’s the feeling that strikes whenever a much-hyped new restaurant opens and oh my god you might not get there while it’s still hot and everyone’s talking about it unless you get there right now. It’s the feeling that has gripped New York ever since foodie mania has slowly crept into the city’s zeitgeist – and anytime ramps are in season.
Given the amount of hoopla surrounding the opening of Alex Stupak’s new restaurant Empellón, diners should be forgiven for mobbing the place. A WD-50 alum takes on Mexican cuisine! In a cool new space in the West Village! This was in every imaginable media outlet online and off a couple weeks ago. Well, take a deep breath, because if you haven’t gotten there yet, you’re not missing out that much. (more…)
Posted in food, Mexican, New York restaurants, restaurants, West Village
Tagged Alex Stupak, bars, New York
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Niko
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Though there are many kinds of sushi, there are essentially only three kinds of NYC sushi restaurant: the casual takeout joint, the trendy, sceney place where, oh yeah, there’s some raw fish there among the mango cocktails, and the reverential temple to sushi where diners speak in hushed tones against the backdrop of traditional koto music.
Which is too bad, because even if you’re serious about sushi, that doesn’t mean you necessary want to dine in a restaurant that’s deadly serious. Wouldn’t the sushi be just as good if they played, say, David Byrne and Adele on a kickass sound system instead of 19th-century Japanese music? This is where new Soho sushi restaurant Niko rolls the dice, combining the downtown atmosphere of Bond St. Sushi at its beautiful-people peak with the sushi expertise of Midtown’s Sushi Yasuda. (more…)
Fish Tag
Sometimes it feels like there are two parallel New Yorks: the men’s New York, consisting of sports bars and barbecue joints, and the women’s New York, with its wine bars and California-light restaurants. Any guy walking into Fish Tag, the new Upper West Side seafood restaurant helmed by bad-boy chef Ryan Skeen, would find lots of single, attractive women with newly blown out hair, drinking white wine and sharing plates. But alas, all the guys seem to be next door at the grittier, meatier Sunburnt Cow. Boys: will they ever learn?
Which is too bad, because despite the inconsistencies at this new hot spot, there’s plenty to recommend Fish Tag to both genders. There are 10 craft beers on tap and even more by the bottle, rare bourbons and even more scotch. In addition to that smoked salmon, Fish Tag has a whole charcuterie board of meat, an impressive selection of cheese and a kick-ass burger.
Posted in American, food, New York restaurants, restaurants, Upper West Side
Tagged bars, burgers, New York, seafood restaurants
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Aux Deux Amis
The word “hipster” may be permanently attached to the word “Williamsburg” in New York, but the hipster is an international phenomenon. At Aux Deux Amis in Oberkampf, a trendy neighborhood in Paris, guys with chunky framed glasses, mustaches and vintage plaid overcoats and their female hipster counterparts crowd around the bar, waiting for a table.
Fortunately, Parisian hipsters’ reference point seems to Serge Gainsbourg’s late ’60s/early ’70s Paris, not Valley Girl‘s 1983. The owners of this new bistro have followed suit, keeping the ’70s decor of the café that used to exist here – neon lights, Formica wood paneling à la Welcome to the Johnsons, mirrors, a beige-ish color to the walls. It’s a way of dining as one’s parents would have, but with irony. (more…)
La Bellevilloise
Once a communist club founded in 1887, La Bellevilloise still provides a valuable service to the people. Nightly live music and DJ sessions draw in a local crowd from hip, young 20th arrondissement, and the well-stocked bar turns out great cocktails as fast as they can drink them. (more…)
Hotel du Nord
Certain places in Paris are known to be Fashion Week hangouts, and Hotel du Nord is one of them. Industry people and models flock to this 100+ year-old classic restaurant in Canal St. Martin, where the main pathway through the dining room becomes a catwalk as glamazon women enter and leave for frequent cigarette breaks outside. (more…)
Puerto Rico Eats: The Luquillo Kiosks
Not far from the El Junque rainforest in Puerto Rico is a mecca of sorts for Puerto Rican street food. On the northeast coast, sun worshippers are drawn to the town of Luquillo and nearby Playa Fortuna for the long stretches of a beautiful public beaches. The only thing missing was a place to feed everyone, and so the kiosks of Luquillo sprang up, forming a ramshackle assortment of sheet metal and concrete structures between highway and beach. Flip flops, drinks in lopped off coconuts, and dozens of fried snacks are all for sale in mom-and-pop stands, some of which have been passed down through the generations.
Navigating the bonanza of treats from the 50-plus stands near the beach can be daunting, but it’s also hard to go wrong. Most of the proprietors speak English as well as Spanish and can tell you what’s inside the various fried shapes under the glass. Choose your kiosk by the number of locals frequenting one or the other and by the house specialty, usually listed prominently on the menu or the wall. Or you could do what we did last weekend, and just go from kiosk to kiosk and eat whatever looks good. (more…)
Posted in food, restaurants
Tagged bars, beef, Puerto Rico, seafood, travel
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The Commodore
What would you do for a great plate of fried chicken? At the original Pies-N-Thighs in Williamsburg a couple years ago, fried chicken fans had to be willing to wait. The line snaked out the door, and service was glacially slow – think Duane Reade with more piercings and tattoos. But then, perhaps even because it took 30 minutes to get to the front of the line then 10 minutes more to get your food, the chicken seemed breaded with manna from heaven, perfectly seasoned and perfectly crisp. So what if you had to eat it while crouched on a curb next to a trashcan?
If you were willing to endure the old Pies-N-Thighs (the new one is a larger, more restaurant-like place), you may want to try the Commodore, helmed by Stephen Tanner, previously of the chef at Pies-N-Thighs, and also in the kitchen at Diner and Egg. But be forewarned: if you don’t have the stamina of a 21-year-old and a love of crowds, you will end up feeling aged, cantankerous and starving – not unlike Mimi Sheraton cast into the wilds of Brooklyn. (more…)
Posted in American, food, New York restaurants, restaurants, Southern, Williamsburg
Tagged bars, Brooklyn, fried chicken, New York
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Rye House
Of all the qualities you can manufacture in a new restaurant – flattering lighting, good music, a smoky barbecue smell – the most elusive is fun. The other ingredients can come together perfectly, but if that feeling of good times is missing in the center, the final product can still fall flat.
Rye House in the Flatiron District is a relatively recent addition to the scene, but it already feels like a lot of good times have been had here. This may be largely because of the bar, which dominates a spacious front room and is manned by Lynnette Marrero and Jim Kearns, formerly of Freeman’s. Classic cocktails and a large selection of beer on tap draw in a big after-work crowd of the Park Bar variety – i.e., lots of guys. (more…)
Posted in American, Flatiron District, food, New York restaurants, restaurants, Southern
Tagged bars, beer, gastropubs, New York
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Fedora
As much as we hate to see old icons of the New York dining scene disappear, let’s face it: not every place is worth saving. Take Fedora, the gay bar on West 4th Street that’s been around since before gay bars were even legal. The atmosphere: fabulously decrepit, as was much of the clientele. The food: questionable. Fedora was a restaurant in the vein of the bygone bohemian Greenwich Village depicted in Mad Men, a style that only lives on in such stalwarts as Gene’s on West 11th Street.
Fast forward to 2010, when new owner Gabriel Stulman of Joseph Leonard took over the Fedora space and reopened it this January. He kept the name and the iconic neon sign outside. A long wooden bar spanning one side of the spare, black and white room looks antique, but it’s actually a new, custom-made bar that incorporates parts of the old Fedora bar. It feels as if it’s been here forever, as does the impressive collection of black and white photos on the opposite wall. Even some of the original Fedora’s regulars are now regulars here. Though Stulman’s following is pretty straight, the original regulars can’t be displeased by the eye candy in this good-looking, stylish crowd. (more…)
Posted in American, food, French, New York restaurants, restaurants, West Village
Tagged bars, duck, Gabriel Stulman, marrow, New York
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