Tag Archives: New York
Street Chic: Greenwich Village
It’s back-to-school time in the NYU neighborhood, where you can always get a lesson on style without a huge clothing allowance. Some of the easiest, cheapest nods to current fashion: a flash of red, oversized sweatshirts and sweatpants, Pendleton plaid, gray, and lace tights like these.
A nice masculine-feminine mix of a slouchy sweatshirt paired with lace tights. Add the hair and you’ve got a modern (unconscious?) interpretation of Flashdance. (more…)
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Tagged bikes, New York, street chic
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Lunch (and Late Night): Luke’s Lobster
One advantage of lobster rolls is that no one can dismiss them as the next burger/pizza/fried chicken: everyone already said that a couple years ago when Ed’s Lobster opened. Defying food trendiness, lobster rolls have remained popular and even inspired an online frenzy when Luke’s Lobster opened last week. Why? Because when well made, lobster rolls are darn good – and provide some justification for living up nahth, as they’d say in Maine.
Started by 25-year-old Maine native Luke Holden, Luke’s Lobster adds some interesting new elements to the New York lobster roll scene. (more…)
Posted in American, East Village, food, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged lobster rolls, lunch, New York, seafood restaurants
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The Breslin Bar Is Open
While we may have to wait a little longer for April Bloomfield and Ken Friedman’s new restaurant to start serving, the Breslin Bar in the lobby of the Ace Hotel is already open. It’s worth going to this new spot north of the Flatiron District just for the interior alone, designed by Roman & Williams: think 1940s school for math and sciences. The oak-paneled bar area in the back, decorated with vintage books, attracted a cool, laid back crowd on a recent weeknight.
More (iPhone) photos and details, after the jump. (more…)
A Voce Columbus
You can’t really judge a restaurant from its opening night, because subsequent meals may vary wildly. But if the first night at A Voce Columbus, the uptown sister of A Voce on Madison Square, was any indication, this is an important debut for the New York restaurant scene. The old Cafe Gray space has been blown out so you can see the amazing view of Columbus Circle as soon as you walk in the door. While Cafe Gray had its plusses, the mushroom risotto among them, the glitzy, gold-toned Trump-esque decor started to feel very Dow-14,000 by the time of its demise. In its A Voce incarnation, this kitted out mall space feels much more expansive – even cool – due to the long, roomy bar and open dining room.
Chef Missy Robbins, who came to New York from Chicago’s Spiaggia (one of the Obamas’ faves), focuses on fresh seasonal herbs and vegetables, specialty ingredients, excellent cheeses and salumi. A pictoral tour, after the jump. (more…)
Posted in food, Italian, Midtown West, New York restaurants, restaurants, Upper West Side
Tagged New York
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Le Fooding
Marie Fromage and I headed out to Long Island City last night for Le Fooding, billed as a celebration of food and drink featuring six great chefs each night (three French, three American) and benefiting Action Against Hunger. Started in Paris in 2000, Le Fooding landed in NYC for the first time this year and still has some kinks to work out.
The long line at the door was the first bad sign and made us draw comparisons to the well-organized City Harvest benefit we attended last year, where a team of event workers always kept the crowd flowing. Inside P.S. 1 for Le Fooding, between the fabulous displays of food, like this one above, there were lines, lines, and more lines, curling into spirals so long that when one guest was asked what food item he was waiting for, he joked, “I don’t know. My friends just texted me and told me to meet them in line.” (more…)
Street Chic: Random Shots Fired
Here are a few random shots from around the Village, end of summer. One thing’s clear: hemlines are getting super short. If you’ve got legs, now’s the time to use them.
Her denim short shorts counterbalance the slouchy-chic masculinity of the boyfriend shirt. (more…)
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Tagged New York, street chic, streetchic
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Google Maps of the Stars
There’s something new and cool on Google Maps: a “featured map” by various famous personalities about town. Though there is a corporate sponsor lurking behind the effort (nycgo.com), it’s still a fascinating way to see how the other half lives.
From bigwigs like Mayor Bloomberg and Diane von Furstenberg to industry players like Fern Mallis of IMG, a few key New Yorkers let you in on their favorite places in the city. While some are lame—can anyone imagine Bloomberg saying “The lights! The crowds! The bustle!” when recommending Times Square?—many of the suggestions sound like they’ve been written by the personalities themselves. Moby says of Billy’s Antiques on Houston: “you can find sex toys from the 1920’s and shrunken heads and fetal pigs in jars and cocktail shakers and world war 2 binoculars and books on taxidermy and etc. when billy’s closes i leave the lower east side.” (more…)
New Spot: The National Restaurant
Rarely do you make the news for not making the news, but that’s just what’s happened with new restaurant The National, which quietly opened over a month ago and is literally off the (Google) map. According to WWD, first-time restauranteurs Julie Dickstein and Jeremy Hogeland wanted to get everything right before alerting the media – unlike so many new places that launch a multi-platform press attack.
Located next to Freeman’s, The National looks like it has a quaint, homey vibe, with antique pieces collected over the span of five years. Chef Zoë Feigenbaum is also a first-timer and graduate of the French Culinary Institute, and is serving up a mostly-seasonal menu that Dickstein describes as “schizophrenic,” because it runs the gamut, Blue Ribbon-like, from Korea to Maine.
So no press, next to Freeman’s, very few seats inside. You know what that means: It’s going to be mobbed.
The National
8 Rivington Street between Chrystie and the Bowery
New York, NY
212-777-2177
Lunch: Defonte’s of Brooklyn
There are a lot of good things coming out of Brooklyn these days, not least of which is Defonte’s sandwich shop. The only drawback to the first Defonte’s was its location in Red Hook, too far away for most of us to get there for lunch. But there’s a reason for that other than the trendiness of Red Hook: Nick Defonte came over from Italy and worked in Red Hook as a longshoreman before starting up his sandwich shop there in 1922.
Now Defonte’s of Brooklyn has opened on Third Avenue and 21st in a modern, prime corner space with a stainless steel counter and a few granite tables, bringing their specialty hot sandwiches to the Manhattan work force. (more…)
Posted in food, Gramercy Park, Italian, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged beef, Brooklyn, lunch, New York
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Street Chic and Red Carpet: The September Issue Premiere
After her former assistant wrote the bestselling tell-all novel The Devil Wears Prada, which went on to become a hit film, you’d think the last thing Anna Wintour would invite into her office would be more prying eyes. Yet here we are, several years later, witnessing the reigning queen of fashion expose the formerly-clandestine inner workings of Vogue. It goes to show you that the only constant in fashion is change. RJ Cutler’s documentary on the fashion mag, The September Issue, is already getting lots of good buzz from those who’ve seen the advance release, which is not surprising given the tantalizing trailer. Wintour gamely decided to make a party of it with a screening at MoMA followed by a dinner hosted by Oscar de la Renta. She arrived with Sienna Miller, seen here in blue Thakoon. And on Anna Wintour?
Prada, of course.
47 Gastro Chic red carpet photos – Renee Zellweger, P. Diddy, the Trumps, Andre Leon Talley, Chanel Iman and more – after the jump. (more…)
Posted in fashion
Tagged Andre Leon Talley, Anna Wintour, culture, Jason Wu, Julie Macklowe, Melania Trump, movies, New York, Olivia Chantecaille, red carpet, street chic, streetchic, The September Issue
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Lunch: Keste Pizza & Vino
The fact that Kesté Pizza was named the best pizza in New York by both NY Mag and Time Out NY may seem like good news, but you know the unfortunate fallout of that award: many of us won’t be able to eat there anytime soon, because now the other 10 million New Yorkers also know it’s the best pizza in town.
Solution: lunch. Kesté isn’t a take-out shop, but they do turn tables quickly in this casual spot, so you can be in and out of the place in 25 minutes if you arrive when there’s no line. Try a late lunch at about 2:30pm on a weekday. (more…)
Posted in food, Italian, New York restaurants, restaurants, West Village
Tagged lunch, New York, pizza
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Beat the Heat Fashion
Just because the mercury’s pushing 90 doesn’t mean most New Yorkers can give up running errands, grabbing lunch, or generally stepping out into the concrete jungle. Shorts, shirt dresses, slouchy layers, and buttoned-down-but-breezy work outfits were the order of the day on a very hot afternoon on Ladies’ Mile, the stretch of lower Fifth Avenue that has attracted chic shoppers for over a century now.
Anella
One of the saddest things about losing a restaurant can be losing a favorite dish. Such was the case when Le Zinc closed several years ago: Although the airy, art-poster interior was mercifully preserved by the next tenant, Kurt Gutenbrunner of Blaue Gans, the outstanding French pork country terrine vamoosed with the beloved bistro.
Happily, that terrine has landed at new Anella in Greenpoint, which Marie Fromage led us to this past weekend. All this time the secrets to the dish have lived on in the mind of Michael Sullivan, chef of Anella and former co-chef of Le Zinc with David Waltuck (Chanterelle, Macao), who recreates the terrine, peppery ground pork laced with a delicate liqueur like Pernod, a dense spread that turns fluffy as soon as you apply it to toast. (more…)
Posted in American, food, Greenpoint, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged Anella, Brooklyn, marrow, New York
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The Latest It Bag? The Collectible Cotton Tote
Status bags may no longer be about money, but they are still about caché. At the 2009 Siren Music Festival, must-have bags in the VIP area were plain old cotton totes. They may been acquired for free, but they denoted access: to a Marc Jacobs show (Sonic Youth tote, after the jump) or some early contact with the hot band Phoenix, whose new album imprinted on this bag, left, just came out.
Dis This: Bruni Takes on Celebrity Chefs
The lede in Bruni’s review of Locanda Verde last week was particularly intriguing:
“Renown in the restaurant world can dawn so suddenly and grow so quickly that many chefs get ahead of themselves, winding up a half-dozen paces beyond where they rightfully belong.”
Which automatically begs the question, who? There are so many options in NYC, but Bruni must have been referring to at least one chef in particular. The answer becomes clear in this week’s review:
“[Table 8] marks the New York debut of Govind Armstrong, one of those supremely telegenic chefs whose celebrity seems to outpace his accomplishments….”
Slap! Score one for Bruni.
Posted in food
Tagged food news, Frank Bruni, Locanda Verde, New York
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