Tag Archives: seafood
Osteria del Corso, Milan
Milan gets a bad rap as an “industrial” city, but it can be beautiful in the springtime, especially when the huge Salone del Mobile fair takes place. And when you’re visiting here, it’s always a good idea to get dining recommendations from a local, as we did from street style photographer Giia of Tonics, who sent us to a little southern Italian spot in the Brera. (more…)
Posted in food, Milan, restaurants
Tagged seafood, seafood restaurants
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Casa Mono
It only took 10 years to get a reservation at Casa Mono.
This little Spanish restaurant has been perpetually jammed since Mario Batali and Andy Nusser opened it on a pretty corner of Gramercy in 2003. Just mention the words “Mario Batali,” and suddenly a line of 20 people will form at the door of any restaurant. Though you can put your name in and wait for a table at Bar Jamon next door, numerous failed experiments to do so led D. and me to hold out for an Open Table reservation in that prime slot between 7 and 9pm, which mysteriously never appeared even weeks ahead of time. In the meantime, Casa Mono inspired a host of other tapas places in the city and a mini Spanish food revolution, as flavors like pimenton and the whole small-plates dining concept spread like a contagion. (more…)
Posted in Cuisine, food, Gramercy Park, Neighborhood, New York restaurants, restaurants, Spanish
Tagged sausage, seafood, tapas
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Calliope
CLOSED
Falling into the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” category is Calliope, a new restaurant by Ginevra Iverson and Eric Korsh on a busy corner of Second Avenue in the East Village. The big French cafe-style windows from its predecessor Belcourt are still here, as is the pretty blue trim, whitewashed tin ceiling and glossy wooden bar at the back. But this motto could also apply to the seasonal menu, which intersperses the more challenging dishes (tête de porc, spicy braised tripe) with familiar Italian and French classics, executed with finesse. (more…)
Recipe: DIY Maryland Crab Feast
For some non-Marylanders, the task of opening and eating a hardshell crab can be daunting. But for the truly obsessed, eating them is just the beginning. What if you didn’t just steam and eat the crabs yourself, but caught them from the Chesapeake Bay for a DIY crab feast? This weekend we took the boat out with my brother and his wife, an experienced crabbing team, and learned how to catch them. (more…)
Posted in food, recipes
Tagged crabs, entree recipes, Maryland, seafood, seafood recipes
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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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Alison Eighteen
CLOSED
Just mentioning that you remember Alison on Dominick marks you as a Diner of a Certain Age. (I am one of them.) In the restaurant’s heyday on Dominick Street in the ’90s, Tribeca had more homeless people than millionaires, and taking a cab down there for dinner was an exotic, perhaps life-threatening adventure. Fast forward to now, when restaurants can only appear mysterious by not listing a phone number, papering over their windows to discourage the B-list or serving dinner in the dark. (more…)
Ristorante da Giacomo, Milan
Though Italian food is often associated with the word “rustic,” in Milan it’s anything but. This sophisticated city, host of the annual Salone Internationale del Mobile, brings the same cosmopolitan style to its cuisine.
Located between Porta Vittoria and Porta Venezia and near several fashion shows during Milan fashion week, the quietly elegant Ristorante da Giacomo is very civilized spot. Light from the large windows, with linen drapes embroidered in the same traditional manner as this spring’s Valentino line, spills onto the tiled floor and turn-of-the-last-century moldings painted pistachio green. It’s old Milan but very well maintained – much like some of the clientele here. (more…)
Corkbuzz
“Buzz” is the key syllable in this new wine bar by sommelier Laura Maniec, former wine director of the B.R Guest restaurant group. Since Corkbuzz opened in late November, it’s gotten dozens of press mentions and seems to be constantly packed. Certainly an upscale wine bar by one of the few female sommeliers is a nice addition to Greenwich Village. But there are already lots of wine bars in the city, so what gives?
Maybe what New York’s wine bars needed all along was a feminine touch. They’re mostly patronized by women, yet the owners and wine directors of most serious wine-centric places are men. It seems like a type of machismo for a sommelier to push an intimidating, challenging wine list that does more to prove his own wine knowledge than satisfy the customer. Corkbuzz represents a kinder, gentler approach. (more…)
Posted in food, Greenwich Village, Italian, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged bars, New York, seafood, wine bars
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Mo-Chica
Ricardo Zarate of Peruvian restaurant Mo-Chica in LA was recently named Best New Chef by Food & Wine Magazine, so naturally we had to eat there during a trip to LA last week. In New York, this would be a near-impossible reservation to get. Best new chef? Working at an inexpensive restaurant? Expect mobs.
We called Mo-Chica and booked lunch for 3pm on a Monday, figuring it wouldn’t be too crazed at that time. One GPS-navigated trip from LAX later, we pulled up at a big boxy structure in downtown LA that looked a lot like… well, a mall. Inside, past a shop selling Mexican tchotchkes, a juice bar and a Thai take-out place, was Mo-Chica. It turns out it’s little more than a stand in a high end food court, complete with plastic tablecloths and a woman taking orders behind a cash register. “Don’t tell them you made a reservation,” D. said. Obviously, something had been lost in translation. (more…)
Scarpetta
To paraphrase Yogi Berra, nobody goes to the Meatpacking District anymore. It’s too crowded. This is one reason we haven’t gotten to Scott Conant’s Italian restaurant on West 14th Street until now. When it opened five years ago, New Yorkers were outnumbered in the Meatpacking District by touring Sex and the City fans, and the resulting atmosphere was decidedly unsexy.
But that’s the good thing about January: Everybody leaves, and suddenly the city’s not so crowded anymore. There was even an available 8:30 reservation at this critically-acclaimed Italian spot in the Meatpacking District on a Saturday night. It was like the ’90s all over again. (more…)
Posted in food, Italian, Meatpacking District, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged bars, New York, Scott Conant, seafood
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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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Hammer and Claws Blue Crab Festival
If you live in New York and love food, chances are you’ve been to some pretty disappointing food festivals. Many are plagued by long lines, small portions, huge crowds, dwindling food supplies, limited selection and VIP favoritism. So it was a relief to find that last weekend’s Hammer and Claws Blue Crab Festival, an all-you-can-eat crab feast in NYC benefitting the Chesapeake’s Save the Bay Foundation, was the exact opposite. This was really all the crabs you – or anyone! – could ever eat. Perhaps in a lifetime. (more…)
Amalfi Coast: Dining & Drinking Guide
Long before farm-to-table dining was all the rage in the U.S., this verdant peninsula on the western coast of Italy was home to some of the finest, freshest cuisine anywhere. The fruits and vegetables grown right on the Amalfi Coast – terraced gardens of olives, lettuces, tomatoes and lemon trees, all whizzing by as you take the Circumvesuviana train down south – make a startling difference on the plate. Over the course of seven days this May, we sampled some of the best the Amalfi Coast has to offer. (more…)
Posted in Amalfi Coast, food, restaurants
Tagged bars, Italy, pizza, seafood, seafood restaurants, travel
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Montauk Dining & Drinking
If you ever want to convince someone to like the Hamptons, take them to Montauk. Of course, they might claim that this fishing and surfing village is not actually a Hampton, since there are very few manicured lawns, polo players or designer boutiques in sight. But this naturally beautiful, windswept tip of Long Island could charm even the staunchest Hampton hater.
Once just the site of fish shacks and red sauce joints, Montauk has been luring serious diners out here ever since Sam Talbot took over at the Surf Lodge several years back, right after winning Top Chef. He has since moved on to Imperial No. 9, but Montauk’s culinary caché lingers on. For one thing, it would be hard for a seafood chef to be much closer to the source, since lobsters, clams, oyster and fish are hauled in to the docks here every day. Unlike tourist attractions like Mystic, this is still very much a working fishing village.
Posted in food, restaurants, the Hamptons
Tagged bars, Bloody Marys, guides, lobster rolls, lunch, New York, seafood, travel
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The Dutch
If you haven’t made it to Andrew Carmellini’s new place the Dutch yet, remain calm, take a deep breath and stop speed dialing the restaurant. It may be booked for the next month, but it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. In fact it could use some time to settle into itself, like a good bottle of wine that gets even better with more breathing room.
In the annals of the New York restaurant world, the Dutch represents an interesting play on Carmellini’s part. No longer just the chef with an award-winning Italian restaurant in Tribeca (Locanda Verde), he is stepping to center stage with this American place in Soho in the old Cub Room space. Like Blue Ribbon down the street, it’s open late, it serves fried chicken and it’s courting an industry crowd including Mario Batali, who sat placidly surveying the dining room the other night. It’s already shaping up to be the next late-night hang for chefs and food world insiders, who often tweet from the premises. (more…)
Posted in American, food, New York restaurants, restaurants, Soho
Tagged Andrew Carmellini, bars, beer, duck, Mario Batali, New York, seafood, seafood restaurants
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