Category Archives: New York

Foxface (New York, August 2019)

Posted on by


[Upfront disclosure: this write-up is of an establishment owned by friends and of a meal at which we received a significant comp.]

Foxface, a tiny—and I mean tiny—sandwich shop in St. Mark’s Place in Manhattan, opened late last year. Ori and Sivan, who own and operate it, are not strangers to the once vibrant, now moribund American food forum world. I’ve known them for some years now, mostly online. Some of those who’ve followed their restaurant reports over the years might well have been surprised that on their return from a five year sojourn in Tokyo they decided to sell sandwiches; but nobody would be surprised to learn that these are some bloody excellent sandwiches (in some cases literally so: blood shows up in the ingredients of a couple of sandwiches in their ever-changing lineup). Continue reading →

Baar Baar (New York, August 2019)

Posted on by


Baar Baar is a recently opened mod Indian restaurant in the East Village in Manhattan. Its name means “again and again” but I have no desire to eat there again, which is a shame because there is real talent in the kitchen. But that talent is in service of taking what could be excellent iterations of more traditional dishes and marring them with unnecessary jhatkas or flourishes that must read well to those looking for novelty but which come across as trying too hard on the plate and palate. At least so it seemed to us at our table. I ate here two days after my dinner at Adda and here again I was sans the missus; I dined instead with more people who I know from the food internet. In this case, one person I knew in the heyday of Another Subcontinent (and her partner) and two others I’ve come to know more recently on Twitter but had not met until this meal. So as to not tarnish their reputations by association with me I will preserve their anonymity. Continue reading →

Pastrami Queen (New York, August 2019)

Posted on by


I said my next New York restaurant report would be of a newer, mod-ish Indian place. I lied. Again. Instead I have for you a report on an older, very far from mod-ish Jewish deli. Deal with it.

We ended up at Pastrami Queen on the Upper East Side for two reasons: 1) we needed to find a place to eat within walking distance of the Met; and 2) we wanted the boys to try pastrami and other Jewish fare in New York and didn’t want to deal with the madness of Katz’s. Not knowing much of the New York deli scene I didn’t actually realize that we were eating anywhere significant till after our meal when I looked them up. It turns out they’re pretty celebrated and are reputed to serve some of the best pastrami in the city. Continue reading →

Rezdora (New York, August 2019)

Posted on by


Back to New York. After a run of informal or relatively casual meals, here’s the first fancy’ish restaurant for which we hired a sitter and abandoned the boys to go eat at. (By the way, Manhattan babysitting rates: what the fuck?)

When I was planning our New York eating I asked the brain trust at Mouthfuls to recommend a couple of “fine dining” (whatever that means these days) places in Manhattan where two people could eat well and get out for about $250 all-in. This sounds like a tough proposition in Manhattan but bear in mind that the missus never has more than one drink and I rarely have more than two. A few names came up but after filtering for “sounds interesting to us” and “not difficult to get a table” only two remained: Rezdora and Crown Shy. We ate at both on consecutive nights. Here first is the Rezdora write-up. Continue reading →

Gray’s Papaya (New York, August 2019)

Posted on by


On Friday I had a quick report on casual lunch at the Upper Westside location of Luke’s Lobster, an establishment whose proximity to Central Park and the Museum of Natural History I appreciated. Today’s report is of an even more casual lunch at a far more iconic and certainly far cheaper restaurant: Gray’s Papaya. The flagship location at Broadway and 72nd is also easily walkable from the Museum of Natural History, though a bit further than Luke’s Lobster. But a large part of the charm of being in New York is walking the streets and despite the heat and humidity we did not object (we averaged about 6 miles a day over our 10 days). And without making over large claims about the quality of either the hotdogs or the juice I can say that we enjoyed our meal at Gray’s Papaya as well. Herewith a few details. Continue reading →

Luke’s Lobster (New York, August 2019)

Posted on by


We stayed on the Upper Westside while in New York last month in no small part because we were going to be spending a lot of time with the boys in the museums and in Central Park. For food-obsessed people like us, however, this presents some challenges as both the UWS and the UES are relative interesting food deserts, especially in close proximity to the big museums. On our first full day, however, we had a nice casual lunch at the UWS outpost of Luke’s Lobster, a chain with locations all over Manhattan and other places on the East Coast as well Las Vegas, San Francisco, Japan and Taiwan. Herewith a brief report. Continue reading →

Yoon Haeundae Galbi (New York, August 2019)

Posted on by


We’ve been curious about the Korean food scene in New York for a while. Koreatown in Los Angeles is usually our stomping ground when we’re there, and it is, of course, a rather hardcore Korean enclave. But New York has a sizable Korean population too and we were interested to see how the food would compare. The boys’ vote, of course, was for Korean barbecue. I looked around online to see what the options were and hit upon Yoon Haeundae Galbi, a recent’ish Manhattan outpost of a restaurant in Busan. Located in Midtown, it was the perfect pick for another evening when we needed a dinner close to a play the missus was going to and when we needed a place that would be an easy sell to some old friends that we were meeting for dinner. And a good meal it proved to be. Continue reading →

Dim Sum at Nom Wah (New York, August 2019)

Posted on by


Since our most recent dim sum meal had been so dire—at Mandarin Kitchen in Bloomington, MN in July—I’d asked for recommendations on Mouthfuls for dim sum parlors in Manhattan. Now, the best dim sum, or for that matter the best Chinese food in New York, is said to be not in Manhattan but in Queens. On this trip, however, our focus was on eating not the best possible versions of the things we were interested in but the best possible versions of the things we were interested in that were also within easy reach of other places we were going to be visiting. And so when it came to pass that we were going to be in the vicinity of Chinatown for lunch one day we were only too happy to stop in at Nom Wah Tea Parlor, which had been recommended by a few people. What did we find? Read on. Continue reading →

Adda (New York, August 2019)

Posted on by


Hot on the heels of my review of lunch at Rasika in DC comes this review of dinner, almost exactly a week later, at Adda in NYC. Adda may be the hottest Indian restaurant in New York right now, at least among the foodie set. While sketching out our meals I asked New Yorkers on Twitter to recommend Indian places and Adda was the one that showed up on most people’s picks. And when I went about making plans to eat out with various groups of people it was the one that kept getting mentioned as a place people would be happy to go to.

As it happens, I went there with a group of people from Mouthfuls, the venerable New York-focused food forum. We’ve all known each other for a long time online and we’re all huge pains in the asses and most of us not easy to please. But we liked the food at Adda. Herewith the details. Continue reading →

Empire Diner (New York, August 2019)

Posted on by


We ate dinner at Empire Diner in Chelsea on our second evening in the city. Why did we eat there? Reasons are there two: 1) we needed to eat somewhere within relative proximity to both our apartment and to the theater where the missus was scheduled to watch Say Something Bunny that evening ; 2) we tried a walk-in at the Midtown Ippudo Ramen location and were hit in the face with a ludicrous projected wait at 5.15 pm. So I checked the list of recommendations I had been given by my compadres on Mouthfuls and gave Empire Diner—a short walk from the theater—a call. They had many tables available and so we hopped back on the subway and went over. We didn’t really know what to expect or whether this would be a meal up the boys’ alley. But it turned out rather well, albeit not very reasonably priced. Continue reading →

Pizza at Mama’s TOO! (New York, August 2019)

Posted on by


Our first meal in New York, eaten shortly not too long after arrival from DC, predictably/stereotypically/appropriately/conveniently involved pizza. We were staying on the Upper Westside, in a neighbourhood described by my primary sources of New York food recommendations as a bit of a food desert. But a short walk north from our apartment put us at a pizzeria that has received a lot of attention, and a New York Times star, in the last year: Mama’s TOO! at Broadway and 106th Street. As the name indicates, this is an extension of an existing brand. Mama’s Pizza, not too far away, has been serving up traditional New York slices for a long while now. Mama’s Too! (the exclamation mark is part of the name) takes that pizza in some new directions, both crust and toppings-wise. I do not pretend to be a pizza savant of any kind—if you’d like to find out more about where they fit in or depart from the larger New York scheme of pizza please take a look at Pete Wells’ review. Read this only to find out what four people who do not have any sort of firm ideological position on pizza thought of their offerings on one hot August evening. Continue reading →

Yakitori Totto (New York, August 2019)

Posted on by


If there is one thing our kids will reliably eat outside the home it is any kind of grilled meat. And ever since their first meal at Raku in Los Angeles they have been particularly enamoured of Japanese yakitori and related skewers. Accordingly, we’d planned to hit at least one yakitori specialist while in New York. We’d originally planned to do our skewering at Torishin but when I went to make a reservation I noted that they say that guests have to be above the age of 12. We fell back on another place not too far away from Torishin that had also been highly recommended: Yakitori Totto. Herewith the details. Continue reading →