Now that my Seoul reports from July are in the books, I should really get started on Kyoto, where we were for a few days before heading to Seoul. Accordingly, here is a report from the weekend trip the missus and I took to New York in October. I’ve already reported on our first meal on that trip: excellent pizza for lunch at L’Industrie in Manhattan. After wandering a bit after that lunch, we headed to the Brooklyn Museum. After spending some time there—I highly recommend the exhibition of Seydou Keita’s photographs, A Tactile Lens—we wandered the mean streets of Brooklyn for a bit and then headed to dinner in Fort Greene. Our port of call? Theodora. This is not a restaurant I had heard of prior to the planning for this trip. But it came recommended by my friend Ori (of Foxface Natural), and as Ori is not generally disposed to over-praise, I resolved to get a table. This was not going to be a slam-dunk. Their tables become available a few weeks out and it was clear as I was tracking them that they go very quickly—especially for prime time on a Saturday, which is what we were aiming for. But by setting an alarm and logging on to Resy as soon as seats for our date became available, I was able to snag a pair (and, yes, they sold out right after that). I am happy to say that the clamour is for good reason: it was an excellent meal. Here are the details. Continue reading
Tag Archives: New York
L’Industrie (New York, October 2025)
I have two meal reports to go from our week in Seoul in July and another two to go from our two weeks in Delhi after that. And I still haven’t started on the meals eaten during our brief stay in Kyoto between our time in Seoul and our time in Tokyo in June. It makes sense therefore that today I have for you a report from a weekend trip the missus and I took to New York/New Jersey in October. Our fall breaks lined up again this year and we took the opportunity to abandon our children and go enjoy ourselves by ourselves. This involved a fair bit of eating out and my first report is of a casual lunch eaten just a few hours after our arrival, at the West Village location of L’industrie. This was one of a few places recommended by my friends on Mouthfuls when I asked for suggestions for pizza by the slice within walking distance of the Whitney Museum. As it happens, we didn’t actually end up going to the Whitney that afternoon (we ended up at the Brooklyn Museum instead) but we did eat pizza at L’industrie. Continue reading
Foxface Natural 2 (New York, May 2024)
Here finally is my long-promised last meal report from my brief trip to New Jersey and New York in May. It features my second dinner at Foxface Natural in the East Village. Considering it took me two months last year to write up my first dinner there (in the company of the missus), it’s only fitting that it’s taken me almost three months to write up the second. But will you be grateful? No. This meal was not eaten with the missus—who did not accompany me on this trip—but with a friend, with whom we’d eaten at Semma last year and I’d eaten at Baar Baar with in 2019. I don’t know if she’ll agree re Semma but I think this is easily the best of our three NYC meals together, even if it resulted in the confirmation of the Curse of Foxface Natural. What do I mean by the Curse of Foxface Natural? Read on. Continue reading
Bombay Bistro (New York, May 2024)
I still have five or so reports from Seoul/Busan to come. But before I get to the next of those, here’s the first report from my recent short trip to New Jersey/New York in mid-May. I was there for just a few nights. I had a packed schedule but managed to see friends for meals on each day. The first of those was dinner in New York City a few hours after arrival. I met an old high school friend at an Indian restaurant in the West Village. I had wanted to try one of the city’s better Indian restaurants. We’d originally hoped to eat at Dhamaka but they seemed to be closed for a private event—at any rate not a single table was available all evening. As we batted around options, location and timing became the chief constraints. Which is how we ended up at Bombay Bistro on Cornelia St., a restaurant I’d never previously heard of and he’d never been to, and which, as far as I could tell from their website, was a regulation curry house—a genre of Indian restaurant in the US that I am usually not interested in. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Foxface Natural (New York, October 2023)
My last whisky review of the year turned out to be of one of the best whiskies I drank all year, and I am very happy to say that my last restaurant review of the year is also of one of the best restaurant meals we ate all year. It wasn’t planned this way: this was not our last meal out this year and nor did I save it up for the end. We ate at Foxface Natural on our weekend trip to New York in mid-October and the only reason it has taken me so long to get all the meal reports from that trip up (see also Gouie, Momokawa and Semma) is that I had such a backlog from our summer travels. But I am very happy to close the year in restaurant reviews out on such a high note. For it was indeed an excellent meal. Before I can tell you about it though I have to give you some caveats. Continue reading
Semma (New York, October 2023)
On our weekend jaunt to New York in mid-October, the missus and I ate sushi for early lunch on both days (at Gouie and Momokawa) and then ate rather excessive blowout dinners. The first of those dinners was at Foxface Natural on the Saturday evening, but that’s not the meal I’m reporting on today. On the Sunday evening we met friends at Semma, the South Indian restaurant that has taken New York by storm in the last year and a half, picking up a Michelin star in the process. One of our friends is a good friend of the house, which is how we managed to get a table on pretty short notice. As it turned out, this also meant that we were comped out the wazoo, with the chef sending out not only everything we’d ordered but also almost everything we had not ordered. I note this upfront so you can keep this special treatment in mind as you read my account of the food itself. On the whole, I thought it was a very good meal—better than my dinner at Adda in 2019—but not without some issues. Continue reading
Sushi at Momokawa (New York, October 2023)
Due to all my time being sucked up by the last bits of planning for the off-campus program I’m about to leave on in another few weeks, I’ve fallen further behind with my backlog of restaurant reports from our travels earlier this year. I still have a few reports from Ireland to come. I’d hoped to get at least one of those out this week but didn’t get around to it—the remaining reports are all quite image-heavy. And so here instead is another of the meal reports from the quick trip the missus and I made to New York in mid-October. I’ve already posted a report on our first lunch on that trip, which featured sushi at Gouie, in the Market Line at Essex Market. That was, on the whole, a decent meal, we thought. We ate sushi again for lunch the next day, this time up on the Upper East Side before a visit to the Met to take in the Manet/Degas exhibit, among other things. I’d asked around for recommendations and Momokawa seemed like a good bet. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Sushi at Gouie (New York, October 2023)
Here is the first of a few reports from New York City. The missus and I were there for a whirlwind trip a couple of weekends ago. She is on sabbatical, it was my midterm break and with kind friends willing to supervise the boys in our absence, it was a rare opportunity for the two of us to get away together. We had a packed couple of days, hanging out with friends, visiting museums and, yes, eating. It’s only the eating that I am going to document here. First up, is our first lunch, which featured sushi. Living as we do in the sushi wasteland that is Minnesota, we always look forward to eating sushi when visiting cities with better sushi scenes. That’s not to say we were looking to spend huge amounts of money eating a bromakase meal somewhere. A casual lunch spot with good fish served in the form of lunch special combos was what we were after. Looking around for spots in the general vicinity of where we were going to be that morning and afternoon, I hit upon Gouie at the Market Line, the basement food hall at Essex Market. I made what turned out to be an entirely redundant reservation and we met a friend for lunch there right as they opened. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Motorino (New York, August 2019)
Here finally is the last meal report from our trip to New York in August. This was our last meal out in the city and another round of pizza. We’d spent the day hanging out at Coney Island and at the end had been thwarted in our attempt to eat pizza for dinner at Totonno. The Upper West Side location of Motorino—just a couple of blocks from our flat—was our fallback option and as it turned out it wasn’t a mere consolation prize. It is likely that Totonno is as good as everyone says it is and quite a bit better but we rather liked Motorino’s pizza—which, like that at Totonno, is in the Neapolitan vein. And we much preferred the atmosphere at Motorino to the frenzy at Mama’s TOO! where we’d had our first meal in New York— coincidentally and fittingly, also pizza. Here is how it went. Continue reading
At Coney Island (New York, August 2019)
On our last full day in New York we took the subway from the Upper Westside all the way to Brooklyn and out to the sea, to Coney Island. I’ve always wanted to go to Coney Island. I’ve never had much of a sense of it—a hotdog stand and a beach is all I could have told you if you’d asked me to try and describe it before getting there—but it is an iconic piece of Americana. And there’s no guarantee that it will still be around when our kids are our age. They may not be able to take their kids there when their turn comes but we could take them now and so we did. And, unlike me, they’re really into hectic amusement parks and boardwalks. We met a friend and his family there for lunch and beach lounging. Before lunch the four of us spent an ungodly amount of money on the rides and attractions along the boardwalk. Is there any reason you should not look at pictures of all of this? No, there is not. Continue reading
The Bombay Bread Bar (New York, August 2019)
This was the third of three Indian meals I ate in New York in August. The Bombay Bread Bar was the latest of renowned chef, Floyd Cardoz’ Indian restaurants. I never had a chance to eat at Tabla, Cardoz’ most successful restaurant, in operation from 1998 to 2010. Along with Tamarind under Raji Jallepalli*, Tabla was one of the few restaurants in that period that attempted to move Indian restaurant food in the US past the established cliches. Despite its longevity, however, it did not really spark a movement. Now the zeitgesit has caught up to Cardoz. New York alone is full of restaurants serving modern and regional Indian dishes, in rooms that are trendy and playful (see Adda and Baar Baar, for example). It made sense then that in 2016, after several years helming non-Indian restaurants, he made a return to this culinary space with Paowalla. But it didn’t stick, and in 2018 the concept was switched to the more casual Bombay Bread Bar. This was apparently more successful but not successful enough to keep it in business. It was announced in July that the restaurant would close in September. Nonetheless, I wanted to eat there. Having tried Cardoz’ updated take on Goan food in Bombay (at O Pedro), I was curious to see what he had been up to here. Continue reading
Crown Shy (New York, August 2019)
In my review of our dinner at Rezdora a few weeks ago I noted that we’d managed to a table for two at prime time on a Friday despite booking just a few weeks in advance. The same was true of Crown Shy, where we dined the next evening: we managed a table for two at 8.30 pm on a Saturday without very much fuss. Now, however, Crown Shy has picked up a star in the most recent Michelin list for New York and I’d guess tables are a much harder proposition at any time. I’d also guess that my other comment at the end of the Rezdora review—that dinner at Crown Shy was quite a bit cheaper—is probably also now not going to be true much longer. What has not changed at all, however, is our opinion of the meal: we thought it was very good indeed and a very good value—the latter of which is not something I would have expected to say of a tony restaurant in Manhattan’s financial district. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Rezdora (New York, August 2019)
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