Like a gentleman who cannot decide which suit to wear to dinner, Compass, the protean, three-year-old establishment near Lincoln Center, continues to seek an identity. Since opening three years ago, it has bid adieu to three chefs and in the process has seen more twists and turns than a slalom course. The latest culinary theme Read More
Last Thursday evening, eight of New York’s leading chefs were AWOL from their kitchens. They went to the movies.
The invitation-only event was the screening of a documentary about Ferran Adrià, the Spanish culinary alchemist who in recent years has enjoyed more press than a rich man’s suit. Just last month, the 42-year-old’s boyish face Read More
This was my fourth restaurant wake of 2004-and by far the jolliest and least sentimental. It is fitting that Le Cirque folded its tent on New Year’s Eve, when the entire world was clowning around and hardly paying attention. That’s how owner Sirio Maccioni wanted it-to get it over with and move on.
“I wish Read More
Almost everyone, at one time or another, dreams of opening a restaurant-holding forth at the copper-topped bar as you welcome stylish and good-natured customers, fielding compliments for the divine food, pouring exquisite wine and chatting with happy customers as they take their leave, vowing to return soon (with lots of friends).
Then there’s the Read More
Don’t touch my food. Please.
I was reading the New York Times food section recently and came across a photograph of a chef at one of the new restaurants in the Time Warner Center (I’ll kindly withhold the name) who was preparing a dish of yellow snapper filets. Leaning over the serving plate with the Read More
A full-page ad in Food Arts magazine portrays David Waltuck, the chef and co-owner of Chanterelle, gazing at the camera with a stunned, almost snarly expression, his sculpted arms bent downward in a bodybuilder fashion as he holds a bulky kitchen blender. Save for the strategic placement of the machine, he is buck naked.
An Read More
Fricassee of Thai snapper with frogs’ legs, porcini and ham “jus” … pheasant with blueberries and chocolate sauce … coffee-crusted sirloin steak.
These are just a few of the undeniably creative dishes that I have sampled over the past two months in and outside of New York City. Two weeks ago, while gnawing on my Read More
Spain has been hailed as the new France in matters vinous and culinary, and with some reason. The country’s leading chefs, from disparate regions-Catalonia, the Basque country, Galicia, Andaluciá and Castilla-are pushing the envelope with striking deconstructions of classic dishes as well as with those daft foamy creations that come in such wild shapes and Read More
Like most Americans, I eat a significant amount of poultry-mostly supermarket poultry, that innocuous white bread of the protein world. I’m not sure that I exceed the national annual average of 81 pounds per person, which is about equal to three cutlets a week. But as it’s so convenient, and hard to botch up, I Read More
Stepping off of an escalator recently, I found myself in a refulgent summer garden-snapdragons, carnations, dahlias, daffodils and enough varieties of roses to furnish a sizable senior prom. It’s a lovely touch, especially for a supermarket. Then again, this is not your conventional urban supermarket.
Now that Whole Foods Market, the country’s largest organic food Read More
