The waiter stood over me, pen at the ready. “Signorina?”
For lunch I ordered sardines on toast, pickled herring, a grilled mutton chop, buttered green beans, pommes lyonnaise and lemon sherbert.
I was 12, sitting with my family in the dining room of Lloyd Triestino’s S.S. Victoria Read More
The first year I came to New York from my native England, I had Thanksgiving dinner with an Italian-American family in Queens. I was used to frugal Britain, where my mother would wash out plastic bags and pin them up to dry, and a leg of lamb was eked out for three consecutive meals, ending Read More
When Drew Nieporent opened Montrachet on these premises in 1985, he turned New Yorkers’ idea of a fancy French restaurant on its head. The setting was a stark industrial space, with tin ceilings and overhanging pipes, in a desolate neighborhood of cast-iron buildings and scruffy warehouses. Instead of elderly French waiters in black tie, there Read More
“The Ancient South American Secret Is Now Yours,” read the label on a mysterious package delivered to my door last week. “Drink. Think. Live. Love. Top Leaf Maté.”
It was a selection of teas sent by a Chilean friend who lives in Oregon. He had added a note: “Maté is pretty good with bourbon Read More
I remember an old ditty from my childhood:
I eat my peas with honey
I’ve done it all my life
It makes the peas taste funny
But it keeps them on the knife
There’s plenty of time to recall your own Read More
On my way into Allegretti the other night, I passed a young woman who was shouting into her cell phone. “Everyone I know in New York is, like, on suicide watch!” But the financial meltdown hadn’t made much of a dent in the number of customers dining at the new French restaurant, just west of Read More
It was bad news for Silvano Marchetto when Graydon Carter decided to go into the restaurant business. For over 30 years, Da Silvano was something of a downtown Elaine’s, with celebrities, artists, writers, and gallery owners packing its noisy rooms for lunch and dinner. But when the Waverly Inn opened, Mr. Marchetto lost not only Read More
“Where’s the noodle man?”
When my son was a boy, he loved to watch the noodle man at Honmura An, the only authentic soba restaurant in the city. The noodle man worked in a glass booth in the dining room, where he’d pummel the dough, toss it in the air and Read More
When the owners of the restaurant Provence, which had been a Soho fixture for over 20 years, changed its name to Hundred Acres, I wondered if they were being sardonic. A century ago this area was known as Hell’s Hundred Acres because the wooden floors of its factories and warehouses kept catching fire. Today, many Read More
Ten years ago an Englishman, Keith McNally, opened a fake French bistro in Soho. Every detail had been carefully researched, from the red leather for the banquettes to the Gauloise-smoke patina on the ceilings and the shellfish display, where names of the oysters du jour were scrawled in soap on distressed mirrors. From opening day, Read More
