By Josh Ozersky 6:15pm

Reality Bites

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The Truth About Brooklyn’s Overhyped, Undercooked Restaurant Scene

The food media, having little in the way of hard news to work with, traffics in trend stories, and these are never more appealing than during this season. Stories are bound to appear about this year’s genius chef plying his magic tweezers, or hyperbolic odes to the year’s “epic tasting menu.”

One thing you can expect every 2012 wrap-up to include, from now through New Year’s, is the annual tall tale about Brooklyn’s coming of age as a restaurant capital. It’s an irresistible story, bound to please Brooklynites and fool huckleberries in the hinterlands, and it has much-needed youthful sex appeal as well; food writers see Brooklyn as a gritty reboot of a story they long ago tired of telling about Manhattan. But here’s the thing: Brooklyn, taken as a restaurant city, sucks. Read More

By Staff 3/23/07 1:45pm

Breaking Bread in Honor of Zebrowski

Governor Spitzer, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, and about 30 Assembly members are breaking bread at Al Di La, an Italian Kosher deli restaurant in Rockland County right now, following a funeral for the likeable, late Assemblyman Ken Zebrowski, according to a reader.

The talk around the table, according to this person, is all Read More

By Staff 2/09/07 5:39pm

The Afternoon Wrap: Friday

  • One can tell critic Martin Fuller doesn’t like Tom Wolfe by modest statements like: “From Bauhaus to Our House [is] perhaps the most ill-informed book ever written about architecture.” [House + Garden]
  • If you fit into the “bonus buyers and moneyed type” category, DUMBO is surely a perfect fit. And a chilly Read More

    • By Regan Good 7/18/05 12:00am

    House of Horrors: Pet-Shop Window A Vision of the World

    Last summer, I saw a man with a leash dragging a strange, scuttling creature across the big lawn in Prospect Park. Its ears were big, its tail was bushy, its face feline, but its body was hound-like.

    “Excuse me,” I said. “That’s cute, but what is it?”

    “It’s an aboriginal fox,” the man Read More