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
After a mediocre dinner at Bobo last fall, I decided not to go back. Let them sink without my help, I thought.
I was sorry because the restaurant, which is on two floors of a Village brownstone, has a quirky charm. I liked the cozy subterranean bar, with its low beamed Read More
Here’s a novelty item to toss on the grill this summer: tuna ribs. At Bar Q, they’re coated with a paste of yuzu and green chili before they’re grilled.
“Don’t worry, dear,” said our waiter, sounding like a hospital orderly as he set a plateful down in front of me. “The cucumber salad will Read More
The waiter set a martini glass on the table. Instead of gin, it contained a thick mushroom soup. Two slices of pancetta had been inserted on top, like slices of lemon for a cocktail. When I dug in my spoon, a poached egg melted into the soup and onto a bed of spinach underneath. A Read More
If this restaurant were in France, you would be driving across the country to find it, your dog-eared Guide Michelin on the dashboard. The journey I made from downtown to Eighty One was also long, but rather different. I took the subway, where I sat opposite some French tourists who were reading the Guide Michelin Read More
Back in the ’60s, when it was the 8th Wonder club, Jimi Hendrix played here. Now, there’s an open kitchen where the stage used to be, all bright lights, green tile and polished chrome, manned by cooks in white jackets and black baseball caps.
At the white bar in front, which has a picture Read More
What would Frederic Edwin Church make of the landscapes that dominate Olana’s main dining room?
In the late 1800s, the painter built the restaurant’s namesake, a landmark mansion upstate with famously spectacular views overlooking the Hudson. Olana, the restaurant, sits on a less than spectacular stretch of lower Madison Avenue. The landscapes, on huge Read More
A waiter placed a shallow white bowl before me. On the bottom, making the corners of a square, lay four pastel-colored florets: yellow, ivory, pink and green. He poured in cauliflower soup and set down a bagel. “The topping on the bagel is ‘Dubarry’: chopped cauliflower and Comté cheese,” he explained. “In Escoffier, dishes made Read More
Commerce Street, a secret, twisting couple of blocks in the West Village, is so quiet you can hear your footsteps echo on the pavement. But the white building that has stood at the corner of Commerce and Barrow Streets for nearly a century has had anything but a quiet past. During Prohibition, it was a Read More
Before I sat down to dinner at the refurbished One if by Land, Two if by Sea, I had a drink by the fireplace in front of the bar. A pianist was tinkling away at Chopin, and two couples, ensconced in leather armchairs, sipped glasses of Champagne. A handsome young Japanese man, dressed in a Read More
