I’ve never really warmed to Eleven Madison Park. There’s no doubt that this huge, elegant restaurant on the ground floor of the Met-Life Building is a jewel in owner Danny Meyer’s crown (the others being Union Square Café, Gramercy Tavern, Tabla and the Modern). The formal room, with its soaring ceilings, marble floors and enormous Read More
I’ve never really warmed to Eleven Madison Park. There’s no doubt that this huge, elegant restaurant on the ground floor of the Met-Life Building is a jewel in owner Danny Meyer’s crown (the others being Union Square Café, Gramercy Tavern, Tabla and the Modern). The formal room, with its soaring ceilings, marble floors and Read More
I haven’t been merry in years.
Do I want to overhear the conversation you’re having in public? No.
How did cows survive in the wild all those years?
I’m not interested in finding out why the Martin Lawrence movie is called Runteldat .
I’m too embarrassed to take a bath.
Those Read More
Midtown Newcomer Keeps Chinese
Tradition in the Kitchen
Cinnabar, a new Chinese restaurant on the West Side of midtown Manhattan, is not some neon and Formica hole in the wall where you hunker down with a pile of paper napkins and a bottle of Tsingtao and order by number. It’s a fancy Cantonese and Read More
The space at 9 Jones Street has seen so much turnover in the past
few years that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it holds some dark secret
that departing tenants are sworn never to reveal if they wish to get out of the
lease alive. Yet it’s in a great location on a Read More
The restaurant has a new chef,
Stewart Woodman, and he has quite a pedigree. He was formerly a sous chef at Le
Bernardin and Alain Ducasse at the Essex House, and also worked with
Jean-Georges Vongerich-ten at Mercer Kitchen and Jean Georges. He uses simple,
top-quality, identifiable ingredients (no mystery purées or weird combinations
of Read More
“Tonight’s special is duck, roasted in a 12-inch non-stick pan by line cook Raoul, with bok choy and a finish of yellow carrots, shiitakes and red and white currants by sous chef Christine.”
I’m exaggerating–a bit. Our waiter at Ilo didn’t tell us the size of the pan or the names of the cooks. But Read More
“So what am I supposed to eat?” asked my son in a belligerent tone as he scanned the menu at Ping’s Seafood in Chinatown. “Dried frog? Organ belly?”
I had been told to expect changes in a sweet 12-year-old on the cusp of adolescence. But this boy had always been a fearless eater. He’d ordered Read More
A fortune must have been sunk into this place, which used to be a model hangout called Flowers. But as models go, they went. Now the first floor has been turned into a dark, sexy, Asian-style lounge, very Suzie Wong with sofas, poufs, red lights and pretty hostesses in orange silk cheongsams. A bright Read More
Joe’s Shanghai has had a lot of great press over the past two years. It has been hailed as one of the best restaurants in Chinatown, but that wasn’t enough to persuade me to spend an hour in line waiting to get in (they don’t take reservations). On a recent Sunday, however, when some friends Read More
