By Richard Morgan 1/08 8:26pm

uptown shabby

josh-hivescrop

Greenpoint Luxe: Brooklyn Scruff Invades Bergdorfs

The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel is currently cultivating a new kind of honey for its kitchens and bars. The hotel, where President Obama stays when he is in town, is used to painstaking attention to detail and extravagance, which makes its approach to the honey all the more intriguing.

Rather than relying on what could be called the Masa Imperative of luxury, after the top-dollar sushi joint that ships in fish from the Sea of Japan and the Bay of Spain with the urgency and costliness of helicoptered transplant organs (indeed, some of the fish are carried in organ containers), the Waldorf has gone in a direction more evocative of the Brooklyn Flea Market: its honey comes from beehives it is now keeping on a 20th-floor outdoor patio.

The initiative, brainchild of executive chef David Garcelon, relies on the expertise of the city’s premier beekeeper, Andrew Coté, who sells his own neighborhood-specific honeys at the Union Square farmer’s market. Read More

By Nate Freeman 9/01/11 8:54am

Dining

Isa, on the inside.

Taavo Somer’s New Williamsburg Spot: His Last In New York?

Savvy restaurateur Taavo Somer has avoided the “hipster” appellation since the opening of Freemans, that taxidermy fantasia on the Lower East Side. The aggressive grizzly man pose of the alleyway eatery aside, Freemans is still a nice place to have a bite. We like to go when our father or brothers are in town — why pass up a perfectly good dumb joke?

Now Mr. Somer has made the logical progression and chased the Freemans Sporting Club scruff across the L to Williamsburg, where he will open his first Brooklyn-based place, Isa, next week. And then he could be done. Read More

By Meredith Bryan 11/05/08 12:15am

Will Patti Smith Show Up To Rock the Vote at La Esquina?

At Kenmare and Cleveland, a block party is getting underway in front of La Esquina, the super-hip, faux taco shop. Not-for-profit art gallery Storefront is setting up a soundsystem, and projecting ABC on the giant wall above the restaurant, which is giving out free hot chocolate. The big news? Storefront director Joseph Grima says that Read More

By Spencer Morgan 11/27/06 12:00am

The Bow and Arrow Boys Club

The basement beneath the store called the Freemans Sporting Club contains the headquarters of an actual sporting club called the Freemans Sporting Club.

On the street level, in Freeman Alley just off Rivington Street on the Lower East Side, fellas shop for $2,013 hand-made suits, $1,680 peacoats, $228 “work shirts” and $200 moccasins. And down Read More