NAI Global, a network of some 300 commercial real-estate firms, released an enormous report today (which we hope to link to here shortly in PDF form).
But the highlight appears to be its ranking of the top 10 most expensive markets for retail space in the world. Midtown Manhattan is the only New York market Read More
The suggestion that there are some filmmakers we have to work to appreciate often implies that moviegoers should be prepared to suffer for the sake of art. We accept that there are writers who require perseverance, perhaps because we associate reading with learning, but we want to pretend that movies, which we grow up Read More
Before
the Iron Chef, before Nobu, Japanese cuisine meant Benihana, with its chefs
chopping and bowing at the table, grilling mutant stir-fry concoctions like
“Seafood Diablo” and performing antics like flipping shrimp tails up in the air
and catching them in their toques.
Its
mascot was Rocky Read More
Before the Iron Chef, before Nobu, Japanese cuisine meant Benihana, with its chefs chopping and bowing at the table, grilling mutant stir-fry concoctions like “Seafood Diablo” and performing antics like flipping shrimp tails up in the air and catching them in their toques.
Its mascot was Rocky (né Hiroaki) Aoki, the mustachioed daredevil founder of Read More
We’re just a bunch of fat pigs, drowning in a sea of vulgarity. I just returned from Tokyo, where I spent much of the time comparing us boorish Manhattanites to my genteel hosts. My conclusion? Even though the Japanese sell schoolgirls’ panties out of street-corner vending machines, we are ultimately much bigger pigs.
We have Read More
From Tokyo to Tribeca,
Koji Imai Sends Forth His Blessing
Kobe beef is grilled over a charcoal called
bincho-tan, found only near Kyoto and said to have purifying minerals.
Megu’s immense two-story dining room, surrounded by a wall made of interlocking porcelain sake pitchers and rice bowls, is dominated by an 800-pound Buddhist Read More
After the very public brouhaha over the design of the Freedom Tower, after all the press accounts of the roiling tension and tantrums between the architects David Childs and Daniel Libeskind, wouldn’t it be something if the final design-as unveiled last Dec. 19-resembles not so much the two men’s shared vision as a Catholic church Read More
For Post-Holiday Grounding:
A Little Noodle-Shop Zen
The other day my teenage son rented Tampopo , the Japanese movie about a ramen-noodle shop in Tokyo. Even though we had just finished dinner, we began to drool as the camera zoomed in on a bowl of noodle soup that was set on the counter in Read More
Everybody’s choice for villain of the year, beating out even Charlize Theron’s brilliant and ghastly portrayal of a serial murderer in Monster , is the unseen wife in Lost in Translation . She’s perceived as a domestic witch, obsessed with redecorating her husband’s study while the poor guy is having an existential meltdown halfway around Read More
For the Free-Spirited Traveler:
A Sushi Joint to Rest His Feet
There are plenty of sushi restaurants downtown, but none of them are anything like this one. To enter Yujin, you cross a curved wooden bridge that spans a small rock garden, walk past barrels of sake stacked in a window, and pass through Read More
