By Drew Grant 1/23/12 9:07am

Food and Beverage

Women: they can do anything!

Watch Out for the Red: Women Now Qualify as Wine Experts

It was in a cozy Brooklyn hideaway, Night of Joy, that we met our first female sommelier. Theresa Paopao had a deck of tarot cards, and we had begged her to give us a reading. (Which came out all swords, something Ms. Paopao claimed that she had never seen before; hurriedly shoving her cards back into a deck and shifting her chair slightly away from us.) We assumed that she was just another Williamsburg hipster.

“Actually, I’m the wine director for Momofuku,” Ms. Paopao told us. We gasped, audibly shocked into silence as if she had just casually dropped that she was a lumberjack or ran an advertising agency.

“But you’re a woman!” we sputtered. Read More

By Tom Acitelli 8/26/11 12:59pm

Here Come the Stories of the Hurricane

homersimpsonbeer

Never Mind the Floods, What About Our Next Bottle? (Updated)

“Pretty much anything they can get their hands on,” said Matt Barclay at Park Slope’s Bierkraft in answer to The Observer‘s question about what types of beer people were picking up in anticipation of Hurricane Irene.

The rush is, indeed, on at some of the city’s tonier beer and wine stores, as news of the storm’s approach rises toward an ursine belch. Read More

By Tom Acitelli 3/04/11 12:49pm

Drink

The Hophead: So You Show Up with Beer

Somewhere along the line, beer became as viable an option as wine for something to bring to a dinner party in New York. So be it.

Now what? Faux pas await you, ones you’d never find with wine.

For one thing, wine has labels to give even the cheapest hooch the veneer of respectability. No Read More

By Will Schwartz 2/19/10 4:32pm

The Whine About Wine in New York Grocery Stores

In a political atmosphere defined by unbridgeable budget deficits, rising tax rates, and venomously argued cuts to public services, a widely popular initiative that promises $162 million of new revenue to New York State should coast through the legislative process with minimal dissent.  

Shouldn’t it? 

Last March, Governor Paterson watched his plan to legalize the Read More

By Mark Wellborn 6/08/07 2:16pm

Hobbled Jay McInerney Turns Out for Townhouse Showing

The mood was festive at last night's townhouse showing/wine tasting/book signing at 310 East 53rd Street.

"Welcome to our home," a woman joked as partygoers sauntered around the 4,000-square-foot property.

Four floors above the midtown after-work happy hour scene, brokers and media types munched on figs with blue cheese and downed wine as Read More