On Monday, as I took a beat from gazing up at the obscured afternoon sun on the east side of Central Park, I realized something. The cherry blossom trees and the eastern redbuds that dot the landscape had finally begun flowering, their blush blooms dancing like tulle skirts in the breeze. When did that happen?…
You know what’s surprisingly annoying? Draining frozen spinach after it’s thawed. I always feel deceived by this seemingly friendly freezer staple. Sure, it’s a shortcut to so many delicious dishes (hello, spinach dip), but then smash cut to me picking teeny tiny bits of green out of my colander and off of my hands for…
One evening in 2022, the five-person team behind the Chinese restaurant franchise MáLà Project, which has four locations in New York, were indulging in post-shift oysters and martinis when they began discussing their ideal bar. “We knew we wanted something approachable yet sophisticated,” says co-founder Christian Castillo, “and we’re all a bit romantic, so we…
Last week, we shared Pete Wells’s revised list of the 100 best restaurants in New York City. Our restaurant-loving readers had notes, to the tune of more than 600 comments. So we gave them another chance to tell us all about their favorite restaurants, and received nearly 900 responses — many effusive in their praise.…
I found it while walking through the home-goods section of T.J. Maxx, the American retail equivalent of the Garden of Earthly Delights, at 8:00 on a Tuesday night in 2015. It was two days after Easter, and in this Hieronymus Bosch land of shopping anarchy, the shelves were stocked with pastel-colored objects of uncertain usefulness:…
In Hawaii, shops that serve shave ice, domes of pillowy-soft ice slivers doused in colorful syrups, vie for ubiquity with other local staples like poke places or lei stands. And you can count on waiting in line: Part of a shave ice shop’s charm is the scramble of people — surfers, construction workers, tourists —…
Hello, everyone! Mia here, back from some time in Japan and filling in for Melissa Clark (who herself is back next week). What I ate: plush pickled plums the size of walnuts and thick, downy slabs of shokupan slathered with anko. Tuna in all degrees of fattiness, tender pieces of conger eel encased in impossibly…
I thought I came up with a whole new expression. It turns out I didn’t. I was thinking about asparagus and how it evokes emotion: the anticipation of its coming, followed by the thrill of its short season’s finally arriving. But there’s another emotion I was trying to put into words: that melancholy — sadness,…
Inflation remains stubbornly high, with Wednesday’s report showing a 3.5 percent rise from a year earlier. These days, we’re all paying more for less, including groceries — food prices inched up slightly in March, too — and, as ever, putting satisfying, budget-friendly meals on the table can be a struggle. But budget cooking doesn’t mean…
Opening Beut Korean Royal Court cuisine from the Joseon Dynasty (1392 to about 1900) inspired this tasting-menu restaurant owned by Sarah Kang, the pastry chef here and formerly of Joomak Banjum, the now-closed, Michelin-starred restaurant. An eight-course menu ($125) reflects the opulence of the bygone era through a modern lens by the executive chef, Sang…