Good morning. What I smelled during a 10-minute bicycle ride today: wood smoke, diesel exhaust, grass, frying bacon, rotting wood, bleach, balloon rubber, dollar pizza, a tendril of burning weed, the sharpness of electrical ozone, cart coffee and, last, the strong, sweet scent of lilies — Easter in the air. Good Friday! There’ll be ham…
Austria is best known for its white wines, grüner veltliners and rieslings primarily. But it also produces brilliant reds, which, because they often seem like afterthoughts, can be great values. Why do they seem so relatively obscure? Partly, it’s because grapes like blaufränkisch, which has great potential for making complex, contemplative wines, and zweigelt, the…
In the business of reporting on and reacting to culture — whether it’s theater, film, music, books or restaurants — eventually something you write will end up in promotional advertising. I’m a living example: If you’ve ever ordered a fish taco from Tacombi on a delivery app, then you might have noticed its description starts…
For almost two years, I had managed to avoid a New York inevitability: attending an improv comedy show. That streak came to an end this month. Thankfully, it was at the hands of my hilarious friend Meg, who invited me to her improv class’s showcase. Equipped with a classmate’s prompt about working at a farmers’…
One of my favorite Hindi terms is “ghar ka khaana.” It literally means “home food,” but it also encompasses the singular joy and unfussiness of meals made in your own kitchen — the dishes that remind you of childhood, the ones you won’t often find in restaurants. My quintessential ghar ka khaana? Dal. To make…
Hello! It’s Eric Kim, reporting for duty and filling in for Mia Leimkuhler this week. How are we doing today? They say you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take, so here’s my pitch for a television show: It’s called “You’ve Been Sheet-Panned!” Each episode starts with a contestant’s cherished family recipe or…
Of all the reasons I fantasize about moving to Rome, the availability of precleaned artichokes is near the top of my list. Whenever I felt like it, I could just nip down to the local vegetable market where the artichokes would be bobbing in buckets of lemon water, their pointy petals trimmed, their hairy hearts…
Some ingredient combinations are positively alchemical, imbuing dishes with a sublime character inexplicably greater than the sum of their parts. Garlic, red chile flakes and lemon is one such mixture; honey, soy sauce and ginger is another. You can add almost any protein or vegetable to these and be guaranteed a dinner worth its weight…
How did a dish so humble earn so many names? First among them is “rundown,” which describes how it’s cooked: an earthy Jamaican stew of fish and vegetables in coconut milk, simmered until much of the liquid steams off and what’s left is pure richness. The same word as an adjective would suggest something gone…
Headliner Beefbar It took Riccardo Giraudi, the Monte Carlo native with a global empire of Beefbars and other brands, 20 years to finally open a restaurant in New York. The TriBeCa space that had housed the original Nobu is now fitted with plush upholstery and 90 seats, an open kitchen and a separate bar area…