Let Texans brag about brisket and Carolinians extol pulled pork shoulder. For the rest of us, the ultimate emblem of barbecue — and test of a grill master’s mettle — is ribs. Picture meaty slabs stung with spice, bronzed with smoke and slathered with sticky sweet barbecue sauce. The meat is tender, but not too…
John Roney has been a waiter at J.G. Melon, the old-school burger joint on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, since 1986. He has worked through plenty of urban disasters, including Black Monday, Sept. 11 and Hurricane Sandy. But the coronavirus outbreak posed new challenges. “When the pandemic hit, everything was gone,” Mr. Roney said. “While the…
Anthony Terlato, a visionary wine importer and marketer who introduced Americans to enduringly popular European wines and sought to elevate the wine market in the United States, died on June 28 at his home in Lake Geneva, Wis. He was 86. His family company, the Terlato Wine Group, said he died in his sleep after…
The other night a watermelon was brought to my table in the backyard of Olmsted, in Brooklyn. The first thing I noticed was its unusually compact size, slightly smaller than my teenage son’s head. The more unusual thing, though, was the copper spigot sticking out of its midsection. When I turned the spigot, out trickled…
The world may not offer much to celebrate right now. Nonetheless, it’s a great time to drink sparkling wine. Champagne, of course, sets the standard with its capacity for elegance, grace, subtlety and depth. But many other types of sparkling wine are available now as well, from unexpected places and a diversity of styles, making…
Good morning. A few summers ago, long before the pandemic came to upend our lives and economy, my friend and colleague Tejal Rao wrote a beautiful column for The Times about how she met the man who would become her life partner. The story was about how he enjoyed oysters — “keenly and quietly, without…
If your town is partly closed or you’re wary of travel during the Covid-19 pandemic, it might feel as if your phone’s map app is just sitting there gathering digital dust. But even if you’re not tapping Apple’s Maps or Google Maps to explore an exotic vacation spot or to belt out turn-by-turn directions on…
Gotham Bar and Grill, in business for 36 years and one of New York’s best-known restaurants, closed in March at the start of the pandemic lockdown. At the time, management said the situation was untenable, and that the closing was permanent. Now it seems there is a possibility that Gotham could reopen after all, if…
Like a lot of 13-year-olds, Daniella Senior loved to bake, and thought she might become a pastry chef. Unlike most of them, she already had six employees. Ms. Senior started out on her own, collecting and filling orders for miniature sweets while growing up in Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic. “I was getting up…
Last month, the writer Bill Buford attempted to teach me, using Zoom, how to bone, stuff, tie and poach a chicken. It was something like one of those MasterClasses that everybody is watching these days, except that those run for 20 minutes, and my lesson lasted more than six hours. It may not have been…