There are some once-a-year winter holiday extravagances I thrill to see again when their numbers come up. There’s a frozen milk punch and a caviar sandwich and a homemade Boston cream doughnut; there’s a hand-chopped steak tartare and a grilled Cheddar-cheese sandwich and a mid-December cookie swap pfeffernusse cookie with imported candied citron — all…
Headliner Veronika at Fotografiska There’s a ground-floor cafe in the new Swedish photography center and museum, Fotografiska New York, in a stately landmark Renaissance Revival building in the Flatiron district. But when it comes to food and drink, the main attraction is the spacious second-floor restaurant whose name is inspired by the patron saint of…
Recently, I asked Twitter to help make sense of the American restaurant scene, 2010 to 2019. OK all my Zeitgeist-surfing food media friends: What the hell WAS the past decade in restaurants all about? Sum it up so I don’t have to write a 2000 word essay about it. — Pete Wells (@pete_wells) December 6,…
Wasn’t it Sartre who said “Hell is other people’s workout music?” I know, it didn’t sound quite right to me, either, but I was having trouble concentrating as I looked around Electric Lemon, the restaurant on the 24th floor of the Equinox Hotel in Hudson Yards. As you probably guessed, the Equinox Hotel is owned…
Cookies have always had a monopoly on holiday desserts, which is great if you’re into cookies. But in my opinion, tiny, delicate, ornamental desserts are a touch anticlimactic at the end of a holiday meal. For cocktail parties and giftable tins, of course, roll and bake to your heart’s content. But after a giant ham,…
When hunter-gatherers living in what is now southern Denmark broke down pieces of birch bark into sticky, black tar about 5,700 years ago, they almost certainly didn’t realize that they were leaving future scientists their entire DNA. Ancient people used the gooey birch pitch to fix arrowheads onto arrows and to repair a variety of…
For several years in the early 2000s, I made mediocre sushi at a Japanese restaurant in suburban Virginia. I never intended to take up the knife; I never thought I could. I started as a dishwasher, and when I made it into the kitchen, I mostly prepared yakitori and tempura. But then one busy night,…
A cacophony of slapping noises filled the food lab at the High School for Environmental Studies in Manhattan one afternoon in late October. “Think of all the hands that have done this for thousands of years,” said Andrew Margon, an English teacher, as his students energetically pummeled lumps of corn masa into tortillas. The students…
Although small and apparently trivial, drink coasters carry much more meaning and importance than you would have thought. Especially if you are a business. Of any kind. Although related to bars, restaurants, and hotels, drink coasters can be a lifesaver in any field of business. And this is because their versatility allows them to be…
For Feast of the Seven Fishes, you will surely need some fish stock. Here’s the easy answer, a powdered stock base made from fish (like cod or haddock), onions and parsley root. It is said to be based on a recipe from 1921 that was developed by Auguste Escoffier. A chef, Henry M. Summers, was…