In 2011, upon visiting Taavo Somer’s erstwhile Brooklyn restaurant Isa, the New York Times critic Eric Asimov wrote that he “couldn’t help noticing many people eating a few small plates, or sharing a main course.” He wondered, “Is this really how people want to eat nowadays?” Sharing food has been both a boon and a…
The saga of Castle Hot Springs resort sounds like a Carl Hiaasen novel if he swapped South Florida for Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. The history of the hard-to-access oasis an hour’s drive north of Phoenix has involved a quail-hunting, self-made mogul, Native Americans, new age crystal worshipers, scheming hoteliers and a gun-toting, toothless caretaker who had…
THE WAY WE EAT NOWHow the Food Revolution Has Transformed Our Lives, Our Bodies, and Our WorldBy Bee Wilson How bad are our diets, and how crazy is our relationship to food? The English writer and historian Bee Wilson sets out to discover how we have become at once enthralled and enslaved by a world…
If there was ever a science experiment you’d want to participate in, it might be this one: sitting in a booth and inhaling the tangy, intense aromas of dark chocolates. But not just anyone gets to join this research. The people doing the sniffing were trained to detect subtle differences in scent, helping chemists uncover…
The swooping landmark Eero Saarinen building that was the T.W.A. terminal at Kennedy International Airport has been reborn as a hotel. Opening Wednesday, The Paris Cafe and Lisbon Lounge, both part of the original terminal, will feature food by Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who will also manage the space. At the Paris Cafe, there’s an all-day menu…
American Express has considered dining perks one of the main benefits for its card members, helping them book tables at hot spots and offering them rewards points for doing so. Now it is taking a new step into the industry — by buying the country’s biggest privately held restaurant reservation service. American Express announced on…
Netflix’s new animated series “Tuca & Bertie” centers on the day-to-day adventures of two best friends who also happen to be birds, stumbling into their 30s together in Bird Town. The show is a raunchy, silly and often chaotic delight, propelled by charming, wacky animation. It’s also a sharp commentary on the #MeToo movement, especially…
Headliner Essex Market at Essex Crossing It has been known, for years, that the original Essex Market, founded in 1940, one of several city markets established by Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia, would have to shut its doors, giving way to more lucrative use of its real estate. Its much larger replacement has opened across Delancey…
More than a year ago, I was on the verge of reviewing Del Posto when the news intervened. The restaurant had changed significantly since the last time it had been evaluated by a Times critic: Sam Sifton promoted it from three stars to four in 2010, when Mark Ladner was the executive chef and Brooks…
“You may attend school in America,” my mom regularly told me and my brothers when we were kids in our native San Diego, in the 1980s, “but when you come home, you’re in Iran.” Accordingly, we spoke Farsi, and attended Persian school on Saturdays to learn to read and write the language; we listened to…