Headliner Grand Salon When it opened nearly four years ago, the Baccarat Hotel had a formal ground-floor restaurant, Chevalier. That room closed, but the hotel continued to serve food in its spacious silver-toned lounge, bedecked with opulent crystal chandeliers. Now, Grand Salon, and the adjacent Petit Salon, as the lounge areas are called, have more…
It is a safe guess that the Eastern European Jews who brought the bialy from Bialystok to New York City, piecing back together the recipe for this plain but beguiling dimpled roll in their new world after fleeing their old one, did not do it so that one day it could be sliced open and…
Cherry Point sits on Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint, a few steps from the corner where Bedford Avenue, having flowed all the way across Brooklyn from the shores of Sheepshead Bay, suddenly comes to an end. The area is marked by a cluster of restaurants. Some have a washed-up feeling, as if they’d all been drifting…
New-employee orientation at Milk Bar is a little like the first meeting of a support group devised by Tony Robbins and Willy Wonka. The 30 people sitting on folding chairs were in for a treat on this January morning in Williamsburg, Brooklyn: an appearance by Christina Tosi, who a decade ago conjured up the first…
A bakery chain from France, with more than 500 outlets, has arrived in New York. The chain, Marie Blachère bakery and cafe, makes its debut with a branch in Great Neck this week, and an outpost to open in Greenwich Village, at 301-303 Avenue of the Americas (Carmine Street), in early March. The company, which…
For the past three years, Charcuterie Masters, an event in Flushing, Queens, has been the ultimate pork showcase in New York. This year, it will be on Feb. 23, and there will be more than 60 kinds of charcuterie, including products that will be sold to take home. Chefs will prepare cured meats, simply sliced…
Marie-Aude Rose, the chef at La Mercerie in the Roman and Williams Guild store in SoHo, has started making her sablés, as the French call butter cookies, and other confections to take away. The delicately burnished cookies — in rounds, oblongs and cut in the shape of birds — are buttery indeed. Oval calissons, the…
The To’ak brand of rare Ecuadorean chocolate is right up there with luxury items like white truffles and certain caviars. Often aged in bourbon or tequila casks and priced at more than $150 an ounce, it is processed from the heirloom Nacional variety of cacao. Now, those on more modest budgets can sample the chocolate…
For perfect Persian-style rice, cooks wrap a pot’s lid with cloth to absorb the condensing steam and to guarantee fluffier grains. The liner is called a damkoni, said Louisa Shafia, the author of “The New Persian Kitchen.” They’re hard to find, so substitutes like folded towels are used. Ms. Shafia comes to the rescue with…
Here’s a guide to Vietnamese flavors and cooking. Andrea Nguyen, the author of this new cookbook, recalls that, in the 1970s, her mother, newly arrived from Vietnam, struggled to find the ingredients she needed for traditional home cooking. Today, that has changed as items like coconut milk and fish sauce have become available widely, even…