Content about Restaurants
July 29, 2010
An afternoon learning about "Grahampagne"
Through a heavy, metal door with "Brewery Employees Only" slapped on the front, I was led into a warm, steamy room where Goose Island beer is made. I side-stepped hoses and puddles of water and found a capacious space filled with slanted light; up above, at the top of a skinny ladder, great tanks of beer were lined up at various stages of aging and fermentation on a platform, were Goose Island's brewmaster Jared was talking to...
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Visiting the Spanish coast.
Barcelona was a wonderful city to be in, but leaving it was just as fun. Installed in a tiny stick-shift Citroen, we headed north from the city for Costa Brava, opting for the cheaper no-toll road that snakes along the coast and could take twice as long. Driving in Europe was harrowing the first time I did it, but I've since learned to embrace the speeding, reckless flow--I figure it's safe to go with it than stand in its way....
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May 24, 2009
Blake eats the best of France.
After we spent our Saturday morning at the sprawling market in Apt, sampling cheese and charcuterie, the only task ahead of us was to find a tiny hillside town called Buoux by lunchtime. Exploring a mountainous countryside of hamlets and hairpin turns was all that awaited us. By the time we'd arrived a few hours later, the sun was falling lazily on a descent toward dusk; the air was fragrant with grass; and a sumptuous meal...
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May 21, 2009
Blake finds hidden gems in France.
Our goal for eating in France, as our budget was limited, was to find simple and unpretentious food. And though we hit the ground running with a list of online recommendations culled from a number of sources--an article in Travel + Leisure, searches on Chowhound and eGullet, guidebooks galore--some of our best and most memorable meals came from eclectic little spots that nobody had written about. One was hidden on a side street...
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January 28, 2009
When I arrived in Buenos Aires, "Ojo de Bife" ("eye of beef") was at the top of most steak menus, giving the blessed ribeye its appropriate place in the steak pantheon. It reminded me of a Jeffrey Steingarten passage from his essay in Men's Vogue about a search across Spain for great steak--which has led me to order ribeye almost exclusively since reading it:
...the most delicious beefsteak is a thick (about two and a...
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November 3, 2008
It came in tin foil, a particularly unfancy receptacle for what was inside. Our waiter, who had just dropped off plates of sea bass carpaccio and a veal meatloaf stuffed into chicken neck (including the head), put the foil on a plate and began unceremoniously unfolding its crinkled, crimped top. It opened in a steamy, meaty rush, and none of us could do much but stare. As Hamid, our host in Florence who Elin met in grad school...
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October 27, 2008
I've dreamed about going to Italy for a couple years now. But with New York rent to pay, only a handful of vacation days to draw from, and 7 hours of plane time all conspiring against me, I've never been able to go. By a great margin Italian food is my favorite food to cook. As my love of Italian food has grown, so has this vaguely imaginary place called Italy--into a glorious land of grandmothers, pasta, and culinary ecstasy....
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September 8, 2008
When I spent a week with Nick in Chicago, we had grand plans for every single meal - especially the ones we cooked in his kitchen. Nick's already covered the fatty, home-ground burger and our foray into making red enchilada sauce, our two major kitchen experiments. But I also know that Chicago is a great eating town. I grew up in the area, but my knowledge of Chicago food is shameful. Unfortunately, I didn't slip out of...
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June 24, 2008
The weekend before last Elin and her mom and I set off to see four states in four days. Our goal was to do it just before the tourists and summer heat took over. In the highly organized itinerary, which would be promptly deviated from, we had plans for upstate New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. The loose organizing principle to the whole affair was to stay in Bed and Breakfasts, and eat well.
We began our trip in the...
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June 4, 2008
Montreal is famous for a dish called poutine, which we sampled heavily the weekend we visited, in which crispy frites are salted, tossed with pillowy, tender cheese curds, then smothered in rich brown gravy. A dish, suffice it to say, to be eaten with a fork. At Au Pied de Cochon, Montreal's cult restaurant where gluttony and excess have become signature sins, they include all of those things--but then they top the shimmering pile with...
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June 2, 2008
When Elin went to Montreal a couple years ago, she sent me an email with only a photograph attached, a picture with her mouth open, eyes closed, and a forkful of French fries covered in gravy. The subject of the email said simply, "Poutine," and I knew that one day we would travel to Montreal where I could try this dish myself and experience the delight that was apparent on her face.
As if frites dripping in gravy weren't enough...
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March 20, 2008
I'm definitely not the first to point this out, but Chicago has some great food. You know, with all the high accolades for their inventive restaurants and classic comfort foods, and the fact that they are hosting this year's Top Chef, I have nothing new to add. It's just that over the past weekend Abby and I managed to fit more good food into our bellies than we had any right to do. If you needed another reason to take a...
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December 12, 2007
"No, no, no!" our waiter was saying, dashing across the room to our white-tableclothed table, where we were sitting in front of a grilled Turbot. I was politely transferring a portion of the fish's glistening meat to my plate with two forks.
"It's very important to us," he began to explain, almost out of breath, while taking my fork and knife, "to eat with our hands." He picked up the fish's head and began to...
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October 11, 2007
The chef Fergus Henderson, owner of the London restaurant St. John, known for his kooky demeanor and round, large eyeglasses, came to New York this week to commandeer the kitchens of two Manhattan restaurants, Savoy and The Spotted Pig, offering patrons a taste of his nose-to-tail cooking. Reservations at Savoy went off the offering in two shakes of a pig's tail; the rest were left to fend at the Spotted Pig. By five-thirty, when the...
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June 6, 2007
Bushwick, named by the Dutch Boswijk for “town in the woods,” is no longer a town in the woods—it is a rapidly gentrifying section of Brooklyn southeast of tragically hip Williamsburg. Once one of the most blighted areas in town after the blackout lootings of 1977--at that time, it was characterized by empty lots, drugs, and arson, and the majority of residents who could leave, left—it is now an uneasy mix of...
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February 7, 2007
Check out Day 1 to figure out why Nick is spending so much time on lunch spots in Manhattan.
Of all the foods I could nosh on in NYC for a quick, cheap lunch, nothing was as obvious as pizza. The capital of that tasty dish, New York should have had interesting pizza places pouring out of its alleyways, with enough springy crusts, milky cheeses, and bright sauces to keep me filled for months. But finding a great slice in the...
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February 2, 2007
Check out Day 1 to figure out why Nick is spending so much time on lunch spots in Manhattan.
After a few months, even the finds of Flatiron become slightly boring for no other reason than repitition. I began looking farther afield for something tasty. With the subway less than a block away, I dreampt of being able to zoom up to any restaurant I pleased. The whole of Manhattan would be open to my slightest food whimsy. ...
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January 30, 2007
Check out Day 1 to figure out why Nick is spending so much time on lunch spots in Manhattan.
Good, cheap Indian food should be a relatively easy find. Some 10 minute walk away is Murray Hill, a neighborhood that is also affectionately known as Curry Hill. During lunch, a stretch along Lexington Avenue becomes packed with yellow taxis attempting to find a parking spot. The idling cars sit with steam pouring off as the drivers...
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January 29, 2007
It didn't start off as a quest. I had a job in the Flatiron section of Manhattan and I needed to eat cheaply. I'm not much of a brown bagger, and soups don't always interest me, so I began to search for the best places to find a meal for around $5. It became an obsession. See, Flatiron and the eastern part of Chelsea have some of the finest restaurants in the world, but they are far from cheap. Like Midtown, many...
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November 12, 2006
Mark Iacono, chef and owner of Lucali's, began making pizza publicly 4 weeks ago. "I didn't even tell my family that I was opening this place," he claims. When he pulled the brown paper down off the windows on Day 1, he was hoping a few neighbors might be curious, and he'd have a few weeks of experimenting and tinkering with the pizza formula before he officially opened.
Literally 30 minutes after the brown paper came down...
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August 24, 2006
By Blake Royer
It's difficult, sometimes, to make Brunch plans. They usually happen in a haze at 1:30 in the morning, when everyone's hungry, a bit tired, and getting very sentimental. "Oh, let's all wake up and have a big intimate meal together tomorrow!" It's a way of ensuring, in hopeful and vague way, that the night never has to end--just after a short nap, we'll all get together again and the only difference is that the sun will be...
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August 22, 2006
I was out for a "guys night," which is what happens when your girlfriend goes out with her friends and you're expected to go out with exact same people you always do. But when your friends are a fellow paupered chef and Jason, guys night doesn't quite mean poker and beer. Instead, we all met at the little restaurant that was getting some big press: the Good Fork.
There is a top-hatted fellow outlined in the door, which is probably the last...
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August 2, 2006
On Saturday morning, at the bright and early hour of noon, my phone began ringing. I vaguely remembered excited pronouncements the evening before about going for a bike ride out to Red Hook to visit the infamous ballfields, where soccer and baseball games unfold throughout the weekend, and outdoor food vendors set up shop on Bay St. to serve cheap, fresh food from south of the border (all the way to South America, in fact). As I answered,...
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July 6, 2006
**It saddens me to point out that Schnack has closed. What is detailed below is a great restaurant. Hopefully they will reopen someday.**
Like many, many people this week, Blake and I had better things to do. He's living the good life traveling around Northern Europe right now, eating voisilmapulla and trying to get around in Estonia with only a passable pronunciation of three words. And I spent the whole weekend packing...
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May 25, 2006
Pop Burger
60 9th Ave, b/w 14th and 15th.
Distance from Shake Shack: 0.81 miles
Travel Time: 24 minutes
# of People in Line: 5
This place is way too hip for its own good, and you could walk by its meatpacking district location a couple of times before you noticed that it’s not just a club. In fact, there’s just a tiny blue “pop” stuck on the door and that’s all--incognito is obviously the cool thing to so. Wide-...
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May 23, 2006
American Burger
100 W 32nd St
Distance from Shake Shack: 0.53 miles
Travel Time: 16 minutes
# of People in Line: 3
Once I'd scanned both New York Magazine's and Village Voice's online restaurant section a few times, it was time to delve into some of the less charted and less proofread parts of the web. That usually involves a good Google scan and then devolves into hour long plunges into Chowhound for some kind of hidden secret.
Nearly...
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May 23, 2006
Bruce’s Burger
33th and 7th Ave.
Distance from Shake Shack: 0.79 miles
Travel Time: 23 minutes
# of People in Line: 2
Decked out in full 50's dinner kitsch, Bruce's Burger tries to conjure up the good times of the care free suburbs in the middle of Midtown chaos. It's billed in neon as a drive-in, which of course is impossible considering it doesn't even butt onto a street, being tucked nicely into a shopping center by a K-Mart....
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May 23, 2006
Eisenberg's Sandwich Shop
174 Fifth Ave, at 22nd st.
Distance from Shake Shack: 0.05 miles
Travel Time: 2 minutes
# of People in Line: 7
You want close to Shake Shack? How about half a block from Madison Square Park? Charmingly vintage, Eisenberg’s is run by a big friendly guy who takes every order and scrawls it on a paper bag, sending it down to the far end of the restaurant and the cooks. The bar is lined with lone...
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May 23, 2006
New York Burger Co.
303 Park Ave. South
Travel Time: 2 minutes
# of People in Line: 4
When the grease fumes clear on this little quest for Shake Shack Alternatives, there is really only one place that deserves the mantle, and that is the New York Burger Co. A block away from the shack, NY Burger Co. provides the shortest walk, shortest line, and shortest wait, which all translates into more Madison Square Park Time.
They, however, could...
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May 22, 2006
Blue 9 Burger
92 Third Ave
Distance from Shake Shack: 0.61 miles
Travel Time: 18 minutes
# of People in Line: 0
Of all the burgers around the area, this one probably comes the closest to replicating the style of the Shake Shack. They are both in the same vein as the West Coast burger staple, In-N-Out Burgers, which are hyper-fresh and vegetable laden. Everything is made to order, a fact they make perfectly clear on all of the...
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May 22, 2006
The Burger Joint
241 Third Ave.
Distance from Shake Shack: 0.33 miles
Travel Time: 11 minutes
# of People in Line: 4
Not to be confused with its definite-article-less famous namesake, Burger Joint, which is famously "hidden" in the Le Parker Meridien, this joint is just a short jaunt over from Madison Square Park on 3rd Avenue and 20th Street and is home to some serious sliders. For those who didn't grow up with the wonderful world of...
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May 11, 2006
Eating Nick’s we decided that our favorite pizzas don’t have a uniform cheese layer--as you take bites they change, from sauce and fresh basil to an all-mozzarella mouthful, and the flavors really develop in your mouth.
But we’ve gotten to the point where food can make or break the entire evening. We’d been having slice after pie after slice after pie, and they’d all been so above average, this it seemed such...
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All content copyright Nick Kindelsperger and Blake Royer.
