Nicoletta - NYC- Restaurant Review. It all sounds rather quaint.
Thanks to the rise of celebrity chefs, restaurant empires have as much need for a great product as they do for spittoons and a separate ladies’ entrance. To see this new model in action, you need only study Nicoletta, the pizzeria opened in the East Village in June by the chef and his business partner, Ahmass Fakahany. It was already clear in March that Nicoletta was to be the first of several places rolled out from the same batch of dough. “We are developing distinct brands where we can open multiple restaurants, lowering costs as we go,” Mr. Fakahany told a reporter at the time as he explained how practices from his former career as a high-flying executive at Merrill Lynch were helping him wring extra profit from his restaurants. Atera in TriBeCa. That is his name for the flurry of little bites that kick off each of the tasting menus at Atera, the remarkable new countertop-dining restaurant in TriBeCa where Mr.
Lightner is the chef. One of them looks like an engorged, rhinoceros-gray potato chip and tastes like something scraped off a rock. That’s what it turned out to be: lichen found in the woods near Bear Mountain, pulverized and reconstituted. Another night, there was a bitter and stringy clump of fried garlic roots, about as rewarding as eating a broom. A facsimile peanut made with foie gras and peanut butter wasn’t as good as an actual peanut, and a facsimile egg shaped from aioli wasn’t as good as an actual egg.
After a few more such mouthfuls, I decided that, if I were ever invited to a Super Bowl party at Mr. Yet, when snack time was over and the core of the menu began, something remarkable happened. A&G Diner’s “Best Burger in Tokyo” Hijacks Taste Buds, Takes Them for a Wild Ride. Everyone seems to agree that the best burger joint in Tokyo is A&G Diner in fancy-schmancy Jingumae.
It tops the lists on Gourmet and B Gourmet blogs and gossip sites and is the first name out of the mouths of my restaurant critic friends. I decided to check it out for myself to see if the taste lived up to the hype and glam of Jingumae. I went in to attack an A&G Diner burger with abandon, but, as it turns out, the burger attacked me . . . The first thing I noticed was the small size of the restaurant interior. There was probably enough space for four adults to sit and dine, but really only for one or two to sit comfortably.
I made myself comfortable and ordered the most popular item on the menu, the bacon cheeseburger. Catch - NYC - Restaurant Review. This is early evening at Catch, a restaurant with a department store’s dimensions and a nightclub’s twitchy heart.
It opened in October in the meatpacking district, which seems to breed such leviathans. You will not find Catch at its official street address. Neta - NYC - Restaurant Review. Michael Nagle for The New York Times An exterior view of the sushi bar Neta, located at 61 West Eighth Street.
More Photos » Michael Nagle for The New York Times One of the two chefs who founded Neta, Jimmy Lau, was head chef at Bar Masa, where he was also in charge of international fish buying. More Photos » Blanca Is a Sleek Surprise Around Back of Roberta’s. Robert Wright for The New York Times At Blanca, the kitchen fills roughly half the space of the restaurant.
More Photos » Located in an airy white loft built in the plaza behind Roberta’s sprawling compound of shipping containers and tents, across from an extensive, multilevel garden, Blanca might be a California beach-town garage renovated by just-retired professional skateboarders. Area Man Winded After Particularly Lengthy Wendy's Order. Restaurant Review - Le Bernardin in Midtown Manhattan. Daniel Krieger for The New York Times Eric Ripert, the executive chef of Le Bernardin.
More Photos » Some of the thrills are the hushed kind, like the way black garlic, pomegranate and lime support the crisp skin and white flesh of sautéed black bass. McDonald's Around the World: Introduction - Bing Travel. Return to the golden age of cocktails. Empellón Cocina in the East Village. Rachel Barrett for The New York Times A gordita with smoked plantains, chorizo and egg yolk.
More Photos » Mr. Stupak first took up Mexican food last year, in a Greenwich Village restaurant he called Empellón. Restaurant Review - Sotto in Los Angeles. Gwynnett St. in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Benjamin Petit for The New York Times Amish chicken, beets, rutabagas, potatoes and hay ash at Gwynnett St.
Cooking Becomes a Show, at Your Table. The Reinvented Maloney & Porcelli - Slide Show. Bread Winners Cafe and Bakery and The Quarter Bar. RedFarm, in the West Village, Turns Up the Flavors. Villa Azur Restaurant & Lounge. SAVOUR Tasting Room and Social Club. Union Bear. How Waiters Read Your Table. Pub Revolutionised. Shake Shack Struggles With Inconsistency.
The Chef Alex Stupak Opens Empellón Cocina. “I like the idea — the story — that someone wanted to question the establishment and was punished for it,” he said recently as he sat in his new East Village restaurant, Empellón Cocina, which opened Feb. 7 and is being watched closely by food lovers citywide.
He made the statement with an intense stare (pretty much his default expression) and without any discernible sense of mischief, because he wasn’t trying to be cute. Tracie McMillan’s The American Way of Eating: Doing the hardest job at Applebee’s. Spike Mafford Nearly three years ago, Tracie McMillan left New York to go undercover within the American food system. McMillan had grown weary of lectures about local food that dismissed the importance of price to working-class people. At the same time, she knew from her work as a poverty reporter that poor families cared about the quality of their food, too.
McMillan hoped to get a ground-level view of how Americans actually make decisions about their meals, especially when money and time are scarce. After working in farm fields in California and a Wal-Mart produce section outside Detroit, McMillan returned to New York in the hopes of landing a kitchen post at one of the city’s 23 Applebee’s restaurants. Expediting, I am told at orientation, is the hardest job in the restaurant. The Dram : Eater Dallas. Norma's Cafe in Oak Cliff.
[Photo: Garrett Hall/EDFW] OAK CLIFF/N. DALLAS/FRISCO—All Norma's Cafe locations will give away free grilled cheese sandwiches on Friday, April 11 from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m in observance of National Grilled Cheese Day. (Norma's is also now serving a mac and cheese grilled cheese, which is exactly what it sounds like with the addition of bacon.)