thirteen columns, all of them reviews, not all of them about restaurants.
at guantanamera, every night is a party
There is no dance floor, but people dance. My ode to one of NYC’s top Cuban spots.
a seven-seat restaurant redefines omakase sushi
A look at how chef Junichi Matsuzaki uses a nearly 30-course tasting and an experimental, freeform menu format to stand apart amid the city’s crowded omakase scene.
eleven madison park isn’t read to become a world class vegan restaurant
A criticism of not just the restaurant, but the media circus behind the changeover to plant-based dining
winning over brooklyn with blowtorched tacos
The case for tripe simmered in chiles — and a few thoughts on Gabriela Cámera’s taco rules from her “My Mexico City Kitchen” cookbook.
contra and wildair are the anti-elitist icons of nyc cuisine
“Haute cuisine is, by its nature, among the most inaccessible art forms. An opera aficionado can download Pavarotti’s 1978 Tosca performance for $20 on iTunes. An art student can peruse Picasso’s blue period via Google image search. But a young chef will have a heck of a time enjoying Grant Achatz's modernist cookery without visiting Alinea and plucking down $700 on a dinner date. And while none of this is to discount the importance of empiricism outside of cuisine (better to step inside Philip Johnson's glass house than view it from your buddy’s Facebook feed), with food you actually have to be there. You can’t eat via the Internet.”
the case for intellectual fine dining at atomix
This Modern Korean spot hands out small sheets of dense reading material with each course — the culinary equivalent of a museum didactic — and somehow finds a way to make it work.
the definitive guide to eating steak in new york city
A very different and much more comprehensive steakhouse guide than you’re used to. With mini-reviews of steaks (and meals) at Keens, Torrisi, Cafe Chelsea, Cote, and elsewhere.
dept of culture makes a case for the communal table
Chef Ayo Balogun serves a masterful tasting of North-Central Nigerian fare, but the restaurant achieves something equally grand in its unique recreation of a West African buka. By sitting most diners around a tight communal table, Dept of Culture forces New Yorkers to do something they rarely do in a tasting menu setting: talk to strangers.
bolivian llama party jolts sunnyside with modern andean fare
During the pandemic, the empire-building Oropeza brothers gave sunnyside a rare modern Bolivian restaurant, with very cool weekend DJ’s to boot.
aldama is a modern mexican masterpiece
I write about a stunner of a vegan mole — and take stock of the city’s growing modern Mexican scene.
tashkent supermarket is home to one of nyc’s greatest hot buffets
A critical contemplation of mega-marts, alongside an ode to the foodways of NYC’s overlooked Central Asian population.
on peppa’s, glady’s, and brooklyn’s thriving caribbean scene
“The jerk, sweet and vaguely piney with expertly rendered fats, calibrated heat, and bracing pungency, is so good that Glady’s is as much in conversation with Peppa’s as it is with a place like Hometown or Mighty Quinn’s. The comparison is important. There’s long been a tendency to overcategorize affordable or unfamiliar foodstuffs, to relegate them to a series of polite “best of brackets” rather than to critique them within the larger context of the city’s dining traditions. And so in the case of Glady’s, its place within the jerk community is just one story; the bigger picture is that it’s one of the the city’s most accomplished barbecue restaurants. And Felix is without question one of New York’s top pitmasters.”
contemplating babbo in a post-batali world
In which I question a famed Times review of the Greenwich Village restaurant — as well as the lack of changes following detailed reports of sexual misconduct against the former chef and owner, Mario Batali.