Do you like Shanghai soup dumplings? Of course you do. Here you are, reading this sentence, after all. And when you eat them—at Joe’s Shanghai if you are in 1998 or are Jean-Georges Vongerichten, or at Shanghai Asian Cuisine if you are Robert Sietsema, or Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao if you live in Flushing or are up for that kind of travel, or at the Grand Sichuan International in Chelsea if you are me, most of the times I have eaten them over the past fifteen years—do you also eat the leaves of steamed cabbage upon which they sit in their wicker-basket platters? No? [...]

New Yorkers argue about pizza a lot. New Yorkers argue about a lot of things a lot, I suppose. But being that pizza is near and dear to New Yorker’s hearts (and that the very first pizza sold in America was sold at Lombardi’s, on Spring Street, in 1905), New Yorkers take special pleasure in arguing about pizza. Mostly: What place sells the very best pizza today? I have some thoughts about this myself. Though not ones that I’d wish to argue extremely vociferously about. I like to eat, and I like pizza (who doesn’t? Is there anyone who doesn’t like pizza?) but finding the perfect one is not [...]

Here's a suggestion for lunch: Go to the Meatball Shop on Stanton Street and Allen Street on the Lower East Side. (If you don't live in New York City, leave now, and you can make it for tomorrow's lunch.) Go alone, as the place is very popular and there will be a line out the door (even at lunchtime!) waiting for tables of two or four, but single patrons can slip onto an open stool between two other people at the bar. Bring something to read—this week's New Yorker magazine is good—as the servers will be busy and take a little while to get to you. When they [...]

I am generally a proponent of going out to lunch. It's so easy to find yourself sitting in your swivel chair, staring at your screen for twelve straight hours, urinating into a soda bottle and eating out of a bag like some kind of farm animal. Better to break up the day with a walk to, and some time sitting in, a nice place to eat food off a plate.

That said, it's cold out right now. And some days, screw it, stay indoors and in sweat pants. This time of year, its good to have a well-stocked fridge. And I have a recommendation as to how [...]

I have a recommendation as to where you should go for lunch: Charleston, South Carolina. Now, unless you're in Hanahan or Folly Beach or Mt. Pleasant, it could take you a long time to get there. So you might want to leave soon. But you really should go, because Charleston has some of the very best food you will ever eat anywhere. There is a place there called Jestine's Kitchen, which has become quite famous, and so often has a line of people waiting outside, and so also has lots of people who like to talk about food on the internet dismissing it as a "tourist trap" and inferior [...]

Would you like to learn how to make the most delicious sandwich available to eat in New York City? It's easy and not very expensive.

First, go to one of the noodle shops called Xi'an Famous Foods. This is a chain that started in Flushing Queens (locations at 41-28 Main Street and 133-31 39th Avenue), but now has two outposts in Manhattan: one in Chinatown, just north of East Broadway, on the outside of the East side of the base of the Manhattan Bridge—this is the one I usually go to. And one in the East Village, at 81 St. Mark's Place.

They call me “Two Soups.” Sometimes. And by “they,” I mostly mean one person. "They" call me this because I sometimes order two soups for lunch. Like, instead of “soup and a sandwich,” or “soup and a salad,” I’ll have soup and another soup. A different soup. I like soup that much. (I could perhaps marry Jennifer Coolidge in Best In Show and sit with her and eat soup and talk or not talk. She’d prefer the latter, I would bet.)

I’m thinking of having two soups for lunch today, in fact. This time of year, when the weather turns cold, this type of day, rainy and gray, [...]

"They weren’t thinking about fusion per se. They were thinking about New York and approaching terroir, a French concept usually applied to the climate and natural harvest of a given area, in a new way. What ethnic foods had come to co-exist in, and define, the terroir of this city? The answer: Almost every kind. Their take on chicken fra diavolo gets some of its heat from sriracha, an Asian pepper blend. It sits on a slick of un-Italian yogurt." —Frank Bruni's article about Torrisi Italian Specialties in this weekend's Times Magazine starts out seeming like a profiley thing about a hit restaurant, but gets into a more [...]