"If you like using online tools to hunt and gather your food, take note: Seamless and GrubHub, two of the better-known players in the mobile food-delivery business, announced today that they will be merging their services."
Are you one of those readers who "look forward to the dark thrill of a public execution on days when there are no stars attached to" a New York Times restaurant review? Well, good for you. It must be nice to have such simple pleasures.
Would you like to feel better about the dietary choices you've made over the last month or so? Then watch this video, in which two men compete to see who can consume more foie gras-injected beignets in the course of a minute. It will totally put you at ease with your own recent decisions. It may also make you vomit.
"By point of context, though, an aisle orchestra seat at the Metropolitan Opera for Donizetti’s 'L’Elisir d’Amore' runs $330, also excluding wine." —I am a huge sucker for departing Times restaurant critic Sam Sifton, but I do recognize that he is probably the most divisive person in that position since Ruth Reichl started flinging stars at Chinese joints. In any event, this sentence from his final review, in which he designates Per Se as New York's best restaurant, echoes on SO MANY LEVELS that even if I were disinclined to enjoy it I would still need to doff my cap.
Photo by Peter Bond, via Flickr
Every New Yorker has a series of cherished myths and hard-earned wisdom that he or she considers the Gospel truth about how to get by in this city. But are the stories we tell ourselves in order to live really on the level? We turn to the experts to help us figure it out.
Living so close to bodies of water best known for the number of corpses retrieved from within, you can understand why New Yorkers are a bit cautious about the bounty of the sea. A longstanding rule of thumb holds that ordering fish from a restaurant on Mondays is never a good thing. But is [...]
"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 [...]
Why do all the New York Chinese restaurants you see in movies look the same?
This story about two fellows being barred from an all-you-can-eat restaurant due to excessive consumption doesn't much interest me one way or the other, but the accompanying photograph is priceless. Look how hungry they seem!
• "Americans love fried chicken. Just like they love chips and dip. So what could be tastier, fast-food restaurants conclude, than chicken you can eat like chips and dip."
• "Seventeen percent of all meals ordered at restaurants in the U.S. are now eaten in cars, according to NPD Group, a consumer research firm."
• " Whereas ice cream or chips used to suffice as a snack, people now want something more substantial like a small sandwich…"
• "Last week Pizza Hut introduced a P'Zolo, a rolled, hot sandwich intended to be held in one hand. It comes with marinara or ranch dip."
[Source]
"The setting is dropped-ceiling bland, with a few plants and paintings for color. This is in keeping with the neighborhood’s restaurant history: 456 resembles nothing so much as a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown." —At the corner of Nostalgia and Zen you will find Sam Sifton's review of 456 Shanghai Cuisine. Oh my God, I am SO HUNGRY RIGHT NOW.
Good news, Manhattan: You're about to get an International House of Pancakes! Can Shoney's be far behind? [Via]
"But while the name will get you in the door, the food won’t necessarily keep you coming back. 'Supa Fly Ho with Cheese' was not especially juicy—or fatty, as the restaurant’s name would suggest—and the patty itself was almost charred." New Waco, TX eatery Fat Ho Burgers—where menu items include "the Bad Mamajama, the Fat Chicken Ho, the Sloppy Ho brisket sandwich and, curiously, A Fat Ho Named Bertha"—has been receiving widespread publicity since its recent opening (and inspiring the classic bit of local news you see above), but the actual cuisine leaves the experts unimpressed.
There is a great struggle that is tearing our nation apart, turning brother against brother, cousin against cousin, person with expense account against person who has meticulously planned out what she will order before she has left work even though she knows no matter how careful she is she is still going to end up on the hook for another thirty bucks she did not account for etc.: It's the war against entrees. What side do you come down on in this titanic conflict? Tell us in the comments!
Here is a scientific explanation for the reason that, even though you have gorged yourself on turkey and stuffing and potatoes and cheese and a bunch of bread and whatever else you've crammed down your gullet, you're still all, "Yeah, I could have some pie."
"One night, I listened as a man who had evidently been sampling Brushstroke’s elegant Asian-informed cocktails loudly imagined how cool it would be to remake 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' as a pornographic film."
"The past remains a painful subject in Lviv, and there have been few public efforts to deal with the city’s dark Jewish history. And so a young Ukrainian entrepreneur sensed an opportunity. He opened Under the Golden Rose, a theme restaurant that he says honors the city’s Jewish past. It’s a place where diners are given hats with peyes attached, nibble on matzoh, and are encouraged to haggle over food prices…"
The last sentence in Sam Sifton's most recent restaurant review is pretty brutal.
