Tag: nyc

Moroccan Pancakes

Moroccan pancakes, or beghrir, aren’t your everyday flapjacks. The semolina batter is yeasted and cooked on only one side, allowing the other to develop the countless tiny “eyes” that give the dish its nickname, 1000-hole pancake. In the new Smile to Go canteen at the Freehand Hotel in Gramercy, Marden cooks them in batches and reheats them in the oven, then tops them with seasonal-fruit compote, house made ricotta, and pistachio honey.

Kish-Kash

Moroccan-style couscous is clearly the star here, and a slim menu supporting the fluffy grain. It takes over 2 hours for Admony to make a batch in a method rarely seen in New York City — she learned how to make it as a child from her Moroccan neighbor — and the final product is no comparison to the grocery version. “I’m going to show New Yorkers how they eat couscous all wrong. People ask if it’s going to be Israeli couscous, and I get really upset. That’s pasta. Couscous is a fine semolina. You need to steam it twice, pass it through the sieve twice. You have this horrible aftertaste in instant stuff. There is no comparison; I can’t eat that.”

NYC is boring

But I have never seen what is going on now: the systematic, wholesale transformation of New York into a reserve of the obscenely wealthy and the barely here — a place increasingly devoid of the idiosyncrasy, the complexity, the opportunity, and the roiling excitement that make a city great.

As New York enters the 3rd decade of the 21th century, it is in imminent danger of becoming something it has never been before: unremarkable. It is approaching a state where it is no longer a significant cultural entity but the world’s largest gated community, with a few cupcake shops here and there. For the first time in its history, New York is, well, boring.

Bocce

Bocce, where diners can play games of bocce and also eat pizza and share plates. The pizzas come from executive chef Tim Meyers and pizza consultant Anthony Falco, who both used to work at Roberta’s. “They can’t replicate Roberta’s wood-burning brick ovens on Bocce’s electric grill, but are still pretty tasty”. But he was particularly surprised by the share plates, like the calamari-and-shrimp fritto misto, which “was perfectly battered and succulent.”

Best NYC Restaurants 2018

Yet, in spite of expensive remakes of familiar dishes, many restaurateurs still manage to turn out spectacular food at more modest prices, and I’ve found myself eating as well this year as in any other. In fact, better. Roman pies called pinsas have flourished at Camillo. Some of my faves at Pheasant include fried polenta with mixed mushrooms

Brooklyn Bridge Champagne Vaults

The cavernous vaults, which are located closer to the foot of the bridge, were rented out as storage space holding wine, champagne and liqueurs, as well as newspapers from the Evening World and produce from the Fulton Fish Market. Year round, the alcohol was kept in the stable temperatures afforded by the Brooklyn Bridge vaults and the rent collected helped offset the cost of constructing the bridge.

It is known that the vaults were constructed first in 1876, likely to appease distributors like Luyties and Racky’s whose storage facilities were demolished to build the bridge. A faded logo for Pol Rogers, the French champagne house favored by Winston Churchill, is still visible. The vaults were closed during World War I and repurposed for non-alcohol storage uses during Prohibition. In 1934, 6 months after the repeal of Prohibition, the city ceremoniously turned over the keys to a new tenant, Anthony Oechs & Co., an alcohol distributor, at a party inside the vaults attended by 100s of revelers.

Another curious find was uncovered in 2006 inside the Manhattan-side tower of the Brooklyn Bridge. A veritable time capsule was discovered by city workers which contained a stockpile of supplies in the event of nuclear attack. Put into reserve at the height of the Cold War in the late 1950s and early 1960s, this space, intended as both fallout shelter and storeroom, was forgotten for nearly 50 years.

As reported by The New York Times at the time of the discovery, the vault contained “water drums, medical supplies, paper blankets, drugs and calorie-packed crackers — an estimated 352K of them, sealed in 10s of watertight metal canisters and, it seems, still edible.” Boxes with blankets were labeled “For Use Only After Enemy Attack.”

Queens Night Market

The nighttime market is known for its wide selection of dishes, and this year’s list of confirmed vendors reiterates that variety, with bites like puffy Hong Kong-style egg waffles from Eggloo, crispy Trinidadian shark sandwiches from Caribbean Street Eats, Peruvian ceviche from Inti Sumaq, and Taiwanese popcorn chicken from Bstro. There are also sweet summer treats like mochi, shaved ice, bubble tea, and ice cream (including fried ice cream).

Swale

We’ve been tracking the movements of Swale, a forage-ready floating food forest around the New York City waterfront, for the last few years from the Bronx to Brooklyn Bridge Park and Governors Island. This year, Swale will dock from May to June at the Brooklyn Army Terminal and open on the weekends.

Mani in Pasta

East Village’s 5-month-old pizza restaurant Mani in Pasta from chef-owner Giuseppe Manco is apparently already a hit. Manco spent the first part of his career making Neapolitan-style pizzas in Italy and the US before switching to Roman-style pizzas, which he’s now considered a specialist in. Critics at Grub Street note that his pan pizzas are “terrific,” highlighting the margherita and carbonara versions in particular. The restaurant also serves up Roman pastas and pinsa, flatbreads made with the same dough as the pizzas but pressed thinner.