Tag: nyc

12-Year-Old Food Critic

Everyone’s a critic, and apparently it’s never too soon to start. That’s why David Fishman, an Upper West Sider who turned 12 last month, decided to take himself out for dinner one night last week. His parents had called him at home to say they were running late, suggesting that he grab some takeout at the usual hummus place. Hummus, again? David thought he could do better than that. He had recently passed by the newly opened Salumeria Rosi, a few blocks from his home, and had been intrigued by the reflective black back wall, the cuts of dried pork hanging from the ceiling, the little jars of cured olives and artichokes adorning the walls. If it was O.K. with his mom (and it turned out it was), he wanted to try that instead. David aspires to be a food critic he has some vague notion that he could make a living writing for the Zagat guides and the new Italian spot on Amsterdam Avenue near 73rd Street seemed worthy of investigation. That night, Tuesday, turned out to be one of the first that the restaurant was open to the public. David requested a menu, which the hostess handed him, and decided that it was within his budget ($25). Then he asked for a table for one and waited to see what she’d say. A year before, he had been turned away from a half-empty restaurant in Montauk and told that it did not serve children unaccompanied by adults. “I was angry, but I didn’t show it. What can you do?”

2 weeks later, this was optioned into a movie.

Manhattan Street Corners

Richard Howe’s photographs of Manhattan street corners capture the many identities of a multi-faceted city. The sequences of images read like a film where we are peering into the lives of the people who define the city’s character. This is a poignant way to distinguish New York, presented in a fashion that pays great respect to the aesthetics of photography. The New-York Historical Society looks forward to including these works in our collections.

all street corners in manhattan. now do it for nyc!

Google Maps NYC Ad

Google has stepped up as the next concern to wrap a train, wrapping 3 exterior cars with an advertisement for Google Maps, slightly less understated then the History Channel’s ad, if such a thing could be, as Google has only wrapped the exterior of the train, leaving the interior with the more traditional ads we are used to seeing in the square displays or banners up top.

looks nice

Brains

I love the custard-like richness of brain, though I admit that for some reason I have to make a bit of an effort to edit out my consciousness (and I’m not making a cute joke here) that it’s brain I’m eating. I make that effort because the reasonable part of me recognizes no difference between shank, breast, brain. It’s all from the same dead animal.

Restaurant Landmarks

This is really cool. Serious eater maportofu started a Talk thread and points out that there’s a handful of New York City food and drink destinations with labels on Google maps: “I find it funny that it actually has labels for Magnolia Bakery and The Bitter End. I also see a label for Lombardi’s, Fraunces Tavern. Mysteriously, none for Shake Shack.”

Beer Table

an intimate drinking and eating room in Park Slope, Brooklyn that serves a daily selection of rare and special beers paired with an assortment of cheese, charcuterie, homemade snacks, preserved foods, and small meals.

Di Fara

Fame has come late for Domenico DeMarco, who for 40 years has operated Di Fara Pizza on Avenue J in Midwood, Brooklyn. Since 1999, the year that a favorable review in a city guidebook put his pies on the map, Mr. DeMarco has graced the cover of The Village Voice (the ”Best Italian Restaurants” issue in June), and his restaurant has topped the Zagat list of the city’s best pizzerias in 2004 and countless other guides to slice-related nirvana.

Through it all, Mr. DeMarco has changed very little. With his hair slicked back and flour on his shoes, he has continued to make each pizza personally as 3 of his 7 children labor in the back. He maintains beds of basil and rosemary on the windowsill, and imports nearly every ingredient from such faraway lands as Israel and the Netherlands. The man insists on no less than 3 different cheeses on each pizza, and chowhounds line up, sometimes for more than 1 hour to buy a regular slice for $2.50 or the Sicilian for $2.75. The city’s reigning pizza deity is pleased by this sort of success, but he is hardly surprised.

2010-10-25: man, i still haven’t been 😦

2018-06-12:

Longtime customers have noted fresh cows’-milk mozzarella in and out of rotation with the firmer, low-moisture variety. Grana Padano, once a fixture of Di Fara, stopped making appearances after the countertop-mounted rotary grater broke. Parmigiano and Pecorino replaced it for a while. There was even a short-lived era where the crusts were enigmatically burnt, seemingly by design, and that’s where things turn philosophical. “Dom’s pizza is a flowing river in that the only thing you can really count on is perpetual change, and that’s part of what’s interesting about it. He hasn’t stuck to the same method for 50 years.”