Food: January 2008 Archives

Okay, so you don't want to go out to watch the game and cooking is not an option. What can you order besides pizza? Plenty, as you already know (hey, we live in New York City, folks!). But we've found some particularly mouthwatering Super Bowl delivery specials, many of which involve pork. Mmmm . . . pork.

When it comes to sushi our tastes skew authentic. Mackerel. Amberjack. Occasionally a tuna and natto hand roll, not Christmas or Dragon rolls. Nevertheless, Gothamist remains a sucker for a gimmick. So when Sakae Sushi, a Singapore-based kaiten – or conveyor belt sushi restaurant – recently opened its first New York City location we couldn’t wait to tear open our disposable chopsticks and begin grabbing tasty morsels as they paraded down the runway. Midtown Lunch’s sneak peek and a perusal of Sakae’s 30-page menu, with everything from typical nigiri-zushi to oddities like corn salad sushi, as well as ramen and yakitori added to the intrigue.

A study to be published later this year in the Journal of Food Safety proves that George Costanza’s cavalier method of double dipping his chip is, in fact, “like putting your whole mouth right in the dip.” For those who may have missed the Seinfeld episode or somehow not seen it reenacted at every party serving dip since it aired in 1993, we’ve posted the scene below. Suffice it to say that Costanza’s preferred dipping style involves dipping his chip in dip, taking a bite, and then going back for more dip with the half-eaten chip.

With his wife Martine running the front of the house, chef Alex Ureña has made a few more adjustments to Pamplona, their small East 28th Street restaurant known as erstwhile hell for sconce connoisseurs, but consistently a solid bet for modern Spanish food at a good price point. Following Frank Bruni’s 2 star Times review in November, Pamplona introduced a weekday lunch, soon following that up with a brunch menu. Coddled eggs, meet Spanish cured tuna. Cured tuna, meet coddled eggs.

This week in the Times, Bruni one-stars Lebanese Ilili, saying “Ilili is probably the atmospherically grandest excursion into Middle Eastern cooking that New York has ever seen.” While much of the menu is inconsistent, he loves the kebabs and kaftas. Says the service is “occasionally confused.” And get the essmalieh for dessert.

The 21 Club opened on New Year’s Eve 1930 at 21 West 52nd Street as a speakeasy and restaurant. Legend has it that when powerful gossip columnist Walter Winchell was banned from the club, he ran an item wondering why the 21 Club had not yet been raided by Prohibition agents. (Winchell, of course, was the inspiration for the character of J.J. Hunsecker in The Sweet Smell of Success, which features several scenes at 21.) The next day 21 was raided and, soon after, the owners installed a secret wine cellar located behind a camouflaged door opening into the neighboring building, 19 West 52nd. The cellar remains behind that 2 ½ ton door to this day, where tasting menus are offered near the booth supposedly favored by Mayor Jimmy Walker.

Sure, you could go to a traditional sports bar to watch the Super Bowl, but that would just be so . . . traditional. We've rounded up a few more options for you -- find one to suit your mood.

At the risk of turning this into a cheese sandwich blog, we pose the following question: What do you get when you take a grilled cheese, arguably the Platonic form of childhood comfort food, and let Anne Saxelby put her spin on it? A decidedly grown-up version known as the Grayson and B&B's Grilled Cheese. As soon as we heard about this new sandwich, Gothamist sped down to the Saxelby Cheesemongers.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is in charge of construction on the new 1 World Trade Center – AKA the Freedom Tower – is now seeking developers to design, build and operate a 34,000-square-foot restaurant on the 100th and 101st floors; whoever wins the bid may also win rights to operate the observation deck planned for the 102nd floor. The Authority is gazing into its crystal construction ball and seeing a Grand Opening in 2013.

This weekend Gowanus Lounge was first to note the unexpected closure of the 2nd Street Cafe at Seventh Avenue in Park Slope. The decade old restaurant, which on weekends had all the charm of a daycare center on adderall, had undergone a major renovation last summer. OTBKB hears word from a former employee that he/she was given just two days notice. Part of the ever-widening quicksand consuming New York restaurants? No word yet on the reason for the closure; calls to the restaurant are going unanswered.

Mary Izett, a self-admitted beer geek and former president of the Malted Barley Appreciation Society of New York City discussed how the chemical reactions in roasting malt and cacao are related to those that occur when roasting meat. Give yourself five food geek points if you knew she was talking about the Maillard reaction.

Luigi Di Palo, a youthful 56-year-old better known as Lou, runs Little Italy’s century-old Di Palo’s Fine Foods with his brother and sister. The store started out as a latteria, selling only fresh cheese, milk and butter. Di Palo likes to say that he and his family are among the “last of the real, original Little Italy people.” These days the store is a little Italy in its own right with hundreds of Italian specialties – salumi, cheese, olive oil, preserves, and Balsamic vinegar among other things. Di Palo’s still makes its own cheese daily and as one customer kvelled, “There’s no ricotta like his ricotta.” And they were right, the bit we tasted was like eating a cloud made out of milk. We chatted with him about his family’s store as well as the neighborhood and its upcoming Carnevale festival, which runs through February 3 and will feature special dishes at area restaurants as well as impromptu shows by Italian performers and singers on weekends.

Padre Figlio: In Italian, the name means father and son, so it’s no surprise that this new Italian steakhouse is run by Mario and Antonio Cerra, the father and son team behind Da Antonio. After ten years, they’ve sold that establishment and are joining forces again to focus on high-end Italian meats, such as rib eye and a porterhouse of Piemontese beef for two.

While we're always on the hunt for both the new and the unfamiliar in New York's kitchens, we also have standby favorite restaurants. One place we find ourselves returning to over and over again is Bedford Street's 'Ino, the sliver of a cafe and wine bar specializing in panini, tramezzini, bruschetta and a laundry list of wines (mostly Italian), with a handful available by the glass or half-bottle. Intimacy comes to mind in a space almost entirely lit by candles and because the room is so small, patrons must get up in domino effect when new customers arrive. The menu is made for mixing and matching -- salads and soups, bruschetta topped with various cheeses, meats, vinegars, and vegetables, and of course the panini (hot pressed sandwiches) and tramezzini (crustless sandwiches on white bread).

At the Ethnic Market highlights international specialty foods and ingredients that you're very unlikely to find at your local Gristedes.

Okay, we realize that this isn't quite as crucial to the basics of a kitchen as either a sharp knife or a cast iron pan, but in our minds, it still ranks as a kitchen essential. Why? Because not only do we use our Microplane grater quite frequently, but it does what it is designed to do absolutely flawlessly.

About once a year or so Gothamist makes a pilgrimage to Bensonhurst’s 18th Avenue for some Sicilian soul food. A little over 15 years ago, 18th Avenue between Bay Ridge Parkway and McDonald Avenue was dubbed "Cristoforo Colombo Boulevard." While that entire length may have been named in honor of the Italian explorer, the stretch where we usually explore the wonders of Southern Italian food lies between between Bay Ridge Parkway and 65 Street.

Prospect Heights mom and Park Slope Food Coop member Yvonne Brechbuhler got a little something extra in a head of organic lettuce she recently brought home: a little green frog “no bigger than the tip of her pinky finger," according to the Daily News. Brechbuhler discovered the frog (pictured) only when she took out the lettuce to make a salad – after it had been in her refrigerator for three days. She insists that her fridge has no frog infestation and speculates the frog hitchhiked in the lettuce from South Florida, presumably seeking fame and fortune in the big city.

The Times ran a follow-up today about their investigation that found abnormally high levels of mercury in fish served at area restaurants. Toxicology reports from 44 pieces of sushi, ordered from places including Nobu Next Door and Sushi Seki, may in fact contribute to some New Yorkers’ 3 times higher-than-average blood levels of mercury. It turns out, however, that most New Yorkers just don’t care.

The “Beer Kir” at Marco Moreira’s 15 East is a Japanese beer-based mixed drink: Sapporo is floated on a shot of honeyed sweet potato vinegar, adding a sweet-sour edge to the dry lager. For the purposes of home experimentation, we found Benímosu ($11.35 for 4 oz.), the same artisanal vinegar used in Beer Kir at Katagiri, a Japanese food store on 59th Street. Made in Kyoto from purple potatoes and koji rice, Benímosu has clean, rounded flavor that’s meant to be added to beer in a 1:5 ratio, which means a 4 ounce bottle of the stuff won’t even last a 6 pack. For more budget beer-vinegar drinks, Katagiri has a whole shelf of (mostly) fruit-based vinegar for cocktail mixing. There’s even one made from sake lees, the unfermentable dregs collected from the bottom of sake brewing tanks.

This soup is of Georgian origin, where pairing red beans and walnuts appears to be some sort of national pastime. It's a rustic soup, lusciously creamy and actually good for you, too. (Unless you overload on the olive oil, that is. Since we don't specify quantities on that, it's entirely your call.)

Hold onto your chopsticks; the Times recently commissioned a toxicology report on sushi from 13 local establishments and got back some rather unappetizing results:

More than half of the restaurants and stores surveyed sold sushi with so much mercury that eating just six pieces a week would exceed the amount the EPA says can be safely consumed by an adult of average weight, which the agency defines as 154 pounds, 70 kilograms. People weighing less are advised to consume even less mercury.

Continue reading "Mercury Rising Higher in Tuna"

This week in the Times, Bruni one-stars Mesa Grill (pictured), knocking the restaurant down from the two stars given it by William Grimes in 2000. Says that while the Bobby Flay restaurant “has considerable charms… on balance [it] presents only flickers of the excitement it did [when it opened] in 1991… It’s an overly familiar, somewhat tired production. More to the point, it’s an inconsistent one.”

Today the Board of Health is expected to pass regulations requiring 10% of the city's 23,000 restaurants to prominently display calorie counts on their menus. A previous push to require calorie disclosure was blocked by a federal judge in September; the new rules will be mostly limited to fast food restaurants that have 15 or more locations nationwide.

Gothamist has dined in all kinds of joints in Flushing’s Chinatown – killer Cantonese, top-flight dim sum and lamb-laden Northern Chinese. The area we haven’t explored much is the food courts, mazes of stalls so diverse that Tony Bourdain could easily cull material for an episode or two. It’s not that we are squeamish, it’s just that the signs are all in Chinese and many of the proprietors speak little English. A non-Chinese speaker would need a Rosetta Stone of sorts.

Crain’s takes notes of a sharp spike in restaurant closings, with real estate brokers reporting many more closures than usual and a surge in restaurant auctions; the city's leading restaurant auctioneer tells Crain’s he’s been handling “20 liquidations a month for the past year, twice as many as the year before.”

Especially telling is that many of the auctions involve seasoned operators rather than neophytes who miscalculated their ability, the strength of the market or both. An example is Frank's, a chophouse in the meatpacking district that has been owned by three generations of the Molinari family. It closed two weeks ago, along with its adjacent butcher shop.

Some people may prefer other bakeries, but from the looks of the crowd at the Magnolia Bakery's new Upper West Side location, people are hungering for some heavily frosted cupcakes. If the treats are available, that is.

What do you get when you mix hot chefs like Seamus Mullen, Joey Campanero, and Josh DeChellis with top mixologists like David Wondrich, Dale DeGroff, Audrey Saunders, Julie Reiner, Jim Meehan and Eben Freeman (and many more, pictured above), a brand new space in the East Village and swirl in a dash of festive atmosphere? The opening party for the Astor Culinary Center.

Dean’s: A third Dean’s Restaurant is now open in Tribeca. The Italian eatery has won fans with their signature thin crust brick oven pizza made with homemade mozzarella and a dozen potential toppings. But if amazing brick oven pizza isn’t your thing, Dean’s also has a full Italian menu with pasta dishes like Parpardella Toscana, a wide ribbon pasta with wild mushroom and sundried tomatoes in a light cream white wine sauce. There are also some big salads and an extensive wine list. And the new Tribeca location is inviting, with brick walls and a warmly lit bar. 349 Greenwich St., between Harrison and Jay. (212) 966-3200.

Easy, sugar fiends - the new Magnolia Bakery outpost on the Upper West Side (Columbus at 69th Street) isn't quite opening at 11AM as Eater reported yesterday. We walked by around 9:30AM and the sign said that they anticipated a noon opening.

Even after only being open since October, Dell'Anima, the brainchild of some Babbo and Del Posto alums, is already tough to get into. Sure, it's partially because it's a small space, with seating for just over forty, but it's also due to the cozy, warm and inviting atmosphere, friendly and knowledgeable staff, and for the delicious rustic Italian fare.

might do to you. Other traditional bake-books operate within the wholly confined orbit of strudel and streusels; A Baker’s Odyssey has strudels galore but is also about forgotten or esoteric American immigrant recipes, so it also covers kulich and chin chin cookies, shoofly pie and puran poori. Recipes involve techniques and ingredients that have sort of fallen by the wayside in an age of 30 minute meals: The book’s cannoli shell dough is made with Madeira, and ANZAC cookies are made with Lyle’s Golden Syrup.

On Crosby Street between Bleecker and Houston, there's a literally hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop called The Crosby Connection. Joey Cramarossa, an ex-cop from New Jersey, works out a tiny space to serve up unbelievably fresh, delicious, filling and reasonably priced sandwiches and salads at $5-6 each.

It's always disappointing to go to a restaurant you immediately fall in love with for the atmosphere and the wide-ranging beer list, and walk away a bit let down by the food. At Jimmy's No. 43 in the East Village, the subterranean cavernous restaurant with a generous draught list of international beers, the menu changes from day to day to include local ingredients and showcase what is in season. There is a long narrow bar when you arrive, and the restaurant expands further back than you may initially think. Lit with candles and tables for parties of one, two, or up to a family style table for eight, the space is comfortable with a busy, but mellow sound level.

Gothamist spent Monday afternoon strolling Brighton Beach Avenue ogling bacon, tins of caviar, baby octopus salad, chicken Kiev, assorted meat pies, smoked fish and a plethora of pickled vegetables among the delicacies in the nabe’s endless stretch of specialty food stores. We also window-shopped at Little Odessa’s gift shops; each overflowing with tacky specimens of multicolored Venetian glass vases. After all the walking and looking, we were getting hungry.

Last night, Savoy chef and local foods champion Peter Hoffman gave a presentation at the Museum of Natural History on the role of water in sustainable farming, in conjunction with the ongoing Water: H2O = Life exhibit (now through May 25). We missed it too, but found some similar upcoming events. Call it the Mr. Wizard meets Escoffier edition- these food happenings deal with the intersections of ingredients, science, and art.

Yes, that's bacon sprinkled on top of a bowl of Arabic spiced New England fish chowder, photographed in front of our tallis bag, which features a beautiful watercolor painting of Jerusalem. Sacrelicious, maybe, but it all makes sense – this chowder is made with Jerusalem artichokes instead of potatoes, after all.

A Times article on the popularity of “fast-casual” restaurants continues to cause some major head scratching. In straightforward expansionist news, the article reported that the Five Guys burger chain plan on opening 29 new local outlets in the next 8 years, and Hale and Hearty is busy putting the finishing touches on its 20,000 square foot Williamsburg production facility.

This week in the Times, Bruni two-stars Blue Ribbon Sushi Bar & Grill (the new one, at Columbus Circle). After a few rocky meals immediately after the opening, “the food has been consistently first-rate,” says Bruni. “Much of it also reflects the [owners’, Eric and Bruce] Bromberg’s winning playfulness.” He also says that while the sushi isn't the best in town, the fried chicken may be.

As Gothamist recently noted, New Year's and the following week or so are a particularly festive occasion for the Japanese. Which is no doubt why Haru decided to celebrate the grand opening of its newest location on Wall Street last Wednesday. Hordes of sushi-crazed suits crowded the restaurant located in the historic Beaver Building for the gala event, which was also a benefit for the Downtown Alliance.

It's a dark day for South Billyburg lovers of southern comfort food – dark as blackened catfish on a moonless Brooklyn night. Eater points out Peter Meehan's discovery that the beloved hole in the wall Pies 'n' Thighs, in the shadow of the Williamsburg bridge, will close tomorrow night. Party, or wake, to follow.

Arthur Emil, the man behind the late Windows on the World and The Rainbow Room, has won the coveted contract to operate the famous Oak Room and Oak Bar (pictured) in the Plaza Hotel, which is near the end of a three-year, $400 million makeover. The 18 story landmark building opened in 1907 and operated as a hotel until 2005, after being sold for $675 million. After delays blamed on “red tape”, the Plaza is expected to open by the end of March as an upscale condominium with retail space and a smaller hotel.

Got a tidbit for us? Send it to the feedbag.

After 81 years spent fattening us up with their many irresistible cookie varieties, the Girl Scout organization is dropping some not-so-subtle hints that perhaps keeping a dozen boxes of Samoas in our locked desk drawer isn’t the healthiest way to make it through the winter. So for the first time they’ll be peddling sugar-free chocolate chip cookies and another low calorie cookie option: Cinna-Spins™. (Pictured.)

Tim and Nina Zagat, whose eponymous ratings guide started in 1979 as a two-page typed list of New York restaurants, are putting their baby on the market. Insiders peg the company’s worth at $200 million; the Times thinks the brand will prove attractive to companies like AT&T, who could use it to build exclusive mobile phone content.

Bar Boulud: Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni recently lost his patience waiting on hold for 15 minutes to make a reservation, which should give you some sense of how feverish the excitement is for Daniel Boulud’s latest foray. The tony uptown wine bar, across the street from Lincoln Center, enjoyed the raging buzz of a sneak-preview opening on New Year’s Eve and now the 100 seat restaurant is open for real. Judging from the photos, the modern yet warm interior does look inviting; a long vaulted ceiling is intended to “invoke a classic wine cellar”, a backlit gravel wall echoes an old world vineyard, and three private “wine themed” dining rooms are available for the swells.

We’re not going to hesitate to echo the praises surrounding The Smith, 3rd Avenue‘s (between 10th & 11th) latest go-to spot (formerly a very-out-of-place Pizzeria Uno). Whether you’re hankering for a good pork chop, a unique cocktail, or some cheddar grits, The Smith fits the bill. The interior is spacious, though dark in the back far away from the windows, and the walls are decorated with subway tile and vintage nude photographs. Despite its size, if you go for brunch like we did, we recommend a pre-noon arrival, since word has caught on and the room fills up fast.

Vincent Gruppuso, the pudding cup king of Long Island, passed away recently, leaving his multimillion dollar Kozy Shack Enterprises behind. The 67 year old dessert tycoon had spent his life turning his tiny, one-man operation into a multinational operation employing 400 employees at three plants in Hicksville, California and Ireland. Last year the company sold over 115 million cups of pudding and pastries. Cause of death? Diabetes.

The company that founded Chuck E. Cheese, which famously replaced lazy live musicians with ruthlessly efficient animatronic animals, now has their sights trained right on your server. According to this breathlessly excited vision of the future, soon “a new trend will be found at your favorite restaurants”! [Emphasis added.] Computerized touch screen ordering at your table is destined to radically marginalize the entire restaurant service industry, liberating diners from the bondage of inattentive service and tedious chit-chat with the help. Best of all, you don’t have to tip a touch screen! Oh, and there’s games, too! And ads!

When the mercury broke the 60-degree mark on Tuesday, Gothamist immediately began obsessing about frozen confections. Rest assured, the irony of the situation wasn't lost on us. If anyone offered us an ice cream cone during the recent cold snap that saw temps in the teens, things might have gotten ugly.

On Wednesday three former waiters filed suit against Keith McNally, owner of upscale eateries Pastis and Balthazar. The AP reports that the "restaurants had failed to pay minimum wage and overtime while letting non-tipped employees share in their tips."

There are a number of restaurants opening in 2008 that we've been eagerly awaiting and we thought we'd highlight some that particularly piqued our interest and have us drooling in anticipation.

Crunchy, salty, spicy, and satisfying, these quick pickled cucumbers add a nice kick to most any meal. We reduced the oil content from Kuo's original recipe to make it a bit lighter and healthier, and rinsed off the excess salt after maceration in order to obtain a more balanced flavor, at least to our palate.

No one knows for sure what’s to become of the future Union Square pavilion, but a strong contender for the space – formerly occupied by the shabby Luna Park – is a new restaurant helmed by Danny Meyer, who opened the Union Square Café in ’85 and whose Shake Shack in Madison Square Park is an object of obsession.

Mayor Bloomberg, our city's tireless crusader against vice, whose victory against the artery-clogging forces of trans fat has drawn outrage from bakers and restaurateurs, was recently caught trans-handed in this Wired magazine photo. Or was he? amNY is absolutely one hundred percent certain that’s a Cheez-It in Hizzoner’s right hand (in the Wired photo, not the image here.)

Paul Adams goes to Back Forty (pictured) for the NY Sun this week. “The restaurant takes its focus on farm-to-table cuisine almost to the point of self-parody,” he says. Back Forty could benefit more by the presence of Peter Hoffman (the chef and owner) in the kitchen, not so much at the greenmarket, says Adams.

At the Ethnic Market highlights international specialty foods and ingredients that you're very unlikely to find at your local Gristedes.

are distressed by the trend and blame it on the fact that executive chefs’ salaries in China are matching or even surpassing the U.S. pay grade.

What with Pacific Standard’s North Slope location, their blog, their robot blog, and their faux-formal alternative title (Jon & John's House of Starchy Living and Temperance Den), the Fourth Avenue watering hole seems determined to become the McSweeney’s of bars. Now they’ve taken their clever eccentricity one step further with a Frequent Drinker Card Program, which gives patrons something in return for their consumption beyond inflated self-worth and unwanted pregnancies.

. For a very low price, you'll have a pan that's strong, durable, has excellent heat retention, and with the right care, a non-stick surface.

It’s now trendy for tourists visiting Rio de Janeiro to eschew the nice hotels in favor of a full immersion in the city’s sprawling shantytowns, or “favelas”. But for those who can’t make the trip to Brazil, a new restaurant will soon bring a taste of that scene to Williamsburg. Called Favela, the establishment is described as a "Brazilian Botequim", a simple place for the neighborhood to gather for drinks, food and watching soccer. (Favela’s business card has Pelé on the back.)

The mice at The Mermaid Inn’s East Village location picked a mischievous moment to scurry out into the dining room a few nights ago – as luck would have it a writer for Time Out New York was there waiting for a table! The immodest mice must have been looking for their 15 minutes of fame, because they timed their appearance perfectly with TONY staffer Jordana Rothman’s emergence from the bathroom.

When news of 124 Rabbit Club’s opening broke, we dropped everything and headed down to MacDougal St. for some brews from the joint’s 40-plus beer list. Initially it was hard to find, then we saw the stairs leading down to an unmarked door and rang the bell only to find nobody home. At first we thought maybe we weren’t cool enough to gain admission, but it seems we weren't the only ones misinformed about the opening date of this “beer-easy.”

Go! Go! Curry: This Japanese fast food hot spot had lines down the block when they opened in the Garment District last spring; now they’re building on the buzz and branching out in the East Village. We’ve become addicted to their belt-busting Grand Slam (pictured), “a monster platter that comes with fried chicken, pork sausages and a hard-boiled egg, among other things. The thick, sweet sauce has a tiny kick of heat and is served over rice with such toppings as slices of tonkatsu, fried pork cutlet.” Or for half the price and calories, you can keep it simple but savory with the curry rice sans toppings, a classic Japanese comfort food.

On a frigid night this week, Gothamist and two friends decided to duck out of the cold and pop into Mole, a twenty-five seat Mexican spot on Allen Street owned by the husband-wife team of Nick Cervera and Lupe Elizalde, also proprietors of Taco Taco in Yorkville. Strung with lights out front, and decorated inside with colorful Mexican tiles and exposed brick, Mole is cozy, but has an extensive menu with specials changing nightly.

The non-official Starbucks Gossip Blog posted a letter Wednesday that one disgruntled New York employee fired off to the company’s top brass. The barista wrote not to protest Starbucks’s aggressive ubiquity, their resistance to fair trade coffee, or their union busting tactics. No sir, she’s up in arms about the new company policy instructing employees to refer to drinks made with sugar-free syrup, non-fat milk, and no whipped cream as “Skinny.”

Outraged by the unstoppable deluge of delivery menus on your doormat and the inability of our elected officials to stem the rising tide? You are not alone! One man has decided to take matters into his own hands by designing a sticker for your apartment door to ward off unwanted promotions.

I've decided to start promoting my own solution: a simple bumper sticker that uses a helpful diagram to warn trespassers that fingers will be crushed if menus are put under the door. This has actually made a huge difference in reducing the number of menus arriving at my house.

Ever since we read about osechi-ryori in the Times last week we’ve become a tad obsessed with this traditional cuisine that the Japanese whip up for the New Year. Stacked jubako, a more elegant take on the bento box, are filled with delicacies deriving from an age-old taboo forbidding women from cooking during the first three days of the New Year. In addition to sweet potato and burdock root and bits of grilled meat or fish, the boxes often include kamabako, or fish cake, whose red and white color are synonymous with festivals in Japan and kuro-mame or black soybeans. Mame means "health," symbolizing a wish for health in the New Year. Although Julia Moskin’s piece included several recipes, Gothamist decided to purchase a premade jubako or go to a restaurant for this festive fare. We quickly ruled out Kai, the elegant Upper East Side kaiseki spot, which was offering a 30-item jubako for $350. Also out of the running was Hakubai's $80 brunch.

Shake Shack – that object of obsession for so many burger lovers within a 10-mile radius of Madison Square Park – reopens today for their first winter season. Gothamist commenter MaiaW articulated the passion and excitement best when we first reported the year-round Shaction last month: “OMG, OMG. Now I have absolutely NO excuse not to eat there once a week (calories shmalories). Woo hooooo!!”

3) Eat less cheese. Okay, this is a big weakness for us. In order to cut calories, we've decided that cheese does not need to be added to sandwiches or salads willy-nilly. If we're going to eat cheese, it should be high quality, and low quantity. A little goes a long way.

Mention the word Kuta to a surfer or a globetrotter and the first thing that comes to mind is the Balinese fishing village turned beach resort. The folks behind Kuta Satay House & Wine Bar are looking to get the same name recognition from diners with their new spot on the Lower East Side.

For New Year's Eve this year, we served a multi-course meal, full of complex and labor-intensive dishes. What had our guests raving and demanding seconds and thirds, though? These simple little flans, which we threw together on a whim the day before.

This week in the Times, Bruni one-stars Irving Mill (pictured). Says, “It’s a self-conscious heir to Gramercy Tavern…if only it performed that way.” He does like some of the food, and the wine list. “At Irving Mill’s finest moments, with its finest dishes, it’s decidedly more than pleasant,” he says. But the cooking is inconsistent, the menu sounds more flavorful than it tastes, the desserts are only so-so, and the space too big, says Bruni.