After undergraduate studies in French Literature at Columbia, Michigan-born chef Anita Lo found herself unable to resist the call of the kitchen, and relocated to France to study at the esteemed Ritz-Escoffier school. Graduating first in her class, Lo soon got her start in New York in the kitchen of David Bouley. Eight years ago she struck out on her own with the Greenwich Village favorite Annisa, which serves contemporary American cuisine with accents......

Today’s wake for a beloved New York institution is being held in honor of Mei Lai Wah Coffee House in Chinatown. It seems the Times’s Eric Asimov, who usually writes about wine, doesn’t subsist on vino alone; he needs his coffee and steamed pork buns as well. And ever since Mei Lai Wah closed last week after a long, losing struggle with the Health Department, Asimov has been in mourning: Mei Lai Wah was indeed......

Whether you spell it Issan or E-san (as the folks at Poodam’s Thai Cuisine do), the cuisine from this Northeast region of Thailand by Cambodia and Laos is some of New York City’s most delicious and spiciest. The restaurant’s name translates to black crab. While that particular delicacy doesn’t appear on the separate Issan menu, there is yam poo dong, or pickled crab. When you order it the waitress will likely ask if you’ve......

Jersey based pizza fanatic Scott Wiener (pictured) may have found a way to turn his appetite into a career with his just-launched Pizza Tours of New York City. Every Sunday, Wiener will escort up to 32 ravenous adults on a pizza tasting odyssey to half a dozen pizzerias stretching from Lombardi’s on Spring Street to Louie & Ernie’s in the Bronx. The licensed New York City tour guide is charging $55 a person for the......

Sure, websites like Menupages are handy when you need to line your stomach for a night of debauchery, but how do Manhattan transplants find the best place to meet up for high fives and car bombs? And how do you find the best bar to avoid them and enjoy your favorite microbrew? A new website, Beer Menus, is more than just a bar search engine; it’s a great resource for tracking down microbrews and......

A Wired reporter bemoaning the pizza backwater that is San Francisco rang up Mario Batali to find out why New York Pizza is so magnificent and got an intriguing theory out of the celebrity chef: New York’s old pizza ovens “capture the gestalt of beautifully cooked pizza.” A food development consultant believes Batali’s abstract ‘gestalt’ is, to scientists, vaporized ingredients that become “volatilized particles and attach themselves to the walls of the baking cavity. The......

With all the alarming facts about catastrophic climate change at our fingertips, most of us know by now that every day needs to be Earth Day. And one of the easiest ways to start minimizing environmental impact is by considering what goes into our own mouths. Here in New York, Broadway East, a new “plant-based” (but not strictly vegetarian) restaurant, has made sustainability a top priority. Tables in the elegantly designed eatery are made from......

Today Frank Bruni reviews Adour (pictured), the four-month-old St. Regis Hotel restaurant conceived by extravagant French chef Alain Ducasse. While it’s not “rapturous” enough to merit the Times’s highest four star rating, it’s still “first-rate: polished service, a knockout wine list, beautiful oil-poached cod, gorgeous roasted lamb and exquisite desserts.” And Bruni does confirm our earlier speculation about some kind of haute bagel on the menu. On the other side of the spectrum and the......

Any Greenpoint residents still speculating about renovations to the cavernous space on the corner of Franklin and Green – the one with the big silver garage door and the new lights along the northern wall – now have their answer: A bar called t.b.d. Co-owner Diane Foley explains that she finally gave up trying to come up with a name and just went with what she was using for all the paperwork. The future......