Results tagged “eat”

Here's the latest installment in our ongoing quest to find a good, cheap meal that won't kill us or our budget.

Meet Courtney Scott, a self-described "vibrant freelance travel journalist and on-air personality," who's blogging about her mission to make it through a week eating nothing but free food culled from supermarket samples and other sources. She's on day four now, and her most recent report finds her stuffing Whole Foods samples into plastic baggies and bringing them home so she can document her little "meal." Scott's definitely got some great self-control (or a weirdly-manifesting eating disorder); yesterday she was hanging in Chelsea Market, alternately blogging and "making frequent laps down the concourse for fresh nibbles," when a stranger offered her the rest of his Pad Thai. After much internal debate, she declined, saying, " 'You can leave the plate but it's against the rules to eat it. I'll just have to throw it out.' So leave the plate he did, with a fresh set of chopsticks and napkins. And throw it away I did; an $8 half-eaten plate of Chelsea Thai Pad Thai in the trash." Victory!

        

The focal point of Trigo, a big 150-seat Mediterranean-inspired brasserie in TriBeCa, is the earth-stone hearth, where chef Michael Garrett bakes new twists on rustic flatbreads, which include a French-inspired Onion and Tart Green Apple. As you can see, the 20-foot floor-to-ceiling windows, elegant iron latticework, and monumental columns make this quite the ambitious enterprise. Only time will tell if it can stare recession in the eyes and laugh, but the all-day breakfast, lunch and dinner service could help Trigo make regulars out of the locals.

The best place to dine on amateur night is obviously in the comfort of your own home, with the doors locked, windows sealed, a six pack of Drank by your side, and BetaMaXmas flickering on ye olde laptop. But you'll inevitably get dragged out by someone who can't resist the Gregorian calendar's charms, and you'll have to eat something to pad your stomach. Assuming that someone is "someone special," here are a number of dining options to make the best of it (and we also stand by last year's index). Time to start making reservations!
• Gothamist favorite Knife + Fork, that romantic little nook in the East Village, is doing a five course tasting menu with wine pairing. Chef Damien Brassel's menu that night will begin with Pacific Coast oysters with sweet and sour fennel, tarragon oil and peppercorn apple salad with wasabi fish roe. $85 later it culminates with warm chocolate, fondant five spice creme brulee and dried lemon panna cotta.
• L'Absinthe Brasserie: Don a blue blazer and khakis and go old school at this dramatic, ornate brasserie. L'Absinthe has a sexy website but an ancient, old money clientele that makes for fun people-watching. Chef-owner Jean Michel Bergougnoux's menu skews classic French with a bit of an edge, and it's not cheap. But judging by the NYE menu [PDF], you'll be getting your money's worth with his $84 three course prix-fixe. It's got a wide range of haute options, from his signature Dover Sole Meuniere, to a light poached Halibut, to the hearty Venison and Foie Gras Pie. Also, eight different varieties of absinthe.
• Or if you're in the neighborhood and want to go in the complete opposite direction, Slice organic pizza is offering a 5% discount on all take-out and delivery on December 31st.

     

This cute little brasserie is the latest venture for Chef Cyril Renaud, whose Michelin-starred restaurant Fleur de Sel is well-regarded for his approachable presentation of cuisine from Brittany, emphasizing seasonal ingredients. Hence Bar Breton, envisioned as Fleur de Sel's casual counterpart.

Restaurant Week, which was supposed to end after Friday night, has been turned into Restaurant Summer, with 130 restaurants extending their prix-fixe deals on weekdays all the way through Labor Day. The special three course menus – $24.07 for lunch and $35.00 for dinner – have proven extra-popular with recession minded diners this month, according to NYC & Company, which organizes the biannual deal. Restaurants participating in the Labor Day extension include such well-reviewed places as Centro Vinoteca, Mai House, Artisanal, Le Cirque, City Hall, Fig & Olive, Tribeca Grill, Town and Mia Dona. The full list will be on the Restaurant Week website after midnight Friday.

Chickpea: We used to love Chickpea, that fresh falafel place on Third Avenue and St. Mark’s Place that let you squirt as much tahini as you wanted into your pita. But we lost interest when they went through that whole confusing name change contest – marred by allegations that the game was rigged – and ended up calling themselves Kosher Village. Now it’s Tahini, and they bake their falafel, which is as about healthy as it is unappetizing.

Yesterday’s notice about the long-overdue return of the Red Hook ball field food vendors elicited comments from disgruntled eaters who were disappointed by the new carts, which limit the vendors’ cooking space and caused massive, hour-plus lines. Commenter sofabait seems to reflect a growing consensus that the new Health Department oversight has changed things for the worse: “The exhaust fumes from their constantly idling trucks totally killed my appetite. Not sure if that is better for our health. The city sure knows how to fuck a good thing up.”

This week’s New York Magazine is all about finding the cheapest eats in the city, but the most obvious source of cheap (illegal) food may be clumsily flying right before our eyes. “Eating pigeons is as American as eating pumpkin pie,” says Wired’s Alexis Madrigal, who's made a persuasive argument for pigeon as the next logical step in the locavore trend. He argues that all pigeons need “is a re-branding. Just as the spurned Patagonian toothfish became the majestic Chilean sea bass… pigeons can merely reclaim their previous sufficiently arugula-sounding name: squab.” Poach at your own risk!

      

Red Hook residents who used to party at Lillie’s bar on Beard Street may be surprised to discover that right next door to the decadent nightspot was an elegant restaurant waiting to be born. What was previously storage space has been thoroughly overhauled into a French bistro called La Bouillabaisse, which owner Neil Ganic (Petite Crevette) hopes to have running in time for the June 18th grand opening of IKEA, conveniently located across the street. (Ganic formerly operated an iteration of La Bouillabaisse on Atlantic Avenue.)

If you’ve got an adventurous appetite and don’t mind a mob scene, tonight’s Taste of Times Square shindig is for you. Starting at 5 p.m., 46th Street between Ninth Avenue and Broadway will be turned over to vendors serving samples from local restaurants. They’ve got everything from Applebee’s to the Hawaiian Tropic Zone, bros! Peruse the full list here; there are also plenty of non-chains like Chop Suey and Chilean restaurant Pomaire.

Barbecue fans will want to start bracing their colons for the 6th Annual Big Apple Barbecue Block Party, which has been announced for June 7th and 8th in Madison Square Park. Gothamist tore through the festival of regional barbecue last year, devouring everything from pork shoulder to Brunswick stew to candied ribs.

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.

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.

The Brooklyn Academy of Music kicked off their fourth season of Eat Drink & Be Literary last night at the BAMcafé. The sold-out event revolved around author George Saunders, a craftsman of absurdly hilarious short story and essays that lovingly lift American consumerism and mass media to surreal heights. His laugh-out-loud short story Pastoralia, for instance, concerns a man and a woman portraying full-time troglodytes in a theme park exhibit. In 2006, Saunders, who has a degree in geophysical engineering, was awarded a MacArthur "Genius" Grant for “bring[ing] to contemporary American fiction a sense of humor, pathos, and literary style all his own.”