How many times have you packed your lunch this week? How many cups of coffee have you picked up on your way in to the office? Do you keep track of how much you're spending? No? Yeah, didn't think so, because if you knew how much cash you dropped on seemingly minor expenses, you'd be brown-bagging it and home-brewing it every day for the rest of the year. more ›

Williamsburg diners, along with East Villagers, Long Island City-ites and Park Slopers are the least likely to leave their zip code to eat out, according to some new data about the city's dining habits commissioned by the Post. "The L is a joke on weekends, and so many restaurants in Manhattan just end up being a complete shitshow, with the waits and the crowds and the bad service," said one Gothamist staffer who lives in Williamsburg. "Leaving the area to eat just seems like an unnecessary hassle," said another. The top three favorite dining destinations in the 11211 zip code? DuMont Burger, Marlow & Sons, and Motorino, whose unfortunate recent shuttering paves the way for some new neighborhood joints to steal the title. more ›

For today's installment of Food News You Probably Could Have Figured Out Yourself, we present the following: a new study shows that the more you eat out, the more likely you are to be fat. Who would'a thunk it? more ›

It seems like every other weekend, Brooklyn is home to some kind of homestyle cooking competition, with a constant rotation of cupcake-offs, chili massacres, a big jerk-off, and probably some vegan tofu spread-a-thons somewhere. Prizes at these things are typically anything from homely trophies to a few cans of PBR, but the just-announced, upcoming inaugural Risotto Challenge is something special indeed: The prizes are going to be very nice. More on that below. more ›

Bon Appétit , in an attempt to appeal to a broader, younger, and theoretically "hipper" audience, has recently revamped its logo. Taunting came in full force, via Grub Street, who concluded, "[t]he truth is that Bon Appétit will never be any hipper or friskier than it is, because no magazine about upscale entertaining can ever speak to people that don’t have big houses and plenty of time on their hands." Adam Roberts, the Amateur Gourmet,... more ›

- Is New York going to go the way of LA with posted letter grades for restaurant health inspections? more ›

One of the greatest gifts in life is that of being given a nice, cooked meal. An arguably better gift (and downright city survival skill) is the ability to cook for oneself. Last August, armed with a handful of basic kitchen tools, some moxie and a typepad account, writer Cathy Erway began to document her endeavor of not eating out in New York, which is, not coincidentally, the name of her blog. Erway has given up truffle tasting menus and egg sandwiches alike, all in the name of figuring out some elusive truth of dining in. Not Eating Out in New York reads equal parts cookbook, diary, and notes from an elaborate science project, especially when Erway posts “brownie points,” or nutritional ratings in the form of little brownie graphics, at the end of recipes. What’s more is that each recipe is usually very cost effective, and flight-tested in Erway’s Fort Greene apartment kitchen. Last weekend, Gothamist had the opportunity to catch up with Erway to talk about her experiment-in-progress, which has been going on now for seven months. more ›

As the weather gets cooler, we find ourselves inexplicably drawn to daydreams of cooking up large batches of soups, stews, and chilis and baking warm loaves of bread (baguettes, cornbread, banana bread -- whatever, really). It's that time of year when nesting begins in earnest for many of us. This weekend, we made a dinner that we felt perfectly captured the transition from summer to fall: a butternut squash and sage risotto topped with seared scallops (loosely adapted from this Gourmet recipe), roasted tomatoes with a parmesan-herb crust, and roasted zucchini and onions. more ›