Since April, the Lower East Side Girls Club has been operating their La Tiendita (The Little Store) booth at the Essex Street Market. The Girls Club reaches out to economically disadvantaged girls and young women between the ages of 8 and 23, offering athletic, cultural, life-skills and career oriented programs. more ›

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. more ›

This week in the Times, Bruni goes to Suba, awards the restaurant two stars. “While it has definite shortcomings and at least a third of the dishes don’t measure up to the others, the best of the food here is distinctive and exciting. In a few instances it’s even dazzling,” he says. more ›

In another life, Gothamist may have been a mouse. That's how much we love cheese. It makes us really, really happy (sometimes to the degree that we could swear it gives us a high). We were thrilled to see that some people agree with us--in a recent Chowhound discussion on fromageries a contributor said, "I just took a piece of perfectly ripened Torta del Casar and ate it in my hands around the corner and it was like sex!" more ›

When we hear the phrase "American cheese," images of cellophane-wrapped neon orange slices leap to mind. Scary stuff. Anne Saxelby seeks to change that with her new shop, Saxelby Cheesemongers, which opens in the Essex Market in the beginning of May. Saxelby's shop will focus entirely on American cheeses -- cheese from dairies all across the U.S. Saxelby worked at the legendary Murray's Cheese as a cheese maven, and then worked at several farmstead dairies in the U.S. and abroad. Some of the cheeses she discovered in her travels across the country will be featured in the shop, including Chenango Historic Cheese from Norwich, New York and chevre from Beltane Farm of Lebanon, Connecticut. In addition to having a retail cheese counter, her booth in the Essex Market will have its own cheese “cave." Now that's the kind of American cheese we like. more ›