BITE will keep you in touch with what I’m eating and what I love and what I left on my plate. I’ll share dialogues I have with heroes and divas, princes and barracudas and what I overhear from the next table. Not every day will I have a meal worth writing about, I suspect, not good enough, not bad enough. Dear friends have asked me if I could try to be meaner so I fit in better on the net. I intend to try. As any man who has lived with me will tell you, I was born to be a critic. Of course, isn’t it the critic who has the thinnest skin of all? I must admit to a certain anxiety. It’s been a long time since I wrote without an editor, a fact checker and a copy-reader to catch my errors, misspellings and typos. I apologize in advance. I’m left-handed and that can sometimes be confusing. I might have stopped reviewing restaurants twenty-five years ago when my first novel, Blue Skies, No Candy lingered on the best seller list. But I am addicted to instant gratification. So I’m still here. On my death bed, I am sure my last words will echo those of the sister of Brillat Savarin:
“Bring on dessert.”
May 13, 2013 | BITE: My Journal
ABC Cocina
We can debate whether or not a gringo has the right to rethink the empanada on this menu, mostly Latinoish, somewhat Mexican, tamely Spanishesque....
May 6, 2013 | BITE: My Journal
Gung-ho Astoria: MP Taverna
Now Michael Psilakis dares to bring his riff on Greek cooking to Astoria, the Queens community that claims more Greek citizens than Athens...
April 29, 2013 | BITE: My Journal
Lafayette Anew
No way a box office star like Andrew Carmellini could hope to fire up the ranges at spring’s most anticipated launch…
April 22, 2013 | BITE: My Journal
Lamb at Lao Dong Bei
All of us in our restless sixsome of hot-head eaters are ready to roll two or three times a month -- in this case, at the drop of a lamb rib.
April 15, 2013 | BITE: My Journal
The Greenwich Project
My cab stops in the middle of what used to be cheap-shoe-and-drug-deal row: Eighth Street. There is a scattering of newish ventures but it’s still somewhat ghostly…
April 8, 2013 | BITE: My Journal
Swinging on a Star: Stella 34
Let’s just go somewhere quiet and surprisingly good with a fabulous view of the city. Let’s go to Macy’s. There’s a new restaurant on the sixth floor called Stella.
March 31, 2013 | BITE: My Journal
Carbone Downtown
The menu is huge and stiff. I try to open it without knocking over my $17 Manhattan.
March 25, 2013 | BITE: My Journal
Maysville: Smoke and Ice
It looks like we’re being herded to Siberia, a small back room, totally empty at this early hour, almost on top of the kitchen…
March 18, 2013 | BITE: My Journal
JoJo: Still Loverly
I didn’t really expect to see Jean-Georges tonight, even though he does have a way of popping into his restaurants when I’m there. But I love what we’re eating…
March 11, 2013 | BITE: My Journal
Battersby Brass
A stubbly mess, looking like a kindergarten art project follows. “Home made vegetable muesli on Greek yogurt,” says our waitress. Tilt, I think…
March 4, 2013 | BITE: My Journal
L&W Oyster Company
You expect to be welcomed like family, because anyone who’s ever been greeted by Eric twice becomes family...
February 25, 2013 | BITE: My Journal
The Tower of Babbo
The joys I’d forsaken come tumbling again, along with the bruises, at dinner one wind-whipped February Friday night…
February 19, 2013 | BITE: My Journal
Merci Bocuse
Students gasped and screamed and cheered when Paul Bocuse walked onto the stage in his whites with his son Jerome, to join a panel of Jean-Georges Vongerichten…
February 11, 2013 | BITE: My Journal
Arlington Club Stakes
The visigoths descended – obsessed eaters and night life hotties, aging playboys, media darlings, every phyllum of our town’s self-styled entitled…
February 3, 2013 | BITE: My Journal
Bill's Food & Drink
To cram 85 seats into the second floor dining room must have taken Macy’s most senior shoe salesman…
January 28, 2013 | BITE: My Journal
The Marrow
On some menus bacon just sneaks up on you. But at chef Harold’s Dieterle’s third small bistro in the West Village, meat stars in a bow to his ancestry...
January 21, 2013 | BITE: My Journal
EN Japanese Brasserie
I’m trying to recall another Japanese roller-coaster ride as exhilarating as this one…
January 14, 2013 | BITE: My Journal
Sirio Sour
But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Sirio is now the sons.
January 7, 2013 | BITE: My Journal
Azuri Cafe Heartbeats
If Pete Wells could blow half a page in the Times on a joint in Jersey City, I could take two hours on Wednesday to discover a new falafel and a cosmic shwarma.
January 2, 2013 | BITE: My Journal
Eating Around
Given the tantrums of Congress, we can’t know what 2013 will bring. But we do know there will be pig at inflated prices, kale on every menu, and cocktails yet to be invented, some scrumptious, some floppy and lacking