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 20, 2013 | BITE: My Journal
In the Nabes
I think I’m properly sensitive to the lament of friends who insist there’s almost nowhere to eat on the Upper East Side
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.