Update: DiFara is now open Wed-Sun
As a pizza lover, the trip out to Di Fara in Midwood on the Q feels like a pilgrimage. Located deep in Brooklyn, just after the subway creeps above ground into a strangely suburban landscape, this unassuming corner pizza parlor churns out some of the most celebrated pizza in the city. Pizza zen-master Dom DeMarco, who’s over 70 and has operated Di Fara for 40 years, makes each one himself (all day, seven days a week), from shaping the dough and spreading the sauce, to snipping fresh basil and swirling olive oil over the finished pie. Considering all the hype, I didn’t doubt it would be good; but would it meet my ridiculously high expectations? (more…)
It’s a good time to be a pork-lover in NYC; not only do we have Momofuku Ssam’s famed steamed pork buns and a smattering of good barbecue joints, but now there’s a new shop in the East Village specializing in the traditional Italian dish, porchetta.
Porchetta (pronounced pork-ET-ta) is a boneless hunk of meat and fat, rolled together with rosemary, fennel, and garlic, and slow-roasted in their crisp outer skins. At Porchetta, the meat is sliced and served with greens and beans ($12) or on a ciabatta roll ($9). The minimalist menu also offers sides: chicory salad with garlic dressing ($6), beans ($5) and “crispy potatoes” mixed with odds and ends of crunchy pork skin and savory meat ($5). (more…)
Update: Harney & Sons now has a storefront in Soho
I’ve been an equal opportunity coffee drinker every day for eight years. I drank it from deli-carts, from Starbucks, from the best coffee joints in the city, and from freeze-dried Flavia packs at work. I drank it black, no sugar, while working, from paper cups I wouldn’t chip my teeth on in buzzed distraction. Lately I noticed I’d been sipping less, but I still wanted that daily cup, the bright spot in thousands of ordinary days.
This week, when I walked past my usual morning coffee spot three days in a row without stopping, my abstention wasn’t planned. I’d long suspected that maybe I didn’t really love coffee, but this new realization–maybe I don’t have to drink this today–was surprising. (more…)
Jimmy’s Corner is a dive in the best sense of the word. This narrow, 40-year-old haunt feels like it’s been plucked from Times Square’s seedier past and plunked down on today’s 44th Street where, ignored by tourists, it quietly ministers to a cross-section of locals. History stares back at you from walls cluttered with autographed photos of boxers, and from the tables, covered with snapshots of random folks preserved in amberish laquer. The beers are cheap ($4 pints of Bud Light, Hennekin, or Sam Adams), sports flickers on the TV, and the jukebox cranks out one Stax soul gem after another. I haven’t heard anything that sucks, or was recorded before 1980, from that wonderful device. If you endure this neighborhood as part of your daily grind, and especially if the recent storm of layoffs that are seemingly hitting everyone has you feeling a bit low, Jimmy’s is a cheap, low-key refuge. It’s a good idea to limit your posse to one or two friends, it is quite small. (more…)
Once again, there were some fabulous, over-the-top dog costumes on display at the 2008 Tompkins Square Park Dog Halloween Parade and plenty of pups hamming it up for the cameras. This is my third year taking photos at this event, and I can say that without fail, pugs in costume are hilarious. Their butterball shape is perfect for dressing up, and their furrowed brows and bugged-out eyes give them a sweet, put-upon expression. Check out previous years’ devil-pug and Chinese pug to see what I mean. This adorably grotesque Marie Antoinette was my fave this year, for getting the spirit just right. (more…)
Fans of Magnolia Bakery’s famously sweet cupcakes, rejoice. Now you no longer need to schlep downtown for a dose of that toothache-inducing buttercream frosting. Magnolia has just opened an under-the-radar outpost (no signage yet?) on the corner of 49th street and 6th avenue–right by 30 Rock and a dozen soaring office buildings.
The notable snacks here go beyond cupcakes to the specialty cakes, cookies and bars. I enjoyed a wedge of the pistachio cake with merengue buttercream, an oversized peanut butter bar with heath candy bar crumbled on top ($2.50), and their decadent banana pudding, which deserves the accolades. The fresh-baked brown sugar and chocolate chunk cookies, at $1 apiece, are probably the most reasonable after-lunch snacks here. But unsurprisingly, all the tourist action here is clustered around the cupcake window, which thankfully has its own line. Really, skip it–a cupcake is just a cupcake, even when it has a Sex and the City shoutout.
Magnolia Bakery 1240 Sixth Avenue, at 49th Street
Update: La Superior is no longer BYOB
Tasty Mexican street food is hard to come by in NYC, so this no-frills tacqueria is worth the trek to Williamsburg. The tacos here, served on diminutive palm-sized tortillas, pack loads of flavor and at $2.50 apiece, are considerably cheaper than those you’d get at Mercadito in the East Village. (The tortillas also didn’t disintegrate while eating like my Mercadito tacos did, a good thing since at La Superior there was not a fork in sight). The carne asada taco was delicious by any standard, yet paled compared to the rajas taco–tender roasted poblano peppers drizzled in “Mexican” cream, and the chorizo toluqueno taco. The chorizo was a medley of spicy flavors that I devoured too quickly to contemplate. (more…)
If you’re a beer-lover in NYC here’s one event you shouldn’t miss. Since most people in the US like their light, ice-cold, and bubbly lagers, cask ale, or “real ale,” is pretty uncommon outside of the city. Since the lifespan of a cask ale once tapped is only a few days, the idea of this event is genius: get a whole bunch of cask ales together, for a swarm of beer lovers to drink over three days, or until the casks are kicked. Strategically, the first night is the night to go, but you can still drink your fill tonight and tomorrow at Chelsea Brewing Company at Chelsea Piers. (more…)
Update: Van Leeuwen also has a storefront on East 7th St in the East Village
The Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream truck sits in a sunbeam on a quiet Soho side-street, like an upscale Mr. Softee patiently waiting to be discovered. Unlike a truck with an irksome jingle, however, Van Leeuwan exudes class, from the gentle yellow color and elegant font used on the vehicle, to the flavors list, which ruminates on the high-quality ingredients used in its ice cream.
There’s some examples of this globe-trotting, gourmand-speak on the web site: hormone-free milk from cows that graze “in pastures in the foothills of the Adirondacks,” vanilla beans harvested from “organic bourbon and Tahitian vanilla orchids grown in Papua New Guinea,” pistachios grown “in the rugged lands of Bronte, in southern Italy.” I expected that the thoughtfulness employed to pick and present these ingredients would also produce a tastier-than-average ice cream. But it was actually pretty unmemorable. (more…)
Remember when Tasti D was the king of low-calorie soft-serve? No more. In the past eighteen months, frozen yogurt shops have sprouted all across Manhattan, and the boom shows no signs of slowing. Last month yet another yogurt place, 16 Handles, opened up on Second Avenue not far from the new Pinkberry on St. Mark’s Place, (with a buy-one-get-one-free offer for August). It seemed like overkill, but I was hopeful that something could intervene between me and Pinkberry.
I mean, not long ago I scoffed at the lines winding out of each newly-opened Pinkberry, packed with people willing to shell out $6 for a cup of sleekly-packaged swirly low-cal dessert that no one was sure was really yogurt, or a batch of chemicals. But then Pinkberry got its frosty fangs in me. (more…)