My copy of Gourmet Magazine arrives every month to a sneer and a laugh. Talk of glorious trips to the ends of the earth, newly opened restaurants in Tokyo, and how to find that perfect $200 pasta maker, doesn't translate well into my cramped, cash-strapped life. Yet, I read it every time. Maybe it's my thirst for knowledge, or envy of having loads of disposable cash, but I nod approvingly...
1300 Crosby, Bronx, NY
We awoke promptly at 9. We decided this time to eat some breakfast before we left, slumped down into the plastic bench, and buried our head in books, our ears stuffed with headphones. The subway didn’t emerge from the ground until halfway through our ride into the Bronx, and we couldn’t see any traces of the large skyscrapers that grounded us to home.
Much like o...
1424 Avenue J, Midwood, Brooklyn
Unfolding the MTA New York City transit map to reveal the uncharted Brooklyn belly beyond Prospect Park, we spotted a subway stop adjacent to our destination in Midwood, Brooklyn, New York. We’d read about a small Italian man who, year after year, wins awards for his pizza--sometimes including declarations that it’s the best to be found in New York. ...
Patsy’s lays buried in the middle of Spanish Harlem, a place we sane folk only venture through to get somewhere else--not because we're particularly scared--but because there is not much there. This is not a hanging-out neighborhood. Its name is not sexy. Well, not yet.
Patsy's was founded by Pasquale Lancieri, student of Mr. Lombardi, in 1933 when this stretch east of Harlem was a still...
Even the U.S. Government admits that pizza may be the perfect food. It is a balanced food pyramid and a near-faultless symmetry of tastes: fresh but robust, light yet filling, sweet and tangy...
32 Spring St., between Mulberry and Mott Streets
Lombardi's. The torch-bearer of New York, and even American, Pizza. The ambassador, and the original. Any right quest to find the best New York pizza must start here.
We are not too interested in lore, but here you go: the original was created in 1905. Though there are claims that many Italian breadmakers were creating pizza pies with...
Food photography is an obsessive business. Pictures are alluring, appetizing, what make somebody want to try the recipe. There are times when, obsessed by lighting, aperture, and focus, we forget about the actual eating part. Look at that piece of meat. See the grains? Looks good, eh? Trust us, it was succulent. There's nothing quite like a warm salad in the winter, sharp, crispy...
Though egg mayonnaise is essentially the same thing as American egg salad, it doesn't taste like your average pitch-in. The mayonnaise was creamy but it had a lightness to it, which probably has something to do with the proportion of ingredients. Instead of deli-style New York sandwiches where a literal pound of meat is thrown on each sandwich--"It's like a cow with a cracker on either side,...
While our enthusiasm for cooking has grown immensely over the past year, we still feel mostly reluctant to toss our recipe books aside and approach the task with our own original ideas and ingredients. A sense of improvisation comes with confidence, and as the acting theorist Konstantin Stanislavski suggests, cultivating concentration and trusting one's instincts. Instincts. We don't do...
With minds planted firmly in the dirt, we probed the...
With minds planted firmly in the dirt, we probed the starchy tuber for secrets buried within, all in search of the perfect cooked potato. Armed with a bag of $2.99 Idahos, we set aflame preconcieved notions, sexed things up, and tried to find the courage (and stomachs) to eat nothing but potatoes like our poor brethren of the 19t...
Blake and Nick live in Chicago and have written for The Paupered Chef and other publications since 2006.
