Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Good luck to you, and thanks for taking a stand. I think that you are far too kind to the cops, who are misinformed regarding the state of the law and not in any way serving the public interest by improperly hassling you without any basis at all. You should absolutely win your case, as the stoop is not in any way public property. In fact, the public would be commiting trespass if they choose to loiter on the stoop -- it is private property in every sense of the word.

You would do further public service reporting the identity of the cop issuing the citation, so that he can be encouraged to learn the law he is supposedly working to uphold. They do not deserve anonymity and should be no less acountable for their actions than any of us.

Good luck.

I meant Vezzo, not Vento. I think that Posto is another.

Very interesting, but one of the great benefits of home brew is to allow one to escape the tyranny of harsh industrial carbon dioxide carbonation -- which ruins the vast majority of beer sold commercially in the United States -- and instead allows for the enjoyment of naturally brewed beer which has been naturally conditioned to produce gentle "champenoise" bubbles. I would be very interested in a method which would allow home scaled cask conditioning, but for me this CO2 method defeats one of the main motivations to brew my own beer in the first place.

I think Shanghai Cafe is generally pretty good but I think despite its other shortcomings Joe's is still the best XLB in Manhattan.

I see that Din Tai Fung just opened a branch in Seattle (after already being in LA for some time), and I think that they can't open in NY soon enough. I don't know what they are waiting for -- they would clean up here in a big way.

@AK yes, I actually do disagree. Of course it is a matter of taste, but I think that if one enjoys this style of food, Zlata Praha does it very nicely, in the traditional and unfashionable manner -- which I personally appreciate. I happen to think that the roasted goose with sauerkraut that Zlata Praha servers on the weekends is one of the single best dishes available in New York -- and how many cooks in this town even know what to do with a goose? I think Koliba is quite good as well, and to be sure there are certain dishes that I think one place can do better than the other (although I never cared for the overly sweet sauerkraut at Koliba). For sure, Koliba also pours a very nice beer, and I only wish it had a garden.

@thesteveroller I actually do not know that place, and thank you for the suggestion, which I will definitely try soon. You are also quite right that Italians -- and people most everywhere else -- would never put up with such a fuss for a drink with friends. The idea is to relax and enjoy spending time with your friends, not to wait on endless lines and fight with crowds. Cafe culture/society seems to have great difficulty existing -- much less developing -- in New York, and that is one of the great weaknesses of New York cultural life.

This place is a working demonstration of how one must suffer to live in Manhattan, where the food and beverage scene has become so sodden with awful tourist oriented places that we will bear any indignity to eat or drink something decent. Its nothing but sad that good beer, bread, and sausages have become so rare that we need to wait in line for hours to enjoy them. In the meantime, there are great places in Astoria pouring non-pasteurized Czech beers right out of the barrell, with pleasant outdoor spaces, with no tourists and plenty of empty tables.

Also distressing is the mini-trend this place is following, of boxing in outdoor spaces. Why? It is amongst the greatest of simple luxuries to eat in the open air. Few venues in the City even have the possibility to offer this, and its a mystery why those that can are ruining their outdoor spaces this way -- are you listening Roberta's in Bushwick?

Its too bad that Slice has joined in the same misogynistic trope in discussing Sarah Palin. It is not enough to call her an idiot, but instead devolves further into anti-female slur, Archie Bunker style, to call her a "crazy broad." This is especially ironic given the particular oddness of her dining partner, who being a man -- like most of the other politicians -- gets a pass with his gender unmentioned upon.

@nyc-kitty I completely agree with you, that much of the commentary about Wo Hop that one reads today lacks perspective because there aren't that many of us around who remember when Wo Hop was in fact a good place to eat -- but it really once was. Its only been horrible for the past 25 years or so. I remember when the place was a hangout for the local triads and youth gangs, and the food was fine for those days. Like most things in New York, it has of course gone way downhill -- but that doesn't mean that it was always so worthless.

@Monsieur_Ghislain You have it exactly backwards, as the so-called "Food Safety" Bill is agro-business' wet-dream being turned into law. It wll guarantee that small businesses of all sorts will never be able to overcome the bureaucracy and compete with the industrial food companies. It will allow Federal agents to enter any food establishment in the U.S. with over $500K in revenues for "inspections", and make it impossible for them to deal with the new red-tape. In actual fact it adds no appreciable safety to anybody, but will prevent new entrants into the food industry, and ensure more jobs for yet more federal employees. The U.S. already has one of the most highly regulated and bureaucratized food markets in the world, and made its citizens some of the worst eaters in the world, with the worst access to quality foodstuffs. There is no reason to think that more bureaucracy will improve the situation.

Also, I can't share the author's faith in Christine Quinn to sucessfully "plan" how or what New Yorkers buy and eat, and I think it is an incredible conceit on the part of Quinn to deign to tell all of us what and how to eat for the betterment of society. I prefer the government to stay out of it, and let food producers and consumers freely interact with each other in the market -- and keep the bureaucrats out of it.

I would also suggest either the KA500 or 600 for bread, as I quickly burned out a KA300 on pizza dough. My KA600 has no problems with most any dough. I don't know much about the Cuisinart to be able to compare.

Another plus for the KA line is the availability of third party attachments. The new scraper/paddles (I forget the brand name) greatly advance the state of the art over the KA OEM paddles.

I lived in Budapest for a short time -- though not too recently -- and I suspect that you will enjoy it. It isn't easy to find decent housing there, but it is an interesting and pleasant enough city to live, with one of the lowest costs of living in Europe, and very good public transport, parks, and cultural institutions. Of relevance to this site, the food is excellent, and the quality of seasonal local produce is far better than that available in the United States. You are certain to be amazed by the vegetables, the cakes and pastries, and the poultry (lots of duck and goose) is also particularly excellent. I lived in Pest in District XIII, and there was no shortage of traditional markets (there is a great one by Nyugati station) nearby, and also branches of modern Western European supermarket chains. It might be a good place to look with kids, as it is near both Margit Island and the Varosliget Park. Good luck.

Although this is not a recent article, it served as my encouragement to make my first trip here, and I therefore thought it worth mentioning that I was at the Robbinsville location for the second time yesterday, and thought it was absolutely outstanding, and well worth a special trip from Manhattan. De Lorenzo certainly has a strong local following, but few people from outside the area seem to be aware of what these guys are doing pretty much in the middle of nowhere, and the magnificent product that they are putting out. This could easily be the best pie west of Brooklyn, and I don't think that there is anything in Manhattan that is as good. The style is very similar to Roman, a short and somewhat crispy dough which could stand erect with no tip sag, while maintaining a light and airy crumb. The sauce is excellent, and I found the sausage to be unusually good as well. It isn't very easy to get to, but I think few would be disappointed if they made a special trip.