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Do good, cheap Italian restaurants exist?
There is Le Zie on 7th ave around 20th st - Venetian bent and quite excellent and inexpensive. Their spaghetti and meatballs is unparalleled as is their spaghetti bottarga.
On the other side of 20th st at Park, there is Via Emilia with their unbeatable chicken and truffle giant tortellini and a quite good tagliatelle with meat sauce for only about $9.
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STEINGARTEN AND I HEAR THE DINNER BELL!
Unfortunately my favorite food writers - MFK Fisher and James Beard - are no longer with us. Although they were vastly different they shared three things - an essential sense of wonder at the discovery of food, a voluptuous pleasure in the partaking and finally an integration in their writing of their lives in the food. For me they are captured best in Beard's "Delights and Prejudices" and MFK Fisher's "I was really very hungry" - those works conveyed their essences and the essences of the food they wrote about.
So in terms of my favorite living food writers, I'd have to go with one of the food bloggers since they approach food in much the same manner. I think that Robyn of The Girl Who Ate Everything channels these writers the best. In her travels around the city and now the world I get to experience her discovery and wonder and love of food.
Do good, cheap Italian restaurants exist?
There is Le Zie on 7th ave around 20th st - Venetian bent and quite excellent and inexpensive. Their spaghetti and meatballs is unparalleled as is their spaghetti bottarga.
On the other side of 20th st at Park, there is Via Emilia with their unbeatable chicken and truffle giant tortellini and a quite good tagliatelle with meat sauce for only about $9.
STEINGARTEN AND I HEAR THE DINNER BELL!
This unanswerable question's answer is Calvin Trillin. A man who lures his daughter back from California with bagels, who enlists his wife's Chinese students to decipher the Chinatown menus, who refuses to ever dine at "le maison de la casa house", who taught us how to pack a proper airplane meal, is a man who deserves his place in the Pantheon. He discovered American cuisine while it was learning to crawl. Nothing has been the same since.
In a time when food writing is bursting with more talent than the '27 Yankees, we must honor the Ur-men: Ruth. Escoffier. Trillin.
STEINGARTEN AND I HEAR THE DINNER BELL!
In spite of both my foodie and former New Yorker / food industry-insider status, the NY Times restaurant reviews always made me feel like an outsider. So the hiring of Frank Bruni by the Times was long-overdue fresh air. He’s a fantastic, entertaining writer, though to me his success is because he writes like someone with a regular person's palate. He loves both high-end and low-end food. His words aren’t high-falutin, they’re real. As a reader, you sense he's one of us, not above us. As such, he's made fine dining suddenly accessible to all. That's why he rocks.
STEINGARTEN AND I HEAR THE DINNER BELL!
Last year, I moved to New York shortly before my birthday. It proved to be a truly awful birthday - I had to wake up at 5 am to dress up as the Pillsbury Doughboy (no joke!) for a temp job. Coming to New York seemed like the biggest mistake of my life: what city could be worth the humiliation I'd just suffered through? Then my roommate gave me a birthday present - a copy of Robert Sietsema's Food Lovers Guide to the Best Ethnic Eating in New York City. I started flipping through the chapters, and I think I just about read the whole thing cover to cover that night. Sietsema introduced me to the city as a collection of edible jewels, to be sought out and prized, there for the brave diner to seek out and enjoy. I found several listings for eateries in my own neightborhood of Crown Heights, and a few days later I made my way to AA Bake & Doubles to try the cheap Trinidadian chickpea sandwiches known as doubles. Thanks to Sietsema, I knew I that "doubles" applies even if one is only buying a single sandwich ("I'll have a doubles, please"), and I felt at ease in the tiny storefront even as I stood out like a sore thumb. But on a larger scale, I knew that I was in the right place, that the sacrifices I would make to survive in New York would be well worth it. A year later, whenever I feel frustrated or dispirited by a crowded train or the sight of another Starbucks, I pull out that slim yellow book and set off, in person or in my mind, to try the best dish I've never heard of.
STEINGARTEN AND I HEAR THE DINNER BELL!
Everyone, regardless of socio-economic class, deserves an escape. Ruth Reichl went to absurd lengths to ensure that the restaurant experience was an egalitarian one. As importantly, she blew the doors off of the then staid NY Times by reviewing
restaurants that weren't the typical haute French and Italian temples frequented by the wealthy. She investigated the all-night Korean barbecue joints, the Chinese dim sum houses located in (gasp) Queens,while also even giving those who could afford it their first look behind the noren at sanctuaries such as Kurumazushi and Honmura An.
--Guttergourmet
STEINGARTEN AND I HEAR THE DINNER BELL!
My favorite food critic is you Mr. Levine! and of course Mr. Steingarten!
Really!!
I just sat down to read my email and ended up here within five minutes as a result of going to the food section website and saw your website listed and had to click in. Then I read about this dinner you are offering - registered and wha - la - sending you this posting. Had no idea what I was doing and posted 3 photos of this foodie cutie - apologize for the "x" as I said I did not know what I was doing.
I absolutely know what I am doing now.
So you and Jeffrey used to be on one of the PBS stations years ago and I watched the show religiously. I even ventured up and down Sullivan Street to look for the best baguette per you and you were right!! Then I bought your book - New York Eats (More) - carried it with me each weekend driving all over the city with my boyfriend in search of all your picks.
Then sadly to say, you and Jeffrey were missing.
Then success (for me and you)see you are writing for the New York Times - stilll have no idea where Jeffrey is - Is he still with Vogue or am I confused?
I finally got to meet my food idol. A couple of years ago ironically after cleaning my house and prepraring for passover I had the idea to to to have pizza in Totonnos (you know no leavin things for 10 days) I walk in and saw you Mr. Levine (not to be confused with leavin) and I totally flipped out saying to my boyfriend and father - THERE'S ED LEVINE - THERE'S ED LEVINE ! (It was also the day SLICE was there - photos of you and the crew on the SLICE website). I felt embarrassed to go up to you - but had to - cause you were my FAVORITE FOOD CRITIC- IT WAS GREAT - WE ENDED UP SHARING A CANNOLI WITH MR. TOTONNO (stated he bought them from Fortunatos - the best - he must be right cause my lifelong Italian friend who was raised in Greenpoint only bought her cakes there).
Dinner with you and Jeff would totally flip me out - we already had dessert together - and you know what they say - why not have dessert first?
Estelle
STEINGARTEN AND I HEAR THE DINNER BELL!
AUTHOR: Stelly
EMAIL: estelle.haber@verizon.net
IP: 70.107.13.71
URL:
DATE: 11/01/2006 18:26:29
STEINGARTEN AND I HEAR THE DINNER BELL!
Is there a difference between a food writer and restaurant critic?
I think there is a real difference. One is a subset of the other. As in:
1) Writer
.........i) Food Writer
.................(a) Restaurant Critic
Just because a person writes about a restaurant in grand detail, doesn’t make that person a critic. And usually restaurant critics, who are constrained by a word limit, do not have the luxury to wax philosophical unless they are really good--in a Confucian sort of way.
Though the characteristics of a great food writer and a great restaurant critic bleed into each other, I think a critic must possess some rather unique traits.
A great restaurant critic has:
*an eidetic taste memory
*a biologically great palette
*a sense of humor (anyone who disagrees with this, show me one great restaurant critic without one)
*a bottomless pit instead of a stomach, or at least the ability to supress the satiation response
A great restaurant critic is:
*a great writer
*obsessed with food
*a good home cook
STEINGARTEN AND I HEAR THE DINNER BELL!
Adam Roberts deserves to be named best food critic. While still young and not in the league of Bruni or Reichl, I loved the way he brought Sirio Maccioni and his son to their knees. A real "David and Goliath" story. The critique of his experience at Le Cirque was well written - detailed, professional and totally appropriate in tone and content. In addition, he also took on the challenge of reporting for the first time publically on Calvin Trillin's annual Chinatown tour. Another clever and courageous example of great food journalism. I truly enjoy his blog and his passion.
Do good, cheap Italian restaurants exist?
We just shared a very satisfying meal with friends at Patricia's in the Morris Park section of the Bronx this weekend. Small unpretentious dining room, serious kitchen. The menu was vast and we stuck mostly with specials. Black linguini with calamari, chicen rolatini and butternut squash ravioli were standouts. Also the nutella pastry dessert was wicked. Only disappointment was the somewhat soggy soft-shelled crabs.
Do good, cheap Italian restaurants exist?
Ed- what about Peppe Rosso in Soho? Love their pastas...nearly perfect all the way down the menu.
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Unfortunately my favorite food writers - MFK Fisher and James Beard - are no longer with us. Although they were vastly different they shared three things - an essential sense of wonder at the discovery of food, a voluptuous pleasure in the partaking and finally an integration in their writing of their lives in the food. For me they are captured best in Beard's "Delights and Prejudices" and MFK Fisher's "I was really very hungry" - those works conveyed their essences and the essences of the food they wrote about.
So in terms of my favorite living food writers, I'd have to go with one of the food bloggers since they approach food in much the same manner. I think that Robyn of The Girl Who Ate Everything channels these writers the best. In her travels around the city and now the world I get to experience her discovery and wonder and love of food.