Restaurants

Subterms

    More stories

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Pete Wells Will Leave Role as NYT Food Critic

      by

      Pete Wells is moving on from his role as the Times restaurant critic, a job with many rewards and maybe too many courses.Early this year, I went for my first physical in longer than I’d care to admit. At the time, I was about halfway through a list of 140 or so restaurants I planned to visit before I wrote the 2024 edition of “The 100 Best Restaurants in New York City.” It was a fair bet that I wasn’t in the best shape of my life.My scores were bad across the board; my cholesterol, blood sugar and hypertension were worse than I’d expected even in my doomiest moments. The terms pre-diabetes, fatty liver disease and metabolic syndrome were thrown around. I was technically obese.OK, not just technically.I knew I needed to change my life. I promised I’d start just as soon as I’d eaten in the other 70 restaurants on my spreadsheet.But a funny thing happened when I got to the end of all that eating: I realized I wasn’t hungry. And I’m still not, at least not the way I used to be. And so, after 12 years as restaurant critic for The New York Times, I’ve decided to bow out as gracefully as my state of technical obesity will allow.Not that I’m leaving the newsroom. I have a couple more restaurant reviews in my back pocket that will appear over the next few weeks, and I plan to stick around at The Times long after that. But I can’t hack the week-to-week reviewing life anymore.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      The Most Memorable Pieces by Pete Wells

      by

      The Times’s restaurant critic is stepping down after a dozen years on the job. Here are some of his most engaging reviews and essays.As The New York Times’s restaurant critic for the last dozen years, Pete Wells has reported from the dining-room trenches on a changing industry. When he started the job in late 2011, old-guard restaurants like Le Cirque and the Four Seasons were still humming, with the help of expense-account diners. The #MeToo movement and the pandemic, which reshaped restaurant kitchens, were years away.Pete has explored the five boroughs and far beyond, as the Food desk’s coverage of restaurants widened its scope. He noted the rise in food halls in New York, and the city’s vast wealth of Chinese restaurants. He is on a seemingly endless quest for ceviche. (If you’re curious about his process, listen to him on this episode of “The Daily” and learn why he always packs a notebook.)Here are 21 pieces that show the sweep and depth of his criticism.Pete Wells’s First Starred ReviewWong, ★★, 2012His first column as restaurant critic took him to an Asian fusion restaurant from the chef Simpson Wong, where the duck-fat ice cream and duck-tongue meatballs brought smiles of pleasant surprise.After first reviewing Forever Jerk in 2021, Pete twice put it on his annual list of 100 best restaurants in New York City.Clay Williams for The New York TimesFinding New York’s Hidden GemsForever Jerk, multiple locations, 2021Pete followed the flavor, often to Queens, for long-simmered West African delights, Egyptian specialty sandwiches and roasted cold noodles. To find Forever Jerk, he stalked a smoke trail to a stretch of Flatlands Avenue, where Oneil Reid, the chef and owner, has set up one of three Forever Jerk stands in the city. (Pete gave no stars to restaurants he reviewed during the pandemic. “Formerly,” he told readers, “I tried to make the stars reflect how close any given restaurant came to being an ideal version of itself. But in the pandemic, there were no ideal restaurants, only places that were making it up as they went along.”)A Sri Lankan Favorite on Staten IslandLakruwana, ★, 2013Lakruwana began its life in Times Square, but a fire drove it to Staten Island, where the Sunday buffet has become one of legend. “Lakruwana may be New York’s most elaborate realization of the immigrant restaurateur’s dream: a shrine to another culture that can soothe homesickness in some patrons and kindle a thrilling sense of discovery in others.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      David Liederman, Who Found Sweet Success With David’s Cookies, Dies at 75

      by

      His innovative version of the chocolate chip cookie, studded with irregular pieces of dark Swiss chocolate, led to a chain of more than 100 stores worldwide.David Liederman, whose confections redefined the chocolate chip cookie and whose chain, David’s Cookies, eventually grew to more than 100 stores nationwide, died on Thursday in Mount Kisco, N.Y., near his home in Katonah. He was 75.His wife, Susan Liederman, said the cause of his death, at a hospital, was a heart attack. He was also being treated for myelofibrosis, a type of blood cancer.Mr. Liederman’s innovative version of the chocolate chip cookie will keep his name alive.The cookie’s unique feature was that it was not made with standard Toll House chocolate chips but was studded with irregular pieces of dark Swiss Lindt chocolate. He chopped the chocolate by hand, the way Ruth Graves Wakefield did when she created the Toll House cookie in 1938 in Whitman, Mass., before Nestlé took over and began manufacturing its little chocolate drops. Mr. Liederman called his cookies chocolate chunk, a term that has become widely understood and used in the world of baking and confections.But long before his revisionist cookie came on the scene, creating his reputation and cranking up his income, his career in food, as a chef, was starting to simmer like a good pot-au-feu.He was 19, still an undergraduate, when he went to France. Intrigued by Michelin three-star restaurants, of which there were but a handful at the time, he decided to eat at Troisgros in Roanne, near Lyon, because it seemed to be the cheapest. The meal set him back $19 (the equivalent of about $172 today); the food was an epiphany.He persuaded the Troisgros brothers to let him hang out in the restaurant’s kitchen and work for the next few summers, despite his lack of culinary training. While he was studying for a degree at Brooklyn Law School and clerking for Judge Maxine Duberstein of the New York State Supreme Court, he began taking classes at night in the culinary program at New York Technical College (now the New York City College of Technology) in Downtown Brooklyn.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      A New Terrace Cafe for the Boathouse in Prospect Park

      by

      Purslane Cafe, from the group behind Rucola and more, serves sandwiches and drinks; Parcelle adds a new location; and more restaurant news.OpeningPurslane CafeThe Oberon Group, a restaurant and catering company that is serious about sustainability and zero waste, is now in charge of the terrace cafe at the Boathouse in Prospect Park. Purslane, the group’s catering division, which also produces special events in the park, is running the restaurant. The group owns Rucola, June Bar, Rhodora and Anaïs in Brooklyn, and also runs the restaurant Clara in the New-York Historical Society in Manhattan. Tapped by the Prospect Park Alliance for this seasonal oasis, it serves sandwiches, pastries and coffee and, on some evenings offers cocktail time with music.Prospect Park Boathouse Terrace, prospectpark.org/purslane-cafe. NoméThis luxuriously appointed newcomer at the edge of Union Square, is owned by the New Jersey-based Mocha Hospitality which has other kosher restaurants, including steak houses. The menu from the chef Santiago Chiuz, who is from Honduras and has been a chef in Miami, includes a 50-ounce bone-in rib-eye steak, a Goliath they’re calling Jurassic Hawk. A number of dishes incorporate Asian touches.127 Fourth Avenue (13th Street), 212-419-8889, nomenewyork.com. Parcelle Greenwich VillageJeenah Moon for The New York TimesParcelle, a wine merchant with restaurants and wine bars, has added this new location. The compact yet airy space, with vintage décor, is the setting for a menu created and executed by Mark Ladner, the group’s consulting executive chef; Kate Telfeyan, its culinary director; and Robert Kent, the executive sous chef. A 500-bottle wine list includes natural wines and Burgundian rarities. The wines are also available for purchase from the online retailer. (Opens July 16)72 MacDougal Street (West Houston Street), 917-540-0884 (texting only), parcellewine.com. Din Tai FungJason VarneyAlready established and known for xiao long bao (soup dumplings) in over 180 locations globally, the much-anticipated New York edition of the family-owned Taiwanese chain is poised to open in Paramount Plaza near Times Square. An underground space abut half the size of a football field seats 450 in several areas, one of which has a windowed kitchen where cooks fold and pleat dumplings with precision and speed. A dramatic glass-enclosed street entrance and a staircase with a shimmer of gold curtains leads down to the restaurant where various xiao long bao, wontons, steamed dumplings and buns, noodles and rice are served. (Thursday)1633 Broadway (50th Street), dintaifungusa.com. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 63 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      How A.I. Imitates Restaurant Reviews

      by

      A new study showed people real restaurant reviews and ones produced by A.I. They couldn’t tell the difference.The White Clam Pizza at Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana in New Haven, Conn., is a revelation. The crust, kissed by the intense heat of the coal-fired oven, achieves a perfect balance of crispness and chew. Topped with freshly shucked clams, garlic, oregano and a dusting of grated cheese, it is a testament to the magic that simple, high-quality ingredients can conjure.Sound like me? It’s not. The entire paragraph, except the pizzeria’s name and the city, was generated by GPT-4 in response to a simple prompt asking for a restaurant critique in the style of Pete Wells.I have a few quibbles. I would never pronounce any food a revelation, or describe heat as a kiss. I don’t believe in magic, and rarely call anything perfect without using “nearly” or some other hedge. But these lazy descriptors are so common in food writing that I imagine many readers barely notice them. I’m unusually attuned to them because whenever I commit a cliché in my copy, I get boxed on the ears by my editor.He wouldn’t be fooled by the counterfeit Pete. Neither would I. But as much as it pains me to admit, I’d guess that many people would say it’s a four-star fake.The person responsible for Phony Me is Balazs Kovacs, a professor of organizational behavior at Yale School of Management. In a recent study, he fed a large batch of Yelp reviews to GPT-4, the technology behind ChatGPT, and asked it to imitate them. His test subjects — people — could not tell the difference between genuine reviews and those churned out by artificial intelligence. In fact, they were more likely to think the A.I. reviews were real. (The phenomenon of computer-generated fakes that are more convincing than the real thing is so well known that there’s a name for it: A.I. hyperrealism.)Dr. Kovacs’s study belongs to a growing body of research suggesting that the latest versions of generative A.I. can pass the Turing test, a scientifically fuzzy but culturally resonant standard. When a computer can dupe us into believing that language it spits out was written by a human, we say it has passed the Turing test.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Silvano Marchetto, Owner of Glitzy Greenwich Village Trattoria, Dies at 77

      by

      Da Silvano was a celebrity hangout, drawing boldface names like Madonna, Barry Diller and Yoko Ono. It was often referred to as the downtown Elaine’s.Silvano Marchetto, an Italian restaurateur whose Greenwich Village trattoria, Da Silvano, opened in 1975 and became a star-studded canteen and a Page Six fixture, died on June 4 in Florence, Italy. He was 77.His daughter, Leyla Marchetto, said the cause was heart failure.For four decades, akin to a downtown Elaine’s, Da Silvano was one of New York’s reigning haunts for the art, fashion, media and film crowds. And Mr. Marchetto, a hard-living Tuscan who parked his Ferrari ornamentally outside his establishment, was its rustic host and mascot.He wore Hawaiian shirts and yellow pants, and his wrists were covered in silver bracelets and jewelry. After he fired waiters in fits of passion, he soon missed them, sending emissaries to lure them back. And when everyone from Rihanna to Barry Diller to Patti Smith frequented his restaurant, he greeted them with a friendly growl as he nursed a glass of wine.Before social media democratized the public’s access to the lives of celebrities, tabloids like The New York Post and The Daily News relied on Da Silvano as a source of juicy gossip. The patio tables beneath its yellow awning were coveted seating for those who wanted to be seen, and the pictures snapped by the paparazzi posted up along the sidewalk outside notified New Yorkers about how their favorite celebrities dated, argued, wheedled and canoodled.“Page Six covered us so much people asked if I owned The New York Post,” Mr. Marchetto (pronounced MARK-et-oh) once said. “But it was good for Da Silvano, whatever they wrote.”Mr. Marchetto’s roster of regulars included Calvin Klein, Anna Wintour, Lindsay Lohan, Joan Didion, Madonna, Yoko Ono, Harvey Weinstein, Susan Sontag, Lou Reed, Salman Rushdie, Stephanie Seymour and Larry Gagosian.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      260 McNuggets? McDonald’s Ends A.I. Drive-Through Tests Amid Errors

      by

      Ordering mistakes frustrated customers during nearly three years of tests. But competitors like White Castle and Wendy’s say their A.I. ordering systems have been highly accurate.In the nearly three years since McDonald’s announced that it was partnering with IBM to develop a drive-through order taker powered by artificial intelligence, videos popped up on social media showing confused and frustrated customers trying to correct comically inaccurate meals.“Stop! Stop! Stop!” two friends screamed with humorous anguish on a TikTok video as an A.I. drive-through misunderstands their order, tallying up 240, 250 and then 260 Chicken McNuggets.In other videos, the A.I. rings up a customer for nine iced teas instead of one, fails to explain why a customer could not order Mountain Dew and thought another wanted to add bacon to his ice cream.So when McDonald’s announced in a June 13 internal email, obtained by the trade publication Restaurant Business, that it was ending its partnership with IBM and shutting down its A.I. tests at more than 100 U.S. drive-throughs, customers who had interacted with the service were probably not shocked.The decision to abandon the IBM deal comes as many other businesses, including its competitors, are investing in A.I. But it exemplifies some of the challenges companies are facing as they jockey to unlock the revolutionary technology’s potential.Other fast-food companies have had success with A.I. ordering. Last year, Wendy’s formed a partnership with Google Cloud to build out its A.I. drive-through system. Carl’s Jr. and Taco John’s have hired Presto, a voice A.I. firm for restaurants. Panda Express has approximately 30 automated order takers at its windows through a partnership with the voice A.I. firm SoundHound AI.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Bánh by Lauren Offers Pandan Coffee Cakes, Fried Sesame Balls and More

      by

      Veerays will serve tandoori food, Son del North has Northern Mexico-style burritos and more restaurant news.OpeningBánh by LaurenThe pastry chef Lauren Tran has put down roots in an airy corner bakery and cafe in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge. She had baked at Gramercy Tavern until the pandemic, then began selling bánh (a general term in Vietnamese for cake) from home and at pop-ups. Now she’s turning out multilayered chiffon cakes, macarons, pandan coffee cakes, fried sesame rice balls filled with coconut and mung beans, and savory Chinese sausage, Cheddar and chive scones, many distinctively but subtly conveying Southeast Asian flavors, inspired by her Vietnamese heritage. A sleek quartz counter, an open kitchen and marble-topped tables define the space. Sidewalk seats are coming. (Opens Saturday)42 Market Street (Madison Street), Two Bridges, 646-360-3325, banhbylauren.com. VeeraysIn 2020, the chef Hemant Mathur opened Veeray da Dhaba, an East Village restaurant modeled after a Punjabi truck stop. Now his chef de cuisine, Binder Saini, and their partner Sonny Solomon have this fancier Indian restaurant offering tandoori food, often with game meats and contemporary interpretations. Highlights include curried tandoori pheasant, duck vindaloo with coconut rice, and slow-cooked bone-in goat with whole spices. The dining room has a plush, vintage look. (Monday)213 East 45th Street, 646-429-8398, veerays.com. Son del NorthHere, the Tijuana native Annisha Garcia offers the style of burritos that are typical of Northern Mexico. Made in Sonora, the flour tortillas are stuffed with choices of carne asada, cheese and beans, shrimp and more in a quick-serve setting. (Thursday)177 Orchard Street (Stanton Street), sondelnorth.com. Conwell Coffee HallStevan KeaneA financial district office tower built in 1929 for Conwell Life and Trust became residential decades ago. Now this cafe and cocktail bar, open to the public, has been installed in its restored marble-paved lobby with lavish Art Deco features, including a dynamic industrial-style mural by Eric Diehl, a contemporary artist. Coffees and breakfast items like croissants are followed by soups, salads and assorted toasts for lunch. Cocktails and bar snacks are served until 9 p.m. The chefs devising food and drinks are Jonah Reider and Pascal le Seach.6 Hanover Street (Beaver Street), 646-412-5956, conwellcoffeehall.com. Perle Wine BarIntimate elegance defines this adjunct to Marian’s, a new American restaurant by the chef Christian Rowan, who was at Eleven Madison Park, Bouley and Nomad. European and New World wines by the glass and bottle are listed to pair with seafood-focused items like raw bar selections, crudos and toasts. There’s a marble bar and outdoor seating.22 Greenwich Avenue (West 10th Street), 646-370-3371 We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More