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In my years as Flatiron Lunch correspondent for Midtown Lunch, I spent a lot of time in the area that's now being called NoMad. While covering the area, it grew from being a dead zone to being one of the more interesting areas to eat these days. Travel + Leisure magazine agrees - this month's Food Issue includes a piece highlighting a number of the places to eat in the neighborhood and two of my photos are used to illustrate them.

See which ones after the jump.

Continue reading "Self-Promotion: My NoMad Photos in Travel + Leisure" »

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What you see here is a jelly doughnut from the new Doughnut Plant in Chelsea. After years of being told how good this place was, I finally had to give it a try. The result is that I'm hooked. The yeast doughnuts in particular are enough to make you want to go protest the local dunkin for lying to us all these years about what a doughnut really is.

While in the Chelsea area, I also took some time to celebrate the moderating weather with Barbecue at RUB and a survey of the Flatiron area food trucks, in hopes of encouraging some outdoor eating.

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As I've said in years past, I don't really do resolutions as such, but on my list of things to learn more about for the last couple of years has been cooking and eating fish. Yeah, yeah, health blah blah blah. It's good for me, but it's also a whole area of food that up until now I've been woefully unfamiliar about.

So, the week before Christmas, Tammi and I took a break from shopping and stopped in at Eataly for lunch at Pesce, the seafood restaurant by Esca chef, Dave Pasternack. Check out the courses after the jump...

Continue reading "Learning about fish at Eataly's Pesce" »

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Today I strayed from my path of finding Midtown Lunch priced dishes in order to partake in some deliciousness from under the sea at the new John Dory Oyster Bar at the Ace Hotel.

The meal was a splurge to be sure, but was absolutely worth it. In the name of posting this now rather than waiting to make time to bloviate about each course, I'm going to post the courses after the jump with some brief notes. Enjoy!

Continue reading "Lunch at The John Dory Oyster Bar" »

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The big story of the moment in the food world is the opening of Eataly, Mario Batali's transplanting of an Italian mega-market to New York. The gigantic space has restaurants, a bakery, a book store and a wine shop interspersed with market spaces selling meat, charcuterie & cheeses, gelato, produce and various other groceries.

The size and spectacle of the place alone is enough to work the eaterati into a lather. I know I was excited. So, Tuesday night, I joined the hordes and scoped out the lunch-worthy options for Midtown Lunch.

The whole wide internet seems to be reporting on this place right now, so I'll dispense with that except to say that the food is great, the place is huge and it can be more than a little confusing to get around - especially when it's jammed with hundreds of other pushy foodies who absolutely need to be there right away.

That said, I thought I'd dedicate this Labor Day post to the remarkably attentive and friendly staff. More photos of these folks at work, including a spot check in the pizza kitchen from Molto Mario himself after the jump.

Continue reading "Eataly: The Staff" »

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