Photo: Mo Gaffney For New York’s anniversary, we are celebrating the history of the city’s restaurants with a series of posts throughout the month. Read all of our “Who Ate Where” stories here. In the extremely niche hothouse atmosphere of my late 20s in Manhattan, the nostalgic abstraction commonly known as “The Nineties” actually began on February 3 when the Roxy, a cavernous nightclub on West 18th Street (see also roller disco; hip-hop venue), opened its doors to the gays for the first of many Saturday-night parties known as Locomotion, an extravagant, two-year phenomenon that som ..read more

Photo: Rahim Hashim In 2017, Rahim Hashim was living in San Francisco, dismayed to discover that city’s near-total lack of the New York halal carts he loved. Feeling he had no other choice, he returned east, partly to pursue a Ph.D. in neuroscience at Columbia University but also, and more crucially, to get a decent platter of chicken and rice again. It was at a favorite cart near Columbia’s campus that he had an idea. “I remember giving the guy a $5 tip and he was almost crying,” Hashim says. It was 2020, during the pandemic, and “he’d been working his ass off trying to just stay in business ..read more

Photo: Hugo Yu Any restaurant can make an order of $12 fries, but the move from “good” fried potato to “excellent” requires intention, and, sometimes, days of prep work. I’m thinking, in part, of Golden Diner’s home fries, where the potatoes are shredded, rinsed, brined, steamed, pressed, chilled, fried, and chopped before being served next to an egg sandwich stuffed with a hash-brown patty inside as well. You can see why people wait hours for its brunch. The twice-fried Belgian batons at Pommes Frites are among the oldest entries in the NYC Potato Hall of Fame, while the “proper English chips ..read more

Photo: GODLIS For New York’s anniversary, we are celebrating the history of the city’s restaurants with a series of posts throughout the month. Read all of our “Who Ate Where” stories here. Dan Flavin was one of the great artist-talkers. He would regale us with a continuous stream of anecdotes, art-historical insights, and disparaging comments about art that was not up to his standards. Back in the mid-1970s, when I was helping Dan with his installations, artists did not have to be as careful about what they said in public. After working into the night wiring his neon-tube sculp ..read more

Photo: Jens Jurgensen/B) 1997 Jens Jurgensen/Ebet Roberts Photography For New York’s anniversary, we are celebrating the history of the city’s restaurants with a series of posts throughout the month. Read all of our “Who Ate Where” stories here. I probably ate at Odessa on Avenue A more than any other restaurant. The food there was good. They were open 24 hours a day, served large portions, and supplied endless baskets of free bread. I do not remember ever looking at the menu, which was very large. It had a lot of pages and may have been in more than one language. I never even though ..read more

Sarah Kilcoyne “I’m always being humbled,” jokes the comedian and actress Veronika Slowikowska. Fresh off her “Canadian star moment” back home to promote her new Hulu series, Davey & Jonesie’s Locker, she was delayed for a day trying to get back to New York. Even after she returned, an empty pantry in Brooklyn meant the only thing to put on top of some eggs were some suspiciously old Tostitos. “I think because I was a struggling artist for so long, eggs are the only source of protein I know how to cook. That’s how I saved my money,” she says. “Now, I can afford chicken, but I still don’t ..read more

Video: If you have been near Second Avenue and St. Marks Place around dinnertime on any non-Monday or during weekend lunch since Okiboru House of Udon opened, you’ve seen the line snaking south. Take one glance at the victorious diners behind the window and you’ll see what they’re waiting for: pale noodles as wide as the ribbon around a birthday present, being slurped down at every seat. This is Himokawa udon, a style developed in the breadbasket prefecture of Gunma, and it’s the main attraction at House of Udon, which is the second New York restaurant from the same group as dipping ..read more

For New York’s anniversary, we are celebrating the history of the city’s restaurants with a series of posts throughout the month. Read all of our “Who Ate Where” stories here. What makes a restaurant an institution? Longevity counts for a lot, particularly in a city with margins as punishing as New York. But perhaps one of the clearest signs of an institution is the steady presence of regulars. And not just regular regulars—any restaurant open for a year or two can have those. But super regulars. Regulars who have been coming by for decades, multiple times a week, every week. Regula ..read more

Photo-Illustration: Grub Street; Photos courtesy retailer During the New York City earthquake of 2024, I was on the phone with Team Manischewitz when the ground started to shake. It would be ridiculous to assume that this was less tectonic than Talmudic, thousands of bubbes spinning beneath our feet, an army of Fruma Sarahs returning in protest, as in Tevye’s dream. Right? Well. Manischewitz is rebranding. Customers stocking up for the Passover holiday, which begins Monday, April 22, at sundown, will notice something different at the supermarket. Their matzo box looks younger, their jars of ge ..read more

Illustration: Naomi Otsu Welcome to Grub Street’s rundown of restaurant recommendations that aims to answer the endlessly recurring question “Where should we go?” These are the spots that our food team thinks everyone should visit for any reason (a new chef, the arrival of an exciting dish, or maybe there’s an opening that has flown too far under the radar). This month: a nighttime café from the Rolo’s team, Daniel Boulud’s newest dining room, and a Nigerian BYOB restaurant in Clinton Hill. Octo (Koreatown) With its expansive bar and big red booths, K-Town’s Octo looks designed for date nights ..read more