There’s something delightfully anachronistic about Torrisi Italian Specialties on Mulberry Street. The tiny new 16-seat cafe, with antique wooden furniture and cured meats hanging in the window and antipasti displayed in small bowls on the counter, looks like a place that would’ve existed in Nolita some years back when I first moved to the neighborhood. [...]

Confession: Yesterday I shamelessly stood in the long line at K! Pizzacone on its first official day of business. Around me in line were hordes of midtown office workers, curious passersby, and people who seem to receive their daily eating instructions from Eater/Grub Street/Feast/et al. And of course there were the obligatory food bloggers. God [...]

Choptank pic via Metromix.com

“Surprise” is a slippery word. When you’re 10 years old, “surprise!” means a happy circumstance—say, a visit from a cash-dispensing grandparent—is about to enter your life. By the time you hit adulthood, “surprise” tends to mean something ominous is about to rock your day, your week, your life. Unless you’re that [...]

I’m a bit of a wuss in blizzards. This morning, on realizing I’d run out of my Stumptown Yirgacheffe coffee beans—which I buy religiously because it’s killer coffee, not because Stumptown is an ad-nauseumly It brew —I couldn’t really talk myself into walking out in the freezing slush. But I was in luck: I opened my [...]

So far Salmaland covers only NYC restaurants—but I’ll soon be adding my picks for other cities here too. How do I define “soon”? Excellent question. But do stay tuned.

One of those cities will be Houston, where I spent years 9-18 and where my parents live. In the meantime, I’m linking to my New York Times [...]

What is Salmaland? It’s a place where you can, quickly and painlessly, find answers to the eternal question, “Where should I eat?” To the left, you’ll find my current short-lists of where to eat in NYC; click on the neighborhood you want to eat in, or use the search tool to the right to look [...]

Very quick early assessment of Carteles, the tiny, retro Cuban sandwich shop that just opened on East 6th Street: It’s not quite ready for prime time. Give it another couple of weeks. Overheard a loud argument going on between the front-of-house (such as it is) and the kitchen. Took about 30 minutes to get my [...]

East Side Social Club is the rare East 50s spot that would make me go out of my way—not just for the Italian-American comfort food, which is ably, if not 100% consistently, pulled off by chef Devon Gilroy (owner Billy Gilroy’s son and an alum of A Voce). But for the vibe too. Rollicking, Rat-Packy, and [...]

A little while back I wrote about the manakeesh—hot, tangy, zaatar-topped pies—at Gazala Place in Hell’s Kitchen and at Bread and Olive in Midtown. Manakeesh are still a bit too hard to find in NYC, but signs of improvement are trickling in: Last night at the new East Village Lebanese restaurant Balade’s opening party, Beirut-born [...]

There’s no denying the charm of the single digit. A dollar sign followed by just one number is a beautiful thing right about now. Especially when the dollar amount in question buys excitement, deliciousness, adventure, satiety, or all four. Single Digit Suppers may or may not become a recurring feature on Salmaland, but here’s the [...]