Entries from The Amateur Gourmet tagged with 'East Village'
CSA Saves the Day
[Hey, this is Adam The Amateur Gourmet. I'm on vacation in Barcelona, Spain and while I'm gone I've asked some awesome people to fill in for me. Today we continue New York City Business Owner Day with Rachel Zoe Insler, owner of the amazing Bespoke Chocolates in the East Village (remember my visit?). Rachel's got lots to say about CSAs, so let's let her get to it. Take it away, Rachel!] I haven't yet bought a single vegetable at the Greenmarket this summer, but I've been eating the freshest local produce around, supporting New York-area farmers and spending less at the grocery store each week. Daily meals at Blue Hill at Stone Barns? That would be nice, but actually, I'm just a lucky member of the Stanton Street CSA. Thanks to my CSA (which stands for Community Supported Agriculture), I am saving time, saving money, discovering new foods, feeling better than ever about what I am eating, and gaining a deepening connection to my food and my community. Does any of that sound good to you? I'll admit that participating in a CSA is not for the right choice for everyone, but, if like many of Adam's readers, you like to cook and you are marginally culinarily adventurous, I believe that you (yes, you) could benefit greatly from considering membership in your neighborhood CSA next season....
Creating Destination
[Hey, this is Adam The Amateur Gourmet. I'm on vacation in Barcelona, Spain and while I'm gone I've asked some awesome people to fill in for me. Today is New York Business Owner Day! Our first post comes from my friend Dan Maccarone, a guy I met at an eater.com party, who soon started a blog with me about Food Songs called foodsongs.net (don't type it in, it's dead!) and invited me to compete against him in his comedy troupe's Iron Chef cocktail making competition. He clobbered me, which is a good thing because I'd never made a cocktail in my life and now he owns a bar. Here's the story of that bar. Take it away, Dan!] I think I've wanted to own a bar my entire life. Growing up I loved visiting taverns in southern Massachusetts and always loved comparing the differences in clam chowders. In college, I loved sampling the difference in pies at various pubs in London and since moving to New York in 1998, I've always loved seeing unique dishes and cocktails on everything from dive bars to martini bars. There's nothing more exciting than walking into a new place and seeing what unique perspective on the cocktail or on bar food it presents....
Porchetta
My Twitter followers are a fervent bunch. A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I was in the East Village, getting a haircut at Sei Tomoko (the best haircut deal in town), and thinking of going to Porchetta for lunch. "Ooooh!" they cheered, "you've gotta go!" "I'm jealous!" "Porchetta is AMAZING." Then, later, when I confessed that I skipped Porchetta for Hummus Place--where I had a lighter, healthier lunch--the Twitter crowd was not happy. "Boooo!" they booed. "Grrrr!" they growled. "Hiss!" they hissed. (Wow, this post sounds like a children's book.) I thought they'd unfollow me and spurn my name forever, but now they should be appeased: I went with Diana to Porchetta for lunch last week and now I get what got them so worked up....
Bespoke Chocolates
Food people are my kind of people. That's why so many of the people I've met since I started food blogging have become good friends: they're generous, they're insightful, they're creative, they're smart and they have good taste. So friendship was clearly in the stars when a longtime reader named Rachel Zoe Insler informed me that she'd opened up a chocolate shop in New York called Bespoke Chocolates. I promised Rachel that I'd be in right away to sample her wares and then totally flaked out; I did include Bespoke in my NY Scavenger Hunt, but I never scavenged there myself because, frankly, I didn't understand where it was!...
Elvie's Turo-Turo & Butter Lane
I'm getting a little rusty in my old age. In the early days of the blog, I was the one dragging my friends to obscure hole-in-the-wall joints in the East Village--now I'm perfectly happy to go to Grand Sichuan over and over again. But Mark and Diana have my number, both literally and figuratively. We had plans for a double date on Saturday night and as I texted with Diana about what we would do, she ignored my suggestion to return to the home of Gui Zhou Chicken and Dry Sauteed String Beans and, instead, told us to meet her and Mark at Elvie's Turo-Turo on 1st Ave. and 12th Street. "It's a Filipino place," wrote Diana. The old adventurer in me perked up: "See you there," I wrote back as I grabbed my camera (or Craig's camera, rather: mine's been in repair for eternity), excited, once again, to try something new....
Lisa Goes To Dirt Candy
Summer Borscht
Veselka in the East Village is a New York institution; NYU students stumble in there late at night to sober up. During the day, it's an eclectic mix of East Village hipsters and older Eastern Europeans. I first went with my graduate class at NYU and stuck to standard diner fare--a burger, a salad, something eggy, a waffle. Only recently, though, did I consume the fare that Veselka is known for: "Ukranian soul food" (and that's according to their website.)...
Pizza Box Food Blogging
