From colossal food markets to hole-in-the wall niche restaurants, TASTE's art director Mark Serra brings us up to speed on what's hot on the Big Apple's culinary scene.
It’s generally accepted that food trends starting as a ripple in a big city quickly escalate into a tidal wave that sweeps across the whole continent and eventually the rest of the world.
Do you spot any of these trends closer to home?
THE RISE OF THE FOOD HALL
Following on Paris’s La Grande Épicerie, Eataly has become the city’s premier culinary Mecca.
Essentially a fancy Italian grocery, restauranteur Mario Batali’s 5 000 square-metre megastore in the Flatiron District offers sit-down or take-out delis with gelato, coffee, Panini, pizza, wines, books, even a cooking school and rooftop beer garden.
MAKE AT HOME
NEW RESPECT FOR OLD ITALIAN
Meatball Mondays, all-you-can-eat spaghetti nights, brinjals and Parmesan grinders are what restaurants like Lincoln, Jonathan Benno’s new restaurant in the Lincoln center is all about.
It offers jazzed-up Italian classics such as guanciale (pork cheeks) and mostarda a (mustard-infused North Italian fruit condiment) while elsewhere artisan pizza boutiques and mozzarella bars are giving the Big Apple restaurant business a much-needed kick up the pants.
MAKE AT HOME:
THE FOREST IS THE NEW FARM
Since Walmart stock organic strawberries, New York foodies have had to find another kind of produce to be exclusive about.
So they go foraging in the wild woods (or Central Park under the guidance of Wildman Steve Brill). Many restaurants, such as The Spotted Pig (who employ professional foragers), boast at least a portion of their menus as having been seasonally gathered.
Think watercress, wild mushrooms, pine nuts and dishes like fiddlehead-fern bruschetta and ram (a sort of wild leek) soup.
MAKE AT HOME
POP GOES THE RESTAURANT
Born of the flailing economy, underground eateries, aka pop-up restaurants, open in public spaces, private homes or other business premises, even on the subway, giving chefs the opportunity to moonlight without big overheads.
By invite only and often via social media, one such pop-up is Bep, a Vietnamese restaurant that operates out of a French coffee shop three days a week.
MAKE AT HOME
LOCAVORES LOOM LARGE
Artisanal food shops such as Dean and Deluca are selling the wares of local farmers, dairymen, bakers, jam makers, honey purveyors and herb growers to a clientele that has started buying daily for the evening meal (as they’ve done in Asia for dynasties).
Efforts are also being made by ‘seed savers’ to protect endangered “heirloom” agricultural products.
DOING ONLY ONE THING WELL
Dish-centric restaurants are big news. From just sushi and simply salads to only doughnuts, falafel or pretzels, single-purpose, niche establishments offer quick turnovers and easy kitchen setups.
Diners love the specialist appeal of singular-plated offerings where emphasis is on ingredients and preparation, not presentation.
This LIttly Piggy Had Roast Beef in the East Village offers only four sandwiches, three featuring roast beef and one pastrami. There are no chairs and little standing room, but an endless stream of loyal patrons who queue up for mounds of succulent roast beef on hot crusty bread.
MAKE AT HOME
READ MORE