It’s been well over a decade since the publication of Melissa Vaughan and Brendan Vaughan’s The New Brooklyn Cookbook. Featuring dispatches and recipes from 31 restaurants throughout the borough, the cookbook offered a memorable snapshot of notable eateries at that point in time. I’ve had a copy of the cookbook in my apartment since not long after it was first published, and a few years ago I began to wonder: what happened to the 31 spots featured in here?
In Memphis, the spice rub used to flavor our ribs varies from restaurant to restaurant, family to family, but often includes amounts of salt, black pepper, paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, cayenne, brown sugar, white sugar, rosemary, ginger, celery salt, mustard, oregano, cumin. We must keep our grills cool enough not to burn these spices, especially the sugar. We will turn on our televisions as the smoke curls into the air, draws lassoes or nooses over so many backyards. On […]
In retrospect, it’s a little baffling that someone hasn’t made a Descendents-inspired coffee yet. (Update: or so I thought! As it turns out, Sweetwater did exactly this in 2013.) As a recent article on Vice pointed out, bands are increasingly lending their names to various foods and drinks: among others, Dogfish Head has collaborated with Juliana Barwick and Guided by Voices on beer; the former also resulted in a very good EP, Rosabi. Coffee roasters based near the labels in […]
“Eat greedily.” Thus spake Archestratus, perhaps our foremost Epicurean forebear, author of The Life of Luxury, an ancient cookbook in verse, and a man said to have “Sailed round the inhabited world for the sake of his belly.” Who, traipsing about the blocks of Greenpoint, Brooklyn, could not identify with his sentiment? So many delicious things to eat, from Achilles Heel to the River Styx!
In October of 1986, flat broke and at wit’s end, I went to work at the home of a quadriplegic named Wolf Aylward and his frequently tipsy sister, Joanna. For six weeks, I had been crashing in the group house of my girlfriend in Brighton, England, scraping pences and pounds together when I could, often from “boot sales” where we sold junk from the trunk of her mother’s car in muddy weekend lots. I lived almost exclusively on Brussels sprouts […]
An International House of Pancakes at three in the morning isn’t the first place where one might expect to witness a test of paranormal abilities. It isn’t often that one hears someone sitting at an adjoining table declare themselves as possessing psychic powers. Rarer still are those occasions when such a declaration is met with a challenge. Specifically: “You have psychic powers? I have psychic powers, too!” And yet, that’s exactly what I beheld one March night in the center […]
Given that they’re responsible for some of the best baked goods one of our editors has eaten in recent years–seriously, their blue cheese and pecan scones are life-changing–we’re really happy to hear that Brooklyn’s Ovenly has a cookbook due out this fall. Structured as a taste test, the book’s trailer also features a cameo by Emma Straub, which is excellent. You can watch the trailer at this link, or below.
Crappy summer jobs working the local Dairy Queen, part time gigs bussing tables, and horrible jobs working alongside top chefs: there are a million devastating and hilarious stories to be told by people that have been paid to serve food to other people. On October 15th at Housing Works, we present a dozen survivors from the food industry who survived the customer complaints and low pay to tell the tales.