01/30/12

G & G Pizza House in New Rochelle, Hudson Valley Restaurant Week, and Churros and Arroz con Leche at New Rochelle’s El Trigal Mexican Bakery

While writing this month’s Westchester Magazine cover story, "Pie-Eyed," found myself thinking about all of my childhood pies. There were a few, I’m afraid, as I was a strangely food-fixated child. Though skinny (and tragically be-braided), I lurked in scores of pizza parlors. The ones that stick most vividly in my memory were the slightly left-of-center joints, like the Pelham pizza place that was attached at its kitchen/bathroom hallway to next door’s gloomy bar. The pizza was cardboard-y (and the cook/owner was German), but if you were a kid dropping by for an after-school slice, you could peek around the corner to watch old men drink whiskey in the afternoon. I’m not sure anyone would have noticed if I’d sat down and joined them.

Posted at 01:06 PM | Permalink | Comments: 4

01/23/12

Where to Find the Best Hot Chocolate; Polpettina Needs Your Help; Chef Billy Rosenberg of F.I.S.H. Is Back; Book Your Valentine’s Day Dinner Now

Cold Weather/Hot Chocolate

Do you remember when the winter indulgence of a cup of hot chocolate meant getting handed a styro cup of hot water and a packet of Swiss Miss? And what was in that Swiss Miss, anyway? It tasted like war-ration milk powder, brown flavoring, and chalk. Blech. Hardly worth getting so cold in the first place.

The good news is that, as Americans’ taste in coffee has become more sophisticated, so has their taste in hot chocolate. Nowadays, in Westchester, you can find excellent versions of the winter warmer—but now made with excellent bar chocolate instead of nasty chemical...

Posted at 02:23 PM | Permalink | Comments: 2

01/16/12

Too Much Is Not Enough at Yard House; Super Bowl at X2O; Look Out, Tanking Restaurants: Gordon Ramsay Is Looking at Westchester

Too Much is Not Enough at Yard House

I say this with love: Beer geeks are the baseball stats freaks of the beverage world. They’re those lonely guys who call sports radio stations at 1 am to share insane rants on Jorge Posada’s shots on goal or whatever. Okay, so I don’t know anything about baseball, but my point is that—for beer geeks, anyway—enjoying a tasty beverage involves rolling around in nerdy details of geography, contents, and classifications.

Knowing this, I was dismayed to see the beer list at the enormous Yard House in Yonkers, which is the first local outpost of a beer-centric chain that debuted in 1996 in Long Beach, California....

Posted at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments: 0

01/09/12

New Year’s Revolutions: EDP’s Hopes and Dreams for the New Year, Hudson Valley Bounty, the Stone Barns Beer and Sausage Dinner, Yonkers Restaurant Week, and More!

Oh, Westchester restaurants have been killing it in the past year. Let’s see: we’ve been on a burger binge, we’ve got macarons, pig up the gazookas, and beer by the gallon. No lesser eminence than Jean-Georges Vongerichten is taking over a storied county restaurant. It’s fab, but let’s not rest on our ever-spreading laurels. (I mean, not me—I’m juicing!) From where I sit, there are five more areas that Westchester restaurants could be exploring:

Posted at 01:08 PM | Permalink | Comments: 0

01/03/12

Happy New Year! Get Out Your Calendars: EDP Brings You Westchester’s Biggest Foodie Events of 2012

Look at you, all hung over and dissipated, with glitter stuck on your contact lens and a friction burn from your Spanx. Honestly, after the last two weeks of epic indulgence, what does a dirty party animal like you have to look forward to in the coming New Year?

Well, it turns out that we party animals have tons to live for in 2012. EDP may have only heard about the ensuing seven months of parties, but those 211 days are jammed with fabulous events that range from Blue Hill at Stone Barns’s chic Sausage and Beer hoedown...

Posted at 01:05 PM | Permalink | Comments: 0