Lots of news and features to share today! Here’s what you can expect:
THE WHERE TO EAT QUESTIONNAIRE Denée Benton’s dining tag line is “a bite for a bite”It’s not every day that actors can say they’ve held their own in the company of Phylicia Rashad, Audra McDonald, Christine Baranski, Carrie Coon and Cynthia Nixon — but Denée Benton can. The Tony-nominated Broadway actress turned “Gilded Age” star is fresh off a third season of the HBO show, in which she plays Peggy Scott, and a Critics Choice Awards nomination, her first. And in both 19th-century New York and 21st-century New York, she calls Brooklyn home. This month, she took on the Where to Eat questionnaire, a series of questions designed to delve deeply into an individual’s restaurant psyche. Read on to find out why her friends know her as “A Bite for a Bite” Benton, how she became a solo dining expert and which restaurant faux pas she thinks should be punished by guillotine. Read the story →
THE BRIEF REVIEW Theodora★★ | Critic’s Pick
Every section is the smoking section at Theodora. Raw king salmon, kissed by hot coals, smacks of kindling. Black miso cod, sticky with oceanic fats, packs a punch of hickory. Whole branzino, copper and burnished, channels the woodsy aromas of a hot sauna. And a flame-spitting Josper oven scents the room with torched oak. Wood-fire cooking is often a restrained affair in New York. Not here. Theodora centers its smoke, using it as a calibrated but pronounced ingredient. Tomer Blechman, who also runs Miss Ada, and Vitor Mendes, the chef de cuisine, deploy the smoldering aromatics like fancy barbecue pitmasters, tying together a menu of dry-aged fish, Levantine breads, wilted greens and hummus laced with monkfish liver. Theodora positions itself Mediterranean; the off-white walls, curvy arches and cute nooks give Santorini-chic. But Mendes sneaks in smart Latin influences. Charred shrimp arrive with pineapple pico de gallo and habanero honey. Butterflied trout — painted with rusty harissa and viridescent chermoula — tips its hat to the viral pescado a la talla from Contramar in Mexico City, the hometown of Gerardo Estevez, one of Theodora’s co-owners. The long menu has its misses, including a bland striped bass that could come from any new American spot. When in doubt, order head-on fish. Sliced mackerel toast, eyes and tail still attached, relies on red biquinho peppers to tame the oily, wobbly flesh. And that branzino serves as a crash-course in piscine anatomy. Pull out the meaty cheek bones for rich marine gelatins. Go scrub the smoke off your hands in the washroom, but note that Theodora offers Aesop soap, and it’s scented with cedar. Naturally. Address: 7 Greene Avenue (South Oxford Street); 929-692-6360; theodoranyc.com Recommended Dishes: Kubaneh, seeded laffa, mackerel toast, pita with hummus and monkfish liver, black cod with miso buerre blanc, whole butterflied trout, bone in branzino, lemon posset with cranberry granita Price: $16 to $22 for vegetables, crudi and composed bread dishes. Midsize share plates are $25 to $31. Larger whole fish and meats are $39 to $72. Wheelchair Access: The restroom is A.D.A. accessible. Theodora provides a ramp for the single step up from the sidewalk and the single step up to the restaurant.
FROM OUR CHIEF CRITICS Your favorite restaurant won’t always be here, so love it nowFor every Katz’s or Pete’s Tavern, there are thousands of other beloved restaurants that didn’t last forever. This week, Tejal Rao writes about how we mourn our favorite restaurants — please don’t steal the dishware — and how we can appreciate them while they’re still around. “Every restaurant is a portal — a way to remember who you were and how things felt when you were, say, 19, or 27, or 35,” she writes, “but also to remember the particulars of a city, a neighborhood, a block.” Read the article → OPENING OF THE WEEK Salvo’sSalvo’s, which began life as popular roving pop-up, has technically been open in Ridgewood for a few months. But it was only for lunch service, which meant 9-to-5ers usually couldn’t enjoy the restaurant’s beloved sandwiches and pastas. Now they’re serving dinner on Friday and Saturday nights, walk-ins only. Wonderful news for working stiffs! More restaurant openings →
OBITUARIES Elle Simone ScottKorsha Wilson wrote an obituary this week for Elle Simone Scott, the first Black cast member on the PBS show “America’s Test Kitchen.” Ms. Scott died on Jan. 5 at 49; the cause was ovarian cancer. She used her influence to help other female chefs of color make connections in the insular world of food, earning the admiration of culinary stalwarts like the chef and television personality Carla Hall and the writer and editor Toni Tipton-Martin. Read the article →
FOOD MEDIA MATTERS Gourmet magazine is coming back (as a newsletter)Food media doesn’t die, it simply reinvents itself: Jessica Testa reports that Condé Nast apparently allowed the trademark on Gourmet magazine to lapse and one Sam Dean snatched it. Now, 17 years after folding, Gourmet is returning, albeit in internet form. Dean, Amiel Stanek and Alex Tatusian, three of the five founders, are former employees of the Condé Nast-owned Bon Appétit. The other two founders, Nozlee Samadzadeh, a software engineer at The New York Times, and Cale Weissman, specialize in editing, reporting and digital design. This version of Gourmet already has the blessing of the print magazine’s final editor, Ruth Reichl. Check out their letter of intent here. Read the article → Have New York City restaurant questions? Send us a note here. Follow NYT Food on TikTok and NYT Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Pinterest.
|
