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Many of you from that time are still here. When the company was sold, I brought that audience here to Substack, where I sent off newsletters on restaurants that shaped the city and conversations with legendary New Yorkers like Graydon Carter under the name Broken Palate. You loved reading those stories…and we loved making them. But, earlier this year, we decided it was time to do it more thoughtfully, more often, and with more focus.

And so, together with Christene and Erin Cunningham, we are officially relaunching as On the House with a new look and a new perspective.

The longer I worked across both publishing and food, the more the two industries started to look the same. A restaurant and a magazine run on a point of view. You decide what you stand for, you set that standard, and you hold to it. If you do that, people start to trust you: A reader trusts what you put in front of them, a guest trusts what shows up on the table. And that trust is the Whole Thing. It’s why they come back, over issues, years, changes, and many more meals to come.

That trust is central to On the House, too.

Our weekly dispatch of good taste — on our plates and in our lives — will deliver a steady distillation of that trust, with fresh resources, tips, secret gems, New York City nostalgia, and, of course, style, all from New Yorkers who know where to find the best stuff. The kind that gets shared, swapped, tabbed, and revisited when you’re truly a regular somewhere, when you take the time to know a place, its gifts, its (occasional) foibles, its comforts...

And it knows you back.

A heads-up: This newsletter will be free through the summer season as we take the next few months to get OTH into a groove and listen and learn more about what you love and crave, while creating a series of smart, absorbing stories that mean something to our readers, old and new. After Labor Day, we’ll share more about what our Paid tier will look like, including special content series, fun seasonal pop-ups, merch, and more.

Until then, cozy up to our table. We’ve got some great stuff in the works to share.

John McDonald
Founder

Erin Cunningham
Editor

Christene Barberich
Editor-at-Large

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This is a very good sign.

Restaurants or hotels where you just can't help but steal a thing or two. A key chain here, an “ashtray” there. Because they got that little signature ‘You Are Here’ thing so right. That’s how we feel about the new wave of cordless lamps quietly replacing candles in so many places we frequent now.

Not that we don’t love the nervous system-chilling of some great tea lights (really, nothing feels more festive than actual flickering fire 🔥). But if we’re going with utility, convenience, and maximum glowy-ness for our next supper outside or impromptu pizza/champagne dinner party (nothing beats it), any of these table toppers would be welcome for getting the coziest lingering light just right.

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&Tradition Setago Rechargeable Lamp

A fan favorite for every room and round of puzzle-making.

Zafferano Poldina Pro Table Lamp

Preferred by taper candle devotees.

Vakkerlight Cubic Accent Portable Table Lamp

A cordless lamp, but also Brutalist.

Lumens Bellhop LED Table Lamp

We usually like this one in bright yellow… but the matte black feels a little more dramatic.

HAY Mousqueton Portable Lamp

These would be nice on your bedside table/tables, too. Like a lantern, only a little more elegant.

Soho Home Emmie Portable Lamp

Edith Wharton might have been really into this one.

IKEA AVHÅLL LED Portable Lamp

For about $30/each, definitely grab a few.

Serena & Lily Brooks Fluted Cordless Table Lamp

For the gardeners among us.

Hübsch Low Portable Lamp

Someone we like a lot recommended this one. The shape is interesting, and the light is very good, indeed.

Tom Dixon Pose Portable Lamp

The one we want most. OTH CHIC of the highest order.

And a few vintage options…for good measure.

Because the best lighting is always a mix of old + new. From left: Firmamento Milano ETOILE Lamp by Daniela Puppa, Verner Panton 'Pantop' Portable Lamp in Chrome, Foscarini Fleur Table Lamp by Rodolfo Dordoni, ‘B. Bulb’ Portable Hand Blown Glass Lamp for Ingo Maurer. 💡

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If you click on or buy anything throughout this newsletter, we might earn a small commission at no cost to you.

Here, author Peter Maguire writes on La Côte Basque. He is the director of Fainting Robin Foundation and the author of the 2021 New York Times bestseller, Breathe: A Life in Flow; Thai Stick: Surfers, Scammers, and the Untold History of the Marijuana Trade; Facing Death in Cambodia; and Law and War: American History and International Law. He has taught the law and theory of war at Columbia University, Bard College, and the University of North Carolina Wilmington. You can find the longer version of this article, “Rōshi Chef: Jacques Rachou and the La Côte Basque Zendō” at Sour Milk on Substack.

The first time I saw Jean-Jacques Rachou in his kitchen at La Côte Basque at 60 W. 55th St., dressed in immaculate chef’s whites and a toque blanche, he reminded me more of a martial arts master than a chef. Carefully observing an athletic young grillardin who was laboring over a hot range, he said nothing. When his apprentice plated his steak, Jean-Jacques studied the meat, spun the plate, and signaled his approval with a nod. Like my jujitsu teacher, the legendary Rickson Gracie, Jean-Jacques is a stern but fair master who leads by example.

Born an orphan in Toulouse, France, in 1935, Rachou was taken in by a local woman. As a child, he worked long hours at a nearby farm and delivered vegetables to restaurants and hotels. In 1946, a local restaurateur offered eleven-year-old Jean-Jacques a job in his kitchen and transformed the boy’s hardscrabble life forever. “It was deliverance,” Rachou said. “It was freedom.” 

For the next four years, Jean-Jacques worked as an apprentice at Le Grand Hôtel Régina and learned classical French cooking according to the rules of Auguste Escoffier’s hundred-year-old brigade de cuisine system. Escoffier divided a kitchen into ranked positions: executive chef; chef de cuisine; sous chefs; chefs de partie; commis chefs (junior chefs); and stations (grill, roast, pastry, butcher, fish).

Rachou left France in the 1950s to cook in the La Mamounia Hotel in Marrakesh, Morocco, then went to Lisbon to open the Hotel Ritz. Next, he went to Bermuda and finally arrived in New York in 1962 to work at Gene Cavallero’s legendary Colony restaurant on Madison Avenue. When he finally opened his first restaurant, Le Lavandou, on East 61st St. in 1975, he quickly developed a . following. “If a Jewish mother could be French, she would be Jean-Jacques Rachou,” wrote food critic Gael Greene. “He seems to have a fix on how to please a hungry New Yorker.”

In 1979, Rachou spent all his accumulated savings to buy Henri Soulé’s La Côte Basque. One of the first to introduce classic French dining to New York at the fabled Le Pavillion, Soulé moved closer to his Bayonne roots when he opened La Côte Basque in the late ‘50s. Truman Capote, one of New York cafe society’s favorite celebrities, satirized the restaurant and its patrons in Esquire Magazine in 1965. He was never forgiven.

Rachou’s attention to detail was unmatched. He spent thousands each week on beautiful cut flowers, used only the finest linen, and his dining room staff was the best in New York City. “The ingredients that we used were the finest that your hands could touch,” recalled Neil Murphy of the Park Avenue Cafe, now in Hawaii at Merriman’s. When Jean-Jacques reopened a completely renovated La Côte Basque, it was an instant success. “In typical Rachou style, La Côte Basque offers big portions or bigger portions,” wrote The New York Times. The restaurant’s oversize plates are typically garnished with levees of wild rice, ramparts of carrot puree, towering timbales, and puff-pastry sculptures.”

What most people do not know is what a huge impact Jean-Jacques Rachou and his restaurant had on the future of American gastronomy. “No one has been more responsible in training the first generation of great American chefs and restaurateurs than Jack Rachou,” said Mike Colameco, host and producer of Mike Colameco’s Real Food on PBS. Rachou was one of the first French chefs willing to hire and train Americans.

“Back in that day, the Frenchmen didn’t think we could work,” recalled chef Gregory Godon. “When Jack realized that we didn’t mind working, we opened the floodgate for the rest of the crew.” For Charlie Palmer, now head of his own small empire of restaurants, it was his big break after graduating from culinary school. “For us young American guys coming to New York working in basically the French mafia for lack of a better term,” said Palmer, “he stood up for American cooks in the beginning.” “You learn the correct way to work,” observed chef Stephan Kopf, formerly of Tavern on the Green, “How to work together, how to be organized, how to produce, just from A to Z.”

“Jack” Rachou taught a group of young American chefs fresh out of culinary school how to work as an organized team, control costs, and run a world-class restaurant. They started making puff pastry, boning quail, crushing bones for stock, and cleaning the kitchen. Michael Handal had just graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY, when he started at the soufflé station. “We were making a minimum of 200 soufflés each night, fresh to order — easily 250 on the weekends — as well as tuiles, petits fours, marzipan, etc.”

After Handal was promoted to garde manger, where butchering was among the responsibilities, he would get “full, primal cuts of animals — not just vacuum-sealed veal loin, but a huge cut, covered in layers of fat and simply wrapped with cheesecloth.” 

When Jean-Jacques called out the orders to the kitchen in his heavily accented English, he sounded like an auctioneer. “He would order like a maniac, and you would have to get it out and organized yourself — it was a matter of survival,” said Rick Moonen. “We worked together on the line, it was total synchronization and he loved us! Just as it was getting out of control, and [we] couldn’t keep up any longer, Jean-Jacques would give you one of his little half-smiles, just a slight one, and wink.”   

“They get the classic cuisine and the principles, and they were very, very, very, very willing to learn,” said Rachou. “They were good to me. I was strong with them.” Sometimes, like my martial arts teacher, Rickson Gracie (who once nearly choked me unconscious for struggling while escaping his headlock) Rachou taught his charges the hard way if they failed to meet his expectations. “Busy lunch — 300, 350 covers. All of a sudden you hear this scream and here comes the Chef down the stairs with a tray,” remembered Charlie Palmer, “with four chickens lined up on the tray. ‘You assholes!’”

“And he throws them!” added Neil Murphy. “I learned a new dish, it was called ‘duck.’” Just as I never struggled to get out of another headlock again, Murphy never served another undercooked chicken. “After that, you learn. You make sure you … check! You got to touch, you got to look, you got to smell, you got to really work with the food,” continued Murphy. “I never served a medium-rare chicken after that. I never embarrassed him like that either. That’s how you learn.”

Today the La Côte Basque alumni include Daniel Boulud, Waldy Malouf, Todd English, Charlie Palmer, Stephan Kopf, Rick Moonen, Charles Tutino, Ali Barker, Neil Murphy, and many others. “The morning shift you had Rick Moonan, Charles Palmer. At night it was Henry Mir, Todd English, myself,” recalled Bruce Egdahl, now executive chef at Round Hill Country Club in Greenwich, CT. “It was a pretty good crew. We were a busy restaurant and Monsieur Rachou is the papa.” 

Despite the amazing food and impeccable service, by the late 1990s, La Côte Basque was at a crossroads, and Rachou knew it. Not only were many of his longtime patrons dying, so was the formal French dining experience. “I think you'll see less and less of grand dining on this level. Before, parents used to take children to good restaurants so they could learn,” Rachou told The New York Times, “Where do they take them today? People don't want to dress up today.” Although he was trying to attract younger patrons, their moderation baffled him. “They split appetizers?” he said to me with a Gallic shrug.

I first went to La Côte Basque in the late 1990s with Didier Rachou, Jean-Jacques’s music-composer son, his wife Lucy, and my fiancee Annabelle Lee. The restaurant was packed with a well-dressed, older crowd, and they took notice when Didier was treated like Henry Hill at the Copacabana in Goodfellas. There were no empty tables, but as we approached the dining room, a squad of servers emerged from the back with a table, chairs, linen, and silverware and set the table with the speed and precision of a Marine Color Guard.

Over the next three hours, I enjoyed the best meal I had ever eaten in New York City. Unlike many restaurants in the 1990s, the food, not the scene, was the main attraction. The maître d'hôtel, captain, and servers were unobtrusive and the service was seamless. Not one of these middle-aged European men aspired to be actors, and it showed as they effortlessly boned fish, carved roast chickens, decanted wine, and anticipated their guests’ every whim. Toward the end of our dinner, Jean-Jacques emerged from the kitchen. With his trademark pencil mustache, custom-tailored blazer, and shirt, he cut a very dashing figure. After he kissed the women’s hands, he shook mine. He could tell that my compliments about his food were sincere and encouraged me to bring my business associates to his restaurant. Very selectively, I did.

While I would like to think it was my bad present-tense French and scintillating wit that forged my friendship with Jean-Jacques Rachou, it was really my enormous appetite. The only people I invited to join me at La Côte Basque were those without food fetishes who were prepared to eat and drink their fill.

I was coming to the end of a long run as a bachelor. For decades, my energy went into my scholarship, martial arts training, and aquatics (swimming and surfing). Most of the time, I ate and drank very moderately. However, if I were going to break training, I would put on a jacket and tie and head to La Côte Basque. I and my guest usually started at the bar. I always ordered a vodka tonic. Like any good bar, the glass had only ice, a lime slice, and a generous pour of vodka in it. A small bottle of tonic water accompanied the glass so I could mix my drink according to taste. Once our table was ready, the tuxedoed maître d’ would lead us into the dining room and seat us. A server would follow us with our drinks if we had not finished them.

Next, we would order. Just before the meal arrived, a cold bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé or some other excellent white wine would arrive at the table. “This is from Chef,” our server would say with a smile. My first course was salmon, smoked on the premises, with perfect toast points, minced red onions, capers, and lemon. If they offered oysters, I had a dozen because I knew that they were the best in the city. Resting on a bed of crushed ice, the muscle was always cut neatly from the shell. Never once was I served one with a hacked mantle, heart, or stomach. The mignonette sauce was little more than red wine vinegar, ground black pepper, and chopped shallots, and it was always perfect.

After we finished our starters and the plates were cleared, our server would walk over to our table with an excellent Latour — also a gift from the kitchen.  If it was on the menu, my main course was always venison grand veneur. The roasted lean meat was served medium-rare with a rich, dark sauce made from pheasant stock, red wine, and cream. If there was no venison, then it was Dover sole, sautéed simply and deboned tableside. Dessert was always a chocolate soufflé, ordered in advance, and served hot. When the server brought it to the table, he dented the top and put a dollop of homemade whipped cream in the crease. Although the next day usually began in the sauna at Columbia University with a stack of newspapers, trying to sweat out the night’s excesses, it was always worth it.

Over long, luxurious dinners in the banquette against the wall beneath Bernard Lamotte’s mural of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, I discussed terrorism cases with criminal defense attorney Andy Patel, lambasted the human rights industry with writer David Rieff, compared notes on the Khmer Rouge with war crimes investigator Craig Etcheson, talked about whatever book I was writing with my editor Peter Dimock, and lamented the death of newspapers with my Newsday editor Spencer Rumsey.

The most memorable meal I had there was with my father, the late Rob Maguire. In the late 1940s, my dad lived in Israel while his father, the chief pilot for Operation Ali Baba and Operation Magic Carpet, flew refugees into the country. After my grandfather remarried in 1948, he shipped my dad off to a boarding school in Paris. My dad rarely attended. Instead, Rob studied in the jazz clubs of St. Germain, Pigalle’s maisons closes, and even sampled the good life in Nice with a classmate who was a French nobleman. As my father and I were finishing our chocolate soufflés, Jean-Jacques came out from the kitchen and poured each of us a glass of rare Calvados. As the two men talked, they were transported back to the postwar France of their youth.

Shortly thereafter, it all suddenly ended. I got married, moved away, and started a family. Sadly, La Côte Basque closed for good in 2004, and several years later, Jean-Jacques retired. Thank you, Jean-Jacques, for so generously introducing me, my friends, and my family to Escoffier’s “tasteful simplicity.” I will always remember this long-lost time, before Wi-Fi and selfies invaded the dining room, and there was a consensus — from Marie-Antoine Carême to Rachou — that Escoffier put it best when he said: “Every meal was a ceremony and a celebration.” 

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Most people walk into a steakhouse obsessing over ribeye versus New York strip. But the conversation should start with the grade. USDA Prime represents roughly the top 2% of all beef produced in the United States. Choice is solid. Select is what you’re getting at the supermarket and pretending you didn’t notice.

The difference is marbling, which is just a polite word for intramuscular fat. More marbling means more flavor, more juice, more of everything you showed up for. A Choice ribeye will always lose to a Prime strip.

“People come in and say they want the leanest cut, then wonder why it doesn’t taste like what they had last time, when it was a steak with amazing fat marbling,” says David DiSalvo, executive chef at Bowery Meat Company. “But the fat is the flavor. That’s not an opinion. That’s just how it works.”

A Quick Guide to Cuts

Ribeye. Heavily marbled and rich, almost buttery when it’s cooked right. The spinalis (that outer cap of fat and muscle) is genuinely one of the best bites of beef on the planet. If your steakhouse serves a tomahawk, that’s a ribeye on the bone with a long frenched rib.

New York Strip. Firmer than a ribeye, with a thick cap of fat running along one side. This is the steak for people who want flavor but also want to feel like they’re eating actual meat, not beef butter. A strip tells you more about the quality of the restaurant than almost any other cut because there’s less marbling to hide behind.

Filet Mignon. Tender, yes. Flavorful, not especially. It comes from the tenderloin, a muscle that does almost no work, which is why it has the texture of a cloud and the beefy depth of one, too. Great steakhouses will compensate with a serious sear and maybe a bone marrow butter.

Porterhouse and T Bone. Same cut, different sizes. You’re getting a strip on one side of the bone and a filet on the other. The porterhouse just has a larger filet portion. It’s the best of both worlds if you genuinely can’t decide and also don’t mind paying for two steaks at once.

Hanger. The butcher’s cut. There’s only one per animal, which is why you don’t see it everywhere. Loose-grained, deeply beefy, and best at medium rare or below. DiSalvo calls it “the most underappreciated cut in the case. It eats like a ribeye at half the attitude.”

Dry Aged vs. Wet Aged: The Argument That Never Ends

Wet aging is simple. The beef sits in its own juices in a vacuum-sealed bag for a few weeks. It gets more tender. It tastes like very good beef.

Dry aging is a commitment. The beef hangs in a controlled environment, losing moisture over weeks (sometimes months), while enzymes break down the muscle. The result is concentrated, funky, almost nutty. A 45-day dry-aged ribeye tastes nothing like a fresh one. It tastes like beef that went to graduate school.

Most serious steakhouses dry-age in-house. If they do, they’ll tell you. Loudly.

The Temperature Conversation

Order what you want. But know this: rare to medium rare (120°F to 135°F internal) is where you get the fullest expression of what that cut actually is. Past medium, you’re essentially cooking out everything that made it worth the price.

A good kitchen will also let the steak rest before it hits your table. If it arrives in a pool of liquid, it hasn’t rested. That’s not juice on your plate. That’s money.

Table Tip

Ask your server what the aging program looks like. Ask if they butcher in-house. Ask where the beef comes from. Good steakhouses love these questions. Bad ones change the subject. And if you see a cut you don’t recognize, order it. That’s usually where the kitchen is showing off, and showing off at a steakhouse is almost always worth your time.

The OTH Five: NYC Steakhouses Worth Your Time

These are the spots we keep going back to, each for a completely different reason. If you’re serious about steak in this city, start here.

Keens Steakhouse

72 West 36th Street, Midtown
Reserve on Resy

Open since 1885. Ninety thousand clay pipes hanging from the ceiling. A collection of Americana on the walls that could fill a small museum. Keens is the steakhouse that every other steakhouse in this city is quietly trying to live up to, and almost none of them do. The porterhouse is outstanding, but you came here for the mutton chop, and you know it. Thick, almost absurdly tender, served with mint jelly that somehow doesn’t feel like a relic. The single malt scotch collection alone is worth a visit. This is old New York, the real kind, not the kind someone decorated to look that way.

Order this: The mutton chop. Always the mutton chop. Prime rib — King’s Cut — if you’re feeling reckless.

COTE Korean Steakhouse

16 West 22nd Street, Flatiron
Reserve on Resy

Simon Kim built something that shouldn’t work on paper: a Michelin-starred Korean barbecue restaurant that also functions as a legitimate high-end steakhouse. Smokeless Japanese grills are set into every table. There’s a dry aging room visible from the dining floor. The wine list runs past 1,200 labels. The Butcher’s Feast is the move for first timers, a prix fixe parade of USDA Prime and American Wagyu that the kitchen grills tableside.

Order this: The Butcher’s Feast. Don’t overthink it.

Bowery Meat Company

9 East 1st Street, East Village
Reserve on Resy

Bowery Meat is the steakhouse for people who find most steakhouses a little boring. The room is moody and downtown without trying too hard. The cocktail program is genuinely good, and the menu wanders beyond the standard porterhouse playbook into territory that most traditional houses wouldn’t touch. The 40oz porterhouse is the anchor, and it’s excellent, but the octopus appetizer, the hash browns (crispy, shattered, almost potato rosti territory), and the bread pudding dessert are the things people actually can’t stop talking about. This is a New York Times two-star Critics’ Pick running out of a space that feels more like a great downtown restaurant that happens to serve incredible beef.

Order this: Porterhouse for the table. Hash browns, no debate. Bread pudding to close.

Carne Mare

89 South Street, Pier 17, Seaport
Reserve on Resy

Andrew Carmellini’s Italian chophouse is doing something none of the other spots on this list are doing: making you forget you’re eating at a steakhouse. The space, designed by Martin Brudnizki, is two stories of Tuscan leather, Venetian mirrors, and views of the East River and the Brooklyn Bridge that genuinely stop conversation. The menu opens with oysters, carpaccio, and Sorrento arancini before it even gets to the beef. And when it does, the gorgonzola-cured Wagyu strip is unlike anything else in the city.

Order this: Octopus carpaccio to start. The gorgonzola-cured Wagyu strip. Tableside salad, because the theater of it is half the fun.

Hawksmoor

109 East 22nd Street, Gramercy
Reserve on Resy

The London import that quietly became one of the best steakhouses in the city. Hawksmoor does things simply and does them extremely well. All-natural beef from family farms across the Northeast, cooked over charcoal with nothing more than sea salt. No truffle butter. No wagyu flights. Just really, really good steak in a room with vaulted ceilings, stained glass, and emerald leather booths that make you feel like you wandered into a very expensive gentleman’s library.

Order this: Bone-in prime rib or the porterhouse. Peppercorn sauce.

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New York has never had more great cocktail bars. The problem actually isn’t finding them — it’s knowing which ones are worth fighting for a reservation. This list cuts through the noise: five bars that are legitimately world-class, each with a distinct identity, each earning its praise through the drinks and not the hype.

1. Double Chicken Please

GN Chan and Faye Chen’s Lower East Side marvel is the bar that rewrote the rulebook. Two rooms, two worlds: the casual front room (Free Range) pours kegged cocktails on tap, while The Coop's sleek, candlelit, intimate serves mind-bending cocktails modeled on dishes. Think Key Lime Pie and Cold Pizza, but in glass form. Ranked #1 in North America and #2 globally in 2023, the daily queue down Allen Street says everything.

Must order: French Toast or Key Lime Pie cocktail

Insider tip: Book The Coop specifically. Reservations drop on Resy at midnight, exactly six days in advance. Set an alarm. Over 70% of seating is walk-in only, so arriving right at opening is your other best bet.

#1 North America’s 50 Best Bars 2023. #2 World’s 50 Best Bars 2023. Reserve on Resy

2. Overstory

Sixty-four floors above the Financial District, Overstory is the city’s most dramatically situated bar, and somehow the drinks match the view. Just 28 seats inside a jewel-box space, with a 360° panorama of Manhattan as your backdrop. The cocktail program is restrained, seasonal, and exceptional. Perched a floor above the Michelin-starred Saga restaurant, it’s one of those rare places that actually lives up to the hype. Come for the skyline, stay for the craft. A $75-per-person minimum keeps things serious.

Must order: Whatever’s seasonal, trust the bartender completely.

Insider tip: Walk-ins are common and encouraged. Show up early on a weeknight, and you’ll likely get a seat. Summer terrace reservations open for parties of 4–8, and those views are worth planning ahead.

#7 North America’s 50 Best Bars 2023. Reserve on Resy

3. Superbueno

Nacho Jimenez’s Mexican-American bar is loud, red-lit, and genuinely joyful: a rare combination in a city that often mistakes somber for sophisticated. The salted plum and tamarind milk punch (Bon Appétit’s favorite drink of 2024) is the kind of cocktail that makes you reconsider everything you thought you knew about flavor. Jimenez took home the 2025 James Beard Award for Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service. The bar earned every bit of it.

Must order: Salted Plum & Tamarind Milk Punch

Insider tip: It gets loud and buzzy on weekends, which is half the fun. Weeknights feel more intimate, and you’ll actually get to talk to the bartenders, which is worth doing.

James Beard Award 2025 Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service. Reserve on Resy

4. Katana Kitten

Masa Urushido’s West Village bar is the platonic ideal of the Japanese-American cocktail bar: highballs on draft, yuzu spritzes, umami-laced creations, and a buzzy izakaya energy that keeps things from ever feeling precious. The retro J-pop decor is genuinely fun, the bar staff is world-class, and the Hinoki Martini — vodka, gin, fino sherry, junmai daiginjo, and hinoki tree essence — is unlike anything else in the city.

Must order: Highball on draft or the Hinoki Martini

Insider tip: Grab a spot downstairs at the bar if you can — the energy there is electric. Great for solo drinkers and dates alike.

#3 North America’s 50 Best Bars 2023 · #9 World’s 50 Best Bars 2022. Reserve on Resy.

5. Bar Snack

Don’t let the name fool you, Bar Snack is not casual. Time Out named it the #1 bar in New York City in early 2026, and it earned that distinction with matcha mint frozens, salad Negronis, and a Spirited Awards nomination for Best New Cocktail Bar. The snacks are genuinely great: pickle-dusted cheese curds, and a Spice Bag hiding chicken tenders, fries, and curry sauce inside packaging printed with a Spice Girls-style logo. Only opened in November 2024, it already feels like a New York classic.

Must order: Matcha Mint Frozen or the Salad Negroni

Insider tip: No reservations needed, just show up. Arrive early on weekends to skip the wait. This one rewards the spontaneous visitor.

Time Out NYC’s #1 Bar, 2026 · Spirited Awards Best New Cocktail Bar Finalist. Walk-ins only.

You showed up. You waited a little. Maybe you got lucky.

A table opened because someone finished early. A bartender slid two stools together. A host looked at the room, did some mental math, and said, “Give me fifteen minutes.”

Dinner was never supposed to be perfectly organized.

It was supposed to move.

New York’s restaurant culture grew out of that motion. You finished work late, texted a friend, and wandered somewhere. Some nights you landed somewhere incredible. Other nights you ended up at a late-night dumpling spot because everything else was slammed.

That unpredictability was the ecosystem.

What most people are noticing now is that the ecosystem is changing.

Dining rooms across New York are no longer shaped primarily by the host stand. They are shaped by software weeks before the first customer walks through the door. Platforms like Resy and OpenTable map the floor in advance. Every table gets assigned a time slot. Every seat gets priced according to demand. Every reservation becomes a predicted revenue block.

From a restaurant’s perspective the system makes sense.

Margins in hospitality are brutal. Empty seats are expensive. If software can help forecast demand, reduce no-shows, and maximize turnover, operators are going to use it.

But technology rarely stops at solving the problem it was built to fix.

Reservation platforms did not simply help restaurants manage traffic. They reorganized how access to dining works in the city.

In the old system, demand happened inside the room.

A restaurant might look full at seven and wide open at nine. A cancellation created opportunity. A bar seat turned into dinner. The host stand functioned like an air-traffic controller, constantly adjusting the room in real time.

Today demand happens before service even starts.

When reservations open online, the dining room is effectively sold hours or days in advance. The algorithm allocates the seats. By the time the doors unlock, the software already decided who gets to eat there.

The person walking down the block hungry is no longer part of the equation.

The winners in this system are planners.

They set alarms for reservation drops. They refresh apps the moment tables release. They subscribe to cancellation alerts and race to grab the opening before someone else does.

The losers are the people who used to define New York dining culture.

The walk-ins.

For decades walk-ins were not an inconvenience. They were the backbone of the room. Bars existed for them. Small tables existed for them. Restaurants expected that a certain percentage of the night would arrive through the door rather than through a booking system.

That flow created the accidental energy that made restaurants feel alive.

You waited next to strangers. Someone recommended a dish. A bartender overheard a conversation and sent something over. The couple next to you told you about a place three blocks away that was even better.

Those moments cannot be programmed.

When the entire dining room becomes pre-allocated inventory, the restaurant stops behaving like a social organism and starts behaving like a logistics system.

And the experience changes.

Dinner begins to feel less like a night out and more like navigating a schedule. You get an alert. You confirm the slot. You show up at exactly the assigned time. Ninety minutes later the system turns the table and moves the next group in.

Efficient. Predictable. Slightly sterile.

Restaurants did not choose this culture intentionally. They followed incentives. If the reservation grid increases revenue stability, it becomes difficult for operators to reject it.

But the consequences ripple outward.

Reservation culture compresses attention toward a small cluster of restaurants. Once tables become scarce, everyone chases the same handful of places appearing on social media feeds and “best of” lists. The result is artificial scarcity in a city with thousands of restaurants.

You see it every week.

Reservation drops behave like sneaker releases. Apps crash. Tables disappear in seconds. Bots scrape cancellations. People trade notifications like concert tickets.

Meanwhile the neighborhood restaurant down the street still has open seats.

The irony is that the restaurants that tend to last twenty years rarely surrender completely to the grid. They protect bar seats. They leave space for regulars. They keep a few tables off the system.

Not because they hate technology. Because they understand what the software does not. Restaurants are not simply revenue machines. They are social infrastructure.

New York built its food culture on movement. The ability to wander through a neighborhood and discover somewhere unexpected is part of the city’s DNA. Some of the best restaurants in the city built their reputation because people stumbled into them by accident.

Reservation culture slowly flips that model.

Instead of discovering restaurants while moving through the city, people now scroll through apps waiting for openings. Instead of wandering into dinner, they chase alerts.

The city becomes more scheduled and less lived in.

This shift also changes who participates in restaurant culture.

Access now favors diners who have time to track reservation drops, flexibility to plan weeks ahead, and constant phone access to chase cancellations. The system quietly filters out the late-shift worker, the spontaneous friend group, and the person who simply decides at eight-thirty that they want to go eat.

The algorithm does not recognize those differences.

It only recognizes inventory.

None of this means reservation platforms should disappear. Restaurants need tools to manage demand. Technology solved real operational problems inside an industry that already struggles with profitability.

But when the tool becomes the authority running the room, something essential disappears.

The restaurants that still feel like New York almost always leave cracks in the system. They protect bar seating. They hold tables for the neighborhood. They allow the unexpected customer to exist.

Those decisions are not inefficient.

They are cultural maintenance.

Because once a city loses the ability to walk around hungry and find somewhere to eat, it loses something deeper.

New York was never supposed to run on reservation alerts.

It was supposed to run on people.

This story was originally published on March 11th in New York Eats Here. Marc Shalma is a 20-year NYC hospitality veteran and the editor-in-chief of We Eat Here: Food culture from the operator's view.

What makes the ultimate club sandwich?

It’s a very personal subject. Not unlike lasagna, barbecue, and Bloody Marys, it’s purely subjective — a recipe to which countless people have claimed authority. White or wheat? Turkey or chicken? Open or closed? As with any recipe, there is no right answer, only what you prefer. Here’s my favorite: an adaptation of the sandwich we offer on the room-service menu for guests at the Trump International Hotel, inspired by the flavors of Thailand.

Like any much-heralded recipe, the origins of the club are a little fuzzy, but we can thank the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis for introducing it to the public at large. The sandwich’s early fans championed its complete-meal benefits — meat, bread, mayo, and veggies claim four of the basic food groups (though mayo is hardly an ideal source for dairy). I added avocado and an egg to give it an Eastern appeal.

Remember, though, it’s the layering that defines a club sandwich; the ingredients depend on the cravings of its creator. Just don’t forget to add toothpicks.

Ingredients

• 3 slices sourdough bread

• 8 oz skinless, boneless chicken, pounded thin

• Mayonnaise

• 3 slices bacon (2 oz)

• ¼ avocado, sliced

• 1 large romaine lettuce leaf

• 4 slices tomato

• 1 egg, cooked over easy

Method

Toast bread. Season and grill chicken. Spread mayonnaise on each slice of toast. Then add the following to the first slice:

First Layer

• Chicken

• Bacon

• Avocado

Then, cover with the second slice of bread and add:

Second Layer

• Lettuce

• Tomato

• Egg

Top with the final piece of bread. Press sandwich down firmly, then skewer toothpicks into each corner. Cut on the diagonal, twice, to create four triangles.

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To the uninitiated, a frittata is nothing more than a failed omelette. But what Americans call an omelette is accurately a “French omelette,” while the frittata is its unfolded, Italian counterpart and arguably the better one.

Why do we praise the frittata? Because it’s an infinitely flexible recipe: easy to prepare and update season to season. It can be served warm or cold, for breakfast or dinner, with tinned corn or truffles. The frittata can be high- or low-brow, and it never judges you for it.

Since eggs cool quickly, serving en cocette benefits both presentation and taste. As the protein base of the dish that breaks apart and re-bonds, the egg melds with the ingredients which makes timing crucial. Don’t fold the frittata in half like the French omelette. Rather, allow the dish to heat until nearly solid, then, as it nears completion, move it to the oven or broiler and let the top achieve a crispy finish. Then it’s ready to serve.

Below are two versions from Jean-Georges Vongerichten one a classic spring combination, the other a study in simplicity. Jet off to the greenmarket or rummage through the crisper. Either way, you’ll have dinner on the table in under 20 minutes.

Frittata of Black Trumpet Mushroom and Asparagus

Makes one hearty serving

Ingredients

• ½ cup black trumpet mushrooms, several heads

• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

• ½ cup shallots, chopped

• 3 cloves garlic, chopped

• ½ cup parsley, chopped

• ½ cup chives, chopped

• ¼ cup Parmesan cheese, grated

• 4 asparagus spears — cut 2” tips and the 2” section just below

• Asparagus tips, 2”, pre-cooked

• 2 eggs

• Salt and pepper, to taste

Method

Heat olive oil in a medium sauté pan. Add shallots and garlic. Toss in mushrooms and cook through. Add parsley and chives. In a separate bowl, beat 2 eggs seasoned with salt and pepper. Add to a heated pan with olive oil and cook until firm. Garnish the top with Parmesan and asparagus tips. Finish under the broiler or in the oven until the top is golden and set.

Frittata of Zucchini and Basil

Makes one hearty serving

Ingredients

• 1 medium, firm zucchini

• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

• 3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped

• ½ cup basil, finely chopped

• 2 eggs

• ½ cup Parmesan cheese, grated

• Salt and pepper, to taste

Method

Cut zucchini into quarters lengthwise, remove the seeds, then chop on an angle about ¼” thick. Heat olive oil in a medium flat pan. Add zucchini and garlic and sauté until lightly browned. Add basil, salt, and pepper. Beat eggs, season with salt and pepper, and mix together with the zucchini. Cook until firm. Add additional zucchini for garnish and top with Parmesan and fresh basil. Finish under the broiler or in the oven until set.

Originally published in CITY, February 2005. Photography by Mary Ellen Bartley.

Somewhere along the line, a rumor took hold: Don’t eat sushi on Monday. It’s treated like insider gospel, as if chefs spend Sunday letting their fish fade. But talk to anyone who actually works in a serious sushi kitchen, and you’ll hear the opposite. The myth hinges on a mistaken idea that “fresh” means “caught yesterday.” Accurate? Not even close.

Start at Sea

Take premium bluefin tuna. These fish aren’t hauled in at dawn and rushed to a chef by sunset. A single high-grade tuna might be caught far offshore and kept aboard for several days under tightly controlled temperatures. This isn’t corner-cutting—it’s essential. Tuna needs time for rigor mortis to pass and the flesh to relax, develop texture, and settle into the quality sushi chefs want. Freshness isn’t measured in hours. It’s measured in handling.

Then the Real Journey Begins

When the boat finally lands, the tuna moves through expert graders, wholesalers, and global auctions before flying to cities around the world. It’s broken down, repacked, sometimes frozen at ultra-low temperatures, and eventually delivered to your local sushi bar.

From hook to nigiri, even the finest tuna often takes 5–10 days to reach a restaurant. In the right hands, that timeline isn’t a flaw—it’s the reason the fish tastes the way it does. The Irony? Monday is perfectly safe.

Here’s the real industry rhythm:

• Quality suppliers deliver multiple times a week, not just before weekends.

• Cold-chain logistics are highly reliable and built for consistency.

• Reputable sushi bars know exactly when and how every fish was harvested and handled.

So no, you’re not getting “old fish” on Monday. You’re getting product sourced through a global network that operates continuously, not around a weekend market schedule. Japan has long understood that fish often improves with controlled aging.

Snapper? Commonly rested a day or two. Mackerel? Salted and vinegared. Tuna? Allowed to settle for optimal texture and flavor. Many of the best sushi bites you’ve ever had weren’t “same-day” fresh—they were prepared with time and intention.

So, can you eat sushi on Monday? If the restaurant is reputable, absolutely. Quality sushi doesn’t depend on the calendar; it depends on expertise, sourcing, temperature control, and respect for the ingredient.

The Final Cut

The Monday myth misunderstands how the sushi world works. Great sushi is the product of technique, not timing. Eat it whenever you want. The fish has traveled far, been handled meticulously, and become its best self — Monday included.

The humble egg might be the simplest thing in your kitchen, yet few ingredients spark more aisle-side confusion. You’ve been there: staring at the cartons, wondering if brown means “better,” white means “cheaper,” and blue means “I’m about to overpay at a farmers market.”

The truth is simple: shell color is about genetics, not nutrition. As long as the hens are raised the same way and eat the same feed, a white egg, a brown egg, and a blue egg are nutritionally the same. The drama is mostly in our heads, not in the carton.

The Color Question

Shell color comes down to breed. White-feathered hens like White Leghorns typically lay white eggs. Reddish birds such as Rhode Island Reds lay brown. Breeds like Araucanas and Ameraucanas lay blue or green eggs thanks to a pigment that’s deposited as the shell forms.

That pigment only touches the shell. It doesn’t change what’s inside. Large reviews and USDA guidance all land on the same point: there is no meaningful nutritional advantage to one shell color over another.

So why the myth that brown is “healthier”? Brown-egg layers are often bigger birds that eat more feed, which pushes up production costs and price. You’re mostly paying for the bird, not a better nutrient profile.

Taste follows the same logic. Shell color doesn’t affect flavor; freshness, diet, and handling do. A fresh white egg from a well-kept hen will taste better than a tired brown egg that’s been sitting in the back of the fridge.

And blue or green eggs? They may look special, but nutritionally they’re in the same league. Claims that they’re dramatically lower in cholesterol or uniquely “super” haven’t held up in research.

Myths We Can Retire

• “Brown eggs are healthier.”
  Not on their own. Color tells you breed, not nutrient content. Unless you change how the hen lives and what she eats, brown and white eggs are functionally the same food.

• “Color affects taste.”
  In blind tastings, people can’t reliably tell brown from white. What they can pick up is age and diet: fresher eggs and hens with access to better forage tend to give richer flavor and more vivid yolks.

• “Blue eggs are a nutritional upgrade.”
  They look great in an Instagram flat lay, but there’s no solid evidence they’re inherently more nutritious than other eggs from hens raised the same way.

What Does Make an Egg Exceptional

If color’s a red herring, what actually separates an average egg from a great one?

• Hen diet and access to the outdoors
  When hens are truly pasture-raised, with real access to grass and bugs plus a decent base feed, their eggs often show higher levels of omega-3 fats and certain vitamins (particularly A, E, and D), along with deeper-colored yolks. Multiple controlled studies comparing pastured flocks to standard commercial systems have found these kinds of differences.

• Specialized feed
  Feed enriched with omega-3 sources (like flax or fish oil) can push omega-3 levels up regardless of shell color or label. Same story for other nutrients: tweak the diet, tweak the egg.

• Farming system and labels
  “Organic” mainly speaks to how the feed is grown and what’s not allowed (certain pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, GM crops, routine antibiotics), plus basic access-to-outdoors rules. Some studies suggest organic or higher-welfare systems can shift aspects of the nutrient profile, but the differences are modest and not nearly as dramatic or consistent as the marketing implies.

• Freshness
  Fresh eggs hold their shape better, taste cleaner, and are the real driver in any “this one tasted better” anecdote.

So yes, a fresh white egg from a genuinely pasture-raised flock can absolutely “beat” a brown egg from a cramped indoor system on both taste and certain nutrients. That’s about how the hen lived, not what color ended up on the shell.

Crack the Right Code

Pick whatever shell color you like looking at, but don’t use it as a health proxy. If you care about nutrition and flavor, focus on:

• how the hens were raised (pasture access, real outdoor time)

• what they were fed (especially if you want higher omega-3s)

• and how fresh the eggs are

The best eggs come from the best conditions, not the prettiest shells.

Seahorse

Just after its 5 pm opening last Wednesday night, I claimed one of the few empty seats at the vibrant central bar of the reborn W Union Square’s new restaurant, Seahorse. Sunlight poured in through slats on the west- and south-facing windows, drenching the room in a dreamy autumnal late-afternoon glow. Waiting for a friend, I watched the light chase itself across the bar into the adjacent dining room, which was also about to come alive.

Around the turn of the century, this restaurant space housed Olives, the first New York City restaurant from Boston wunderkind chef Todd English. Believe me when I tell you: in its early years, Olives was a cool power center that balanced the perennially hot Blue Water Grill on Union Square’s west side. Olives shuttered in 2014, Blue Water Grill in 2019, and with the loss of Coffee Shop around the same time, Union Square itself lost its luster as a dining (and drinking) destination.

Seahorse changes that. It’s impossible not to think of Soho classic Lure Fishbar when stepping inside, and not just because they both put seafood at the center of the menu and share longtime restaurateur John McDonald as owner and impresario. But the restaurants are not twins.

There’s no sushi at Seahorse, for one, though a sizable oyster bar, clad in blue tiles that evoke mermaid scales, anchors the far side of the bright, airy dining room. There’s also that sunlight, which helps give the room — crowned by a whimsical seafaring mural — a light, airy feel, distinct from Lure’s below-deck vibes.

At a preview dinner at Seahorse a few weeks earlier, I went deep on chef John Villa’s relatively straightforward menu, starting with a platter of Kumamoto, Oishii, and Beau Soleil oysters, proffered with individualized relishes for each. A trio of crudos was served simply and properly with salt and abundant olive oil, while Skull Island prawns, drenched in Calabrian chili, brought the heat. Main courses upped the wow factor, with seared tuna au poivre (accompanied by perfect McDonald ’s-style fries) and Dover sole, a platonic ideal of the dish, artfully filleted at a tableside cart and doused in Meuniere. (The turf options include roasted duck a l’orange and Amish farm chicken.)

Back at the bar last week with my just-arrived friend, sipping a house white Negroni and eating a bar snack of Maine lobster on brioche toast — an open-faced lobster roll, delightful — I couldn’t help but feel that New York City needed this once-vibrant corner of the city to come back to life. Yes, there’s a passageway at the back of the bar into the W hotel lobby. And yes, hotel guests make up part of the clientele (shoutout to the two women from Seattle sitting next to us at the bar watching the ALDS on their iPad).

But Seahorse is also an instantly cool new New York City destination, for a power dinner or just a quick drink, right where we always needed it. –Lockhart Steele

→ Seahorse (Union Square) • 201 Park Avenue South • Reserve.

Restaurant Rush, Fall 2025

• Unglo (Upper West Side), Thai barbecue in former Picholine space, reserve

• Danny’s (Flatiron, above top), ABC legal analyst Dan Abrams’ clubhouse for media friends and more, reserve

• La Boca (Chelsea), Argentine chef Francis Mallmann’s first NYC spot, for food charred on plancha at new Faena NY, intel, reserve

• Seahorse (Union Square), upscale seafood spot grabs pole position at remade W Union Square, intel above, reserve

• Wild Cherry (West Village), Le Rock’s Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson take over restaurant at Cherry Lane Theater, reserve

• Cove (Hudson Square), chef Flynn McGarry’s new spot, for 8-course tasting menu ($210 per) or à la carte, reserve

• Muku (Tribeca), Sushi Ichimura reborn as kaiseki-inspired 10-course counter, $295 per, intel, reserve

• Barbuto Brooklyn (Brooklyn Heights, above), chef Jonathan Waxman takes his West Village classic to 1Hotel Brooklyn Bridge, reserve

• Bar Lumière (Columbia St. Waterfront), New American cooking from Junoon vet, plus wines by Andre Mack, reserve

  ---

FOUND NY delivers recommendations and intel for people who earn and spend well in and around New York City — where and how to eat, live, get away, shop, and work.

The web is a morass. Quality recommendations are particularly hard to come by. Enter FOUND, built to be highly interactive and extremely useful.

Paid subscribers will receive an email full of actionable information every Tuesday and Friday, plus full access to our archives and community. Unpaid subscribers will receive previews, occasional emails, and a sense of longing.

Soho has changed a lot over the years. The cobblestones and cast-iron facades are still there, but the spirit—the mix of creativity, grit, and neighborhood familiarity—feels harder to find. Every once in a while, I think about the places that gave Soho its pulse. These five spots weren’t just restaurants or bars—they were part of the fabric of downtown life, each unforgettable in its own way.

1. Jerry’s on Prince Street
Opened in 1987, Jerry’s was the definition of a Soho institution. A place where artists, locals, and downtown regulars gathered for breakfast or lunch long before brunch was a “thing” in Soho. Owned by Jerry Joseph, it was a scene without trying to be one, with great daily specials, a strong Bloody Mary, and the sense that everyone knew each other. It captured the unforced neighborhood rhythm that’s hard to find today.

2. Honmura An
Before sushi counters and omakase bars became the norm, Honmura An quietly served hand-cut soba that felt almost spiritual. The space was minimalist, the food disciplined, and the owner’s dedication to Japanese craftsmanship unmatched. It was the kind of restaurant that slowed you down, a reminder that true hospitality can exist in restraint.

3. MercBar
My first venture, MercBar, opened in 1993 and became one of Soho’s longest-running and most iconic nightlife spots (opinion). Hidden behind an unmarked door on Mercer Street, it was warm, candle-lit, and quietly electric, a place where the fashion crowd, artists, and downtown insiders crossed paths night after night. For over two decades, it stood the test of time until the building was finally demolished.

4. Dean & DeLuca on Broadway
Dean & DeLuca wasn’t just a gourmet market; it was a classroom for taste. The marble counters, the coffee bar, the gleaming produce, it made everyday ingredients feel luxurious. For many of us, it was where we learned what olive oil, prosciutto, and French butter actually tasted like. Its loss left a real hole in Soho’s food identity.

5. Kelly & Ping on Greene Street
Part market, part noodle house, part design statement, Kelly & Ping was decades ahead of its time. The space blended Asian street-food culture with Soho cool in a way that felt effortless. Its open kitchen, communal tables, and inventive menu made it a gathering place for anyone chasing something different before “fusion” became cliché. Thanks to Lee Ping and Brad Kelly.

Spring is the time for growing. There’s joy in caring for plants and enjoying their bounty, whether it's flowers, vegetables, or herbs.

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Whether you have an acre, share a community garden, or have a windowsill, you can grow something for your home. The time spent on keeping your garden alive is minimal, and the benefits are plenty.

According to the Journal of Physiological Anthropology, interaction with indoor plants can reduce stress. In addition, bringing plants into the home can improve the quality of your air. Plus, there’s true satisfaction in clipping some fresh basil or oregano to add to your dinner or arranging fresh daisies you helped grow.

Erica Berman, co-founder of Veggies to Table, a non-profit farm that grows and donates organic produce and flowers to help local people experiencing hunger and needing joy, shares some tips on how to start your mini garden.

Start With Seeds or Plants?

On the farm, Berman grows all the plants from seeds, instead of purchasing babies from a garden store. If you choose to buy plants, Berman suggests opting for ones that are grown organically.

Grow a Garden in Your Apartment

If you’re living in an apartment, grow herbs such as dill, cilantro, and basil. For veggies, opt for small patio cucumbers and cherry tomatoes. Grow all for a tiny, urban herb and veggie garden of your very own.

If you’re a beginner or you feel like you don’t have much of a green thumb, try parsley, rosemary, basil, and thyme. “Another hardy plant for a balcony would be oregano. Kale and chard can also grow in pots. Yumm! If you have basil and parsley, you can make pesto!” notes Berman.

If you’re growing basil, it needs some attention. “They need sun and water — but not too much. Make sure to use the basil and pinch off the leaves so they keep growing,” says Berman.

Flowers in the Home

Flowers bring instant cheer into any home. “Lavender is a great flowering plant. I also love lilacs. Depending on where you live, jasmine is fabulous, but it doesn't grow in Maine, where we are. Petunias, snapdragons, and zinnias are also easy to grow, and they bring so much color and joy,” says the farmer.

Don’t Forget to Water — But Don’t Overdo It

Berman shares one last tip: “Overwatering is often as big, or bigger, a problem than underwatering.”

Whether you have an acre, share a community garden, or have a windowsill, you can grow something for your home. The time spent on keeping your garden alive is minimal, and the benefits are plenty.

According to the Journal of Physiological Anthropology, interaction with indoor plants can reduce stress. In addition, bringing plants into the home can improve the quality of your air. Plus, there’s true satisfaction in clipping some fresh basil or oregano to add to your dinner or arranging fresh daisies you helped grow.

Erica Berman, co-founder of Veggies to Table, a non-profit farm that grows and donates organic produce and flowers to help local people experiencing hunger and needing joy, shares some tips on how to start your mini garden.

Start With Seeds or Plants?

On the farm, Berman grows all the plants from seeds, instead of purchasing babies from a garden store. If you choose to buy plants, Berman suggests opting for ones that are grown organically.

Grow a Garden in Your Apartment

If you’re living in an apartment, grow herbs such as dill, cilantro, and basil. For veggies, opt for small patio cucumbers and cherry tomatoes. Grow all for a tiny, urban herb and veggie garden of your very own.

If you’re a beginner or you feel like you don’t have much of a green thumb, try parsley, rosemary, basil, and thyme. “Another hardy plant for a balcony would be oregano. Kale and chard can also grow in pots. Yumm! If you have basil and parsley, you can make pesto!” notes Berman.

If you’re growing basil, it needs some attention. “They need sun and water — but not too much. Make sure to use the basil and pinch off the leaves so they keep growing,” says Berman.

Flowers in the Home

Flowers bring instant cheer into any home. “Lavender is a great flowering plant. I also love lilacs. Depending on where you live, jasmine is fabulous, but it doesn’t grow in Maine, where we are. Petunias, snapdragons, and zinnias are also easy to grow, and they bring so much color and joy,” says the farmer.

Don’t Forget to Water — But Don’t Overdo It

Berman shares one last tip: “Overwatering is often as big, or bigger, a problem than underwatering.”

When Carbone opened in New York City in 2013, it became a worldwide sensation for the instant nostalgia of chef Mario Carbone’s red sauce classics.

The restaurant, which paired its food with a healthy dose of showmanship, became New York’s “it” restaurant, with celebrities like Rihanna and Kim Kardashian frequenting the colorful retro dining room. The restaurant’s spicy vodka rigatoni became an internet sensation when influencers started devouring it on Instagram and TikTok.

Carbone quickly expanded, opening locations in Miami Beach, Dallas, Las Vegas, Doha, Hong Kong, and Riyadh that are as well received as the flagship. The restaurant also markets a line of at-home sauces (and clothing) under the Carbone Fine Foods label.

Now, Carbone has released a coffee table book with Assouline. Carbone by Assouline tells the story of the restaurant's creation through 150 photos and numerous recipes. If you still can’t snag a reservation at the Carbone nearest you, Broken Palate is sharing Mario Carbone’s meatball recipe with our readers.

Carbone co-founder Mario Carbone uses sweet Italian sausage instead of ground pork in the recipe, along with milk-soaked bread instead of breadcrumbs. The meatballs are gently fried in olive oil and covered in tomato sauce (make it from scratch or use jarred Carbone sauce), before being cooked low and slow. “We insist on mixing the blend by hand, gently folding the ingredients with the same delicacy required to make a soufflé, to achieve the tenderest result,” says Carbone.

Mario’s Meatballs

Serves 6

Prep Time: 35 minutes

Cook Time: 1 hour

Meatballs

Ingredients

• 2 - ¼ cups of day-old or stale white bread, crust removed, cut into ½ inch cubes

• 1 Cup plus 3 tbsp of whole milk

• 3 Tbsp of olive oil, plus more

• ½ cup of finely chopped yellow onion

• 12 cloves garlic, finely chopped

• ⅓ cup of finely chopped flat-leaf parsley

• 2 tbsp of kosher salt

• ½ pound of ground beef, preferably 80/20

• 12 ounces ground veal

• 12 ounces of sweet Italian sausage, casings removed

• 1 large egg, lightly beaten

• 1 cup of finely grated 24-month-aged Parmigiano-Reggiano

Instructions

• Place the bread and milk in a small bowl and soak them together.

• Meanwhile, in a medium saucepan, heat the oil over medium-low heat. Add the onions and garlic and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft and translucent but not browned, 16-18 minutes.

• Remove the pan from the heat and scrape everything into a large bowl.

• Stir the parsley and salt into the large bowl and cool to room temperature.

• Once cooled, add the ground meats, egg, and Parmigiano-Reggiano to the bowl and gently combine until evenly mixed.

• Add the soaked bread last, discarding any milk that was not soaked up, and continue to mix gently, making sure not to overmix.

• Form into 2 ¼ inch balls; you should get about 22 meatballs.

• Transfer to a plate and refrigerate while you make the tomato sauce.

Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

• 5 - ½ cups of canned crushed tomatoes

• 3 - ½ tsps of kosher salt

• 2 - ¼ tsps of granulated sugar

• 1 tbsp of olive oil

Instructions

• In a large saucepan, combine all the ingredients and bring to a simmer over medium-high heat.

• Once the sauce comes to a simmer, remove the pan from the heat.

Alternative

• Two Jars of Carbone Fine Foods Marinara Sauce

To Serve

Ingredients

• Olive oil as needed to cook

• ¾ Cup of finely grated 24-month-aged Parmigiano-Reggiano, plus more to freshly grate for garnish.

• ¼ cup finishing olive oil

• Picked basil leaves, fried, to garnish

Cooking Instructions

• Ladle about 1 heaping cup of the tomato sauce into a large roasting pan or ceramic baking dish and spread over the bottom; keep the remaining sauce nearby while you cook.

• Heat a large skillet, preferably nonstick, over medium-high heat, and coat the bottom with a thin layer of olive oil.

• Working in batches, add just enough meatballs to fit loosely in the pan and cook, turning as needed until lightly browned all over, 4 to 6 minutes per batch.

• Add the cooked meatballs to the roasting pan with tomato sauce, nestling them into a single layer.

• Once all done, top the meatballs with ¾ cups of grated parmigiano-reggiano.

• Heat the oven to 325 F.

• Cover the pan of meatballs tightly with foil, and bake until the internal temperature of the meatballs reaches 140 F on an instant-read thermometer, 20-25 minutes.

• Meanwhile, rewarm the tomato sauce over low heat.

• Once the meatballs come out of the oven, uncover the pan and gently transfer each meatball to the pot of sauce, turning each to ensure they’re coated in sauce.

• Finish cooking the meatballs in the sauce until its internal temperature reaches 160 F, about 5 minutes, and remove the pan from the heat.

Serving Instructions

• Spoon the meatballs onto a large serving platter or individual dishes and top with spoonfuls of sauce.

• Freshly grate Parmigiano-Reggiano over the top and drizzle with the finishing olive oil.

• Top each meatball with a fried basil leaf to serve.

Though I am usually an equal opportunity imbiber, there’s nothing like an ice-cold martini to set the tone of an evening: A martini is meant to be sipped and savored. It’s not the drink for picnics or dive bars. It’s a drink that starts an evening filled with promise.

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That first sip of the martini might be one of the most satisfying moments of a week. That first moment — when the martini is cold and fresh is the best. And, while a traditional gin martini is still the classic, bartenders have gotten creative with the martini, giving us delicious iterations from James Bond’s Vesper to the espresso martini, making choosing a monumental task.

Some bars are now offering tiny martinis — a four-sip solution to all your martini problems. Think of it as a “small plate” or “tapas” option for ordering a full martini. These libations served in scaled-down martini glasses, are the perfect way to try several martinis in one evening, enjoy the ritual and flavor of a cocktail without the commitment of a larger-format drink, or simply have a fresh martini after a few sips.

I first encountered the tiny martini at Pastis, where they serve Le Petit Pickle, a three-sip martini made with vodka, house brine, and pickled vegetables. It’s the perfect order while you’re perusing the menu.

Chelsea’s Bar Bonobo has doubled down on the tiny martini trend. The Chelsea bar, which is celebrating its first anniversary next month, offers ten-dollar tiny martinis on its Golden Hours menu from 3 to 6 p.m. Monday to Friday (with a potential all-day golden hour in the works for Sundays).

Bar Bonobo’s beverage director Patricia Verdesoto explains the appeal of the tiny martini. “We have cocktails that have really interesting ingredients and people might not be 100 percent willing to try something new. These tiny martinis allow people to have a little taste and, hopefully, fall in love.”

Verdesoto says the tiny martini is also the perfect way to learn more about the martinis they like. “I’m always so shocked that so many people have never had a martini. A tiny martini is a good way to try a dirty or a vodka martini and discover the flavor profiles.”

Bar Bonobo offers six different tiny martinis including a classic Cosmopolitan, a Bonobo (gin, vodka, Lillet Blanc, and Grand Marnier), the classic Cold A$$ Martini (gin or vodka and dry vermouth), a spicy and briny Hot ‘N Dirty with pepperoncini-infused vodka, olive brine, and a spritz of dry vermouth), an espresso martini, and the Chelsea (fin, pisco, lemon, and strawberry, rhubarb, and orange bitters). Can’t decide? That’s the beauty of the tiny martini: pick a few or order a flight of three for $30.

On my visit to Bar Bonobo, I ordered the Cosmo, the Chelsea, and the Hot ‘N Dirty. First off, if you haven’t had a well-made Cosmo, go and find one immediately. However, the Hot ‘N Dirty is the standout of the crowd. A spicier and fresher take on the dirty martini, it’s my new favorite cocktail.

Verdesoto says she’s seeing a trend among bars to offer cocktail flights. “We’ve seen beer flights and mezcal flights, now cocktails. You can’t offer full cocktails, but you can offer low-ABV versions or minis. I do think of it like tapas. There’s a bar called Romeo’s on the Lower East Side that offers mini cocktails paired with little snacks and I think that’s cool.”

The bar manager says the “teeny ‘tini” speaks to how people are drinking these days. “Happy hour isn’t as big as it used to be. People are taking it easier, especially during the week. With a tiny martini, you can have a little taste and it’s not a commitment.”

Being the executive chef at an iconic restaurant in New York City is a daunting task that demands endless hours, nonstop dedication, and a near-superhuman ability to multitask.

For more than a decade, Preston Clark has done just that at the iconic Soho favorite, Lure Fishbar. Now, Clark has taken on the task of helming the kitchen at a second restaurant: Bar Mercer, the West Houston Street restaurant that opened just a month ago in the former Bar Tulix space. Mercer Street Hospitality owns both restaurants.

Clark says he created a menu at Bar Mercer that speaks to how people like to eat. “It’s a neighborhood spot, so the menu is approachable. I wanted to create dishes that I like to eat. I wanted to create a craving.”

The chef has succeeded.

The menu reads like a list of favorites like a grilled pork chop with mushroom and cipollini white wine sauce, a filet au poivre with peppercorn sauce, a proper burger (with American cheese), and the “hangover pasta”, a comforting bowl of chitarra, ham, bacon, and a sunny side egg. “I’m a little more out of the box from Lure, because I don’t have to stick to a predominantly seafood menu. It’s fun for me to do a chicken liver mousse or a sliced ribeye on the blackboard,” he says.

The restaurant is also causing a sensation with its mini pigs in a blanket — a modern rendition of a retro classic cocktail party snack that is the ideal companion to a pre-dinner martini.

Clark says his inspiration came from English Pubs mixed with a classic New York hotspot with a close, personal connection: The Odeon — a restaurant that his father, Patrick Clark, the first Black chef in the U.S. to win a James Beard award, helped open with restaurateur Keith McNally back in 1981.

The elder Clark, whose career included helming the kitchen at Tavern on the Green, helped forge Patrick’s career from a young age. “My father would take me to work with him when I was young. I decided to be a chef when I was 13 or 14.” One of Clark’s first jobs was at Tavern under the guidance of his dad. Though the Lure and Bar Mercer chef lost his father nearly 20 years ago, he continues to be the driving force in Patrick’s career.

As executive chef of Lure Fishbar, Clark has placed his mark on another iconic New York establishment. “I’ve been there so long, I feel like it’s mine,” he says of the SoHo seafood house. In a city where dozens of restaurants open daily, Clark says the secret to success lies in simply making guests happy. “There are so many flash-in-the-pan restaurants that people never return to. I want people to enjoy the restaurant so much they return. That’s the key to longevity.”

Clark says being a chef is satisfying not only for the food but for the community building. “We’re able to provide jobs and be a part of the fabric of the city. I can help by teaching people a skill. If you’re able to change the life trajectory of a few people, that’s being successful.”

With leading two restaurants in Manhattan, Clark says the only challenge is trying to make room to try out other restaurants to stay current on dining trends. He admits to eating at home a lot with his son but says he makes time for a few favorites, like sister restaurant, Cha Cha Tang for the roasted duck and dumplings by chef Doron Wong. “I love how clean the food eats,” he says.

You might also find Clark at Bar Mercer on his days off. “I like to eat there to make sure the chefs are executing the dishes properly. Plus, I love the menu,” he confesses.

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For years, every time I would run into Gary He at a restaurant, one thing was clear: he was always a man on the run. “Tomorrow I am off to X City to shoot a McDonald’s,” he would say. Six continents and 50-plus countries later, the result is one of the most interesting books I have seen.

McAtlas is the kind of coffee-table book that people will truly pick up.

JM: Why the book?  What prompted wanting such a deep dive?

Gary: McDonald's is the largest restaurant chain in the world, with the most stores and the highest revenue; there is no other restaurant where more people are eating. Because of this, the brand is a sort of barometer for how and what people are eating, especially when you dive into the localizations. After a run-in with a Ramadan fast-breaking meal at a Moroccan McDonald's for which I could find no online documentation, I took it upon myself to begin cataloging and researching the menus and locations. As a food journalist, it was incredible to me that no one had done such a deep dive into what is arguably the most important restaurant in the world.  

JM: Was there a particular McDonald’s that was better than others? If so, what was it? 

Gary: The Chinese and Japanese McDonald's restaurants are outstanding in that they have the chain's DNA but have such different menu items that are delicious, like shrimp filet burgers (Japan) and taro pies (China), that if there weren't golden arches printed on the packaging, you could be convinced that it was an entirely different brand. But if we're talking about one item in particular, it has to be the McSpaghetti in the Philippines. This dish exists because sweet marinara pasta is a staple at children's birthday parties, thanks mostly to the popularity of local chain Jollibee, to the point that pretty much every American chain that enters the market has some version of the dish on the menu. The McSpaghetti is the best, topping even the homegrown chain's version, in my opinion.

JM: What was the strangest thing you ate at one?  

Gary: Oh man, the Asian markets are chock full of local dishes that have been translated into McDonald's menu items, which some people would consider strange and others would think are completely normal. Check 'em out in the book! But outside of that region, the standout bizarre dish, originating in Brazil, has now spread to other Latin American countries: a bowl of melted cheddar cheese that you're supposed to dip fries, McNuggets, and even entire burgers into. I know that the staple food item in this country is the pão de queijo cheese ball, but an entire bowl of cheddar seems a bit unhinged.

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Of all the foods in the world, it seems that eggs are the most personal order. People have a clear preference as to how they want their eggs cooked: Poached, egg white omelet, over easy — there are almost as many different ways to eat an egg as there are chickens.

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As author of several books on eggs and the Fresh Eggs Daily site, fifth generation chicken keeper Lisa Steele has an opinion about people’s egg opinions. “I think eggs are so simple and basic on the surface, but they’re very scientific. One little tweak can change so much. That’s why you can have two people side by side making eggs and the results can be so different,” she says.

Steele says the best approach to cooking eggs is the simplest. “From poaching eggs to frying them, I’ve tried every method. People make it so hard, but it would be easier if everyone used super-fresh eggs.”

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For instance, Steele says that many people are intimidated by poaching an egg. They’ll purchase gadgets or look for tricks like adding vinegar or whipping the water into a vortex (which she does simply because she finds the swirling water “mesmerizing”). Her instructions are way easier: “I just take a super fresh egg and drop it in water. Turns out great every time.” Steele explains that as eggs get older, tiny bits of air get into the shells and the whites begin to change. They’re still perfectly good to eat for weeks, but cooking results aren’t as beautiful.

Obtaining super fresh egg sounds super easy, right? It turns out it’s a little more complicated than you think if you’re not raising your chickens or having some farms nearby.

If you’re purchasing eggs at the market, there are many buzzwords to decipher — and an expiration date on the package doesn’t tell you where or when the eggs were packaged. Thankfully, Steele is here to help demystify all the egg carton content.

Steele says that words like farm-fresh and local can be misleading. “I think a farm can be within 400 miles to be considered local,” she explains.

And cage-free means next to nothing if you’re concerned about the welfare of the hens laying your eggs. “It just means that the chickens aren’t in tiny cages. But they’re still in a barn and they may never see the light of day,” she says.

Free range allows chickens to have access to the outdoors from their barns through a door, “but a high percentage of chickens never find that door,” says Steele, who recommends seeking out certified humane pasture-raised eggs. “Pasture-raised chickens are outside from sunrise to sundown,” she explains.

Steele says pasture-raised chickens spend their days scampering on grassy dirt, getting sun, and foraging for bugs. “Certified humane also sets down requirements on how often they’re fed and watered, and what shelter they should have from the elements.” They’re also provided with a minimum of 108 square feet per bird to roam in (about the same size as a small cruise ship cabin).

Steele says that when you see organic on your egg carton, it’s more about what the chickens eat than the egg — “Organic speaks to the feed they’re eating. All eggs are antibiotic and hormone free.” That said, when you combine pasture-raised, certified humane, and organic on a carton, you’re off to a good start when choosing eggs.

At this point in our interview, I ran to my fridge to get my carton of eggs out. To my delight, they were marked pasture-raised, certified humane, and organic (and cost $5.99 at Whole Foods Market, so not bad). One question remained: Are they super fresh?

Though there was a “sell by” date marked on the carton, Steele says there’s a better way to tell if your eggs are super fresh: look on the side of the carton for another number, which will tell you the exact date the eggs were placed in the carton for delivery to your store. Mine started with 131. “131 is the 131st day of the year, so May 11 is when they were put in the carton,” she says, noting that two weeks is the oldest you want to look for. “At two weeks, the egg will start to disintegrate. Two weeks is still fresh — just not super fresh.”

Steele also says to look for the Plant Number on the egg carton to find out how many miles your eggs traveled to get to you. The code, assigned by the USDA, is a four-digit number on the carton that starts with a “P” or “G”. You can then Google that number to find out where the eggs were packed, washed, and graded. “I live in Maine and we found a carton of eggs from Florida,” she says.

Why are these simple facts coded and difficult for consumers to find out? Steele doesn’t have the answer. “when I first wrote a blog about this, it was featured on Dr. OZ, and I thought it would change the industry — but it didn’t.”

If you have the space, you can always raise chickens, like Steele does. She says a typical backyard hobbyist can start with five to ten chickens. “I hear Costco is selling a coop with a shed attached. You need to feed and water the chickens and you’re good to go,” she says.

In case you’re wondering, Steele is only interested in her chickens for eggs and not for anything else. They’re raised as pets and live out their lives happily pecking for bugs in the sunshine. “I love my chickens, they’re great. I’m just so fascinated by the eggs.”

Now that you know how to find the best eggs for your family, here’s a great fried egg with Hollandaise recipe, courtesy of Lisa Steele:

Fried Egg with Asparagus and Hollandaise

Makes 2 servings

“We used to grow our own asparagus in Virginia, and for anyone who has tried, you know that it takes several years, along with a lot of patience and scrawny spears, before you’re finally able to harvest full-size asparagus!

We had almost gotten to that point in our garden when we packed up and moved to Maine. I have yet to start an asparagus bed at our new farm, but I do need to, because in the early spring, when the spears are ready to be picked, they’re ideal for this dish. If you don’t grow your own asparagus, check your local farmers market,” - Lisa Steele

• Extra-virgin olive oil

• 6 to 10 asparagus spears, ends trimmed

• Kosher salt

• Freshly ground black pepper

• 2 fried eggs

• Hollandaise Sauce (recipe below)

• Freshly grated Parmesan, optional

Heat a drizzle of olive oil in a medium-sized skillet on medium-high. Add the asparagus spears. Season with salt and pepper. Cook 2 to 3 minutes on each side, until the asparagus is lightly seared but still crisp.

While the asparagus is cooking, fry the eggs in a separate skillet. Make the hollandaise sauce.

Divide the asparagus spears between 2 plates, top them with the fried eggs, and spoon the hollandaise sauce over it all. Garnish with Parmesan, if desired, and season with salt and pepper.

Hollandaise Sauce

Makes about 1 cup

• 3 egg yolks

• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

• 1 tablespoon water

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes and chilled

• Freshly grated nutmeg

• Kosher salt

• White pepper

Bring a small pot of water to a boil. Add the egg yolks, lemon juice, and water to a heatproof glass bowl and set it over the pot of boiling water, making sure the water doesn’t touch the bottom of the bowl. Whisk the mixture until combined. Slowly add the butter, a few pieces at a time, whisking continuously until the butter is melted and fully incorporated. Cook the sauce for another minute or two, continuing to whisk, until it thickens. Season with nutmeg, salt, and pepper. Immediately remove from the heat and serve.

As one of the world’s greatest modern-day chefs, Daniel Boulud runs dozens of restaurants globally, including establishments in Singapore, Dubai, at sea on Celebrity ships, and more than one dozen in New York City.

Throughout his career, Boulud has been named “Chef of the Year” by Bon Appétit magazine, and has earned several James Beard Awards including “Outstanding Chef” in 1994 and “Outstanding Restaurateur” in 2006. His eponymous New York City restaurant, Daniel, has a two-Michelin star rating, while two of his other NYC restaurants, Le Pavillon and Jōji, have each earned one Michelin star.

Boulud is also considered an outstanding culinary mentor and his restaurants have been a launch pad for many chefs who have gone on to open their own establishments around the country. He recently re-opened Cafe Boulud so I popped uptown to chat with the man, DB.

John McDonald: Given you’ve been both chef and owner for decades — in particular at the highest level of fine dining — what would you say has changed the most (in fine dining) over that period?  

Daniel Boulud: I think what has changed the most in fine dining — and in all dining — is social media. Today, people control their marketing and message in a different way than in the past. Customers also have a voice in a different way than in the past, and businesses can project themselves differently. It’s been a huge impact on our industry. The digital world has put everyone in a crazy race.

JM: In my experience, entrepreneurs — and you are certainly that, not just a chef or owner — who achieve this level of success have routines and habits that drive those results. What are some of those routines? 

DB: I have the chance to live right above the store. I’ve been living above Daniel for over 25 years and in the same zip code for 40 years. And my other places are within reasonable reach.

I also travel to visit other restaurants around the globe, but that’s not part of my everyday routine. I feel it’s very important to live close to your headquarters. I also feel that constant communication with my staff is important. I also taste the food at my restaurants all day long. I don’t know if it’s a routine, but it’s a concern that allows me to see if there’s a weakness, but also to be in the dining room to check on the service, as well — I am not “after” anyone, but I am “with” everyone.

My personal routine is to have breakfast with my kids in the morning and see them at night before they go to bed.

JM: If there was one thing you could tell me about cooking that would help me become a better home chef, what would that be? 

DB: It all depends on the time you have at home. It’s not a question of budget for good home cooking. It’s a question of time, equipment, and efficiency. Cooking at home should be soulful, spontaneous, and delicious. It’s something that you’re confident you can do comfortably. To become a better chef first you should have a cookbook collection as inspiration: it could be a seasoning or a flavor composition. I use one pan for maybe three applications to get to the final dish. It’s a good exercise. I love to make one-pot meals that are delicious and thrilling for gathering around the table, like pot roast. You also want a very good pantry with oils, vinegars, and spices. You also want very good pots and pans. I wish I could be more of a home cook.

JM: With restaurants all over the globe, what is your travel routine? Any travel hacks or secrets?

DB: My travel routine is to try not to miss my flight. I’m a carry-on kind of guy. I take a garment bag, a small suitcase, and another bag. If I take an overnight flight, I always try to have a very nice meal the day I’m leaving between lunch and dinner so I can try to sleep right away and try to avoid eating on the plane. While traveling to the airport, I do a recap with the team. When you’re waiting for the plane it’s a good time to catch up. I like to rest on a plane but I’m not the kind of guy who needs two Scotches before he can relax. The secret is to plan well and try to get through immigration as fast as possible.

JM: Do you think it would be beneficial if restaurant owners were able to rate their customers in the same way Uber and other customer services do now?

DB: Yes and no. Of course, you don’t want to do anything that might offend any customer or make them frustrated or concerned with the type of hospitality you provide. At the same time, a bad customer should be banned across the board. For the most part, we have little problems with customers. We don’t care to rate them as long as they want to come back. But we do rate them when they are good customers and they are very nice people and they are nice to the staff and they genuinely love the experience. We like to rate them to bring them back, for sure. People who have created no connection with our team, we don’t want to rate them. We just hope they will come back, but we have no attachment.

JM: And if tomorrow someone bought all your restaurants but said you can keep one but that would be the only one you can own for the future, what would that be? 

DB: We just reopened Cafe Boulud. If someone wants to buy all my restaurants, they all have my name attached to them for the most part. I own the real estate and I live above Daniel, so I would keep Daniel and Cafe Boulud and someone else can have the rest.

JM: Do you wish people would dine without their phones?  Any thoughts on the impact of how everyone is rarely truly engaged in their meal or their dining guests?

DB: When you dine with a phone, you’re either very bored or you’re by yourself, and you do your work. It’s one thing if someone wants to catch up at the end of the meal. We try to entertain people enough that they don’t need their phones. Guests who are truly well-paired never use their phones…so choose your friends wisely. We see more and more parents giving phones to kids. In a way, it’s good, but the kids don’t have parent time with the meal. I have young kids, but there’s never ever a phone at the table. But if we travel and we want to have a conversation, my wife gives them something to do. But paper and crayons do that, too.

JM: Are there any restaurants from the past that you miss?

DB: 21 Club in New York, not for the culinary but for the history, the most powerful dining room with the most powerful clients. All the CEOs had their own toys hanging from the ceiling. Also, Chanterelle was the quintessential French restaurant run by an American chef. It was humble and delicious and was one of the first downtown establishments. I also miss the Four Seasons’ original Pool and Grill Room.

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Joshua Boissy and Krystof Zizka are the co-owners of Maison Premiere, a sexy little oyster and cocktail bar that brings New Orleans’ Big Easy culture to the Big Apple. (The team, by the way, is opening a Manhattan bar next.)

The celebrated bar has won a James Beard Award for its bar program and ranked 39 on the prestigious North America’s 50 Best Bars list.

The bar has birthed a new book, The Maison Premiere Almanac: Cocktails, Oysters, Absinthe, and Other Essential Nutrients for the Sensualist, Aesthete, and Flaneur , written with Jordan McKay and longtime managing partner of Maison Premiere, William Elliot. In addition to 90 drink recipes, the book also delves into the history of the once-taboo absinthe and suggestions on how to drink the libation once thought to induce hallucinations. The book also discusses the fascinating lives of oyster farmers.

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OTH spoke with Joshua Boissy about improving your home bar situation.

OTH: Maison Premiere is known for its cocktails, oysters, and absinthe — all very sensual items. What makes a cocktail sensual, in your opinion?

Joshua Boissy: For me, sensuality goes beyond just consuming something. It’s more than tasting or drinking — it’s experiencing something. That means a lot of energy and passion. When you think of a cocktail being sensual, it’s the sourcing and handling of the ingredients, the way the bartender builds the drink, the execution, the garnish, the serving, and the glassware.

For our martinis, we’re serving gin and vermouth in a glass. There are a lot of good martinis in the world, but we hope you’ll have the best martini experience with us.

OTH: You just released The Maison Premiere Almanac. Can you give some tips on how to use it at home?

JB: We’re a world-class bar, but we wanted to write a book for consumers. We selected 90 recipes. A lot of them have many ingredients, like most cookbooks. Take the Sherry Cobbler, for instance. It looks amazing, and it’s complicated, but it’s one of the first cocktails that women drank in the Victorian Era. It’s a statement drink. So maybe it’s not practical for a Monday night, but if you make it on Christmas Eve, it would be a showstopper.

There are also a lot of drinks that are super easy. We’re doing everything we can to share our vision of who we are. At home, the objective is for you to make a good drink.

OTH: What’s the most important thing you can share about making cocktails?

JB: It comes down to quality products. When it comes to making a bar at home, before you run and get a vermouth, crack open our book and see our recommendations. You can buy a bottle of really interesting Amaro for about $15. Then, go and taste a few gins. Then slowly, you’re curating a bar cart at home.

OTH: Let’s talk about gins. There are so many with so many flavor notes. How do you know which to bring home?

JB: You’re never going to know unless you play and experiment. It really comes down to personal preference: Are you a linguini vongole person, or a ravioli person? There’s no right or wrong answer.

OTH: What about the proper glassware?

JB: Most of the time when I’m home, I drink out of totally inappropriate glassware. More than anything, focus on the ingredients, and don’t worry about glassware for now. You only need to have functional ingredients and good products: good vermouth, good bitters, and a few options of gin. And olives. If you’re making a martini, get some really good, giant, briny olives.

OTH: Can you leave us with one really good tip?

JB: About 30 to 45 minutes before making a martini, put the glasses in the freezer. And put the gin in the freezer. When you make a martini with gin, it’s something about the viscosity, the cold that’s perfect. That’s one of the tricks of our tableside martini game: everything comes from the freezer. It will make all the difference in the world.

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