I spent a somewhat awkward month in eastern Venezuela in 2007, when George W. Bush and Hugo Chavez were at the height of their enmity. President Bush’s axis of evil speech (which, for the record, did not actually include Venezuela) had become legendary in Venezuela, and Chavez spent much of his time making four-hour speeches […]

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I have a theory about ethnic food: if yelpers consistently whine about a restaurant’s service, the restaurant is almost surely awesome. If the service sucks and the place is still open—especially in a high-rent city like NYC—the food must be amazing, right? Banjara, an Indian restaurant in the East Village, is a perfect example of […]

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If you’ve read many of my other posts, you’ve probably seen lots of whining about Midtown East. There are way too many Starbucks (Starbuckses?) and real estate is insanely pricey, so there isn’t much room for charismatic hole-in-the-wall ethnic joints. (If the term “hole-in-the-wall” brings back gleeful memories of truck stop toilet stalls, please stop […]

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You know that I prefer to eat my meals at cheap, independently owned restaurants… many of which are in a perpetual struggle to survive, no matter how good the food is. Of the restaurants I’ve visited in the past year, at least three (Chilean restaurant Barros Luco, Canadian spot T Poutine, and Vietnamese take-out joint […]

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I rarely get excited about the pleasant, well-behaved plates of food served at most European restaurants. I do, however, get excited about spicy bowls of green mush and black-as-death spicy baked fish and gelatinous fish skins. Carefully manicured plates of meat and starch, with minimal spice? Not interested, usually. Then again, sometimes those carefully manicured […]

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