Nycnew york city

When Gavin Kaysen announced in March that he would leave his longtime position as Café Boulud ’s executive chef to open his own restaurant, plenty of people in the restaurant industry — and those who watch it — were surprised. As Daniel Boulud’s right-hand man, Mr. Kaysen was a player in one of the most successful restaurant empires in New York. But the bigger surprise was where Mr. Kaysen, 35, planned to open his restaurant, Merchant : not in Manhattan or Brooklyn but in Minneapolis, his hometown. A chef with no shortage of opportunities in New York had decided to leave. “I had some people ask me candidly, ‘Why? Why leave New York? Why move there?’ ” Mr. Kaysen said. Traditionally, chefs trained in New York and then stayed, with the goal of running big kitchens or opening their own places. Yes, there have always been chefs who have left, for reasons that are familiar to New Yorkers of any profession: to have more space for children, or to be closer to family (the reason … [Read more...] about Chefs Move Beyond New York

When word got out last month that Angel’s Share might close after nearly 30 years, the city — or at least a very vocal slice that was devoted to artisanal cocktails — spun into a paroxysm of despair. Social media was flooded with remembrances of the speakeasy, a softly lit cove of urbanity and elegance hidden in two rooms on the second story of an East Village building. “This hurts more than any other NYC closing I’ve heard in the past 10 years,” ran a typical tweet . Food-obsessed websites bemoaned the news . In all of these lamentations, there was almost no mention of Tony Yoshida, the owner of Angel’s Share. Despite its outsize importance as a trailblazer in the craft cocktail movement, few, in this age of celebrity restaurateurs and bar owners, seemed to know who was behind the place; or that he was the same person who owned a string of Japanese-oriented businesses on the short, angled section of Stuyvesant Street — including the Sunrise Mart grocery, Panya Bakery and … [Read more...] about The Mysterious Man Who Built (and Then Lost) Little Tokyo

On a cold Tuesday afternoon in January, four women made their way down Guernsey Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. They had just finished lunch at Acre , a Japanese cafe and shop, where they had been served bento boxes and green tea, and were headed to 50 Norman , a new warehouse space nearby that housed three other Japanese businesses. The women, all Japanese immigrants, had driven in from New Jersey, at the advice of their friend, Chieko Koie, who had already dined at Acre and was interested in visiting the warehouse after seeing it on Instagram. The group’s first stop at 50 Norman was Dashi Okume , which sells dashi, a soup base typically made from ingredients like dried fish, seaweed and mushrooms. The business, which opened in Tokyo in 1871, offers various ready-made dashi powder blends, as well as bins of dried ingredients for customers to make their own. “For Japanese people, dashi is really important for making food,” Ms. Koie said. “It’s like a piece of home here in … [Read more...] about Sake. Dashi. Soba Shops: Japanese Chic Takes Root in Brooklyn

In 1979, the artist Ming Smith arrived at New York’s Museum of Modern Art with a portfolio of her photographs. She had been living in the city for a few years, nurturing her obsession with photography, when she heard that the museum had announced an open call for submissions. As Smith walked into the building, prints in tow, the receptionist thought she was a messenger. A few days later, the department of photography’s then chief curator, John Szarkowski, and assistant curator Susan Kismaric bought two of Smith’s pieces, making her the first Black woman photographer to have her works acquired by the museum. Even before gaining institutional recognition, Smith had faith in her art. “I didn’t care if I fit in,” she said to me in her quiet, Midwestern-inflected voice. “Photography was my sacred space.” It was an overcast day in January, and we were sitting in Smith’s home studio, a compact apartment in a tall residential building in central Harlem, surrounded by her work. … [Read more...] about The Ecstatic, Elusive Art of Ming Smith

Sasha Petraske, who helped restore lost luster to the venerable cocktail as the founder of the New York cocktail bar Milk & Honey and other polished drinking spots around the world, was found dead on Friday morning at his home in Hudson, N.Y. He was 42. His wife, Georgette Moger, said he had died overnight. The cause had not been determined, she said. Mr. Petraske’s role in the modern cocktail revival is difficult to overstate. The opening of Milk & Honey in 1999, in a narrow space on a dark, little populated block of the Lower East Side, has been called instrumental in the revival of cocktail culture across United States and beyond. Though unmarked and unadvertised, Milk & Honey became a phenomenon, known for its unapologetic dedication to expertly crafted, pre-Prohibition era cocktails, not to mention its eccentric reservation system and exacting rules of decorum. In a Manhattan bar world then ruled by glitz and noise, sloppy drinks and sloppy behavior, it served as … [Read more...] about Sasha Petraske, 42, Dies; Bar Owner Restored Luster to Cocktail Culture

NEW YORK (AP) — The first English-language television broadcast of the U.S. men’s soccer team in its new media contract was seen by 416,000 viewers on TNT. Last Saturday’s 0-0 exhibition draw against Colombia, which started at 7:37 p.m. EST, was seen by 540,000 in its Spanish-language broadcast on Telemundo for a combined audience of 956,000, according to Nielsen. The first men’s game under the contract was a 2-1 friendly loss to Serbia on Jan. 25 .It started at 10:07 p.m. EST and was streamed with English commentary on HBO Max, which did not release viewer figures. That match was seen by 76,000 on Telemundo and by 25,000 on Telexitos, like Telemundo a division of Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal, for a total of 101,000. The U.S. Soccer Federation started eight-year broadcast agreements last month with Warner Bros. Discovery Sports for English-language rights and Telemundo for Spanish-language rights. ESPN and Fox had shared the USSF's English-language rights from 2014 through … [Read more...] about US men’s soccer debut game on TNT draws 416,000 viewers