I was going to take a little holiday respite from blogging while I was home on the East coast but Holy Christmas, this was just too good to keep to myself. Not an hour back in Jerz, straight off the red-eye, and I was walking blurry-eyed into one of my favorite places in the world: [...]

When I saw this gorgeous dish of Farro Spaghetti, Beets, Brown Butter, and Poppy Seeds featured on Grub Street New York a few weeks ago, it was so beautiful it hurt my heart a little.
A recipe from Pasta Sfoglia, a new cookbook by Ron Suhanosky and Colleen Marnell-Suhanosky (owners of the acclaimed Italian restaurant Sfoglia, [...]

There are a few hole-in-the-wall places in Chinatown that I’ve been going to for as long as I can remember. Dai Wong, or Big Wong Restaurant, is one of them. When I walk in and inhale the scent of freshly roasted duck, and hear the deadly chop of a flashing knife against a [...]

As featured in Bay Area Bites, March 10, 2009.
There I was, sitting at the handsome bar of Bar Stuzzichini, off Union Square in NYC, completely zoned out to all the pretty people around me drinking their sexy apertivi and buxom glasses of vino.
Plenty of time for all that revelry in a second. First, I [...]

If you’ve ever been to Ridgewood, NJ, you know what a picturesque, quaint little town it is.

Its main street is lined with boutique shops, an old movie theater, and a small town gem called The Country Pancake House, famous for its 90 flavors of pancakes. And these aren’t any ordinary pancakes. [...]

Pat’s who? Gino’s what? Fuhgettaboutit. It’s all about Pudge’s in Blue Bell, PA. Come hungry because a couple of “large” sized sandwiches could feed a small village with a foot and a half of juicy chopped ribeye piled high on fresh Italian bread that tastes like it was just baked that [...]

“I’m from New Jersey. I don’t pump my gas, I pump my fist.”

No matter how far I stray, there will always be love for the dirty jerz. And there will always be room in my stomach for some dinerage – even if I literally just had dinner an hour ago.
Now, if you are [...]

Chatham Restaurant (or what the locals call Hop Sing), is probably the first memory I have of eating out. And by eating out, I mean stuffing my 2-year-old face with fistfuls of delicious barbecue pork buns (guk cha siu baau), baked to golden perfection and containing the ideal balance of savory and sweet, while my [...]

Looking for a quaint, country-fresh brunch spot without worrying about the deadly NY weekend brunch wait? Look no further.  The Tasting Room offers a wholesome brunch menu, and will feed it to you before your stomach starts to eat itself from morning-after hangover hunger. The gentle prices will also take the sting off last night’s [...]

While the architecture and décor of this nautically themed restaurant is novel—inside I really felt like I was taking a little jaunt on a high-class steam liner…like I should be wearing red lipstick and gloves—I’m afraid the food was a bit underwhelming.  Selecting from the 3-course Winter Restaurant Week lunch menu, I started with the [...]