Veritasty: Truthfully Delicious

" One of my favorite places in the world is Italy.  One of my favorite places in New York City is Eataly." How I started my previous post about Eataly , the massive food emporium across the street from Madison Square Park and the Flatiron Building.  Eataly has multiple stellar restaurants, including a rooftop restaurant/beer garden called Birreria. Although a trip to Birreria is perfect on those lazy summer evenings, they apparently invested in some heat lamps so you can enjoy the beer flowing all year long. A lazy summer evening to Birreria also ensures you will be drinking and dining with a huge audience of people, though. When we visited, the bar was extremely crowded and noisy with the after-work corporate crowd.  I had a glass of prosecco at the bar (wine list curated by Joe Bastianich) and a sip of the locally-brewed cask ale beer.  By locally-brewed, I mean they brew beer in big ol' tanks beside the restaurant and serve out of giant barrels beh...

The 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi is upon us!  The reporters and guests may not be enjoying their hotel accommodations, but let's hope they're at least enjoying the food there! My boss is Russian and I've been practicing my " zdravstvujte !" a lot.  It comes in handy when I go to my local Net Cost Market, a small but very popular chain of Russian supermarkets in New York City.  Net Cost Market has a salad/hot food bar with pay-by-weight goodies, in addition to regular packaged familiar and unfamiliar goods.  For a more professional outlook, see my friend Arthur's Yelp review .  He lends better Russian insight. In a typical Net Cost shopping trip, my basket will contain the following items: . plain Lifeway kefir -- Kefir is a runny yogurt drink popular with Eastern Europeans.  It's supposed to be good for your every digestive need, and the flavored ones taste pretty good (strawberries & bananas?  cappuccino?  practically decaden...

If you were to ask me what food I were craving at this very moment, it would probably be Bon Chon.  According to its website, Bon Chon means "my hometown" in Korean, and I'm super duper happy that we have a taste of Korea in New York.  And not just any Korean food, but specifically Korean fried chicken. The menu at Bon Chon boasts pan-Asian dishes like bibimbop (clay pot rice) and chicken katsu (chicken cutlet) but the star item is the fried chicken.  I've heard the hot variety of their chicken has made grown men cry, but I was definitely up for the soy garlic variety. The first thing I noticed on the menu was that food was cooked to order, so they warned that there would be some wait.  This must be part of a clever marketing ploy because I was starving by the time the plate of chicken arrived.  We ordered a large order of soy garlic wings and drumsticks to split between three people.  The huge plate was ringed with drumsticks in a neat cir...