Veritasty: Truthfully Delicious

Happy New Year! I couldn't have thought of a better way to end 2014 than with a delicious meal and with the company of wonderful friends.  We dined at Pylos, a restaurant specializing in rustic Greek home cooking in the East Village.  When you first enter Pylos and venture beyond the mysteriously draped curtains, you see a ceiling littered with terra cotta pots staring down at you like a many-eyed creature.  Besides the warm orange tones of the terra cotta glowing in candlelight, the blue and white decor remind you of the buildings on a Greek isle.  Thought I have not traveled to one of these island destinations, I have visited Greece with my best friend Jackie, who was a dining companion that night, and I reminisced fondly of our Grecian adventures. To start, we tried a trio of spreads: tzatziki ,  melitzanosalata , and  taramosalata .  Tzatziki is a thick yogurt sauce typically with cucumber or dill.  I'm a little obsessed with it of late, p...

Tutti a tavola a mangiare! Famous sign off phrase of Lidia Bastianich, Italian chef and TV personality, meaning "everyone to the table to eat!".  (Fun fact: Though her cuisine is Italian, she's from a region of Italy that is now in Croatia.  I dunno, I always thought this trivia about her was so interesting, and an insight into how country borders can change so arbitrarily.) Lidia (I pretend I'm on first-name basis with her) has a very cute restaurant in Manhattan's Theater District.  As you walk down West 46th Street, you realize why it's nicknamed Restaurant Row: dozens of restaurants and bars stacked upstairs and downstairs and all next to each other.  I say "upstairs and downstairs" because most of the restaurants are three steps down from street level and upstairs are beautiful brownstones.  It's all quite romantic in the evening hours, with twinkling lights and the people milling around. Becco is one such restaurant that Lidia o...

I got Brooklyn pride.  I got Bensonhurst pride.  When I was born, Bensonhurst was known as a heavily Italian neighborhood.  Now, 20 years later, Bensonhurst Italians are spreading outward to Staten Island or New Jersey, whereas minority immigrant groups are moving in.  The “heart” of Bensonhurst is 18 th Avenue and the 60s-70s Streets.  Mind you, I actually live on Benson Avenue, not just within the vague boundaries of Bensonhurst you see on Google Maps, so I am a little miffed that people don’t consider my street to be the center of Bensonhurst….  Every summer, Bensonhurst is the host of the Feast of Santa Rosalia – better known as The Feast by locals – in honor of the patron saint of Palermo, Sicily.  The Feast is similar to the Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy in the fall, and both have their pros and cons.  San Gennaro is far more popular and located in a historic, chic neighborhood, particularly with the Lower East Side and SoHo ...

One of my favorite places in the world is Italy.  One of my favorite places in New York City is Eataly. Eataly is a sprawling establishment across from Madison Square Park that contains several restaurants, an enormous marketplace, and a cooking school.  It was the brain child of Mario Batali, intended to be like a European food hall . Usually, I'd be a bit cynical about projects that intend to turn American things into European institutions, but two thumbs up to Mario Batali and the Eataly team because it is really just spectacular. One of the best things right up at the front of the store is the gelateria.  Alex and I contend that Eataly's gelato is the best in the city... perhaps even good enough to rival the gelato in Italy .  I've had plenty of gelato in Italy, and while nothing has really disappointed, few were memorable as the gelato in Eataly. Interestingly, at Eataly, one scoop in a cone is cheaper than one scoop in a cup! They have a smal...