Caper

Inside George McNally’s Faux, in Tribeca. In 1980, Keith McNally, his brother Brian, and Keith’s then-wife Lynn Wagenknecht, who had all cut their teeth as waitstaff at One Fifth in Greenwich Village, opened The Odeon on the corner of West Broadway and Thomas Street, and effectively invented a template for downtown dining that New York is still aspiring to. The Odeon became an instant hub for writers, artists, and celebrities, and its neon sign turned it into a symbol of Tribeca’s cultural rise.

From left: Lisbonata, Caffè Panna, and Hani’s. (Shot in CrowleyScope™.) A few times this summer, my wife Jordan has forced me to endure the humiliation ritual of waiting in line for viral ice cream. After a steak dinner at Socceria, she hurried me over to the Greenpoint outpost of Caffè Panna, Hallie Meyer’s empire of collabs both ice cream and soft serve.

Last Call for the Dive Bar? The author, who has spent perhaps too much time in dive bars from New Orleans to Chicago to New York, asks what happens when they begin to vanish.

The view was the draw at Windows on the World. (Photo courtesy of CNN Films.) I n a 1976 New York magazine cover story by restaurant critic Gael Greene, Windows on the World was declared “the Most Spectacular Restaurant in the World.” The lofty, if admittedly hyperbolic, title was one the just-opened restaurant on the 106th and 107th floors of the newly built World Trade Center’s North Tower intended to live up to.

Chef DeVonn Charles Francis will helm the new restaurant at MoMA PS1. (Photo by John Kim.) What a time to love art and food in New York City! Last week, the news broke that MoMA PS1 is finally reopening its cafe, with chef DeVonn Charles Francis at its helm. The now 50-year-old Long Island City extension of MoMA has been without a dedicated restaurant since 2023, when Mina Stone’s eponymous Mediterranean café closed after four years of serving spanakopita and ouzo.

The chef Vitor Goularte Mendes in the kitchen for a pop-up at Tascha in Nolita. (Photo by Daniel Hamaj.) I’m standing in a basement under Allen Street when the chef Vitor Goularte Mendes—who is gearing up to open his first restaurant, Iara—takes out three plastic pouches of Amazonian spices. He asks me to hold out my palm so he can give me some powdered tucupi. I don’t know what tucupi is; he tells me it’s fermented cassava juice.

Breaking down a 500-pound tuna on the North Fork. (All photos by Cayla Zahoran.) You’re not in the Hamptons anymore. That was my first thought arriving in Greenport for a few nights, and I mean that in the best possible way. Greenport is an unassuming village on the North Fork of Long Island, all salt-bleached shingles and boat slips, the kind of town where the loudest thing most mornings is gulls fighting over bait scraps.

It’s peak produce season on the East End, however briefly. (Photo by Susan Wood via Getty Images.) T here’s a scene in the 1989 film Weekend at Bernie’s where the two protagonists are treading water in the open ocean, their dead boss floating beside them like a pool toy, and one of them declares that this is, in fact, “the perfect weekend.” Corpse and all. I think about that scene more than I probably should.

The 2026 James Beard awards, the “Oscars of Food,” in Chicago’s Lyric Opera. (Photo by Daniel Boczarski / Stringer via Getty Images.) On Friday, August 7th, the James Beard Foundation closed submissions in its search to find the next home of the “Oscars of Food.” The move, if it happens, wouldn’t be until 2029, when Chicago’s contract runs out. The process is two-step: The first was the “Request For Information” stage, during which any city could make the case as to why it should be a contender.

Why have publishers shied away from restaurant cookbooks? (Photo by Audrey Patsiga via Getty Images.) A restaurant with enough acclaim was once a sure-fire bet to land a cookbook deal and likely go on to become a bestseller: Think The French Laundry, Zuni Café, and Chez Panisse. The formula continued to work for the likes of Prune, Pok Pok, Gjelina, and Momofuku.