• Baked Pasta with Kabocha Squash, Radicchio, Walnuts, and Taleggio

    Baked Pasta with Kabocha Squash, Radicchio, Walnuts, and Taleggio

    If my friends who are cooking Thanksgiving this year have one dilemma it’s the issue of beloved vegetarians. Do you relegate them to side dishes while everyone else eats turkey? Do you make the main event vegetarian so that everyone feels included? Is it even Thanksgiving if there isn’t a dead animal on the table?…

  • Sukh

    Sukh

    I’m a bit aggressive when it comes to picking a restaurant. After all, I’m not just eating for me, I’m eating for you: my adoring public! So on Friday night, when we met our friends Jeremy and Jason for dinner, I found myself in an extraordinary new role: passive restaurant goer. That’s right, Jason picked…

  • Pumpkin Pie That’ll Actually Make You Love Pumpkin Pie

    Pumpkin Pie That’ll Actually Make You Love Pumpkin Pie

    If there were a universal “meh” list, pumpkin pie would probably be at the very top. How many people are passionate about that odd combination of orange gunk, eggs, pumpkin pie spices (perhaps the most famous thing about it), in a pale, pallid crust? Not many! And yet, year after year, we make pumpkin pie…

  • Golden Hof

    Golden Hof

    A few weeks ago Deb Perelman, aka Smitten Kitchen, reached out to me and asked if I had any interest in seeing a staged reading of Moonstruck starring Patti Lupone. That’s like asking me, “Would you like to spend several hours in actual heaven?” I immediately said “yes” and then we got to the important…

  • Rigatoni with Sausage and Butternut Squash

    Rigatoni with Sausage and Butternut Squash

    Over my twenty years of doing The Amateur Gourmet, I’ve been approached by fans a handful of times. Usually the exchange is quick and pleasant: I feel a thrill for being recognized and hopefully they feel a thrill for meeting their favorite nerdy, gay, old-school food blogger. However the exchange goes, I’m always on the…

  • Raoul’s

    Raoul’s

    There’s forced cool and there’s real cool. Raoul’s in SoHo, which has been around for fifty years, is the real deal. I grabbed a five PM reservation yesterday before seeing a show at The SoHo Playhouse, not really knowing much about what to expect except that Raoul’s always shows up on lists of SoHo’s best…

  • Espresso Tahini Granola

    Espresso Tahini Granola

    Here’s how I know if I need to buy a cookbook or if I can put it safely back on the shelf: I open to three random recipes and if those three recipes look really, really good — like ones I’ll actually be excited to make — it’s a keeper. And that’s how it was…

  • Balthazar

    Balthazar

    Not to toot my own horn, but Balthazar — one of the most beloved, important restaurants in New York City — features a quote from me on their Press Page: “At its best, I think it’s New York’s most authentic French bistro, and if you catch it at the right moment you can find yourself…

  • Marbled Pumpkin Bread

    Marbled Pumpkin Bread

    There’s are certain cheats that are universally acknowledged as acceptable by food people and one of them is that it’s totally fine to use canned pumpkin in place of fresh pumpkin in baking recipes. I realize a lot of you are rolling your eyes at that: “Who in their right mind would ever trouble to…

  • The Burger Joint 2.0

    The Burger Joint 2.0

    One of our favorite New York secrets, back when we lived here in the early aughts, was nestled behind a red velvet curtain in the lobby of The Parker Meridian hotel. If you were going to see a show or a concert at Carnegie Hall, you’d walk through the ornate marble lobby and, against all…