Matcha with cheese foam and Oreos.
It’s been a very cheesy start of the week— what with the Museum of Pizza’s opening—but we’re not about to let that stop us from informing you that cheese tea has arrived in the East Village.
A Union Square institution, Coffee Shop, served its final brunch Sunday with one last samba performance by Maucha Adnet, her trio, and a pair of roving carnival dancers. Charles Milite and Eric Petterson– who own the restaurant with Karolyn Effer, wife of music producer Jellybean Benitez— were on hand for the farewell, and fondly remembered a New York magazine story about the Brazilian diner’s opening 28 years ago. It noted “the late-nighters who’ve been thronging Coffee Shop and its secret room in the back–artists, actors and young models wearing black tights and gold medallions.” At the time, Patterson said he wanted the 23-hour diner to recreate the feeling of Brazil: “the sensuality, the music, the friendliness of the people.”
(Courtesy of MoPi)
The evolution of pizza goes as follows: it was made, it was popularized, it was sloppified, it was morphed into thin and thick slices, and, now, it’s being made into art.
We’re coming down off our Oktoberfest hangovers, but there are two festivals in the Lower East Side this month to soothe your pounding head. They’re both green, delicious, and on Sunday, October 14.
(Photo: Daniel Maurer)
When Robataya NY closed at the end of last year, the East Village lost one of its most distinctive restaurants, where barefoot cooks grilled food behind a semicircular bar and served it to diners with long paddles. But the establishment’s owners are turning lemons into lemonade, or rather rice into sake: Robataya has quietly been replaced by another beloved restaurant, an East Village outpost of Sakagura.
787 Coffee. (Photo: Daniel Maurer)
Subscription boxes have been all the rage for years now, offering anything from cocktail ingredients to stuff to supposedly empower you when you’re single, delivered to your door on a recurring basis. Even beloved salami slingers Katz’s will bring pastrami to your doorstep every month. Now, some subscription companies have decided to branch out by opening physical storefronts in addition to their delivery services. Two coffee companies that offer subscriptions for whole or ground beans, Eleva and 787 Coffee, are both opening cafes this week, in Williamsburg and the East Village respectively.
(Photo: Summer Cartwright)
The trendy elusiveness of a pop-up and the grungy walls of a dive bar have combined to make The Boneyard, a spot in the East Village that’ll stay alive until October 6.
Unlike current pop-ups in the city, like Rihanna’s SAVAGE X FENTY lingerie brand, or Supreme’s exclusive day-only spots, The Boneyard is brought to you by a media outlet. Whalebone Magazine— a Montauk-based “publisher of fine prints,” according to its website– is behind the project. On the heels of its dive-bar issue, the outlet, which has an “about” section comprised of a few sentences and a “Nicholas Cage Losing His Shit” video, teamed up with Seagram’s 7 to really celebrate the grunge and grease of America’s favorite hole-in-the-walls.
“I’m the only person selling these dumplings on the street,” says Mo Rahmati as he dishes up some of the last of his steaming mantu, labor-intensive Afghan dumplings. He often sells out, and business is only going to get busier. Saturday, at a celebration of street food on Governor’s Island, his Nansense cart won the Vendy Award for the Best Rookie of 2018.
(via 3dollarbillbk on Instagram)
3 Dollar Bill opened this summer near the Montrose L stop as the largest queer venue in Brooklyn. “We should be proud of ourselves that we opened it, because a lot of people tried and didn’t succeed,” co-owner Brenda Breathnach said. She and her partners, who also own the East Village gay bar Phoenix, spent two years trying to get the new venue up and running.
“Up until the last day, we weren’t sure whether this place could open.”
(Photo courtesy of Riis Park Beach Bazaar)
Sure, summer technically ended Saturday, but the folks who run the Riis Park Beach Bazaar are determined to keep the sun-and-sand vibes going well into the winter. They’ve just announced that The Meatup Grill will be the off-season tenant at Jacob Riis Park.
(Photos courtesy of Sister City)
Earlier this year the folks behind the Ace Hotel chain announced that they were converting a former Salvation Army shelter on the Bowery into a minimalist “micro hotel” inspired by ““the functional perfection of Finnish saunas, Japanese bento boxes, rock-cut cliff dwellings of prehistory and John Cage’s 4’33.” Now we’re told Sister City, as the new hotel chain will be branded, will open in January with a restaurant, Floret, helmed by the owner of Carroll Gardens’ acclaimed Battersby.
(Photos courtesy of Sauce)
The East Village needs another pizzeria like a white pie needs extra cheese, but the latest one, Sauce Pizzeria, comes with a twist: True to the place’s name, slices and pies are served with a side of sauce.
You may know Sauce as a popular Italian restaurant on the Lower East Side. Owners Adam Elzer and Perry Rahbar will be offering some of that spot’s specialties (spaghetti bolognese, etc.) at this new spinoff. But the star of the menu is thin-crust pizza made with sourdough and organic malted flour.