BlackBook

Since launching the croissant-donut hybrid known as The Cronut on May 10th, Dominique Ansel has never been the same. Instantly, the famed French pastry chef's namesake bakery in Soho has become the hottest New York venue between the hours of 5:30am and 8am – and it's not even a nightclub. 

While food etymologists were losing it last week over the cronut, a subtler move was taking full effect: pickles no longer means pickles, as in pickled cucumbers. Order the house-made pickles at a New York restaurant, and you’ll get ramps (Betony), or cauliflower and okra (Battery Harris), or stringy white mushrooms (Lavender Lake). At the newly opened Preserve24 on East Houston, you’ll get carrots, red onions, ramps, and jalepeños (be careful with those). Cucumbers, meanwhile, have become the red velvet cupcake of the pickle world.

New Zealand and Australia might be considered afterthoughts among New York bars and restaurants, but a new wave of Trans-Tasman spots is primed to change that. Open now are The Musket Room and Hawker Bar (pictured), with the latter spinning off Burke & Wills and the Manhattan Cricket Club later this summer.

One of the great fading charms of New York City was its lack of chains. Businesses were family-run, an end-around on the high costs of labor. Every bodega, every coffee shop had its own quirks and character. Now, in post-Giuliani/Bloomberg New York, we’ve got Home Depots and 7-11s just like any suburban strip. Park Slope has enough left-wing intolerance to have staved off chains for a while, but today Fifth Avenue welcomes 185-unit leviathan Le Pain Quotidien to the neighborhood.

Pancake bites. Portable pancakes. However you want to frame it, mini Danish pancakes filled with apple caramel, berry jam, and ham & gruyere are now in NYC with today's opening of Sugar and Plumm's new Back Room. 

Italians, as we surely know, do love to carry on the family business. After all, selling out to the corporate powers would be just so…American. And so Giuseppe Cipriani’s boys, Maggio and Ignazio, are keeping it in the clan. And though it’s almost hard to believe, this is the brand’s debut entry into a city that seems so perfectly suited to their epicurean ethos. With aesthetic nods to that most famous Venice original, Harry’s Bar (here as well, the room’s energy radiates from the bar), the new Cipriani Downtown Miami exudes their signature low-key glamour. Michele Bonan’s design incorporates striped Venetian floors, Murano chandeliers and massive windows affording gorgeous aquatic views.

It’s New York City’s deepest, darkest secret: most of the pizza served across the five boroughs is borderline inedible. Oh, you’ll eat it—no problem there—but you won’t be satisfied, and you might feel sick. There’s only so much uncooked dough and tomato-like paste the human body can handle. How do you know which hole in the wall to give your business and, more importantly, your pizza-trust?

Fatburger is landing in NYC. Next Tuesday the 11th, the west coast burger monster known for its made-to-order burgers that come in t-shirt sizes from small to XXXL, is opening its first New York spot in Murray Hill: an area already packed with other burger joints like Bareburger, Rare Bar & Grill, and Black Shack Burger.