My decades-long food colleague and friend Daniel Young, who lives in London and does many things, including posting on substack about past and present hungers, asked me if I knew of an old egg store on East 7th Street between Second and First avenues in the East Village, Manhattan, the same block where another Daniel and I live in a tenement built in 1893. The egg store is in a 1984 film by Paul Mazursky, Moscow on the Hudson, London Daniel emailed. Russian-circus saxophonist Robin Williams, who defected while his troupe negotiated a final, … [Read more...]
Archives for 2022
Born to Pasta
I've been absent and errant, for many reasons, but global tumult has sifted through everything I am. The other day, I admitted to a friend who masters a special bookshop -- which, if forever ambered, could be an Ashurbanipal or Alexandria for our rickety future -- that my daily reliance on cooking as thinking, hand-ballet, and even small achievement was waning, and I wanted to end my relationship. He stopped, struck. As we spoke, he had been sorting books and ephemera in his store's exploded back room. I already knew that New York City … [Read more...]
What a Stranger in the Family Ate
Nothing goes without saying, and I have said and written many times that my father, Harry Weinstein, was crucial to my cooking and eating life. If you have browsed this blog over the last decade you might recall his salami and eggs, or my watching him delicately prize open and slide down steamers in the clam bar at Brooklyn's long-gone shore-stadium, Lundy's. He took his food seriously, with concentration I've rarely seen elsewhere. To be sure, my mother, Edythe, cooked more food for us than Harry did: it was her task and responsibility, … [Read more...]