Cookbooks for the season just dropped, London is eating itself silly, and the internet still cannot leave cottage cheese alone
It is the fat middle of fall publishing season, which means your mail carrier is basically a cookbook delivery service now. London had about six restaurants open in the same two weeks, Tokyo got a minimalist dining room from an architect who usually does monasteries, and somewhere a block of feta is still being roasted into submission. Here is what is actually worth your attention.
Her latest, out October 20, keeps to the Garten formula of unfussy, well-tested recipes built for a dinner party that looks harder than it was. It published this week and is already stacked at the front of every bookstore in America.
Preorder or just buy it at the counter, it's already out
A small, focused book on one ingredient, with 25 olive recipes plus cocktails, trivia, and buying and storing advice, out October 13. Single-ingredient cookbooks are having a moment and this one treats the olive like it deserves a whole shelf.
Good gift for the person who always orders the olive plate
See the book and two recipes →
101 recipes that pull from Indian cooking and a wider global pantry, built around her own immigrant story, out October 13. It is being shipped and shelved right now, and it is the kind of memoir-cookbook that reads as well as it cooks.
Read the first chapter before you cook from it, the stories are the point
See the book and two recipes →
Sushi master Endo Kazutoshi is opening a ten seat counter in a Chelsea townhouse this month, more than a year after his old restaurant at the Rotunda closed following a fire. It's the most fought over reservation in London right now, the kind of opening that makes a sushi obsessed city lose its mind.
Start trying for a table now, it seats ten
The team behind the beloved Farringdon restaurant Cloth spent a year restoring Simpson's Tavern, a 269 year old City chophouse once frequented by Dickens, and reopened it this October. It's a rare case of a historic London room getting its life back instead of becoming flats or a bank branch.
Go for the dishes that nod to the old tavern menu
Daniel Calvert's first solo restaurant opened in Azabudai Hills at the start of October, with interiors by the British architect John Pawson. It paired a serious chef with one of the world's most restrained designers, and the result has become the thing people in Tokyo are talking about this month.
Book ahead, it's new and already drawing attention
People are blending cottage cheese into pasta sauces, whipping it into a stand in for ice cream, and baking it into cloud bread, all chasing the protein without much extra effort. It has outlasted most of its viral cousins this year because it is cheap, flexible, and does the job without turning your kitchen into a production.
Start with the whipped version on toast before you commit to a whole pasta sauce
Rice paper, usually a soft wrapper, gets moistened, stuffed with leftovers, then pan fried until the outside turns shatteringly crisp and sliced open to show the filling. It is the rare viral trick that is genuinely about texture, not just a good camera angle, and it is a legitimately smart way to use up fridge scraps.
Use whatever vegetables and herbs are wilting in your crisper, then dunk in peanut lime sauce
This is chef Thomas Straker's first restaurant outside London, set up in the old Lucky Strike space on Grand Street. It opened October 10 and is the loudest import of the month, four years running in London before crossing over.
Walk in or book ahead, a space this talked about in its first weeks fills fast
An all day bakery and bistro from Delmonico's Hospitality Group, with an open kitchen so you can watch the bread get shaped and baked from the counter. It opened last week and is part of a wider states-wide expansion for the historic steakhouse's parent company.
Go for breakfast, it serves six days a week
The Danish coffee and cardamom bun import opened a new cafe and bakery inside Lantern House. It opened last weekend and is the city's newest entry in the cardamom bun conversation.
Go early for the buns before the espresso line forms
A new SoHo bakery selling a single sourdough rye loaf for sixty dollars, which has turned into the city's running argument about whether viral bread is worth the sticker shock. The lines are still forming and the debate over whether the novelty outlasts the price is still very much live.
Go on a weekday morning if you want to actually get one
The 42 year old Lenox Hill trattoria is closing for good on November 1, after a petition and a brief reprieve earlier this year failed to change the landlord's mind. Regulars are showing up this week to say goodbye, and an Instagram account covering the neighborhood called it a wave hitting people's DMs.
Get a table before November 1 if you have any history with the place
Daniel Humm's big new downtown adjacent restaurant opened in mid October to immediate attention, the kind that makes every other opening that week look smaller by comparison. It is the opening other restaurants are being measured against right now in the trade press.
Start trying for a reservation now, it will not get easier
The Danish import's signature bun, built around the coffee and bun pairing that made the brand's name before it ever left Denmark. It just opened at Lantern House and this is the first week to catch it before the crowds figure out the hours.
Go on a weekday morning, before the after work crowd
One loaf, sixty dollars, the thing half of food Instagram has an opinion about this month. Worth tasting once just to have your own opinion while the argument is still fresh.
Call ahead or arrive early, they are known to sell out
A citywide autumn food and wine festival with vendors and tastings. It lands November 7, just inside the two week window.
Book tickets ahead, autumn food festivals in New York tend to sell out their early sessions
An Italian food and culture festival in SoHo, built around Italian producers and makers. It runs November 12, a date worth planning a Thursday around.
Grab a ticket now while early pricing holds
Earlier: Wednesday, October 28Tuesday, October 27Monday, October 26Sunday, October 25Friday, October 23
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