Snack Sightings: Little Somethings (and One Big Nothing)

A round up of eight under $10 snack sightings in Manhattan and Brooklyn--from Apulian Panzerotti bites to salted buttermilk biscuits, yet another cheese puff and a Korean pancake that inspired great hope, and then despair.

Read More

The Quest for the Perfect Pão de Queijo

Perhaps because she was alarmed at the pictures of my lumpen breadsticks, but also because I was so insistent on wanting to learn how to make the ultimate in cheese puffery--the pão de queijo, Tina Luisa extended an invitation to learn in her home  just a block from Scandinavia House, an hour before our meeting. I readily agreed, so taken, again, with the gemütlichkeit of our group, that a virtual stranger would invite me over to cook in her kitchen.

Read More

Puff n' Stuff for When Life is Tough

Corrado Bread and Pastry is a busy, welcoming spot in the East 70s, catering to ladies who lunch and school girls in pleated uniform mini skirts. I like many things about it: the outside dining area, the fact that, tiny as it is, it has a bathroom, that, in an area with the highest concentration of billionaires in the city, its prices are miraculously low, especially for ritzy items like prosciutto wrapped focaccia sticks ($2.75) or mini pepper brioches stuffed with chicken and basil or tuna and watercress ($3.50). 

Read More

Savory Surprise at a Sweets Stalwart

Unlike the pan de quejo at O Café, the pogácsa at The Hungarian Pastry Shop have more puff than cheese—tiny baked curlicues of Parmesan on top-- and flaky layers that separate easily as in the best Southern biscuit. Ask for them to heat it up; it will take 20 minutes in a strange hamster cage contraption that warms items just enough to soften the cold, luxurious butter.

Read More