Tasting Table -- Food, Wine, Cooking, Recipes and Restaurant Personalities

Search Results: "Chocolate"

Wed. 28 Oct '09

Cooking

Make your own chocolate at home. Let's be honest: Until you own a conch and make friends with some Brazilian farmers, you won't be the next Jacques Torres or Michel... more
Tue. 09 Jun '09

Cooking

All-American chocolates from Hawaii. The vast majority of artisanal-chocolate producers work with beans shipped in from far-off lands. There hasn't even been an... more
Mon. 16 Feb '09

People

ChocoVivo's intense new chocolate made the old Aztec way. We believe excellent chocolate is close to high art. Of course, great art can only come from a great... more
Tue. 17 Mar '09

Cooking

Milk's minty milk shake for St. Patty's Day. Every year around St. Patrick's Day, people obsess over McDonald's Shamrock Shake, the somewhat elusive green, minty frozen... more
Fri. 14 Nov '08

People

The Mast brothers are leading New York's bean-to-bar charge. The status of high-end microbatch chocolate is quickly catching up to its cult coffee counterparts: Mass... more
Mon. 12 Oct '09

Cooking

Take a field trip to an artisanal epicenter. Few things are better than chocolate, and while we're partial to just about all forms of cacao, Taza makes one of our... more
Mon. 20 Jul '09

People

Kee's handmade chocolate truffles rule. Truffles, no matter how fancy, aren't really worth eating unless they are made that day. That's one reason why Kee Ling Tong... more
Mon. 01 Jun '09

Cooking

Jacques Torres Ice Cream opens in Dumbo. Even Jacques Torres agrees that comfort food is a saving grace in the fallen economy. After noticing a drop in sales for his... more
Fri. 09 Oct '09

People

Jacques Torres turns beans into bars in time for his Chelsea Market debut. Over the years, Jacques Torres's brand has grown to include multiple chocolate emporiums, an... more
Mon. 17 Aug '09

People

Timothy Childs stops at nothing for better chocolate. Meet Timothy Childs, equal parts candy man and mad scientist. His four-year-old company, TCHO, was among the... more
Fri. 05 Sep '08

People

New York's ice cream wunderkind is no Mister Softee. New York went food-truck crazy this summer (really, one Belgian waffle truck franchise wasn't enough?). And when it... more
Mon. 31 Aug '09

Dining

Five ways to weather the shoulder season. Summer is drawing to a close and though the lingering heat makes it hard to believe, it'll be sweater weather any minute. Here... more
Tue. 09 Dec '08

Drinks

The city’s best hot chocolate comes from the freezer.. Symbiosis is a remarkable thing: Bees have flowers, Tom has Katie, and the Roasting Plant has Il Laboratorio... more
Fri. 19 Jun '09

Dining

Cookies and ice cream never tasted better. Ice cream sandwiches are no longer just a childhood afterthought or a cheap date at Diddy Riese. Today's combination of fresh... more
Tue. 16 Jun '09

Dining

Intelligentsia brings serious coffee to Abbot Kinney. You already know Intelligentsia doesn't skimp on quality with its coffee, but there are reasons to check out... more
Wed. 25 Mar '09

Dining

Stogo's dairy-free desserts are surprisingly delightful. Dairy-free ice cream is great in theory, but most producers add artificial ingredients to the recipe to make up... more
Fri. 23 Jan '09

Cooking

A sweet-and-savory love affair for Valentine's Day. When it comes to cheese and Valentine's Day, we tend to think of stuffed animals and sappy cards. But cheesemonger... more
Thu. 19 Nov '09

Dining

The humble vegetable joins the pastry party. Most home cooks reserve the parsnip for roasting, mashing and blending into soups. But pastry chefs know better: This humble,... more
Fri. 20 Nov '09

Cooking

A Jefferson Park favorite comes to Old Town. For a decade, Jefferson Park's Delightful Pastries has been a neighborhood favorite for its eclectic, international array of... more
Mon. 02 Nov '09

People

A new local confectioner puts serious savory into her sweets. Salt is an essential component of pastry. Anything beyond that--say, hand-blended curry powder, roasted... more
Wed. 15 Jul '09

Dining

Get fired up for Nickel Diner's s'mores cake. When Nickel Diner's pastry chef, Sharlena Fong, created the maple-bacon glazed donut, a sweet-and-savory star was born. Now,... more
Wed. 24 Jun '09

Dining

Gelato + brioche = the perfect portable snack. Few foods kick-start the day like an eggy brioche--except when the mercury rises. The solution: Shove some gelato... more
Wed. 25 Mar '09

Dining

It was inevitable. Cupcake, meet bacon.. Bacon's sweet-smoky essence has found its way into every corner of our lives, including our medicine cabinets, pockets, closets... more
Wed. 05 Aug '09

Drinks

A.M. meets P.M. in these coffee-flavored beers. As we enter a golden age of Grade A coffee and beer (and peak iced-coffee season), it's a no-brainer that brewers are... more
Mon. 26 Oct '09

Cooking

Put some local love into your Halloween treats . As Halloween approaches, swap that bag of mini chocolate bars for something a little more palatable (for your body and... more
Mon. 20 Jul '09

Dining

Get a taste of Rick Bayless's Xoco before it opens . Rick Bayless returned from a recent trip to Oaxaca with some good news: "What we're doing is every bit as good as... more
Fri. 19 Jun '09

Cooking

The Heartland's best ice cream comes to Brooklyn. You're going to want to meet this new Midwest transplant: Jeni Britton Bauer, whose luscious small-batch ice creams have... more
Mon. 18 May '09

Cooking

Three Tarts sells one-bite sweets at bite-size prices. When wallets start to thin, the sweetest things in life are the first to go. Fortunately, one Chelsea shop is... more
Mon. 04 May '09

Dining

Compartes' gelato and sorbets are as unique as its truffles. Compartes has come a long way since Frank Sinatra would dip in for chocolate-covered fruit. When Jonathan... more
Wed. 01 Oct '08

Drinks

Five surprising cheese pairings from Casellula’s fromager. At Casellula, a sleek Hell's Kitchen wine bar known for its inventive cheese pairings, fromager Tia... more
Wed. 11 Nov '09

Cooking

Let McCormick Gourmet Spices enliven your meal. In the budding stages of the holiday season, it's a time when home cooks dig out their sauce-stained, dog-eared recipe... more
Fri. 28 Aug '09

Cooking

BabyCakes's vegan doughnuts have us deliciously fooled. Who said it's impossible to make a healthy doughnut that tastes as good as the real (fried) thing? We did--and... more
Tue. 14 Jul '09

Cooking

Kopali Organics' feel-good snacks. If our national appetite was a Venn diagram, with overlapping circles for our growing hunger for exotic flavors, our desire for all... more
Fri. 10 Jul '09

People

Zingerman's deli does Bacon 101. Everybody knows bacon, but not everyone knows great bacon. Ari Weinzweig, proprietor of Zingerman's in Ann Arbor, Michigan, didn't even... more
Fri. 26 Jun '09

Cooking

The city's freshest (and most authentic?) lobster roll. Every summer, a familiar debate runs down the East Coast: What's the proper way to make a lobster roll? Plenty of... more
Fri. 26 Jun '09

Drinks

Flawless food-and-beer pairing online . Wine sommeliers spend years sharpening their skills, sniffing and swishing hundreds of vintages so they can suggest perfect... more
Fri. 01 May '09

Cooking

Culture your own curds with this easy home recipe. If the apocalypse should come, Brooklyn could sustain itself deliciously: The borough already produces chocolate, beer,... more
Fri. 24 Apr '09

Cooking

Cooking soft-shell crabs doesn't have to be hard work . Every delicacy has its flaw: chocolate is fattening; truffles are outrageously priced; and crabs are a hell of a... more
Mon. 06 Apr '09

Cooking

Say "Buona Pasqua" with a legendary Italian Easter cake. We've always envied the trappings of a traditional Italian Easter: While we gnaw on chocolate bunnies and sweaty... more
Fri. 03 Apr '09

People

These art-inspired cookies are (almost) too pretty to eat. We've seen cookies inspired by everything from politicians to pottery. But fine art? When the edible is as... more
Fri. 03 Apr '09

Dining

Change things up at Piccolo's reversal-wine dinners . Piccolo Ristorante loves playing with role reversal: The owner hosts, the sommelier serves food, and the chef... more
Tue. 16 Dec '08

Dining

Top pastry chefs are elevating this Christmassy confection to new heights. Sadly, a Three Musketeers bar is usually as close as we get to real nougat. But during the... more
Mon. 17 Nov '08

Dining

Yuzu delivers gorgeous, ready-made (and healthy!) dinner parties . We all love going to holiday parties, but hosting one can bring a bigger headache than an eggnog... more
Mon. 26 Jan '09

Dining

Forget dinner: This year, book a romantic Valentine's Day brunch. Before you scramble to make Valentine's Day dinner reservations like every other doting couple, consider... more
Wed. 18 Nov '09

Dining

Things are looking up at Hollywood's Osteria La Buca. Good, home-style Italian cooking doesn't always have to come from Mama. And now, with Alberto Lazzarino in the... more
Tue. 17 Nov '09

Wine

Wines for pumpkin pie and beyond, from Tasting Table and The Noble Grape. A festive meal calls for an equally celebratory progression of wines. We've made your... more
Tue. 17 Nov '09

Cooking

DeLise Café takes holiday dessert in a new direction. We mean no offense to Grandma's pecan pie. But one of the easiest ways to breathe life into Thanksgiving is... more
Fri. 06 Nov '09

Wine

'Inoteca offers coveted wines at fire-sale prices. Brothers Jason and Joe Denton have compiled one of the city's best Italian-wine lists at the Third Ave. location of... more
Fri. 06 Nov '09

Wine

Josh Kaplan crafts a Tasting Table-only wine flight at ENO. Josh Kaplan's ongoing mission is to find "drinkable overachievers"--wines that stand out for their character,... more
Tue. 03 Nov '09

Wine

Discover Washington State's powerhouse Syrah. Located near the border of Oregon, Walla Walla, Washington, is a surprising wine destination to some. But one grape, Syrah,... more
Mon. 02 Nov '09

Drinks

San Francisco's Blue Bottle Coffee comes to Venice. If you've ever been to Blue Bottle Coffee Co. in San Francisco, you know about the seemingly endless lines of people... more
Mon. 26 Oct '09

Drinks

A new book spotlights the craft-beer explosion. The streets are flowing with artisanal beer these days, so it's about time we understood what we're drinking. Thankfully,... more
Fri. 23 Oct '09

Cooking

A definitive guide to throwing big parties in tiny kitchens. Zora O'Neill and Tamara Reynolds don't place much stock in fancy linens and seating charts. Their idea of a... more
Tue. 20 Oct '09

People

Send a better get-well basket . At this point in the season, we all know someone who's down with a cold or the flu, and we want to help him or her feel better--even if... more
Tue. 13 Oct '09

Dining

Lulu and Mooky's makes better ice cream through science. Using liquid nitrogen is a favorite trick among Top Chef contestants and practitioners of molecular gastronomy,... more
Mon. 12 Oct '09

Drinks

Heartland Brewery breaks out its first limited-edition beer. Until recently, if you wanted to tip back one of Heartland Brewery's beers, you had to hoof it to one of the... more
Mon. 21 Sep '09

People

Paul Virant stores the season in a mason jar. There are no skeletons in Paul Virant's closet--just mason jars. Nearly 5,000 of them, in fact. Virant is known for the... more
Fri. 18 Sep '09

Drinks

Get an inside look (and taste) at Skyscraper Brewing. Phillip Sutton sees himself as a counterrevolutionist to extreme beer making. At Skyscraper Brewing, he's not... more
Fri. 11 Sep '09

Cooking

Ground cherries are the season's best-tasting identity crisis . Today's market-goers are versed in grape varietals, wild strawberries and alternative salad greens... more
Fri. 04 Sep '09

Drinks

Chew, sip and discuss at the Great Taste Debates Party. It's been a heated summer--in more ways than one. As the mercury rose, so did the intensity of the discussions at... more
Fri. 28 Aug '09

Drinks

Discover the brave new world of iced coffee drinks. When it comes to cool, sweet caffeinated drinks, the big coffee chains have nothing on our indie coffeehouses. Leave... more
Tue. 25 Aug '09

Cooking

Homemade yogurt is one of Zebda's revelatory tastes. At Zebda, the tiny Mediterranean-Middle Eastern deli that opened in June on the edge of Albany Park, you'll find... more
Fri. 14 Aug '09

Cooking

Try Fritz Pastry's not-too-sweet afternoon snack. Watching Nathaniel Meads deftly work what will soon become a Danish, it's obvious--the man loves his dough. He opened... more
Mon. 10 Aug '09

People

Kiss My Bundt's Chrysta Wilson takes the cake . Growing up in the South, Bundt cakes were as commonplace as sweet tea to Chrysta Wilson. So when the community organizer... more
Fri. 07 Aug '09

Dining

An Italian standard turns 25 years young. When Spiaggia opened in 1984, fine dining in Chicago--and across the country--was synonymous with French cuisine. "Italian food"... more
Fri. 31 Jul '09

Dining

Some cool and tasty highlights from the month. The dog days of summer mean long, hot--really hot--days. Here are a few tips we've kept on ice for you. • Nancy... more
Wed. 29 Jul '09

Dining

Small plates replace pizza at the Santa Monica restaurant. Sometimes even a successful restaurant needs a little change. After less than a year, chef Jason Travi has... more
Mon. 20 Jul '09

Drinks

Taste your way through the largest bitters selection in town. Every bartender knows that a dash of bitters adds subtle flavor to any cocktail, and when it comes to buying... more
Wed. 15 Jul '09

People

A Chicago-born Italian makes the city's sweetest lobster roll . Culinary school can provide a valuable education, but going door-to-door in Sicily, begging elderly bakers... more
Fri. 10 Jul '09

Dining

Hit three of Astoria's best Greek spots in one easy itinerary. Drinks: Ovelia Hop on one of the outside bar stools at this white-washed restaurant (pictured) for a... more
Fri. 03 Jul '09

People

Kris Swanberg's Nice Cream is a cross-town culinary effort. When teacher Kris Swanberg got laid off last summer, she turned to her never-used ice cream maker and, in her... more
Tue. 23 Jun '09

Dining

Pastry chef Karen DeMasco sweetens the deal at Locanda Verde. Consider this a thank-you note to Cleveland: The towering talents behind the new Locanda Verde--chef Andrew... more
Tue. 16 Jun '09

Drinks

Refreshing horchata goes behind the bar. Huge jars of milky-white horchata are a familiar sight at taquerias and the Red Hook ball fields, but this summer, the Latin... more
Thu. 11 Jun '09

Dining

When it comes to good eats, Oakland is no longer San Francisco's insignificant neighbor to the east. Here's proof.. Picán Chef Dean Dupuis of Atlanta's South City... more
Wed. 10 Jun '09

Dining

Valerie Confections goes to the farmers' market. Valerie Confections has garnered a national following for artisanal toffee, hand-crafted chocolates and petits fours, but... more
Fri. 22 May '09

Dining

Three new spots to fill your weekend picnic basket. Memorial Day weekend isn't just the unofficial start to summer--it's also the kick off for picnic season. Thankfully,... more
Thu. 21 May '09

Dining

Let local insiders (and your appetite) be your guide on these culinary field trips. Scratch that Sex in the City bus tour or Duck Boat jaunt off your itinerary: This... more
Wed. 20 May '09

Wine

Drink around the globe at the new Pourtal wine bar. You'll find the self-serve Enomatic wine dispensers--get a pre-paid card, slip it in a slot for a taste--at many wine... more
Wed. 13 May '09

Dining

FIKA spreads the Scandinavian lifestyle . Swedes lead a charmed life, from their unified design aesthetic down to their daily fika--an extended, leisurely coffee... more
Wed. 13 May '09

Drinks

Ice cream in root beer, beer and...port?. Drinking a classic ice cream float has a certain Norman Rockwell-innocence, but it shouldn't be relegated to nostalgia: Today's... more
Mon. 04 May '09

Dining

Catch a rising star in Chicago. Whether it's scoping the Beatles at the Cavern Club or scooping up Google stock at the IPO, everyone loves to get in on the ground floor.... more
Fri. 01 May '09

Dining

Hatfield's is now one of the best dining deals in town. When the economy started tanking, Quinn and Karen Hatfield didn't come up with recession-dining gimmicks for... more
Tue. 21 Apr '09

Cooking

Cook and consume consciously with treats from these eco purveyors. We'll use any excuse to turn a holiday into a food-focused event, especially when it aligns with our... more
Tue. 21 Apr '09

Dining

Cool off with summertime's new sundae. With temperatures already hitting the 100-degree mark, our culinary battle to beat the heat is officially on. This year we have new... more
Thu. 19 Mar '09

Dining

Visiting Beantown? Make time for these hot tables. . From lavish Japanese to rustic Italian, Boston's latest restaurants have something for every appetite. Hungry Mother... more
Mon. 09 Mar '09

People

Meet Andrew Steiner of Andrew's Cheese Shop. Cheesemonger Andrew Steiner isn't one for formalities. Instead of waxing poetic about something like Hook's 12-year-old... more
Wed. 25 Feb '09

Wine

Top Napa wineries offer little-brother labels at a deep discount . If you're sporting more DKNY than Donna Karan lately, try the same strategy with your wines by buying... more
Wed. 25 Feb '09

Cooking

The Deli at Little Dom's panna cotta-to-go. When the Deli at Little Dom's opened in Los Feliz earlier this year, locals quickly swooped in for muffaletta... more
Tue. 17 Feb '09

Dining

Afternoon tea at the Patisserie at the Bazaar . After enjoying dinner at Rojo y Blanca or drinks at Bar Centro at the SLS Hotel, you probably ogled the Patisserie's... more
Tue. 03 Feb '09

Drinks

Celebrate Sixpoint's birthday with a new beer and a month-long party. If Brooklyn had an official goodwill ambassador, it would be Sixpoint Craft Ales, the Red Hook... more
Tue. 06 Jan '09

Dining

An ideal itinerary for this design-driven neighborhood. Meet Up: 68 Jay St. BarWeeknight bonding begins with $3 drafts at this brick-walled haunt, where local art dealers... more
Fri. 19 Dec '08

Wine

Three of this year’s best wine values, plus a discount. Although 2008 is almost over, we still have some of the year's most important wine purchases ahead of us: A... more
Mon. 15 Dec '08

Cooking

Stop by Formaggio Essex for one-of-a-kind gifts (and a discount!). Our favorite source for last-minute, one-of-a-kind edible gifts is tucked way in the back of the Essex... more
Fri. 24 Oct '08

Dining

A three-point plan for a perfect Sunday at the Brooklyn Flea. Eye-Opener: OleaSleepy-eyed Brooklynites line up early for brunch at Olea, which brings Mediterranean... more
Fri. 17 Oct '08

Dining

Art-inspired food at three museum cafés. Neue Galerie/Café SabarskyThe Neue Galerie's new Alfred Kubin exhibit features dark, nightmarish works by the... more
Tue. 30 Sep '08

People

Bierkraft’s Ben Granger picks his favorite fall brews. If Brooklyn has an emissary of great beer, it's 31-year-old Ben Granger, a former pastry chef who co-owns... more
Fri. 12 Sep '08

Dining

Try the East Village's other tiny, chef-driven restaurant. It's a bold move to serve pork buns just steps away from Momofuku. But Jehangir Mehta, a former Jean-Georges... more
Thu. 04 Sep '08

Dining

Three stops make a perfect night out in the land of lofts. Meet-Up: Smith & Mills. Cozy up to the tiny, steamship-themed bar for excellent Negronis—or, if... more
Tue. 03 Mar '09

Cooking

A new cookbook for low-tech bakers. In these strapped-for-cash times, even noncooks are heading into the kitchen to test their culinary skills. It's a state of affairs... more