Columnists: Steve Cuozzo

Latest Columns

• Andrew Carmellini's Lafayette is baked in charm

   When I finally got around to ordering Lafayette’s bouillabaisse royale, an argument-starter since Andrew Carmellini’s endlessly awaited “grand cafe” opened in mid-April, they’d dropped it: “Too hot for it now,” the...   June 18, 2013

  From Food

• Drying out on Water Street

  Although the Water Street and Front Street office tower corridors look much closer to normal than they did a few months ago, several buildings are still not yet 100 percent restored after Superstorm Sandy, and some...   June 18, 2013

  From Commercial

• Harlem Shake sure can shimmy

  Harlem Shake’s eponymously named fountain treat is Mayor Bloomberg’s death-by-diabetes nightmare — a half-liquid that’s like red-velvet cake run through a blender with peanut butter and ice cream. Even the small size (...   June 12, 2013

  From Food

• It’s all Greek to Calatrava

  Now, this couldn’t possibly be true — could it? According to the Greek-American newspaper, The National Herald, architect Santiago Calatrava is “reportedly the leading candidate” to design the new Church of St. Nicholas...   June 11, 2013

  From Commercial

• Mammoths on Broadway?

  In a parallel metropolis all too close to our own . . .  Tusks clashed this week over the city’s plan to buy 100 woolly mammoths cloned by Russian scientists and, in the words of Transportation Commissioner Janette...   June 06, 2013

  From Oped Columnists

• Andrei Dellos’ two new spots are rife with head scratching missteps

  Anyone who eats out often in New York will have a lot of questions. Like, why do taco-joint waiters talk like “Downton Abbey” butlers? But the young woman in the busy communal sink area at cyclopean new Manon in the...   June 05, 2013

  From Food

• Can’t believe it’s now Butter!

  Celeb-heaven NoHo restaurant/lounge Butter will launch a Midtown outpost at the new Cassa Hotel, taking over the bilevel space that was long supposed to be for BLT American Brasserie. A rep for Butter confirmed that...   June 04, 2013

  From Real Estate

• Finding sweet-n-sour in Cherry

  ‘this place is great for a birthday — last time I thought it was for a biopsy,” my friend giggled at plush, red-velvety Cherry in the Dream Downtown Hotel. Well, you’d never guess the clubby space was last Romera, the...   May 29, 2013

  From Food

• Oculus a perk with eye to high rents

  Store rents in the Port Authority’s underground World Trade Center Transportation Hub will run as high as $550 a square foot, the city’s leading retail brokers say — as pricey as nearly anywhere in Midtown except for a...   May 28, 2013

  From Commercial

• A summerful of hot boite spots

  Memorial Day weekend augurs long, sultry months of al fresco dining. Nothing tops the sheer, silly pleasure of feeding your sun-drenched face. A meal in the open air lets us see and hear the city as we rarely do: from...   May 22, 2013

  From Food

• Bloomberg adding space

  What Bloomberg LP scandal? We can’t compete with our colleague Mark DeCambre’s May 10 bombshell revelation that Bloomberg reporters were using confidential data from company computers to spy on Goldman Sachs — which...   May 21, 2013

  From Commercial

• Pernicious plans for Penn station

  Be afraid, be very afraid, of “improvements” to Penn Station that would leave it little better than it is, while bleeding taxpayers and making commuters’ life hell for years on end. Arguments to untangle Penn Station’s...   May 20, 2013

  From Oped Columnists

• Pencil in this pensive cafe

  There’s life in the old bistro yet. Cramped, crazy-busy Le Philosophe shows how to make leaf-eating scenesters fall for duck à l’orange and lobster thermidor: lighten them just a little, and make the place look more...   May 15, 2013

  From Food

• Dahling! FiDi Cipriani is celeb-friendly again

  Victory for Cipriani Wall Street! The city has decided to build a new and shiny newsstand not in front of the venue’s red-carpet ballroom entrance, but on the next block west. We reported a few weeks ago how the plan to...   May 14, 2013

  From Commercial

• An authentic parmesan tease

  Carbone lays a big, fat uovo. Chefs Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi’s adorable Torrisi Italian Specialties indulged in small-scale presentation that avoided being precious. But at the century’s most slavishly anticipated...   May 08, 2013

  From Food

• Two stars for Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi’s new downtown spot, Carbone

  Carbone lays a big, fat uovo. Chefs Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi’s adorable Torrisi Italian Specialties indulged in small-scale presentation that avoided being precious. But at the century’s most slavishly anticipated...   May 07, 2013

  From Food

• Chuck eyes re-zone bonds

  Joining the melee over East Midtown rezoning, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) will propose today that City Hall issue bonds to pay for future transit and infrastructure improvements in the Grand Central district. Schumer...   May 07, 2013

  From Commercial

• Chowing down at Stella 34, inside Macy’s Herald Square

  Except for Koreatown and Keens, the West 30s are a restaurant wasteland. Italian’s scarce, and when you stumble on the odd grim trattoria left over from the old Garment District, you wish you hadn’t. So, new Stella 34...   May 01, 2013

  From Food

• Miracle on 54th street

  In an unusual case of close cooperation between the owners of land and leasehold, Waterman Interests has signed a new, 75-year master lease at 400 Park Ave., at 54th Street. Tod Waterman’s company made the deal with...   April 30, 2013

  From Commercial

• The velvet blunderground

  Velvet ropes are synonymous with the city’s most exclusive entertainment and party venues. But now the iconic barriers are being called upon to guard a much more pedestrian location: the rim of a big, empty sidewalk...   April 23, 2013

  From Commercial

• Cuozzo to NYC restaurants: 10 things I hate about you

  Inedible sweets. Ridiculous menus. Inquisition-style seats. There’s no end to restaurant nuisances, especially if you love exploring the city’s “must-try” spots. I’ve been to more than a few this year. Herewith, a...   April 17, 2013

  From Food

• Landmark East contest

  Of the eight Midtown East buildings being weighed for landmark status, which — if any — should be immortal? In the name of democratizing the city’s landmarks designation procedure, Realty Check invites you to weigh in....   April 16, 2013

  From Commercial

• Big 3 eyeing Hudson Yards

  Time Warner, Citibank and Ralph Lauren Polo could be the next big companies to move to mammoth new Hudson Yards on the Far West Side. All three have had talks with Hudson Yards developer Related Cos. about taking space...   April 11, 2013

  From Local

• All brine and no Pearl

  Let’s get the good news about Pearl & Ash out of the way: Open six weeks, it serves some captivating “modern and globally inspired small plates” out of an open kitchen nearly as tiny as the dishes. Chef Richard Kuo has...   April 10, 2013

  From Food

• A new century in Brooklyn

  It looks like Brooklyn’s famous Cascade smokestacks will soon go up in a puff of nostalgic memory. That Bedford-Stuyvesant location that was a linen-supply factory for more than 110 years is slated for a large new...   April 09, 2013

  From Commercial

• A misbegotten war on restaurants

  What good are punitive, minutiae-absorbed restaurant inspections that cripple perfectly safe eateries in mid-meal — but can’t protect the public from a real risk? Earlier this month, Mayor Bloomberg himself had his...   April 09, 2013

  From Oped Columnists

• In your facelift, LA!

  In the 40 years since Johnny Carson hijacked “The Tonight Show” from Rockefeller Center to Burbank, the palmy blur New Yorkers call “Los Angeles” lost most of its mystique. We sneered at LA’s empty downtown, its inept...   April 07, 2013

  From Oped Columnists

• Twirls & tricks at Harlow

  Richie Notar was famously a driving force behind Nobu for 20 years. But nobody at Harlow, his splashy, sexy new Midtown “Old Hollywood Glamour Joint” (as a Times puff piece called it) is asking him about that. They want...   April 03, 2013

  From Food

• New towers turn Big Apple into Spec City

  Two new Manhattan office towers now going up will soon bring 900,000 expensive square feet to market. Not a square inch of that space has been pre-leased. Yet their developers seem unfazed. How can this be, given...   April 02, 2013

  From Commercial

• Manzanilla brings modern Spanish food back to Manhattan

  New York is finally starting to “get” modern Spanish cuisine. Not that catching up with the civilized world came easily: For years, whenever a brave chef or owner launched a quixotic quest to bring the style here, they...   March 27, 2013

  From Food

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