Ninth Street Espresso isn’t only serious about its caffeinated beverage program; someone behind the espresso bar is also consciously seeking out some tasty pastries to accompany your perfect cappuccino. Selections finely complement, but do not overshadow, the main event. All selections are from Tisserie, the new-ish Union Square French bakery designed by The Rockwell Group [...]

Exhausted, exhilarated, overwhelmed, energized…. our lives are a constant, bittersweet engagement in Manhattan. We get to bed thinking about how much we’ve accomplished today and yet how many more miles we have to go tomorrow. It’s sometimes impossible to stop from the day and allow ourselves to drift into REM. Yogi Tea’s Bedtime Tea helps [...]

It’s easy to drink serious amounts of coffee, but to be a serious coffee drinker, there are few pulling a shot of the brown liqueur who are up to the standards of a true aficionado. That’s why a place like Ninth Street Espresso, which recently (confusingly) opened on 13th Street in the lobby of the [...]

As I was walking out of Chelsea Market last week, a woman approached me and a friend, and what was a quick lunch turned into free tickets to Emeril Live, a Food Network show that is shot on the second floor. After being audience members, our vision of the Bam-tastic celebrity chef was kicked up [...]

Sangria is so often paired with the summer sunshine, but with the weather so flip-floppy, it might be nice to have a pitcher resting up in the fridge for any given occasion, especially a sangria that plays off of winter notes like cranberries and spice. Using a juicy Zinfandel as a base and improving it [...]

For special events, birthdays, and gift giving, personalized cookies always add an extra touch of sweetness and charm. Something about a batch of cookies made specifically for one person or for a certain cause always makes the attraction more festive. Hardened by the fashion industry, West Village resident, Gail Dosik, became One Tough Cookie. While [...]

Enter The Little Magazine Café in Tribeca and enter into the wonderful world of proprietor Fred Parvin. The café reflects him and his interests with waves of classical music pervading the air and a music room in the back of the expansive, vivacious space. The café stocks nearly every daily newspaper, periodical, and magazine; so [...]

A recent Jacques Torres discovery sent me into chocolate bliss last week. Available in small packs at his chocolate factory on Hudson Street are dark chocolate covered cornflakes chunks. Made by blending cornflake bits and chocolate and then letting them cool and firm together, the end result is a crunchy mouthful about the size of [...]

KIND Fruit + Nut Bars are a delicious new product for the health and socially conscious set. Each one of the ten varieties of bars—Walnut+Date and Apricot+Almond being my favorites—is satisfyingly healthy. The bars have no preservatives and are wheat-, gluten-, and dairy-free. They are what an energy bar would be before mass production and [...]

My first meal of 2007 was at Todai, the all-you-can-eat sushi buffet that recently bought out Minado on 32nd Street. Minado was “the ultimate sushi buffet,” which started and operated solely on the East Coast. Todai is a larger sushi buffet chain, which started in California and now has 25 international locations. With a larger [...]