With the new season comes many important questions: Where to eat? What to cook? What to pair it with? And where better to get the insiders’ opinions than at the New York City Wine & Food Festival? Talking up native New Yorkers and food industry mavens at the Grand Tasting then listening to the NY Insiders Panel with Master Sommelier Laura DePasquale left us with plenty to chew on.
Butternut Squash Soup By David Diaz of Brasserie Beaumarchais
What You’ll Need One medium sized butternut squash from the farmers market, peeled and seeded How to Make the Soup 1. Cut squash into large chunks. Place squash and star anise into a pot with enough room to cover with water. Cover with water. How to Make the Crème Fraiche Topping In a bowl mix crème fraiche and cinnamon and a pinch of salt. How to Plate the Dish Place 10 marshmallows in the center of a soup bowl, use a blow torch and brown to the degree which you desire. Heat soup. Pour the hot soup into the bowl. Drizzle cinnamon crème fraiche and enjoy! |
What Fall Ingredients Should We Be Using?
Beets and Squash. Chef David Diaz of Brasserie Beaumarchais is all about the beets. He’s serving them this fall as a salad of roasted reds, yellows and candy canes with pistachio goat cheese. Diaz’s festival taste, however, highlighted another root vegetable: squash (see sidebar for squash soup recipe).
Sunchokes. Chef Christopher Cipollone of Tenpenny praised the sunchoke for its versatility. “You can enjoy them as a soup, sautéed, as chips, baked, boiled, fried…whatever you can do with the potato you do with a sunchoke.” You can also make a sunchoke “soil,” as Cipollone did for his grand tasting dish, by deeply caramelizing the vegetables, then combining them with flour, forming the mixture into a cake, baking it and then grinding it in a food processor.
Best Thai in NYC
Chef Cipollone falls back on Woodside’s Sripraphai.
Best Culinary Getaways Near NYC
For a short and delicious trip out of the city, Chef Cipollone puts The Cookery in Dobbs Ferry, Crabtree’s Kittle House in Chappaqua, and Pour Cafe and Wine Bar in Mt. Kisco at the top of his favorite food destinations near NYC.
Best Meat Provider in NYC
Frank Prisinzano, the man behind the East Village trio Frank, Lil’ Frankies and Supper, and new LES restaurant Sauce (a grocery meets demonstration space) is stoked about the organic, heritage breed birds he gets at Madani Halal in Ozone Park.
Best Health Food (and Beverage) Spots in NYC
Tara Sheena from the Village Voice raved about Park Slope’s The Green Kitchen and went on to recommend getting coffee at ‘sNice or a chai at Ozzie’s.
Best Tacos in NYC
Queens native Diaz claims the tacos from the tiny Taqueria La Casa Del Idolo in Corona are even tastier than those from El Idolo’s fleet of Queens and Manhattan taco trucks.
Best BYOB Joints in NYC
Laura Manniec of Corkbuzz Wine Studio likes to bring her own bottle(s) to Carroll Gardens pizza and calzone haven Lucali.
John Ragan, wine director at Eleven Madison Park, loves bringing his own to the intimate Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare (a crowd favorite of the NY Insider’s Panel). Ragan’s other favorite spot for special occasions is Blue Hill at Stone Barns.
Best Locally-Produced Wines
When it comes to drinking local, Manniec enjoys Bridghampton-bottled Channing Daughters. Master Sommelier DePasquale reaches for a Hermann Wiemer Riesling from the Finger Lakes. Natalie Tapken, wine director at Lure Fishbar and Burger & Barrel, sticks to the boroughs with Brooklyn Winery and the Red Hook winery.
Sarah Knapp is a Brooklyn based entrepreneur whose love for the outdoors and community building led her to the October 2013 creation of OutdoorFest. She has a BA in History, is a Wilderness First Responder and a NY state hiking, camp and boating guide. Her proudest achievement to date is reading the Aeneid in Latin. 
Allison was one of our first top writers and Chief Editor but is no longer working with offMetro. Allison is a native New Yorker, who has lived in Rome, Tuscany, Melbourne, Toronto and Los Angeles. She frequently contributed travel pieces to Family Travel Forum, using her own children as guinea pigs as they travel the globe. She never missed a chance to sample local delicacies, as her love for travel goes hand-in-hand with her love for food and wine. 
Josh Laskin is a freelance travel writer and photographer based in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. When he is not at work or on the road, you can find him in the mountains snowboarding, climbing, hiking, fly fishing, mountain biking, and eating bagel bites.
Annie is a travel writer, environmentalist, and surfer based in Venice, CA. She heads up our West Coast team, keeps our grammatical errors in check, and makes sure our California writers always have a plan for their next adventure. Follow Annie’s travels @annelisemcb.
Carly Pifer is a freelance writer who has been known to follow whims inspired by romantic movie scenes or colorful street style shots to India, Japan, Tunisia and Argentina. After stints living in Seoul, Boston, Paris and Los Angeles, writing and searching for something intangible, she landed somewhat steadily in Brooklyn and has begun to find inspiration in her more immediate surroundings. 
Kate E. O’Hara is a New York based freelance writer and photographer who loves all things food—especially the people who make it and market it. Her writing aims to capture the essence of the food experience; the stories that go well beyond a plate of ingredients. In addition to her love of food, Kate is also known to have a hankering for red wine and craft beer. You can also find Kate on Instagram