The Manhattan Times

I think I’m going to have to get a spray bottle.

The NY1 weather report is Ramon Morel’s boss. If it’s 60 degrees or above you can find him on the same corner day in and day out until the temperature drops again. His days off are at night, he jokes.

The Next Door restaurant (above) will be joined with its sister eatery, 107 West, in the coming weeks. The new menu will be a combination of the distinct offerings of each restaurants.

Papered windows and construction signs at the former 107 West restaurant on W.187^th Street has caused concern among many local residents. Many fear changes to the neighborhood institution and its sister restaurant, Next Door, next door.

(See correction at the end of article)

Company and conversation always makes a meal better, even if it’s with strangers.

Owner Mike Hassan and his family all run Tabouli. Photo: Corinne Ramey

by Corinne Ramey

As a boy growing up in Washington Heights, Mike Hassan spent much of his time in the kitchen. He followed around his Palestinian relatives, watching them prepare traditional Middle Eastern foods, and spent time watching the Food Network. He always felt that something was missing from his neighborhood.

Inside what was formerly a typical Caridad – in the neighborhood tradition of serving traditional Dominican food – is now a dimly lit, date-friendly chic establishment where television screens, nestled in dark wood paneled walls, show Head Chef Harold Breton wrestling with sugarcane as he prepares a meal.

Despite the local trend, the owners of Bangkok Heights, the new Thai restaurant on W. 181 Street and Pinehurst Avenue (what was formerly Jesse’s Place), have no interest whatsoever in fusion. A cook in New York restaurants for nearly 40 years, co-owner Noy Tongchareon remembers 10 years ago when everyone was obsessed with mixing Asian ingredients with American or European cooking methods. “Everything was fusion, fusion, fusion,” he said.

Nearly a hundred college students in white aprons and tall paper chef hats crowded around Yeshiva University President Richard Joel, Thu., March 11, in a YU auditorium, leaning in close to catch Joel’s first reactions to what he was eating. Joel’s discerning palate was called to service to cast the tie-breaking vote in a three-way tie in the second ever Yeshiva University Cholent Cook-off.

Starting in Inwood, a Brooklyn blogger has set out to eat his way through every pizzeria in the city. He  goes only by Colin, lest pizzeria owners catch onto his identity and begin to serve him a “dishonestly good slice.”

On a Friday night at this time of year in the 1950s, you’d be hard pressed to find a soul on the streets, let alone inside a restaurant. Most families stayed home in strict observance of Lent, the 40-day period of penitence and abstention in the Roman Catholic tradition from late February to early April, remembers Coogan’s Restaurant owner Peter Walsh, who grew up in the Irish Catholic neighborhood of Yorkville.