Shauna Lyon

What’s happening this season in art, theatre, TV, music, dance, and movies.

Hallie Meyer’s gelato project expands from Union Square to Greenpoint, offering bounteous daily flavors topped with luscious imported Italian cream.

Summer Culture Preview

It’s clear that Aguilar values beauty and craftsmanship, from the clean design of the pristine cooking stations to the handsome ceramic and wooden serving pieces and the meticulous plating. If you sit at the main, black-quartz bar (the seats are all barstools, and the best face the long, open galley kitchen), you can watch the ballet of chefs as one of them—often Aguilar himself—crafts, say, a perfect crab tostada, piling fresh jumbo lump meat with serrano pepper, avocado crema, and copious lime…

Shauna Lyon Goings On editor With spring showers come joyous flowers and lots and lots of culture, in a season that is more packed than ever—or, at least, since 2019. In shows grand and small, there’s no denying that a certain artistic frisson is in the air—from the oft-reliable bellwether the Whitney Biennial to Mark Morris on Burt Bacharach, from a climate-change piece directed by the delightful boundary pusher Peter Sellars to that stirrer of our youthful souls Olivia Rodrigo. Broadway is as…

Kampimarn—who grew up in Udon Thani, in northeast Thailand, and came to the U.S. thirteen years ago—once cooked at the highly praised Somtum Der, in Red Hook, but it was with the pre-service family meals that he auditioned his recipes; these became the basis for the menu at UnTable. The appetizer Yum Samgler, which evokes a jaunty fruit ceviche, is more poignant with a primer: Yum refers to cold salad, in this case a refreshing medley of cherry tomato, grapes, fig, strawberry, and avocado, and S…

In early June, when smoke from Canadian wildfires engulfed New York City in an otherworldly orange haze, Clark Hodgin set out to capture the eerie scene, for Carolyn Kormann’s first-person dispatch. Hodgin’s collection of uncannily beautiful images of iconic spots includes one in Central Park, where kids who have taken to the irresistible boulders appear frozen in amber, a cell phone in hand, backpacks and all. The image underlines the strangeness of that dystopian moment, which was surreal and…

Shauna Lyon Goings On editor For our winter culture preview, our critics round up the most exciting events on the jam-packed calendar. Oscar season—which kicked off earlier than usual, this summer, with two culture-dominating blockbusters—is in full swing, with such delights as Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro,” a bio-pic of Leonard Bernstein centered on his love life; Ava DuVernay’s “Origin,” about the journalist Isabel Wilkerson’s path to writing the seminal book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent…

Fong On has been in Eng’s family since the original opened on Mott Street, in 1933; for decades, it sold tofu up and down the Eastern Seaboard, “because there weren’t many manufacturers,” Eng told me. “Even Philadelphia didn’t have their own tofu.” But Asian communities—Chinese in particular—as they grew, started making their own, and business slowed; by 2017, Eng’s brother closed the shop’s doors. Eng, the fifth son, had cycled through many artistic pursuits—from rock guitarist to photographer…

For Lee, Nowon was hard-won, though rather meteorically. In 2017, the chef, who had cooked his way up the ladder for Floyd Cardoz, Masaharu Morimoto, and Dale Talde, landed an executive-chef position at Hotel 50 Bowery’s Rice & Gold. He hadn’t yet turned thirty. “I was too comfortable,” he told me. “I need to be in the fire.” So he quit, and, in April, 2019, started a pop-up in the East Village’s Black Emperor bar, selling burgers, chopped-cheese rice cakes, fried chicken. “I was a one-man show,…

The chef Austin Johnson’s upstate farm supplies both his town-house restaurant, which offers tasting and à-la-carte menus, and Rigor Hill Market, next door.

William Djuric, who grew up in New York, opened a fast-casual restaurant in the West Village, serving warming goulash, irresistible burek, and ideal krofne.

The owners of King, in SoHo, have opened a stylish Italian restaurant focussed on pasta and wine, with views of the skating rink and the Prometheus statue.

The chef Jeremy Salamon’s grandmothers provide inspiration for impeccable pastries and exceptionally thoughtful dishes at this breakfast-and-lunch counter-service spot in Crown Heights.

After closing in 2019, the adored neighborhood restaurant has opened in a new West Village location, where the chef continues to serve signature dishes such as Insalata di Cavolo, pan-fried gnocchi, and Pollo al Forno.

On a recent night around six, as bombastic classical music hinted at the drama to come, Shani himself, in the midst of several other chefs, worked in the open kitchen. It’s an excellent show for the ten-seat counter, along which piles of food provide a barrier of sorts—peak strawberries, figs, giant scallions, crab legs. The “Display only” sign, scrawled in what looks like purple lipstick, doesn’t apply to the chefs, who carve off octopus tentacles and grab resting racks of ribs within sneezing…

The food at Masa Takayama’s Tribeca izakaya is remarkably hit or miss—with one notable exception.

A new collection of photos dating back to the eighteen-forties celebrates a time before food photography succumbed to cliché.

After earning a reputation as an innovator at Pujol and Cosme, the chef has opened a café that serves both Arctic-char tostadas and avocado toast.

Opened during Prohibition, the bar was frequented by writers including Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. It’s now a swanky restaurant.