Robert Sietsema

1 day ago | robertsietsema.substack.com | Robert Sietsema

Some restaurants have been running into trouble lately, due to spiraling rents, rising labor and utility costs, scarcity of trained staff, and ballooning ingredient expenses, all intensified by the pandemic. These pressures caused some restaurants to change the way they operate, curtailing amenities, reducing comfort level, installing reservations systems that make it difficult to actually get one, and sometimes treating customers in rude ways.

2 days ago | robertsietsema.substack.com | Robert Sietsema

For decades, our comrades in Los Angeles have been turning out untraditional dishes utilizing pastrami — big smoky hunks of it, principally in burritos, but also in things like burgers, shakshuka, tacos, and quesadillas. In the meantime, most Big Apple restaurants and delis stick to sandwiches, with the pink cured meat appearing occasionally in other creative contexts — such as the gargantuan pastrami rib at Tatiana, and, sprinkled with pickled mustard seeds in a taco at Empellon Taqueria.

5 days ago | gothamist.com | Robert Sietsema

Perhaps no street has its fingers on the pulse of Downtown New York better than St. Mark's Place. For decades, it has been the point of entrance not only to the East Village but to a youthful lifestyle where fads are on display more readily than anywhere else. Entire generations have washed down the street like a flash flood: Beats, jazz cats, hippies, punks, Japanese expats, rappers, street kids, sidewalk preachers and people with extensive tattoos. Every group has left its mark.

1 week ago | robertsietsema.substack.com | Robert Sietsema

Twenty years ago, there were a half dozen Romanian restaurants in Sunnyside, including vampire-themed disco Transilvania, and a lively corner bar with a soundtrack of romantic Italian American ballads called Harmony — both now closed. In fact, only a pair of places remain, Romanian Garden (basically, a Romanian steakhouse) and Danubius. On a recently weekday evening, two friends and I visited Danubius, located in a backwater south of Queens Boulevard at 47-57 41st Street.

1 week ago | ny.eater.com | Robert Sietsema |Melissa McCart

This is an entirely overhauled map in that we’ve combined Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill. Since the neighborhoods are small and somewhat intertwined, it’s no big deal to walk down Court Street from one to the other, especially in the warmer weather. The restaurants in both neighborhoods have been satisfying locals and visitors for a while now. The stretch has always featured solid neighborhood spots and red sauce classics.