It’s opening week at a new restaurant from Di Fara Pizza. The Brooklyn pizza institution, known for making some of the city’s best pies since 1965, opened a sandwich shop at 1012 E. 15th Street, near Avenue J, down the street from its original location in Midwood. It’s called 1012 Kitchen, and it’s only open for lunch to start. The restaurant is a...
READ MOREHumor might be the hardest thing in the world for a restaurant to get away with. Plenty of attempts can be found in the city’s dining rooms, especially at the billionaire-bait tasting-menu spots, where caviar presented in an ice-cream cone is hailed as the pinnacle of whimsy, and at restaurants embracing the new school of self-aware, proudly stupid...
READ MOREHundreds of enthusiastic spectators crowded onto Havemeyer Street in front of the Shrine Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel on Sunday, July 9, to witness a Catholic tradition that dates back to 1887 Italy: the hoisting of the seven-story Giglio. Part of the 12-day Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in honor of the Virgin Mary, the Dancing of the Gig...
READ MOREA Williamsburg parish officially began the 136th annual Our Lady of Mount Carmel Feast, a street festival full of Italian eats, music and games, with an opening mass and processional on July 5. The 12-day festival, which dates back to 1887, celebrates Italian culture and tradition with tons of vendors selling authentic cuisine and sweet treats, gam...
READ MOREWill Florio’s pride for his Italian heritage served as a vanguard for Italian Americans who brought their generational culture and talents to Valley Stream and etched them deeply into the village’s public life. Florio died on May 3. He was 72. Born in 1951 to two first-generation Italian immigrants, living in Dyker Heights, Florio would not stay in...
READ MOREChef Vincent Dardanello of Amunì in Bay Ridge grew up in the predominantly Italian American community of West Caldwell, New Jersey. His extended family of Sicilian descent was so large that they practically constituted an enclave unto themselves. On any given Sunday, as many as 40 relatives would pass through for Sunday lunch at Dardanello’s grandp...
READ MOREOver 250 members of Brooklyn’s esteemed legal community gathered at El Caribe in Mill Basin on Friday, June 9, for the glitzy annual dinner of the Columbian Lawyers Association. The gala was a celebration of the past year’s achievements, a farewell to outgoing president Salvatore Scibetta, and a hearty welcome to the incoming president, Yolanda Gua...
READ MOREHello Grappa!, a new E.U.-funded promotional campaign designed to energize Americans around this sustainable Italian spirit, is hosting a cocktail contest and series of workshops on June 14, 15 and 16 to coincide with Bar Convent in New York. All gatherings are open to bartenders, wine and spirits professionals, journalists, influencers and other t...
READ MOREThe temperatures are finally heating up, which means those summertime snacks need to cool down: just in time, new-school Italian gelato shop Biddrina Gelato, launched this week outside of its sister restaurant, Clinton Hill's Locanda Vini & Olii. Named after the Sicilian legend of the "Biddrina," a mythical serpent said to live in the wetlands of...
READ MOREMarco Cappelli, the Brooklyn-based guitarist and composer, makes music that is beyond category while remaining connected to Southern Italy. He has founded a new label, 41st Parallel Records, to distribute his genre-bending works. Cappelli, a musician from Naples, lives in a walk-up apartment, in a building with an Italian American landlord, in the...
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