A New York Minute

Some eating and shopping highlights plus a wonderfully inspiring museum

I’m just back from New York. I was there to meet with my US publisher, plotting and planning for the launch of my new book later this autumn. The US edition of The Christmas Companion is out on 28th October, which I know now seems like a million moons away now; but, I also know, will be upon us in no time. That’s always the way: time creeps up on you when you think you’ve got plenty of it.

I hadn’t been to New York since before the pandemic and was excited to pay pilgrimage to some of my old favourites, as well as discover some new (to me, at least) spots. Here are a few highlights from the trip, which you might well know and love already and/or which I thought you might want to add to your to-do list when you’re next in the city:

• the pain perdu and the croque madame at Buvette in the West Village. I was also excited to see that the culinary power duo behind Buvette, Jody Williams and Rita Sodi, have also opened a new little shop, Officina 1397, just up the street: olive wood rolling pins, aprons, vintage nutcrackers, prettily packaged Italian sweets and beautiful bottles of exquisite olive oil. I’m there for it all.

  

• the most delicious dinner at Txikito with my friend, David. Basque food and a happy, relaxed atmosphere. I’m still dreaming about the octopus carpaccio and the cheesecake. But also the radicchio salad, the chickpeas and the chargrilled steak. Basically, still dreaming of all of the food: it was sublime.

• pizza (let me clarify: the most delicious pizza) at Pasquale Jones. As a side note, two of our party are strictly gluten free and their pizza (which I stole hefty chunks of) was equally good as the regular, non-gluten-free pizza. No small feat that.

• the cherry blossom (non-alcoholic) negroni and the club sandwich at the bar at Hotel Chelsea. A very pretty bar with a nice buzz (but not so very buzzy that you can’t comfortably hold a conversation); very exciting to find a good non alcoholic tipple (always a tricky one); and reassuring to have a proper club sandwich (the mark of a good hotel, in my humble opinion). We also stayed at the Chelsea for two nights and loved it: more on the hotel’s fascinating history here and here - I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole reading about it.