You likely don’t have to be Jewish to get the “certain inside jokes and elements” that go into the flavor profiles of Chozen ice cream, says co-founder Meredith Fisher, but an appreciation for Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm probably helps.
Chozen is a small, family-run, New York City-based, certified Kosher ice-cream brand conceived by Fisher, her mother Ronne and her sister Isabelle Krishana one night as they sat around the dining table and paired vanilla ice cream with Ronne’s homemade rugalach from the freezer. That became their first flavor–cinnamon ice cream swirled with pieces of apricot, walnut, raisin and almond pastry–which launched in June 2010 along with Matzoh Crunch and Coconut Macaroon.

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“When I first started in the food industry, I used to think pairings were a bunch of crap,” laughs Karen Dunlap, who manages the tea service and its associated pairings at Union Square Café on E. 16th Street, “but it’s not.” Dunlap should know: She’s a 15-year veteran of the tea industry who joined Union Square as both a server and a tea consultant last spring.

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As part of the New York City Food and Wine Festival earlier this month, Murray’s Cheese held a tasting event at the Norwood Club, a historic townhouse on 241 West 14th Street. The goal was to introduce customers to their new line of cave-aged cheeses, which (as you might’ve guessed from their name) have been a long time coming. Murray’s Cheese on Bleecker Street is home to five subterranean cheese caves–rare in this town–where over 100 varieties of cheese are aged by on-staff experts. For the event, the Norwood Club’s four floors were turned into “caves,” each designed to showcase a specific type of cheese, including natural rind cheeses and cheddars on the second floor, washed rind and alpine cheeses on the third floor, and bloomy rinds up top.

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Masak, an East Village restaurant that opened in August, is Singaporean-born chef/owner Larry Reutens fine dining spin on traditional hawker fare from his Southeast Asian country. That, like the rest of the country’s cuisine, is derived from a mélange of Malay, Indian, Chinese and Nonya flavors, and at Masak, Reutens adds both an American sensibility and French techniques. Reutens does not want Masak, which means “to cook” in Malay, to be pigeon-holed as an authentic Singaporean eatery. The casual 40-seat eatery is meant to serve as both an neighborhood bistro and a laboratory where the chef, who used to work for Visa in business development, can let his imagination run wild, melding his Singaporean heritage with his Manhattan restaurant kitchen experience.

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Il Buco Alimentari e Vineria, which opened October 7, is the “quicker, friendly, livelier and less serious” little brother to Il Buco, the Noho Mediterranean establishment that owner Donna Lennard has managed for 17 years. Located around the corner on 53 Great Jones Street, Il Buco’s spin-off market is where you can buy olve oils and house-cured salumi, grab a coffee from the espresso bar, lick a house-made gelato or indulge in porchetta and cheese sandwiches–served on bread made fresh on premise and put together by Alimentari’s chef Justin Smillie and store manager Aaron Oster.

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Transition to fall with The Horticultural Society of New York’s “Homegrown: A Do-It-Yourself Series” that commences with its first of four food-related workshops this very evening. Tonight, concoct plum jams, hot pepper jelly, a cranberry-horseradish chutney, and raspberry jelly with…

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One of our favorite stories in the current travel-themed issue is on a trip to Vienna with Kurt Gutenbrunner, the Austrian-born chef-owner of five restaurants in Manhattan. That’s why we’re psyched that you can soon transport yourself to Austria by way of Viennese coffeehouse culture at the temporary Café Sacher, part of the upcoming Austria Pop-Up Store at Openhouse Gallery.

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The Whole Foods Market Cooking NYC site launched in late summer, focused not just on the myriad ways to prepare seasonal meals and the supermarket’s stash of ingredients, but also on becoming an online social hub with an emphasis on do-it-yourself cooking. The site was inspired and curated by Food52, the online food community and recipe trove created by Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs.

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