Luscious Sights, Smells Now Joined By Tastes
BY DONNA MINKOWITZ | There is nothing like rifling someone’s hair under white cherry blossoms. Or gazing at tall black-purple tulips while someone puts their arm around you and pulls you close enough to smell their spicy traditional cologne. That is why there is no single better spot for a date in all of New York City […]
How To Cook a Trump
BY DONNA MINKOWITZ | I have to say, it’s hard to write about how good food tastes when Trump is compiling weekly lists of “crimes” by immigrants. I wanted to describe for you the precise degree of crispness and umami of the chicken thigh/ fermented soybean/ potato chip appetizer at the hot new Williamsburg restaurant […]
Cooking Up Rebellion
BY DONNA MINKOWITZ | In times of trouble, cooking makes me whole. I may be tired, irritable, I may have gotten home late, I may even be sick, but I stand at my fry pan tossing in onions, that base of almost every culture’s cooking. To me, it might as well be the base of […]
Pussy Grabs Back
BY DONNA MINKOWITZ | What was in the bowl slid down my throat. It entered my mouth feeling exactly as though I was being fucked. I’m not making this up: this was a rare occasion on which it was hard to tell which set of lips something was entering. Moist, small bits of lobster, butternut […]
Organizing for Sustainable Food
BY DONNA MINKOWITZ | The queerest thing about last week’s James Beard Foundation conference in Manhattan was the ginormous photograph of a brown-black human turd, pictured underneath a similar-looking red sausage. The photo was displayed on a huge screen by public policy academic Raj Patel, who announced to the assembled corporate honchos, entrepreneurs, and bland […]
Affordable Caviar — No, Seriously
BY DONNA MINKOWITZ | There is a dish you can eat in a cellar in Brooklyn that is a work of art, and also soulful. It costs $12, and will fill you up. That dish is Mekelburg’s salt-baked potato with crème fraîche, black caviar, and smoked black cod. You may think it’s not for you because […]
Extra Butter, Extra Sugar
BY DONNA MINKOWITZ | Is there something gay about the wild visual and tactile fantasies at play in dessert-making? “Of course, it’s a gay sensibility! We don’t say it in public anymore, but fuck them, of course it’s a gay sensibility!,” said Ron Ben-Israel, one of the most elite wedding-cake makers in America and the queerest […]
Getting Fancy
BY DONNA MINKOWITZ | The words “fancy food” make my heart swell, for better or worse. In 1970, “fancy food” is what we called it when my father got a gift basket from his boss full of special jams, cheeses that weren’t Kraft Singles, and chocolates that were not from Hershey. That basket thrilled me. […]
Pleasures That Cannot Be Bought
BY DONNA MINKOWITZ | One of the main things our movement is about is pleasure. The right to pleasure — the goodness and innocence of all pleasure that hurts no one — is what we, more than anyone else in our time (and perhaps any time), assert and defend. In honor of Pride, this is a […]
The Revolution Will Not Be Consumed at Smorgasburg
BY DONNA MINKOWITZ | Under normal circumstances, my reaction to the news that a new artisanal food hall had opened in the city might be rage. In the extraordinarily beautiful river park next to Battery Park City, new kids in town Le District and Hudson Eats are revoltingly overpriced and offensively underwhelming. ($15 for bad, […]
