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NYC Restaurant Week breaks sign-up records this year
NYC Restaurant Week To Go, the upcoming mid-pandemic version of the city’s decades-old, semiannual Restaurant Week, is positioned to be the biggest NYC Restaurant Week in history, the New York Post reports. There have been 571 restaurants that have signed up to participate in this month’s program, far outpacing the city’s last highest record of 391 participating restaurants in the summer of 2017.
Much of the influx of new restaurants comes from boroughs outside of Manhattan. Last year, only 17 restaurants outside of Manhattan participated in the city’s program, according to the Post. This year, 184 restaurants outside of Manhattan, including 78 in Brooklyn, 45 in Queens, 17 in the Bronx, and 19 in Staten Island, have signed up to participate.
Every participating restaurant — including hot spots like Michael Stillman’s steakhouse Quality Eats and Melba Wilson’s Harlem favorite Melba’s — will offer at least one takeout or delivery meal for $20.21. The full list of participating restaurants will be posted online starting on January 25. The official program runs from January 25 to February 1, although each restaurant has the option of extending the promotion through February 7.
In other news
— Popular omakase spot Kissaki continues its fast-paced expansion through the area, opening a fifth location in Greenwich, Connecticut, on January 27 for takeout and delivery. The establishment opened its first location on the Lower East Side one year ago and has since opened other spots in the Hamptons, Long Island City, and the Upper West Side.
— The New York Times takes a look at how bars are adapting to serving drinks in the frigid weather.
— On Sundays through the winter, West Village pop-up-turned-deli and bottle shop Dame is selling Leo’s bagels topped with the restaurant’s whitefish salad with pickled red onions, celery, crispy shallots, and parsley; or smoked salmon, whipped caper cream cheese, red onion, dill, and crispy shallots. Pre-orders are available here.
— Good Enough to Eat on the Upper West Side has built out a new outdoor tachigui-style restaurant dubbed Good Ramen to Eat under a heated tent at 522 Columbus Avenue, at 85th Street, opening today at 5 p.m. The ramen-centric menu includes a shoyu ramen ($18) that includes shoyu tare, beef sukiyaki, and blanched mizuna; and a “Midnight Diner” ramen ($16) with instant Shin Ramyun, spam, and kimchi. Outdoor dining, takeout, and delivery are available.
— Food writer and cookbook author Priya Krishna examines for Bon Appetit the outdoor dining setups and economic inequalities on display among nearby streets in NYC, including Vanderbilt Avenue in Prospect Heights and Nostrand Avenue in Crown Heights.
— Things are moving fast in the Bánh Vietnamese Shop House kitchen: