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New York Post
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Post
The Yacht Club is NYC's restaurant of the summer
Summer isn't over yet — and the restaurant of the season has just set sail. The maritime-mad Crew restaurant group has just launched the Yacht Club on the tenth floor of the mighty Starrett-Lehigh Building, which overlooks the Hudson River. 7 The Yacht Club offers fantastic views. EMMY PARK The 20,000 square-foot restaurant is easily the most elaborate venue from Crew's captains, the brothers Alex, 49, and Miles Pincus, 46. Most of their ten other Big Apple cafes and bars are open-air — either in the water, like the insanely popular Grand Banks oyster boat in Tribeca, or at river-fronting locations like Island Oyster on Governors Island. (Small, underground Holywater in Tribeca is the only landlocked venue.) While the Yacht Club has abundant outdoor space on two levels, it also boasts a 5,000-square-foot main dining room indoors — and Crew's most ambitious menu to date. Although Manhattan's Hudson River waterfront has more than a few open-air cafes and watering holes, none can challenge Yacht Club's scale. 7 The restaurant has a huge amount of space both indoors and out. EMMY PARK 'I'd say we're healthily anxious and also excited' about the new direction, Alex Pincus told me with a laugh. Ths Yacht Club made a splash with boldfacers, including Christopher Meloni and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and a slew of creative types and influencers at a party last week. It opened to the public Monday night, adding a 'cool factor' to Starrett-Lehigh, a landmarked, streamlined-style, 1930s monolith between Eleventh and Twelfth Avenues. The horizontal skyscraper contains more than two million square feet of offices — it's home to the headquarters of Ralph Lauren and serves as a base for New York Fashion Week — but it didn't have much for the general public, save for Marcus Samuelsson's Hav + Mar restaurant on the Eleventh Avenue side. 7 The Lobster Frites ($65) is topped with panko breadcrumbs and Creole butter. EMMY PARK 7 The Lobster Roll ($55) can be topped with caviar for an additional $45. EMMY PARK The Yacht Club changes that at a stroke. Its views of the river, the Downtown Manhattan skyline and the New Jersey coast are worth the trip alone. It's especially stirring at twilight when the setting sun alights the High Line buildings and towering One World Trade Center with shifting shades of silver and gold. Alex, an architect by training, designed the comfortable dining room in collaboration with Eric Cheon of North 45 Project. Large circular booths in nautical blue, buoy-like columns and panoramic windows make a suitable setting for a seafood-focused lineup of sustainable species including sweet 'Sailor Baby' oysters — named for Alex's young son and custom-grown by oyster wizard Will Peckham in Peconic Bay. I enjoyed skillfully seared Montauk tilefish ($38), honey- and herb-inflected crawfish sausage en croute ($19) that resembled pigs in blankets, and sensationally sweet-and-spicy oysters chargrilled with Creole butter and Parmesan cheese ($21). 7 Tilefish ($38) is skillfully seared. EMMY PARK 7 The '3 Coasts' seafood tower ($95) features an assortment of oysters and Louisiana crawfish sausage. EMMY PARK The alfresco Lido Deck boasts cute mini-cabanas and lawn chairs and serves a more simple menu. A second outdoor level is set to open in September. If the setting isn't intoxicating enough, a cocktail menu by beverage director and sommelier Anthony Gochal will do the trick with colorful martinis, negronis and tropical libations. Sailor, Alex's third child, is now almost two-years-old. He was born twenty-four hours before dad and Miles pitched their concept to Starrett-Lehigh owner RXR, which wanted to bring public energy to the tenth floor. 'It was a busy few days,' Alex said with a chuckle. 7 The restaurant is part of Chelsea's Starrett-Lehigh Building. EMMY PARK From that point on, RXR 'worked very fast to build the venue,' which the brothers operate under a management agreement. Since its founding in 2014, Crew has become a force on the New York food scene, with 1,000 seats, 550 employees and a dominant role in maritime-themed dining. Kerry Heffernan, a former chef at Eleven Madison Park, has served as the culinary director for ten years, while Andres Grundy, an alumnus of L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon and Raoul's, runs the kitchen at the Yacht Club. Alex said, 'For years we've worked out of the galleys of historic ships. Now, with a world-class kitchen and a proper dining room, we have the tools to create food people truly celebrate, ten stories above sea level.'
New York Post
10-07-2025
- Business
- New York Post
Hani's bakery delights and boasts a life changing PB&J — the best in the city
The best peanut butter & jelly in town lurks behind a door with the letter 'D' — marking a former Dunkin Donuts that's now Hani's Bakery + Cafe, the city's hottest place for fabulous baked goods and sandwiches. The doorhandle 'D' might stand for delicious or decadent, both of which apply to Hani's, located at 67 Cooper Square. It's the neighborhood's biggest draw since the rotating Astor Place Cube was installed in 1967. Hani's is a labor of love by celebrated former Gramercy Tavern pastry chef Miro Uskokovic and his wife, Bon Appetit senior food editor Shilpa Uskokovic, who took over the space late last year. 8 Miro Uskokovic and his wife Shilpa Uskokovic conceived Hani's and developed its delectable menu together. Mark Weinberg 8 The peanut butter and jelly sandwich 'is the most American thing,' according to Uskokovic, who prides himself on his traditional US menu staples — and grinds the peanuts for it in-house. EMMY PARK 'We debated whether to keep the 'D' and decided it was pretty cute,' Uskokovic chuckled. Uskokovic, who first came to the US from Serbia shortly before 9/11, set out to make his pastries, cookies and other goodies all-American — not influenced by Eastern Europe or France. 'I became known for my American desserts at Gramercy Tavern and other restaurants, and PB and J is the most American thing,' Uskokovic said. Hani's is a simple, ultra-clean space with a few booths and counter chairs, although most customers take their purchases out. Doughnuts, buns, croissants and rolls gleam inside a glass case. A sign lists a rotating lineup of sandwiches. 8 Hani's, located in the east village, takes a space formerly run by Dunkin' Donuts, and the chain's conspicuous 'D' logo is still on the door. EMMY PARK 8 Hani's turkey club sandwich eschews the traditional third slice of bread to pack in plenty of filling, complemented with a chunky pistachio and kale pesto. EMMY PARK 8 A tripple chocolate chunk cookie topped with sea salt from Hani's. They certainly don't skimp with these chunks! EMMY PARK For me, the life-changer was the PB & J. I've eaten the combo in every conceivable form since I was a child, even including a peanut-butter-and-jelly lobster nightmare in Miami. Hani's version, for a mere $6, laughs at all of them. Like the bakery items, it's meant to be 'nostalgic, but artisanal,' Uskokovic said. The single, thick slice of milk bread, which like all baked goods is made in-house, is toasted to a crackling turn. The peanut butter is ground in-house from Bazzini peanuts. Thick raspberry jam was from locally grown fruit. Unless you want to make a mess, I advise attacking the open-face sandwich with a fork and knife. Think comfort food sent to finishing school. It was as satisfyingly full-on tongue and palate as a juicy steak, but more fun with its interplay of creamy peanut butter and sweet jam atop the crusty bread — the summer picnic lunch of my dreams. 8 The bakery counter at Hani's — where hungry customers usually clean them out of stock by 3 p.m., hours before closing. EMMY PARK 8 The interior of Hani's bakery, located at 67 Cooper Square. EMMY PARK 8 A 'deliciously gooey' malted milk-glazed cinnamon bun from Hani's. EMMY PARK The turkey club ($17) needs 15 minutes to assemble, and is worth the wait. It's a skyscraper of a sandwich using two slices of buttery, multigrain bread, rather than the common three. Lightly salty turkey slices share the space between them with lots of crisp bacon, orange and gold tomato slices and pistachio and kale pesto. 'We make the pesto a bit chunky,' Ukoskovic said. The result has a pleasing, tapenade- like texture. Hani's baked confections have a timeless quality that made me forget Cronuts. The best-sellers are the triple-chunk Valrhona chocolate cookie and lusciously moist, malted milk-glazed cinnamon buns. But my choice was raspberry tea cake, a gluten-free number made with almond cake, labneh cream (strained yogurt), Mexican herbs and sugar. The almond flour is made with corn milk drawn from a Brooklyn granary. It's just $6.50, less than you'd spend on a slice of commercial layer cake in a diner. Hani's is open only from 7:30 a.m. daily on Monday through Thursday until 4:30 p.m., although they tend to run out of many items by 3. It's open until 5 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, but Uskokovic said they're adding from 6-10 p.m. on those days. 'There's always a line outside on weekends. We apologize to our neighbors about it and we bribe them with treats,' he laughed.
New York Post
16-06-2025
- Business
- New York Post
Manhattan's power scene is back in full force at this luxe new Italian restaurant from Michael White: It's Marea 2.0
Midtown has its pre-pandemic swagger back — and People's Exhibit No. 1 is Santi (11 E. 53d St.), the buzzing new modern-Italian restaurant from celebrated chef Michael White. Its nexus of corporate power, great pasta and fun people-watching make it the area's hottest scene since White's Marea opened in prehistoric 2009. After splitting with the Altamarea group in 2021 due to disagreements over the company's direction, White has spent most of his time launching new venues in Florida. (A consulting gig at the Lambs Club on West 44th Street lasted only a few months in 2022.) 10 Michael White is back in NYC with Santi. EMMY PARK 10 The elegant midtown address was once home to White's Alto. EMMY PARK Santi, launched by his BBianco Hospitality Group with business partner Bruce Bronster, marks his triumphant, full-scale Big Apple return. Marea's still going strong and Midtown has other established, excellent Italian restaurants such as Il Gattopardo, Cellini and Fresco by Scotto. But others faded and the scene needed new blood. Santi delivers it for everyone — from shoppers and museum-goers to a Who's Who of Midtown glitterati. Once home to White's aughts-era hit Alto, the venue has overnight became a haunt where the city's prime movers wheel-and-deal over homemade gnocchi and tagliatelle, and cocktails such as the Fifty-Fifty, which features Taggiasca gin, made with prized Ligurian olives. Santi's pleasures unspool through several main areas designed by Michaelis Boyd, gorgeously lit by L'Observatoire International and festooned with luminous portraits from Bronster's private collection. Each section draws a different crowd. The front dining room, a few steps down from a horseshoe-shaped bar for the after-work, sip-and-flirt set, draws movers and shakers to its semicircular booths and banquettes. It's become a canteen for bankers at market-moving investment firm Jefferies Group and its CEO Rich Handler, who work upstairs. On any given afternoon or evening, you might spot Henry Kravis, Barry Diller or real estate mogul Bill Rudin, who's planning a new skyscraper a few blocks away. 10 Midtown power players are flocking to Santi. EMMY PARK 10 With dishes such a succulent veal chop, Santi's food is worthy of the five Michelin stars that White has earned at previous restaurants. . EMMY PARK Boldfaces such as Eva Longoria and Queen Rania of Jordan have popped in, too. Pop star Beck ordered a comfort dish from heaven — hand-folded tortellini ($36) filled with prosciutto, mortadella, pork and Parmigiano Reggiano, finished in a creamy sea of cheese and butter. A circular staircase leads to the slightly more intimate mezzanine, after passing a huge,1800s mirror that Bronster found buried under a Southampton barn. The upstairs area has attracted art and fashion luminaries such as designers Diane von Furstenberg and Michael Kors and painter Kehinde Wiley. The restaurant's noisiest section is the ground-floor atrium, where light globes suspended from the double-height ceiling suggest a galaxy in formation. On my visits, it drew canoodling couples in the corners and noisy groups of guys at middle tables. Fortunately, new wall fabrics and sound bafflers have begun to soften the din. 10 Amberjack crudo is one of many great seafood dishes. EMMY PARK 10 Gnocchi in tomato sauce is a standout pasta dish. EMMY PARK The menu, executed by the kitchen team of Jason Lin and Sol Han, is worthy of the five Michelin stars White earned at his other places. It boasts splendid seafood, both raw and cooked, like tasty, toothsome amberjack crudo ($32) and pleasingly moist halibut ($55) pan-seared on one side and then poached in extra-virgin olive oil. But the pastas — all original, none replicating White's previous plates — are the crowning glory. 'We've been deliberate about not copying expected dishes because that's not fun or challenging, and our guests deserve more than a rehash of old ideas,' White told me. The sautéed Italian breadcrumbs known as mollica, a White hallmark in the past, are mostly absent, letting the pasta and sauces speak for themselves. 10 Some notable guests, such as musician Beck, favor the booths in the front room. EMMY PARK 10 Beyond the front room is the elegant-but-noisy atrium. EMMY PARK Tagliatelle Ragu ($36), which Wiley has ordered more than once,gets my vote. The coarse-ground beef and pork are gently broken down to a velvety texture by a judicious infusion of milk. My favorite, though, was ricotta gnocchi ($28), lighter than the potato-filled variety and bathed in San Marzano tomato-and-basil sauce — a brave statement when too many chefs shy away from red sauce lest their dishes be mocked as Italian-American dinosaurs. 10 A sweeping staircase leads up to a mezzanine. EMMY PARK 10 The mezzanine dining area is slightly more intimate. EMMY PARK But I miss White's legendary fusilli with braised octopus and bone marrow, his heart-stopping, red-sauce masterpiece at Marea. Per Se's Thomas Keller once called his favorite dish in New York. Is there any chance we'll see it again at Santi? When asked, White smiled and said coyly, 'I'm talking to my chefs about it.'
New York Post
09-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Woke NYC schools are failing teachers and pupils because they have no discipline — this is why the UFT's Michael Mulgrew must be stopped
Voting is underway to elect the President of the United Federation of Teachers in New York City. Michael Mulgrew, who has held the position since 2009, is expecting he can sleepwalk into another term. However, under his watch schools are requiring less and less of pupils, to the point where attendance is essentially optional and almost everyone is handed a passing grade. Brooklyn-based Social Studies teacher Mike Dowd writes why its time for a change and for basic discipline to be brought back. Advertisement Officials love to brag about the 84% graduation rate for New York City public-school students. But if you thought that was an honest measure of how many kids are passing, I have bad news. High-school grading policies have become so corrupt, class credits have become almost meaningless. 8 Michael Dowd in front of the Tweed Courthouse, which is the Department of Education Headquarters in Manhattan on May 2. EMMY PARK 8 Michael Mulgrew, President of the United Federation of Teachers since 2009 is hoping he will be re-elected again, despite the current dire state of education in the city. Stephen Yang Advertisement In recent years, the Department of Education and many individual schools, have adopted 'equity grading' practices intended to benefit disadvantaged students. But by making it almost impossible for such students to fail, even when they don't show up to class, our school system harms the less privileged by discouraging hard work and reliability. Despite the demoralizing effect these policies have on teachers, the United Federation of Teachers, under the out-of-touch leadership of Michael Mulgrew, has failed to make this a public issue. New Yorkers would be shocked to see how far school standards have dropped. Advertisement Although many of us who taught under Mayor Bloomberg remember the pressure to increase passing rates or face retaliation, there was an important check on this practice — the longstanding notion that attendance was a basic requirement for passing. But this constraint disappeared under Mayor De Blasio, whose pursuit of equity involved eliminating 'seat time' as a requirement to pass. 8 Dowd says 'equity grading' practices, which are intended to benefit disadvantaged students, make it almost impossible for students to fail. Christopher Sadowski Thereafter, schools could award passing grades to chronically absent students who didn't deserve them alongside students who worked hard. Advertisement Then, Mayor Adams made attendance completely optional by continuing remote-learning policies that forbade any lowering of a student's grade due to absences. Nowadays, if teachers want to penalize students for cutting, they must give a makeup assignment for each missed day and inevitably accept work — even if it appears to be AI-generated. Meanwhile, many individual schools have incentivized absenteeism through another equity policy — minimum grades. In these schools, a missing assignment or test with no correct answers receives a grade as high as 55 — just 10 points below passing — instead of a zero. Students, therefore, can (and do) miss months of class in a semester and still pass, even without doing makeup work. 8 Attendance at schools has dropped since requirements to be marked in for every class have been eleminated. Not surprisingly, high-school attendance has fallen. But it's even worse than publicized. Because students need only show face at their 'attendance' class to be marked present each day, they can skip other classes and still have excellent official attendance. How often this happens is unknown because the DOE hides this data. The DOE has other ways of de-emphasizing attendance. Advertisement When students fail classes, teachers must select prewritten, explanatory comments for their report cards. But the DOE has removed Excessively Absent (More than 2 days/month) from the list, leaving no appropriate options for chronically absent students. They've even removed Excessively Late, as if to emphasize that old standards no longer apply. So we've gone from defining three absences per month as excessive to denying that absences can even be excessive. Meanwhile, the DOE's attendance app hides attendance records from parents and teachers. As a coach, I no longer know if my wrestlers are attending class and must keep paper records to know my own students' attendance history. Advertisement 8 Police outside of Angelo Patri School, in the Bronx in September 2024, the day after a bullet went through a window, striking a teacher. Matthew McDermott 8 Dowd says the UFT has has failed to make the demoralizing effects of undisciplined school policies a public issue, and blames out-of-touch leadership from Mulgrew. EMMY PARK A culture shift is underway as attending class goes from being a widely understood responsibility to a mere lifestyle choice. Regularly absent students often ask me with complete sincerity how they might improve their grades. Some even request college recommendation letters. As students offer ever weaker excuses for low attendance, it's clear that these new policies are teaching them to surrender in the face of everyday challenges. At a formative time in their lives, our future workforce is losing its self-discipline, reliability, and resilience. Advertisement 8 Dowd writes that new policies are not giving kids the life skills of discipline and reliability they need. Yuliia – 8 Dowd and other teachers are calling on Mulgrew and the UFT to fight harder for more discipline and better standards in classroms. Stephen Yang But the damage goes beyond work habits. Allowing students, especially those with weak academic skills, to miss vital classroom instruction denies them the full education they deserve. In fact, in a recent examination of equity grading, the Fordham Institute, an education think tank, cites research showing 'lenient grading leads to less learning.' Advertisement My fellow teachers and I wonder how the DOE can completely upend longstanding norms of student accountability without public debate and why our union leaders remain silent as our integrity is undermined from above. It's time for Mayor Adams to end these destructive policies or tell us why he supports them. In the meantime, the DOE needs to provide period-by-period attendance data, to show us just how serious our absenteeism problem is and tell us just how many chronically absent students are receiving class credit. And we need to identify the schools at which these problems are most significant and develop plans to fix them. We waited far too many years to address teachers' concerns about student cellphone use. Let's not do the same with lax attendance and grading policies.
New York Post
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Surprise! NYC's new Planet Hollywood restaurant has shockingly good food
It's a shocking twist: The new Planet Hollywood has really good food. The celeb-magnet eatery opened its third NYC iteration two months ago at 136 W. 42nd St., on a corporate block that's nothing like Times Square around the corner. After friends reported having tacky, processed-tasting snacks at an opening party, I was ready to laugh my head off over menu oddities like 'L.A. Lasagna,' an 'icon' from the original Planet that opened on West 57th Street in prehistoric 1991. 6 When Planet Hollywood 3.0 opened earlier this year, no one expected it would have legitimately good food. EMMY PARK Instead, I felt almost embarrassed to enjoy it — and other dishes vastly better than the ones from Planet's early years, when it was a culinary joke, notwithstanding the backing of Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Demi Moore. The second Planet at 1540 Broadway closed in 2020. When I first reported in 2022 that founder Robert Earl planned another re-launch, he told me it would be 'more complex and more appealing to New York locals as well as tourists.' We'll see about that. They might be surprised to find that the three-level, 17,500 square-foot venue which cost almost $20 million to build, is almost entirely without the film posters, costumes and other memorabilia that were the main draw at he original Planet Hollywood and version 2.0. The colorful, second-floor dining room and third-floor event space have lots of booths, five-pointed stars attached to the ceiling and lampshade-like overhead lights. Video images of Dua Lipa and Daniel Craig's James Bond randomly alternate with outer-space cartoons and (for no clear reason) pumping oil derricks on screens all around the rooms. The place has drawn bevies of boldfaces, including Alec Baldwin, 50 Cent and Whoopi Goldberg on opening night and cast parties for Broadway's 'Moulin Rouge' and '& Juliet.' But celebs will eat anything when it's free, and the last thing I expected was better-than-decent food. 6 The new spot has limited movie memorabilia but screens aplenty. EMMY PARK It might not rank with nearby Michelin-starred Gabriel Kreuther and fancy steakhouse STK, of course. The more useful comparison is with the area's tourist-jammed venues such as Hard Rock Cafe and Bubba Gump Shrimp. Planet's menu blows them away. There's no identified kitchen mastermind, but Earl wanted to make people forgot the dreary fare of Planets past. He tapped unnamed local chefs to oversee the menu and sources quality ingredients, including meat from butcher-to-the-stars Pat La Frieda. They restaurants delivers what you want from 'fun' food — crispy, crackling mouth feel and sugar-loaded condiments that don't overwhelm the underlying flavors. I have a weakness for this style if it's done with integrity, and the kitchen nails it. 6 'Fun food,' like cheesy garlic bread, is well prepared and satisfying. EMMY PARK 6 A blackened shrimp appetizer was fresh and flavorful. EMMY PARK Cheesy garlic bread ($15) on ciabatta is a mini-pizza with rich marinara sauce, a staple which the house employs well on many dishes. A half-dozen blackened shrimp ($21) — fresh-tasting, marinated and seared with tangy Creole mustard — made me forget the usually wretched bar snack. Baby gem caesar salad ($16) using crisp leaves, Parmesan flakes and toasted croutons was worthy of a classy steakhouse. 6 The salmon entree was cooked to perfection. EMMY PARK Even after such good starters, I had little faith that sesame ginger salmon ($33) would be grilled medium-rare as I ordered it. But the filet arrived perfectly pink under crisp skin, and elevated to serious enjoyment by soy, ginger and sesame glaze. I could take or leave the humdrum chicken pot pie ($23), but the 8-ounce deluxe Wagyu burger ($28) more than redeemed it. The monster needed knife and fork to navigate the (again) properly medium-rare patty, bacon slices, pickles, tomatoes, onions, fried egg, avocado and ranch coleslaw on a toasted brioche bun. 6 The awkwardly named and oddly plate 'L.A. Lasagna' tasted great. EMMY PARK The biggest shock was that L.A. Lasagne ($26). It had no evident Los Angeles influence, nor did it resemble any lasagne I've ever known. But they can call it what they want. Four crispy, parmesan-breaded pasta tubes were filled with ricotta and bolognese-style meat sauce, and served in tangy tomato sauce. Delicious. It's the sort of sinful, guilty pleasure many crave after a night of clubbing, but works just as well at lunch. I hope the folks who work in the great office towers all around the place will forget Planet's old reputation and give its food a chance.
