Restaurants

Subterms

    Latest story

    88 Shares96 Views

    The Restaurant Where ‘S.N.L.’ Celebrates Tuesday Night

    by

    Lattanzi doesn’t exactly scream “celebrity magnet.”Its brick-walled, burgundy-carpeted dining room, lined with black-and-white photos of Rome, feels more antique than affluent. The menu leans on old Italian standbys like veal scaloppine and chicken piccata. There’s no bouncer, no photos of famous regulars, no gatekeeping host. The location isn’t some trendy downtown neighborhood, but Restaurant Row, a stretch of West 46th Street that’s been a theater-district fixture for nearly a century.Yet every Tuesday evening before a new episode of “Saturday Night Live,” Lattanzi is where you’ll find Lorne Michaels, the show’s creator and kingpin, and that week’s celebrity host, along with a rotating cadre of eight or so carefully chosen “S.N.L.” producers, writers and cast members.After decades at the helm — the show will celebrate its 50th anniversary this weekend — Mr. Michaels is well-known for his rituals: the basket of popcorn kept replenished at his desk, the so-called “Lornewalks” he takes to clear his head, and the Monday meetings in his office with the cast and host, said Susan Morrison, an articles editor at The New Yorker who wrote the forthcoming biography “Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live.”Lattanzi, which specializes in Roman food, has been around since 1984. Mr. Michaels has been bringing celebrities and staff members there for decades.Nico Schinco for The New York TimesBut the Tuesday dinners are especially sacred, she said — one of the few predictable events in the weekly lead-up to a show that traffics in unpredictability.“In a week where everything is going 100 miles an hour and everything is hurtling toward Saturday night at 11:30, it was a moment of civilized calm,” she said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 150 Shares104 Views

      in Television

      New Season of ‘The White Lotus’ Brings a Tourism Boom in Thailand

      by

      Crowds of visitors descended on Maui and Sicily after the HBO show’s first two seasons. Is the tropical resort island of Koh Samui ready for Season 3?When the third season of the hit HBO series “The White Lotus” debuts on Sunday, viewers will be transported to the tropical island of Koh Samui, Thailand. And if previous seasons are any indication, many of them will soon be booking vacations there, too.The show, which takes place at a different fictional White Lotus luxury resort each season, centers on a group of wealthy tourists, their interpersonal dramas and the inevitable tension with staff and locals, all against a backdrop of paradise skewed.Members of the “White Lotus” cast this season include Lalisa Manobal, right, who performs as Lisa with the K-pop group Blackpink.Fabio Lovino/HBO, via Associated PressThe travel industry has been anticipating the new season almost as much as fans have. Partly thanks to the so-called “White Lotus” effect, Koh Samui and Thailand have already emerged as top destinations. Koh Samui was one of the New York Times 52 Places to Go in 2025, and Thailand was Travel+Leisure’s 2025 destination of the year.With a wave of tourists set to wash ashore, the roughly 68,000 residents of Koh Samui are about to get a lot more familiar with the “White Lotus” effect.On the pristine white sand of Chaweng Beach one recent evening, Tey, 46, a local carpenter who declined to give his last name, said he didn’t really know much about the series. But then came a flash of recognition.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Alice Brock, Restaurant Owner Made Famous by a Song, Dies at 83

      by

      Arlo Guthrie’s antiwar staple “Alice’s Restaurant” was inspired by a Thanksgiving Day visit to her diner in western Massachusetts.Alice Brock, whose eatery in western Massachusetts was immortalized as the place where “you can get anything you want” in Arlo Guthrie’s 1967 antiwar song “Alice’s Restaurant,” died on Thursday in Wellfleet, Mass. — just a week before Thanksgiving, the holiday during which the rambling story at the center of the song takes place. She was 83.Viki Merrick, her caregiver, said she died in a hospice from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.Ever since Mr. Guthrie released the song, officially called “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” in 1967, it has been a staple of classic-rock stations every late November, not to mention car trip singalongs on the way to visit family for Thanksgiving dinner.Ms. Brock’s restaurant, the Back Room, does not feature much in the song itself. Over the course of a little more than 18 minutes, Mr. Guthrie — doing more talking than singing — recounts a visit that he and a friend, Rick Robbins, paid to Ms. Brock and her husband, Ray Brock, for Thanksgiving dinner.Ms. Brock with Mr. Guthrie in 1977. They met when she was a school librarian and he was a student.Peter Simon Collection, Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, UMass Amherst LibrariesA shaggy-dog story ensues: Mr. Guthrie and Mr. Robbins take some trash to the city dump, but, finding it closed, leave it in a ravine instead. The next morning the police arrest them for littering, and Ms. Brock has to bail them out.That night she cooks them all a big meal, and the following day they appear in court, where the judge fines them $50. Later, Mr. Guthrie is ordered to an Army induction center, where he is able to avoid the draft because of his criminal record.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 38 Shares109 Views

      in Music

      Kacey Musgraves’s Nashville

      by

      “I always knew that Nashville would be a destination of some sort for me, that I would land there in terms of music,” said the singer-songwriter Kacey Musgraves during a Zoom call. A native Texan who is nominated for five Grammys this year, including best country album for “Deeper Well,” her fifth studio album, she began singing at a young age and at 18 competed on season five of the country music television show “Nashville Star.” A year later she moved to Nashville and never looked back. “I do owe so much to the community there for absolutely shaping me and my songs, and for giving me the opportunities that I’ve had,” she said.Her love for the city runs deep. “Nashville is home to an unparalleled songwriting community. Some of the best songwriters in the world are based there,” she said. Indeed, the city pulses with the energy of its musical heritage, and you can soak it all up everywhere you go — from its groovy lounges to its record stores and hole-in-the-wall bars.So where should a visit to Music City begin? “Even if you’re not necessarily a fan of country music, the Country Music Hall of Fame is really interesting,” she said. “Country music is a very historic genre, and this museum really honors the roots of that.”One of her favorite haunts in the East Nashville area is Grimey’s, a record store set inside an old church, complete with vaulted ceilings and stained-glass windows. Right next door is Anaconda Vintage, a used clothing store where she “can always find a little treasure or two.” Across town near Vanderbilt University is Brown’s Diner, the oldest burger joint in the city and “notoriously John Prine’s favorite spot to get a hamburger.”Ms. Musgraves is currently on tour across North America in support of “Deeper Well,” which was reviewed in The Times as “a study in quiet thoughtfulness rooted in gratitude.” Her last stop, on Dec. 7, is back home in Nashville at Bridgestone Arena.Here are her favorite places to visit in the city.1. Sperry’sRoast of prime rib beef with creamy horseradish sauce, asparagus and a twice baked potato is one of the classic dishes at Sperry’s.William DeShazer for The New York TimesWith its classic decor, Sperry’s is the kind of restaurant that seems frozen in time.William DeShazer for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares109 Views

      in Theater

      A Project That Celebrates Collaboration and Cooperation

      by

      For T Magazine, Kate Guadagnino set out to identify the many people involved in creating a single object or artistic work, including a luxury handbag, a performance piece, a pizza and more.The price tag on a particular Bottega Veneta leather bag is eye-popping: $15,000.But when you consider the number of people (more than 30), the amount of time (more than a year) and all the fair and exhibition visits (dozens) behind the creation of the bag, “it’s easier to accept it being expensive,” said Kate Guadagnino, a contributing writer for T: The New York Times Style Magazine.Ms. Guadagnino recently spent about two months chronicling the resource- and labor-intensive processes to make five objects or artistic works, including a plant-based chair, a nine-hour stage performance and a potato pizza. The resulting project, which was published online last week, appears in T Magazine this Sunday.Like the items whose production Ms. Guadagnino documented, the series also required a team effort: It took more than 20 editors, researchers, photographers and others over three months to produce. Nick Haramis, an editor at large at T Magazine who spearheaded the project, said that the five items were whittled down from 47 initial ideas.“The ones that were most compelling were either exceptionally intricate — like the ‘Spirited Away’ puppets — or seemingly simple, like Dan Barber’s slice of pizza,” he said. “The goal was that by including those extremes we might land on something unexpected and fun.”In an interview, Ms. Guadagnino reflected on what she learned from her reporting and how it changed the way she thinks about pricing. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.You interviewed 18 people for this project. With so many people involved in the production of these items and works, where did you begin?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Theater

      Overlooked No More: Renee Carroll, ‘World’s Most Famous Hatcheck Girl’

      by

      From the cloakroom at Sardi’s, she made her own mark on Broadway, hobnobbing with celebrity clients while safekeeping fedoras, bowlers, derbies and more.This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.For 24 years, as the hatcheck girl at Sardi’s, the storied theater district restaurant on West 44th Street in Manhattan, Renee Carroll found fame from within the close confines of a cloakroom.From that post, she hobnobbed with celebrity clientele, fed insider gossip to newspaper columnists and wrote an immensely popular, chatty book that dished about which stage actress ate too much garlic (Katharine Cornell, if you must know) and how fading stars wistfully reacted when rising newcomers like Joan Crawford entered the dining room.Checking hats at a restaurant might seem like a menial job, and in fact the salary for safekeeping homburgs, fedoras, bowlers and derbies was measly, but Caroll saw the position as an opportunity to make her own mark on Broadway.With her wisecracking personality, she won over actors, writers and producers while earning dime or quarter tips. If someone checked a play script with her, she perused it and offered canny critiques, sometimes unsolicited, by the time the patron had finished lunch.Her approbation was considered such a good-luck charm that even hatless playwrights and producers were known to leave her money. Eugene O’Neill once entrusted her with his wristwatch when he had nothing else on hand to check.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More