Email Author Robert Sietsema

Awards

• 2011 - Association of Food Journalists Awards, published June 23, 2010

  "An Open Letter to Josh Ozersky"

• 2011 - AAN AltWeekly Awards, published June 23, 2010

  "An Open Letter to Josh Ozersky"

• 2011 - AAN AltWeekly Awards, published December 1, 2010

  "May We Interest You in Some Egg Fetus?"

• 2011 - AAN AltWeekly Awards, published December 8, 2010

  "Siam I Am"

More

2008 Stories by Robert Sietsema

• The Early Word -- Company, or is it Co.r

  published Dec 31, 2008

  King among bread bakers, Jim Lahey was a co-founder of Sullivan Street Bakery, but, apparently, he always longed to make pizza. You can get an excellent slice of pizza at the bakery, but it ... More >>

• A High-Fiber Breakfast

  published Dec 31, 2008

  Looks pretty damn good, rightr And who doesn't love a traditional hot breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toastr But look a bit closer to discover that the breakfast is a knitted one, more suited to cover... More >>

• Gambling and Gourmandizing at Colandrea New Corner Restaurant

  published December 31, 2008

  Bombarded with regional cuisines straight from Italy, we tend to forget our own Italian-American cooking. Originating late in the 19th century,... More >>

• Bad Food Jokes and Riddles

  published Dec 30, 2008

  Yesterday was my lucky day -- I spotted a copy of 101 Fast Funny Food Jokes by Phil Hirsch (New York: Scholastic Books, 1983) sticking out of a trash can in Bay Ridge, and decided to use it as an excu... More >>

• Christmas Dinner Debriefing

  published Dec 29, 2008

  Every Christmas a bunch of pals and I head down to Chinatown for Christmas dinner. Not only because we love Chinese food, but because we've had enough of Christmas by that time, and need an escape. ... More >>

• Incredibly Cheap Eats -- Scallion Pancake

  published Dec 29, 2008

  Northern Chinese food has finally infiltrated Manhattan's Chinatown, appearing at its fringes at a tiny new noodle shop with the enticing name of -- Strange Taste. Much of the menu is Fujianese, inc... More >>

• Adventures in a Crippled Kitchen

  published Dec 26, 2008

  Chapter 2: Reality Sets In [Note--You can read the first chapter of this continuing saga here. A new episode appears every Friday at 9 a.m.] I stared at my faithful stove in disbelief. No flame had ... More >>

• A Greenwich Village Christmas

  published Dec 25, 2008

  A creche is a nativity scene, a three-dimensional representation of the Christmas story. The most famous cresh in Greenwich Village abuts the Saint Anthony of Padua Church at the corner of Houston a... More >>

• The Early Word -- Java Village

  published Dec 24, 2008

  Java Village is the fourth Indonesian restaurant to appear in Elmhurst in the last three years, and quite unlike any of the others. While Mie Jakarta and Minangasli on Whitney Avenue style themselve... More >>

• A Real Italian Christmas

  published Dec 23, 2008

  Nothing says Christmas in Italy as much as live eels. In central and southern Italy, large eels lately swum from the Sargasso Sea called capitone are spitted and roasted over a fire on Chr... More >>

• Get Your Motorino Running in Williamsburg

  published December 24, 2008

  There are now nearly a dozen places in town claiming to make the true pizza of Naples (that's Italy, folks, not Florida). Many of these are... More >>

• Xcellent Xmas Present for Foodies -- Fuchsia

  published Dec 22, 2008

  My favorite food book of the year was Fuchsia Dunlop's Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China. In it, she tells the amazing story of an Englishwoman going to coo... More >>

• Strange Snacks of the World -- Dragon Fruit

  published Dec 22, 2008

  Hylocereus undatus--looks kind of Christmasy, rightr Nowadays, many of New York's best greengrocers are found in Sunset Park's Chinatown. As my friends and I stepped off the N train at Eighth Avenue... More >>

• Xcellent Xmas Present for Foodies

  published Dec 20, 2008

  Trudging home in the driving sleet of yesterday, I saw a store that had popped up on 8th Street without much fanfare, maybe one of those Chrismas stores that have become common in Manhattan. They ap... More >>

• Strange Snacks of the World -- Ube

  published Dec 19, 2008

  Don't touch that monitor! Those wild purple and lavender hues are not the result of some defect in your computer, but a color that occurs in nature, believe it or not. Purple is the color of ub... More >>

• Adventures in a Crippled Kitchen

  published Dec 19, 2008

  Chapter 1: How It Happened It began innocuously enough. I came home one evening to find a pale green notice crudely taped to the front door of my tenement. It was from Con Ed, and read: "All Gas Ser... More >>

• I, Locavore -- Really, Really Local Honey

  published Dec 18, 2008

    The state and federal government have a long list of things they want to prevent you from eating. They don't seem to care that the poultry supply is awash in salmonella, or that animals for hum... More >>

• When You'd Rather Not Eat Well

  published Dec 17, 2008

  I know this sounds weird coming from me, but there are times when you'd rather not drag your ass across the boundaries of time and space to get the best possible meal. I pondered this as I gazed ... More >>

• Edgar Allan Pho: World of Taste in the Bronx

  published December 17, 2008

  Sure, there are good Vietnamese restaurants in Manhattan's Chinatown, and along 86th Street in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. There's even a decent... More >>

• Xcellent Xmas Present for Foodies

  published Dec 16, 2008

  A friend and I were traversing Manhattan's Chinatown the other evening on the way to one of Mark Bello's wonderful pizza parties when we spotted it--a storefront on Mott that seemed exclusively devot... More >>

• Strange Snacks of the World -- Doubleheader!

  published Dec 15, 2008

  Today's SSW is a doubleheader. The first snack we found at a 7 Eleven somewhere downtown--we hesitate to reveal the exact location, since we want to keep this snack all to ourselves. (No, just kiddi... More >>

• Taste Test -- Claude's Patisserie

  published Dec 12, 2008

  After three months that left us on tenterhooks, longtime West Village favorite Patisserie Claude has reopened--sans Claude. The gruff French pastry chef has left the business in the hands of his abl... More >>

• The Early Word -- Indian Express

  published Dec 12, 2008

    Dinner begins with free papadams and chutneys The room dramatically snakes past a bar, culminating in one of those "wall of water" installations. Despite the fast-food-sounding name, Indian Exp... More >>

• Incredibly Cheap Eats -- Stall 38, Golden Shopping Mall

  published Dec 12, 2008

  Stall 38, downstairs at the Golden Shopping Mall, features the food of Xian, a province in China adjacent to Inner Mongolia. The comfy seating area is surrounding by color photos of all the stall's ... More >>

• A Taste of Tianjin

  published Dec 11, 2008

  "Gimme a pig foot, and a bottle of beer" at Tian Jin Chinese Restaurant  Sometimes known as the Shanghai of the North, Tianjin is a city-state (part of no province) that lies just east of Bei... More >>