Valentine's Day

5 Great Ideas for New York City Singles on Valentine's Day

Being single on Valentine's Day is secretly awesome. You have to spend exactly $0 on someone else. You can buy a crappy box of chocolates without wondering if it's good enough for a significant other -- it's good enough for you! And you don't even have to think about sky-high prix-fixe menus for two ... More >>

Orient Express' Sam Ziar on Romantic Cocktails

​ Sam Ziar tends the bar at Orient Express, one of the West Village's most romantic spots. Today, on Valentine's Day, he expects to be one busy man, but he took some time out to talk to Fork in the Road about his favorite winter ingredients and what makes a great Valentine's Day drink.  

Guide to FiTR's Valentine's Day Coverage: What to Buy, Where to Eat, What to Avoid

The Valentine's Day balloons go up at Caliente Cab Company. Despite our collective cynicism about the so-called greeting-card holidays, the staff of FiTR have thrown themselves into the upcoming holiday. We've told you where to buy red-colored foodie cooking gifts (including fetishistic aprons for ... More >>

Our 10 Most Romantic Restaurants

Valentine's Day is quickly approaching, meaning it's time to make a dinner resy at a romantic restaurant. But what, exactly, makes a restaurant romantic? In some cases it's ambiance -- a fireplace or candles go a long way in setting the mood. Ditto a killer view. But as a friend recently quipped, "R ... More >>

Jonathan Waxman on Why It's Smart to Get a Business Degree Before a Culinary One: Interview Part 2

Yesterday we spoke with Barbuto chef (and culinary legend) Jonathan Waxman about his new gig as a consulting chef at Rosa Mexicano and his passionate love affair with Mexican food. Today, though, he tells us about what he wished he'd known as a young chef and also give us some date ideas for Valenti ... More >>

Department of Ridiculous Press Releases: Valentine's Day Restaurant Gift Cards

If you're in the food-journalism biz, you get bombarded on a daily basis with press releases, often as many as 30 per day. Some are faintly rational, but others immediately provoke guffaws with their wild assertions. Here's the best one I've received so far today. According to the National Restaura ... More >>

This Week's Specials: Ten Best, VDay Edition; Pulqueria Cocktails

What we've been up to at Fork in the Road this week: Lauren Shockey chooses the 10 best restaurants for a Valentine's Day date, and asks Jonathan Waxman for his VDay picks. Lauren Bloomberg shows the advantages of being a homebody on Valentine's Day and plans some takeout feasts. Robert Sietsema com ... More >>

New Amsterdam Market Gets a Pop-Up Soda Fountain

Remember when the perfect Valentine's Day date was taking your sweetheart to the soda fountain for a nice coke float? Neither do we. But you can re-create the experience at the pop-up soda fountain at New Amsterdam Market this weekend.

What Gals Really Want for Valentine's Day: Luxury Chocolates

Williamsburg's taciturn Mast Brothers know just what I'm talking about. This time of year always presents a dilemma for straight boys and gay girls: how to celebrate Valentine's Day -- the only holiday focused on carnal love and desire -- with your significant other? Taking her out to dinner is t ... More >>

Roasting Plant: Best Valentine's Day Cookies on the West Side?

​While browsing online for Valentine's Day cookie options, I stumbled upon a Serious Eats post from 2010 in which Roasting Plant's cookies were crowned as the best chocolate chip cookies in New York City. I was skeptical. In fact, with Levain Bakery, Blue Ribbon Bakery Market, Milk & Cookies ... More >>

MyBlockNYC Wants New Yorkers' Loves And Hates For Valentine's

via​Valentine's Day can elicit strong emotions. For a holiday purporting to celebrate the sweetest of emotions, vitriol seems just as common as saccharine. MyBlockNYC, an interactive mapping website" that encourages users to post videos corresponding to certain NYC blocks, is hosting a Valenti ... More >>

Valentine's Day Gifts for Your Foodie Significant Other

This just might be a good gift for your BF who refuses to wear an apron -- and walks around at his own dinner party covered with tidbits of the food he just cooked ... Valentine's Day -- or, more accurately, St. Valentine's Day, named after a whole slew of early Christian martyrs named Valentine - ... More >>

Sachal Vasandani

Ditch Plains Chef Marc Murphy on Wooing With Food: Interview Part 2

Yesterday we spoke with Landmarc and Ditch Plains chef Marc Murphy about what it's like being a judge on Chopped. Today romance is in the air as we look ahead toward Valentine's Day and Marc reveals to Fork in the Road what he'd cook to woo someone. I just learned that you're auctioning off a home- ... More >>

Valentine's Day Peeps Push the Peep Envelope

We're hereby declaring a start to the Valentine's Day mayhem, and hope to give you some decent advice as to where to eat cheaply and well in a romantic atmosphere, and what kind of foodie gifts are available in a Cupidian theme.

Posts of the Week

As we look towards a blessedly long weekend, we pause to take a look back at the regular-sized week: Our 10 Great Food Moments in Literature. In honor of Presidents' Day, eat at some presidentially-themed restaurants. Angelo Sosa ruminates on Social Eatz and his naked soul. The Early Word on the ... More >>

Man Makes Ass of Self on Valentine's Day

​The Daily News spins this story as a "Valentine's Day surprise gone wrong," and maybe it is, or maybe there are lines to be read between the otherwise innocent sentences of the very brief article, but suffice it to say: If your "girlfriend" locks you out on Valentine's Day, don't climb up her ... More >>

The Recession's Over! Candy Sales Rise This Year

doobybrain.com​Happy Valentine's Day! And especially to all the candy and chocolate retailers out there--this year, people will be spending more on the holiday this year than last year.

Valentine's Day Is Also National Condom Day!

​Yes, it's true, good friends. National Condom Day and Valentine's Day fall on the very same day! Someone was either thinking, or not thinking, as the case may be, because just like Mother's Day, every day should really be National Condom Day. (And thereby, the two shall ever remain separate.) ... More >>

Numerous Americans Say 'I Love You' With Olive Garden

​If you are reading this and haven't made any Valentine's Day dining plans, you are screwed. Unless you are one of the millions of Americans who apparently think that Olive Garden is a desirable destination for romantic dining.

Why Not Feast on Animal Hearts for Valentine's Day?

Enjoy a romantic meal of the Peruvian cow heart kebabs called anticuchos at Lima Limon.​ Let's face it. The tried-and-true methods of celebrating Valentine's Day have outlived their usefulness. A romantic restaurant? Forget it. The prices have been jacked up for awful prix fixe dinners, featur ... More >>

Valentine's Day is the Absolute Worst

​Tomorrow, millions of unoriginal people will give and receive chocolates, flowers and diamonds for the elaborate courting ritual of Valentine's Day. Women will wear red or black lace lingerie and men will take them out to dinner at expensive restaurants with prix fixe specials for V-Day, and ... More >>

Our 10 Best Restaurants for a Break-Up

​As the publicists who keep sending us their drinks and menu promotions won't let us forget, Valentine's Day is not only around the corner, but also one of the most profitable days of the year for the restaurant industry. Plenty of amorous and orally fixated couples have rushed to reserve th ... More >>

Posts of the Week

Once again, we have made it to Friday afternoon. And so it is time to look back at the week that preceded it. Our 10 Best Restaurants for a Break-Up. The Early Word on Yuba. On Valentine's Day, drink Cienfuegos' Fuego de Pasion.

In Defense of My Beloved Snooki: The Best Valentine's Date Ever

​Jersey Shore star Snooki has been voted by Yahoo users as the worst Valentine's date. The New York Daily News News reports that she "got 41 percent of votes in a poll of omg! Yahoo readers on the woman with whom they would least like to spend Valentine's Day." This is so wrong: Snooki would b ... More >>

Tomorrow: Our 10 Best Restaurants for a Break-Up

​Ah, Valentine's Day, when our thoughts turn to chocolate, cheesy wine bar promotions, and emotional ruin. The holiday is a fantastically profitable one for the restaurant industry, as most couples equate food with romance, or at least a prelude to getting laid. But what options are there for ... More >>

The Treats Truck Bakery Hopes for a Summer Opening

​When the Doughnut Plant announced yesterday that it would open its Chelsea Hotel store on Valentine's Day, our thoughts turned to Kim Ima, who told us last September that she was hoping to open her Treats Truck bakery in Carroll Gardens "around Valentine's Day."

Your Valentine's Day Gift Might Be Slightly Less Crappy This Year

This could be yours.​This year could mark the most dramatic rose Valentine's Day gift-giving ceremony yet! Why? Because girl/boy/person, you are going to get the good stuff. And by good stuff, we mean the money stuff. A National Retail Federation survey has revealed that Americans will spend ... More >>

The Chelsea Doughnut Plant Will Open on Valentine's Day

yummyinthetummyblog/Flickr​After stringing along area sweet-tooths for months, Mark Israel has finally settled on an opening date for the Doughnut Plant's Chelsea Hotel location. Befitting the amorous feelings his titular treats often inspire, the new shop will open on Valentine's Day. Per D ... More >>

LAUGH IN THE FACE OF LOVE

MADCAR hosts Love Sucks!

New Amsterdam Market Reappears to Host a Valentine's Day Mini-Market

Photo courtesy of Liddabit SweetsLiddabit Sweets' Snacker.​Earlier this week, Lauren offered advice on procuring good Valentine's Day chocolate. Thanks to the New Amsterdam Market, there will soon be another seasonal source for the cacao-fixated.

Chatting With Kim Ima Part 2: Her Real, Live Bakery, Her Upcoming Cookbook, and Being a One-Truck Gal

Copyright the Treats TruckKim Ima, with numerous caramel cream sandwiches.​ Yesterday, Kim Ima, the sparkly proprietress of the Treats Truck, spoke with us about everything from cops who like cookies to why being a food truck owner can sometimes feel like being a three-card monte player. Today ... More >>

The Weekend In Clubbing: Ed Banger, "One Night Stand," Rain Machine, Fertile Ground, And More

​It's Valentine's Day weekend. I'm not one to buy into Hallmark holidays (publicly, at least), so we'll treat this weekend like any other. Excuse the cleverly named soirees and sexual innuendo. On Friday, lonely singles and teenagers unite at the One Night Stand warehouse party in Brooklyn. E ... More >>

Reasons Not to Eat Out on Valentine's Day Sound a Lot Like Reasons Not to Eat Brunch

SimonDoggett/flickrIt arguably tastes better at home.​ Andrew Knowlton's list of the top five reasons why you shouldn't eat out on Valentine's Day is an utterly sensible one. There's nothing to disagree with, but the uncanny thing is that if you substitute "brunch" for "Valentine's Day," almos ... More >>

Dustin Peyseur, From Beach Fossils, on Loving Rock Ladies: "They all make me want to give chocolates and roses endlessly (and then be immediately punched in the face for being a chauvinist pig!)"

Dustin Peyseur, sensitive as fuck.​Even though they are so cowardly and weak that they ran screaming from their offices yesterday as if a little snow were a nuclear bomb, we still love our friends at eMusic, not least for their tradition of putting together holiday-appropriate featurettes. How ... More >>

10 Really, Really Bad Valentine's Day Gift Ideas

​If you're really in love, you shouldn't have any problem making your feelings known on Valentine's Day. But you might anyway. Because commerce, advertising, and social panic conspire to bamboozle us into bad choices. The market is now saturated with "unique" Valentine's gifts. These are alm ... More >>

Valentine's Day Poetry Hike

Love in the Parlors: Valentine's Day Concert

Rockie Weekly Horoscope February 2 -8

Rockie Weekly Horoscope February 10-16

Music

Cupid's Cut

Nelson George brings the romance; Cervenka, the metal

Better Read Than Dead

Music

Lush Life

Heart brut

V-Day Breakups and Hookups

Valentine's day pressures can result in heartbreak or getting lucky

Listings

Valentines Day Bars

Listings

Listings

Love Saves

The heart is a retail hunter