Acquiring crushable felt Borsalinos can become borderline addictive. A few Saturdays ago my friend Randy Goldberg and I stopped into JJ Hat Center, a New York institution for hat buying. I was just going along for the ride because Randy wanted to go to replace a lost Borsalino (which was swallowed by an NYC taxi) not at all intending to buy anything. After about 45 minutes, I walked out with a simple Italian-made felt hat that will last a lifetime (if cared for properly).

That’s how things just seem to go at JJ Hat Center — once you are there it is hard to resist all of the finely made hats. Next time you are on Fifth Ave (between 31st & 32nd streets) stop in and see if you can avoid the lure of the Borsalino.

21 Comments

My family has always had a theory that the uglier and more out of the way a restaurant, the better the food. When I was a kid, my dad was under the impression that there was nothing worth eating in our suburban Chicago town, so we routinely found ourselves at 65 Restaurant in Chinatown, which had a giant red and gold Buddha in the entrance and a wonton soup to which I compare all others.

I felt a little out of the loop when other kids would talk about eating deep-dish pizza from our local Giordano’s chain, but we had Buffo’s; a sleazier, wood-paneled joint 45 minutes from home with decidedly better pizza. While it used to annoy me, I’ve come to embrace the theory wholeheartedly as I’ve gotten older. It’s no secret that restaurants that look like they’ve stood the test of time tend to serve great food, or maybe food just tastes better when you have to work a little for it.

Either way, Salumeria Biellese is one of those places. If it weren’t for the sun-faded press clippings and awards plastered all over one of the font windows, you could walk by every day and not realize that it offered anything to distinguish it from the hundreds of other generic corner delis in the city. It resides on a stretch of 8th Avenue below Penn Station with little to lure in crowds besides superior encased meats. While locavorism and slow food have become increasingly popular in recent years, Salumeria Biellese has been making its own cured meats and sausages since 1925. They expanded operations to New Jersey a few years ago, but local family farms continue to supply all of their meat (mainly Berkshire hogs), and the salumi are based on traditional Piedmontese recipes.

16 Comments

Massimo Piombo outside Barneys New York.

Piombo, the colorful Milanese menswear label is finally landing on U.S. shores with its debut this week at Barneys New York. Situated in some very prime real estate on the first floor of the Madison Avenue flagship, the Italian label has long been a insider favorite of menswear editors like Esquire’s Nick Sullivan (who introduced me to Piombo originally).

But why did it take so long to get this stuff to New York? “Mark Lee (Barneys CEO) wears Piombo and he approached us to come to Barneys and New York. It is the perfect partner for us,” said Massimo Piombo this morning as we surveyed the clothing and the newly installed (and stunning) window display on 60th Street.

12 Comments

Of all the great menswear shops in New York, Paul Stuart arguably has the best windows of any of them. Known as the more European-American answer to a preppy Brooks, Paul Stuart’s windows wrap all the way around the Madison Avenue storefront and down a good stretch of 45th Street, telling a great story in the process. To kick off it’s fall season Paul Stuart culled together a group of menswear folks — Esquire Fashion Director Nick Sullivan, Chris Callis and Woody Hines from Men of Habit, Lawrence Schlossman from Sartorially Inclined and your humble correspondent — to rig out its windows in a homage to plaid and tweed.

9 Comments

A vintage Breitling on display in the company's 57th Street shop.

A few weeks back I got an invite to meet the new Breitling USA President, Thierry Prissert at the watchmaker’s new boutique on 57th Street. Me being someone with a fairly shallow knowledge of Breitling, it seemed like a good opportunity to learn about a very historic brand straight from the head of the company.

Honestly, what I had been expecting to see at Breitling was a lot of very very large brutish watches that don’t appeal to me. Upon visiting the shop and seeing the collection, my preconceived opinion was partially confirmed. But more surprisingly, Breitling also has some very classic looking timepieces that I would definitely want to own.

18 Comments

We stopped by the recently opened Gant Rugger shop on Prince Street in Manhattan to check out the new Gant Rugger SS12 collection and were pleasantly surprised by the presence of one of our favorite designers — Mr. Christopher Bastin. We had no idea Gant’s original Bastian was going to be walking us through the new clothes, but were happy to get an expert tour. The new Rugger collection looks solid per usual; the clothes are very collegiate and also very wearable. It is important to also note the colors are all spot-on (often with preppy, the colors are all wrong) and the fabric selection was very well done — all directly attributable to our pal Christopher Bastin.

Since we had him hostage we coerced Christopher into helping us show off some of our favorites pieces from the upcoming SS12 collection. Check it out after the jump.

13 Comments

Inside the loo in the famed New York Athletic Club hangs this intriguing bit of engraved marble that, apparently, has been salvaged from The Grand Union Hotel. It reads as follows:

“The Meanest Man
in the United States
occasionally visits this Toilet Room.
He always carries away as a souvenir, either a coat
hook, doorlock, or paper holder and often several of each.
He would take the marble slabs if they were not made fast.
We guarantee this man a warm reception
if we get hold of him.

Ford & Co.
Grand Union Hotel.”

16 Comments

After 81 years, the famous New York establishment 21 Club is finally getting a few bar stools. Glenn Collins at The New York Times reports on some new developments at 21 which include a new bar in the lounge, complete with places to sit and drink.

“The bar was for drinking, not for resting,” said a customer of 36 years, Thomas Moran, the chief executive of Mutual of America.

In the era of the three-martini lunch, the standing elbow-benders were three-deep at the bar, nearly as much a part of the lore of “21” as its checked tablecloths and the ceiling dangling with dozens of toy airplanes, patrons’ sports memorabilia and other curios (they are dusted twice a month). “I’ve served many people who ate a whole meal standing up,” said Tara Wright, a bartender there for the last six years. The tradition was “that you’d made it when you could stand at the bar,” she said. “You’d arrived.”

15 Comments

Ten years ago, at age 30, Shinya Hasegawa moved to New York City to attend design school and learn how to make clothing. Growing up in Tokyo he was always had a fascination with clothing, often spending hours scouring for the best vintage and seeking out the best outdoor and workwear goods from America. After earning his degree in New York, Shinya went to work for the vintage dealer What Comes Around Goes Around and then later spent four years working with Daiki Suzuki at Woolrich Woolen Mills.

During his time in Tokyo and New York, Shinya’s love of clothing paralleled his love of surfing and the outdoors. This is where the inspiration for Batten Sportswear — a new line of mens outerwear, sportswear and accessories that is launching for spring / summer 2012 — was born. Seeing the collection with Shinya in his showroom, it was clear from the outset what the concept of the collection was. Batten mixes a weekend adventure in Yosemite with a subway trip to The Rockaways, all encircled by everyday life in the city.

38 Comments

The diner is a rightly beloved cultural institution, and yet it remains a curious one. In one sense they all resemble one another—you could order in any diner without referring to a menu. And yet they also reflect their owners and neighborhoods—they may have an unexpected specialty or insist on serving something only one way. (We won’t get into the hash browns v. home fries debate at the moment, though it is a rich one.)

Consider the Viand, on Madison Avenue and 61st Street. It’s near Barneys and Hermes, not the exact provenance of a fried eggs and bacon—unless you’re ordering room service at The Pierre. The Viand is narrow—the booths are only one person wide—and nearly always crowded with one of the more unusual cross-sections of diners in the city. You may sit at the counter next to a high-powered lawyer or a woman who would typically lunch in a far tonier setting. But it’s not always an overly smart crowd, you come across tourists, office workers, shopping Europeans. It’s local and international at the same time, which is to say, it’s a uniquely New York institution.

31 Comments

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an interesting article by Jessica Firger about Master Purveyors, supplier to many of New York’s “institution” steakhouses like Keens and Peter Luger. The old-school butcher is one of the last remaining companies in N.Y. that specializes in “Prime” cuts of beef, which need to be cut, hung and handled entirely by hand to ensure the high quality meat retains its “Prime” classification and to make sure it is perfect when cooked and subsequently devoured.

The meat has just completed an overnight haul from Chicago, but its journey through one of the world’s largest wholesale food markets to the plates of New York City’s finest steakhouses has just begun. “This came to us today and it was walking on Friday,” says Sam Solasz, 83 years old, who opened wholesaler Master Purveyors more than 50 years ago.

Master Purveyors specializes in prime fresh and dry-aged Angus beef, served at renowned restaurants like Keens Steakhouse, Peter Luger, Wolfgang’s Steakhouse, Gotham Bar and Grill and the Four Seasons, as well as at markets like Fairway. Only 2% of U.S. cattle are graded “prime,” a label that normally commands twice the price of “choice” or “select” meats.

“We’re the last of the Mohicans,” says Mark Solasz, 48, assistant vice president at Master Purveyors and Sam Solasz’s youngest son. “It’s a dying industry because it’s hard work.”

Read the entire article here.

Photos by Natalie Keyssar for The Wall Street Journal.

12 Comments

34th Street. Note the building with the billboards who wouldn't sell to Macy's so they built around it.

There’s something about these old photos of New York that continually draws me back. I actually posted some other images from this collection by Berenice Abbott back in 2009 during the thick of the economic meltdown, which sadly many people are still dealing with. Abbott’s photos — which were commissioned by the WPA and are part of the New York Public Library’s collection — cover a large swath of New York life during the mid-1930s, another very difficult period in our country’s history.

Even though you may have seen these before, these photos are never a let down. To me it is interesting to see how much the city has changed and of course, how it hasn’t. You can see the complete set here and can own the book too, should you desire.

Under the elevated train. Beautiful.

The bread was warm. Note the fog on the glass.

21 Comments