Tag: NYC

Join me in NYC for great Food Market Tours

🇺🇸 Discover the Vibrant World of NYC Food Tours! 🇺🇸

Exploring the food scene in New York City has always been a passion of mine. As a food lover, every visit to the Big Apple became an adventure to uncover the latest trends and flavors.

What truly captured my heart was the explosion of incredible food markets, paired with the classic bodegas that are an integral part of NYC’s rich food culture.

And that’s how this Food Tour came to life.

Whether you’re a culinary enthusiast, a culture lover, or simply seeking an unforgettable NYC experience, this tour is designed just for you! Let’s explore the city’s markets, taste delicious bites, shop, and have a fantastic time together!

Planning your trip to New York City soon? Get in touch so we can organize your personalized day tour. Just fill out the form below, and we’ll get back to you!

We offer both half-day and full-day tours—your choice!

Click here to get in touch for more details on how to book your curated Food Market Tour.

🇧🇷 Descubra o Vibrante Mundo dos Food Tours em NYC! 🇧🇷

Explorar a cena gastronômica de Nova York sempre foi uma paixão para mim. Como amante da boa comida, cada visita à Big Apple se transformou em uma aventura para descobrir as últimas tendências e sabores.

O que realmente conquistou meu coração foi a explosão de incríveis mercados de comida, junto com as clássicas bodegas que são uma parte essencial da rica cultura alimentar de NYC.

E foi assim que este Food Tour nasceu.

Seja você um entusiasta da gastronomia, um amante da cultura ou simplesmente alguém em busca de uma experiência inesquecível em Nova York, este tour foi criado especialmente para você! Vamos explorar os mercados da cidade, provar deliciosas iguarias, fazer compras e nos divertir muito juntos!

Está planejando sua viagem para Nova York em breve? Entre em contato para que possamos organizar o seu tour personalizado. Basta preencher o formulário abaixo, e nós retornaremos o contato!

Oferecemos tours de meio dia ou de dia inteiro—você escolhe!

Siga-nos no Instagram @lafoodsittertravels para mais novidades.

Clique aqui para entrar em contato e obter mais detalhes sobre como reservar seu Food Market Tour personalizado.

Join us in NYC

by marcelasenise

Empire State Buildinglafoodsittertravels

for a personally curated food tour by Marcela Senise, lafoodsitter and team.

Visit New York City Curated Food Tour for more details or just send us an email on m.senise@lafoodsitter.com

Andrea Strong

by marcelasenise

Over the course of her career, Andrea has been a lawyer, a restaurant manager, a waitress, a farm hand, a humanitarian activist, an advocate, and for the past two decades, a journalist.

Known for her pioneering food blog, The Strong Buzz, Andrea covers the intersection of food, business, culture, policy, and the law. Her work appears in The New York Times, Food & Wine, New York Magazine, Heated, Eater, and more.

1. What is the importance of your kitchen in your house?

The kitchen is the heart of our home. I live in a garden apartment in Carroll Gardens with my two kids Sam and Eiji who are 9 and 13 now. I am always in the kitchen, probably because it’s the biggest room in the house. It’s large enough to fit my desk where I write and work, and a big, old well-loved (marginally destroyed) dining room table where we eat all our meals, but also do homework, play board games, and have fierce games of cards. It’s where the kids can sit around with their friends and be ridiculous when they are not in front of the TV and their phones. I love to read and the kitchen is full of bookshelves stuffed with novels and many cookbooks. The front door opens right up into the kitchen, and it’s very homey and warm, and that’s important to me. When people come over I hope they feel the warmth and the love that’s in this room.

2. What’s the best part of the day for you to cook?

I have two kids so I cook all the time – particularly during the pandemic, it was three meals a day, for everyone, every day for months. It was a bit bananas. But things have smoothed out now, thankfully, and mostly I cook in the late afternoon. We eat dinner together as a family every night we are home, and the kids get hungry early (well honestly they are hungry all the time), so I cook around 4ish and we eat by 5:30pm-6pm. But I am always putting out snacks, slicing veggies and fruit for them, or making them toast, or bagels or what have you. I’m a very good short order cook.

I should also say that both my kids can cook, particularly my older son Eiji. Both kids have been cooking with me since they could stand. They started out putting flour in the bowl, stirring, adding chips to cookies, and as they got older, they did more. Eiji went to the Dynamite Shop, a tween and teen cooking school in Park Slope, and thanks to that he can cook anything. He cooks once a week for his Volleyball team. He’s amazing. Sam is also getting good—he can make scrambled eggs, fried fish, and lasagna. They both love to bake. Sometimes I’ll wake up to them in the kitchen making muffins. Lest you imagine some dreamy scene, you should know they are not particularly tidy cooks. The kitchen is usually a massive mess, like a tornado has blown through. But I don’t care. I am happy to see them cooking and enjoying being together. These are the memories that they’ll have forever. So if we have to clean up for a while, so be it.

3. Are you a creative chef or simply love to follow recipes?

I’d say I follow recipes and then create. I like the NY Times Cooking and Smitten Kitchen in particular. Once I have cooked a recipe once, I’ll put my own spin on it. I tend to like things with high acidity and some heat so I’ll usually add a squeeze of lemon juice and red chile flake to nearly every recipe I make. And I’ll play with different vegetables or grains or proteins, whatever is in season and in the house.

4. Three ingredients that are never missing from your kitchen cabinet?

As I mentioned I like heat, so I always have a jar of Onino on hand. This is an amazing crunchy chili made in Brooklyn by Cristy Lucie-Alvarado, a recipe developer who has worked most of her life in food marketing. It’s nutty, spicy, garlicky, and just amazing on EVERYTHING. I eat it by the spoonful. No that’s not weird; try it and you will too.

I love good salted butter so I always have that out on the counter. I really don’t like cold butter, so it’s never in the fridge.

I love pesto, so I try to have pine nuts, or even pistachios or almonds in the pantry, some sort of nut that I can toast, toss in the food processor with a clove of garlic, some good Parmesan cheese, lemon, olive oil, and basil and make a quick pesto. Sometimes I’ll add some avocado or a zucchini or half a chili pepper. I told you, I like it spicy. And pesto is so versatile and forgiving. It’s also one of those sauces that’s just great on pasta but also as a sandwich spread, or on fish or chicken, even with raw veggies.

5. How did your passion for cooking come about?

I’d say I first had a passion for eating and for food and restaurants that grew into a passion for cooking.

My parents divorced when I was very young and my dad did not know how to cook. We’d see him once a week at his apartment in the Upper East Side of Manhattan and he’d take us out for dinner, sometimes to neighborhood places and diners, but other times to really wonderful restaurants like Rumplemeyers and Maxwell’s Plum (I am giving away my age here). I was captivated by the food and the dazzling rooms, the magic of restaurants.

I studied law and practiced for a while and my passion for restaurants only grew – I was lucky enough to be eating out at the best restaurants in the city. Then I ended up working in restaurants and writing about them. I did go to Peter Kump’s Cooking School for a semester (now Institute of Culinary Education) so I had the basics down, but honestly I didn’t cook much until I had kids because I was too busy eating out. Sure, I’d cook a special occasion meal, but mostly on the rare occasion when I was home I ate a bowl of cereal or ordered in sushi or Chinese. But when I had kids that all changed. I needed to cook for my family, and I learned to cook family recipes from my Persian grandmother, and the rest I sort of cooked what I knew I liked to eat and what I knew they would eat. I was never into making one meal for the kids and one for the grown ups. We all ate the same thing. (Even though Sam used to be quite picky — I’d just make sure to have rice and beans for him at every meal.) And we always ate together. Family meals are very important to me. Yes there are many pizza nights in front of the TV, but I really like the ritual of sitting down to dinner together. Even if it’s fast and furious, it’s together. There are some words of conversation even too.

6. What’s your favorite dish to cook that you know can never go wrong?

That’s an easy one—Persian Rice and Choresh. These are two Persian recipes that my Bibi taught me. Choresh is a stew, there are many variations on it, but every Friday night I make Chickpea Choresh and a big pot of rice with a potato crust. We are Jewish and while we are not religious, I like the customs and the notion of having a special Friday Sabbath meal where we eat Persian food that my mother and my grandmother used to make for me as a child, It makes me feel like I am creating this lineage of love through food and the generations.

7. Would you receive an entire TV crew in your kitchen for a day?

If they can fit inside, yes!

8. Do you follow any tv shows or have a favorite cooking book?

We love to watch “Nailed It” as a family. The show cracks us up. It’s great. We have also watched the Great British Baking Show but it makes me too hungry. I always want to eat many pieces of cake afterwards.

Tamar Arslanian

by marcelasenise

Tamar Arslanian is founder of the popular blog IHAVECAT and author of the book Shop Cats of New York written-up in the New York Times, USA Today and New York Post. Most recently Tamar has founded “Flirting With Vegan,” a community and tour company that encourages all foodies to give delicious plant-based cuisine a chance.

Because no one has time for mediocre food.

1. What is the importance of your kitchen in your house?

Well I love to eat so I do spend quite a bit of time there. I live in NYC so by our standards I have a good sized kitchen. In the rest of the United Stated however, it would be considered minuscule.

2. What’s the best part of the day for you to cook?

Evenings.

3. Are you a creative chef or simply love to follow recipes?

I started off following recipes but during COVID I had more time to cook and became more comfortable with “going with my gut” so to speak. It was exciting to know what flavors go together to enhance a dish.

4. Three ingredients that are never missing on your kitchen cabinet?

Olive oil, zataar and salt.

5. How did your passion for cooking come about?

To be honest I would say I have more of a passion for eating well than for cooking, but seeing as I live alone, I have had to learn how to cook! My mom is an excellent self-taught cook so she has taught me to be very discerning when tasting food. She cooks delicious low-fat high flavor dishes from all cuisines and finds using butters and creams the lazy way of making a dish taste delicious. Herbs and other seasonings are her favorite.

6. What’s your favourite dish to cook that you know it can never go wrong with it?

A veggie curry with coconut milk.

7. Would you receive an entire tv crew in your kitchen for a day?

Of course as long as they were a NYC size crew to fit into my NYC size apt!

8. Do you follow any tv show or have a favourite cooking book?

My greatest inspiration comes from all the amazing TikTok chefs who are able to share incredible inspirational meals in 3 minutes or less.

Jessie Sheehan

by marcelasenise

“Granulated sugar, all-purpose flour, and salt! Not very sexy, but true.”

American bakery is one of my favorites ever. Cookies, brownies, muffins, colorful cakes, icing sugar, confettis, sprinkles…you name it.
These days on Instagram you can find an infinite number of “bakers” profile but some few can distinguish themselves from the crowd.

“Peeps” let me introduce you to a lady I cherish tones for her flair, the sense of humor and wittiness which she manages her account and of course her baking skills!
New Yorker, a Brooklyn resident since ever, mother of two, plenty of writing collaborations with important publishing and web name, her blog and two books, one of them, The Vintage Baker, which just came out and she is pretty busy baking cookies to take them on promo events. I just bought mine on Amazon (link on title) also available on bookstores in USA.
Meet Jessie Sheehan. And take my words for it, after reading her “Kitchen stories” go straight to Instagram and click “Follow”.

What is the importance of your kitchen in your house?
I love my kitchen and it is the room in which I spend most of my time. It has a lot of light – which is great for photographing my sweets – and a lot of counter space for working. I have an induction cooktop, which offers the cook a lot of control and an even heat. And I have a convection oven which I love for the perfectly browned color it gives my baked goods. My kitchen is a “galley” kitchen, meaning there is a narrow(ish) passageway between two walls of counters and cabinets and appliances. One has easy access to everything one needs at all times in such a kitchen, and I am crazy about mine.

What’s the best part of the day for you to cook?
I am a morning person and love to bake and work in the early hours of the day. I love the light at that time of day and the quiet. I often have a long laundry list of things that need to get accomplished – between baking and photographing and writing – and so I like to start early.

Are you a creative chef or simply love to follow recipes?
I am a rule-follower, which is why I am drawn to baking. When you bake you really must follow the recipe – you cannot add extra flour or remove the leavening, the way you can leave out a spice or use a different kind of citrus in a savory dish. However, I also love being creative with my baking when I am developing a recipe (ie: not following someone’ else’s). I love adding new flavors and spices, some nuts, or coconut for texture, milk chocolate perhaps, rather than dark, etc. etc.

Three ingredients that are never missing on your kitchen cabinet?
Granulated sugar, all-purpose flour, and salt! Not very sexy, but true.

How did your passion for cooking come about?
I did not grow up in a house of home-baked goodies. On the contrary, both my parents worked, but because I had a big sweet tooth, as did my brother, there were always lots of packaged sweets. But as I got older and realized that the one thing I loved more than anything (maybe even my own children) was eating, and sometimes even making, sweets, I decided to learn just how to do that. I went to a bakery in the Brooklyn neighborhood where I live, and asked if they would teach me what they knew, and the rest is history.

What’s your favorite dish to cook that you know it can never go wrong with it?
Hmm, well I would never say “never,” as I still make mistakes all the time! But lately I have been baking the butterscotch potato chip balls (a cookie from my new cookbook, The Vintage Baker) a lot, for many of the events I am doing to launch my book, and I think I could almost make them with my eyes closed now.

Would you receive for a day an entire tv crew in your kitchen?
Of course! Would love to share what I do with as many people as possible! And I love TV.

Do you follow any tv show or have a favorite cooking book?
I really love podcasts and listen to a lot of food related ones, like Bon Appetit’s, Serious Eats’, and Cherry Bonmbe’s. My favorite cookbook, is probably one of Ina Garten’s or the Baking Bible from America’s Test Kitchen/Cook’s Illustrated.

Jessie Sheehan is a baker, food writer and recipe developer. She is the author of The Vintage Baker (Chronicle Books May 2018) and the co-author of Icebox Cakes (Chronicle Books) and has developed recipes for many cookbooks, besides her own. She has contributed recipes/and or written for epicurious, Fine Cooking, TASTE, food52, and Main Street Magazine, among others.

She blogs at jessiesheehanbakes.com and is the FeedFeed editor for the Brown Sugar and Icebox Cakes feeds. She likes layer cakes with lots of frosting and cookies that are thick and chewy. Oh, and she has a soft spot for chocolate pudding. She lives in Red Hook, Brooklyn, with her husband and two boys, not far from her beloved Baked, the bakery where she got her start.

Icedbox cakes is Jessie’s first book also available on Amazon.

NYC classics

by marcelasenise

A true foodie knows about these precious gems when in NYC!

Harley Langberg

by marcelasenise

I love cooking in the morning as I’m a morning person.

I came about Harley’s work a few years back in early 2015 while scrolling around Instagram. It was “love at first post”! I love his touch when using the ingredients, choices of pieces, influences and how original years down the line his work still is. Proud to see his changes in creation but I can’t deny my favorite ones will always be the ones with candies and oreos!
One special moment was to see a Picasso piece Harley recreated and Met Museum reposted it!

Harley Food Art recreation of Picasso’s “Au Lapin Agile”

Another quality of Harley’s account is his genuine being in touch with his 36+K followers. Always with a kind word of reply if you leave a comment. And that was how our contact begun. Let’s say we are the real deal of virtual friends.
Proud too to see him hapilly married to his bestfriend Zach.

I can’t wait to meet them in person if not here in Italy back in the US and of course get one priting (or maybe two or three!) to put it in my kitchen wall.

What is the importance of your kitchen in your house?
Very very important! As a food artist and amateur chef, I am in the kitchen at least once a day and it is my favorite part of the apartment!

What’s the best part of the day for you to cook?
I love cooking in the morning as I’m a morning person making a delicious breakfast but I also do love cooking during the day and early evening as well.

Are you a creative chef or simply love to follow recipes?
I love to take recipes and adapt them to make them my own and I always usually put a healthy spin on the recipe. Sometimes I’ll substitute ingredients or omit certain unhealthy ingredients.

Three ingredients that are never missing on your kitchen cabinet?
Extra virgin olive oil, kosher salt, and fresh ground black pepper.

How did your passion for cooking come about?
It came about when I was young and I had people around me who loved to cook like my babysitter and family friends. Ever since I was little I had such a fascination with the cooking process and still do today!

What’s your favourite dish to cook that you kow it can never go wrong with it?
My favorite dish to make is a recipe I adapted from Food & Wine Magazine where I create my own whole wheat pizza dough, roll it really thin and top it with thinly sliced eggplant, garlic, fresh ground pepper, homemade pesto, and parmesan cheese. It’s more of a flatbread than a pizza and it’s absolutely delicious! I try to make it once a month.

Would you receive for a day an entire tv crew in your kitchen?
I’m not the best on camera but I don’t think I could turn down an opprotutniy like that!

Do you follow any tv show or have a favourite cooking book?
My two favorite tv shows are MasterChef Junior (those kids are just so adorable and talented) and also Chopped (love seeing the creativity that goes into making delicious dishes using odd combinations of ingredients). As for cooking books, I love the Gumbo Shop cooking book which is a popular gumbo restaurant in New Orleans.

Harley Langberg Having been born and raised in NYC, Harley Langberg early on found a passion for both art and food. During high school, he spent a summer at The School of Culinary Arts at Kendall College and the summer after worked in the pastry kitchen of the world-renowned Lacorix at the Rittenhouse. While the culinary world and his passion for cooking was always important to him, Harley decided to attend Northwestern University where he studied Economics and Chinese. While at Northwestern, he continued to invest his spare time in cooking, working in the local pastry kitchens in Evanston, IL, writing a weekly cooking column in the school newspaper, The Daily Northwestern, and teaching his fellow students how to cook during private and public cooking lessons and demonstrations. Since graduating from Northwestern in 2010 he has been working in sales and operations for a NYC-based company, yet always had the urge to find a creative outlet that best suited him. One day while in Chelsea Market, he discovered an exhibition of a food artist and was completely fascinated by this new form of art which he had never seen before. That night, he went home and created his first food art piece, and from that point on had been hooked and unexpectedly developed a new talent, food art. Since plating that first piece in October of 2013, he has created hundreds of food art pieces, worked with a number of prominent brands including The Food Network, Chili’s, Billboard, and Little Caesar creating special pieces for their social media channels, and built an Instagram following of over 33.5k followers.

@maximusupinnyc

by marcelasenise

For New York lovers!
Max, a young guy from West Village goes around the Big Apple catching some pretty mesmerizing shots!
Mornings, evenings… he is right there on my Instagram feed to bring a smile to my face and some saudades as well.
He knows I’m a follower & a fan.

A must follow Instagram account @maximusupinnyc

Francine Segan

by marcelasenise

“I became passionate about cooking about 20 years ago during a summer we spent renting a house in Italy. I was inspired by the wonderful local ingredients. I was inspired by the Italian friends I made who invited me to dinner for a homecooked true Italian meal. I was inspired by the delicious food I had in every ristorante and trattoria in Italy.”

What is the importance of your kitchen in your house?

Our kitchen is the most important room in our house. It’s the room where my husband and I start our day, over a cup of espresso and where we end our day each evening over dinner. It’s the room where our children love to sit and chat with me while I cook. It’s the heart of our home.

What’s the best part of the day for you to cook?

I like cooking in the late afternoon, after work. It’s very relaxing for me to cook after a day of work.

Are you a creative chef or simply love to follow recipes?

A little of both. I like to follow recipes from my Italian chef friends, but I also like to combine ingredients and spices in my own way to create new dishes.

3 ingredients that are never missing on your kitchen cabinet?

Fabulous artisan pasta like Felicetti, great olive oil from Tuscany or Umbria & Sicilian salt from Trappani

How did your passion for cooking come about?

I became passionate about cooking about 20 years ago during a summer we spent renting a house in Italy. I was inspired by the wonderful local ingredients. I was inspired by the Italian friends I made who invited me to dinner for a homecooked true Italian meal. I was inspired by the delicious food I had in every ristorante and trattoria in Italy.

What’s your favourite dish to cook that you know it can never go wrong with it?

My favorite dish is pasta with oil, garlic, hot peppers and a little colatura. I can never go wrong because I use only artisan imported Italian pasta & olive oil.

Would you receive for a day an entire tv crew on your kitchen?

YES! What fun.

Do you follow any tv show or have a favourite cooking book?

I don’t follow any particular tv show, but have many many favorite cook books. I buy cookbooks when I’m in Italy. One of my favorites is by Fabio Picchi, on using leftovers, and another is on Italian desserts by Salvatore di Riso.

Francine Segan, one of America’s foremost experts on Italian cuisine, an engaging public speaker, author, TV personality and consultant.