How the city eats.
A Polish-Jewish bread arrived with the immigrants, got unionized on the Lower East Side, and then mechanized its way to becoming the city's default breakfast.
From Dorothy Parker's round table to the dining car of every Woody Allen fantasy, Manhattan's restaurants have starred in the city's stories as long as it has had them.
Cantonese beginnings, Taishanese cookery, Fujianese arrivals and East Broadway's ivory trade of flavor — Chinatown's menus are a map of migration.
Baked for the whole pie, sold by the single piece, eaten folded on the street — the New York slice is an invention of the city's economics as much as its ovens.
The French houses that ruled mid-century New York set the service, the pacing and the ambition that American fine dining still runs on.
The city's dining journalism began as society gossip, became a serious literary form mid-century, and turned into the data business we read today.