Yikes! This aggressive-looking machine is patented under the name “Lightning” and is cold to the touch.  Because it’s made from cast iron, when you lift it, its weight drags your whole body down and turns your arm to pudding. It has four gears; each is a different size, and each is necessary. When activated, these…

Written by Ina Bort In our last two posts, we explored the life of Alva Vanderbilt Belmont and dropped in at her Marble House suffrage conferences in Newport, where “Votes for Women” plates like this one may very well have been used. But it may be that these plates were instead (or also) used—that is,…

Written by Ina Bort Our last post explored the biography of Alva Vanderbilt Belmont, the doyenne-turned-activist we believe commissioned this plate’s manufacture. Today we explore the first of two likely scenarios where this and similar plates may have been used: The suffrage conferences Alva organized at Marble House, her Newport estate, in 1909 and 1914….

There are still a few good butcher shops left in this town, but unfortunately, sometimes you have to know where to look. That did not seem to be the case in 1910, when butcher shops could be found all over the city, and the butcher sections of supermarkets involved actual counters, not just sad, colorless…

I actually came to New York for acting school. I graduated NYU in 2005, and kinda-sorta auditioned for stuff for a couple of years while working a terrible office job. I’d always thought about food as a plan B, and after realizing I wasn’t cut out to try and make a living at acting, I started looking into culinary school.

New York has long been a food capital, from the upscale kitchens of our finest restaurants to the bagels and sausages on the street corners. But as anyone who has walked around Brooklyn has figured out, the next chapter of New York’s food history has everything to do with the local, “artisanal” food scene that…

For this edition of our interviews with A Taste of New-York History vendors, we got a special treat! Shamus Jones of Brooklyn Brine invited us to tour their Brooklyn production facilities, where we watched pickles get born.  They start off with fresh cucumbers from Mr. Pickle, the “old guard Brooklyn pickle makers” who expanded to…

How did The Redhead start? What was your goal behind it?
My partners bought an old jazz bar in the East Village with the goal of turning it into a neighborhood restaurant almost 7 years ago. I did not get involved until almost a year after they bought the place.

When did you discover that being a candy maker is what you wanted to do with your life?
When I realized it was an option! We had moved to Barcelona and our friends who started the company made that a reality.