Another year of The Village Voice’s Choice Eats in Manhattan has wrapped up and just like the years before it, it was spectacular. This year marked year nine of this fun event and with it came fifteen new restaurants to add to the growing list. Added this year was: Belle Reve, Butter Lane, Cabalito Pupuseria, Dough, ESH, The Gander, Grandaisy Bakery, Javelina Tex-Mex, Littleneck, Nha Minh, Pearl and Ash, Rosemary’s, Sheep Station, Sugar Couture, and Untamed Sandwiches. And that doesn’t include the original 50 restaurants that were on the bill from previous years!!
Again this year, all restaurants were brought together in the Metropolitan Pavilion for four hours. This gave city goers and fellow foodies ample time to browse through all of these wonderful places that are normally scattered throughout the five boroughs. With three levels of ticket options, the VIP tickets were sold out in a record-breaking amount of time, but luckily there were still tickets available for people who wanted to attend.
DJ Delphine Blue of Little Water Radio kept the crowd pumped up and in the mood with fun and entertaining music all night long. People who attended the event were there to have fun and have fun they most certainly did!! With cuisine from over 35 different nations, people were able to travel the world in food, without ever needing to leave the state! Choice Eats featured certain cuisines like Vietnamese, Italian, Uzbekistani, Brazilian, Cambodian, Russian, Tunisian, Greek and Cajun/Creole. And this was only a small portion of what was there!! There was certainly enough food to go around, and people enjoyed being able to take a trip around the world, with just their meals.
As like the years before, part of the portions went to the Slow Food NYC organization that helps to counteract the fast food culture that permeates the world today. While this event may be over for the year of 2016, you can be rest assured that next year’s tenth annual Choice Eats will be a great event that you should start preparing for now. If you have never attended one of the Choice Eats events, you are missing out on a spectacular time. The 2016 event was a huge success, and New Yorkers will be waiting just to see what other great restaurants get added to the bill next year. Another slam dunk success for New York and all of the participating restaurants! Until we see each other again next year!
Photos: Farooq Alihassan