Like so many businesses in Jackson Heights, entering Mariscos El Submarino, which translates to The Submarine Seafood, feels like taking a trip to somewhere else. Stylistically, the inside makes you feel like you’re in a mom and pop restaurant in a coastal town in Mexico: The bottom half of the walls is painted in a soft blue and throughout the restaurant you’ll see renderings of their mascot, a smiling yellow submarine with a mustache, that looks like an off-brand Disney character. On one of the walls is a hand painted slogan written in red and yellow letters: “El amor puede esperar pero el hambre no.” Love can wait, but hunger cannot.  

As playful as this interior is, the food here is seriously good. In the four years since it opened, Mariscos El Submarino has introduced New Yorkers to a world that few here were familiar with: The complexly mouth-watering multiverse of Mexican-style seafood. 

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The restaurant is spearheaded by Amy Hernandez and Alonso Guzman, a couple that loves seafood but could never find a Mexican seafood spot in New York that they liked. Guzman is from Sinaloa, a northern Mexican state that stretches from the Gulf of California to the Pacific Ocean and is known throughout Mexico for their deliciously tangy shrimp cocktails. “There was nowhere in New York City where I could find food like this,” Guzman tells Time Out. He chalks this up to the fact that most New York Mexicans are not from the coastal states. “There’s a lot of people here who are from Puebla, where they don’t eat as much seafood.”  

There was nowhere in New York City where I could find food like this.

The items on Mariscos El Submarino’s menu started out with all the things Guzman craved and couldn’t find in New York: aguachiles, an avocado-centered dish that is made with shrimp, raw fish, chiltepin peppers, lime juice, onions and other ingredients; and ceviches, two dishes that he grew up eating at home.

He says that the lack of familiarity with Mexican style seafood—especially ceviche, which is typically made with raw shrimp, avocado, tomatoes, and cucumber—meant that he struggled to convince some of the local community to try the dishes, even if they were Mexican themselves. When the restaurant opened in 2020, they had no tables and few customers. “Our customer service, if I’m being honest, wasn’t the best,” Guzman admits.

Some people were also concerned about the hygiene of eating raw fish. “Working with seafood is also pretty complicated because you need a lot of care and cleanliness,” Guzman says. For a year, they struggled to stay afloat. Then in 2021, Pete Wells, the food critic from the New York Times, wrote about the restaurant and things began to quickly turn around.

Not long after the article published, Guzman began to see other non-Latino people visit the restaurant, and not just people from the neighborhood. “There were people who I never saw before,” Guzman says. 

Since then, the menu has expanded to include aguachiles that not only use raw shrimp, but also octopus and other types of fish. More recently, they added hot food in the form of fish tacos and shrimp tacos.

El amor puede esperar pero el hambre no. Love can wait, but hunger cannot.

For first timers, Guzman recommends the mixed green aguachile, which is not too spicy and has a combination of cooked shrimp and raw fish, so that people who are hesitant about trying raw seafood can ease their way into it.

These days, it’s difficult to go to the restaurant on a weekend without seeing it packed with locals and people visiting from other boroughs. Clearly, this Mexican seafood is hitting. In the future, Guzman tells me that he wants to focus on bringing fresher and better quality ingredients. They’ve started looking for the best places to source oysters, clams and callo de hacha, a type of mollusk commonly used in Mexican cuisine. 

When I asked him what their biggest ambition is after those oysters, Guzman says he plans on opening a second location. “My wife and I have always dreamed of what I’m about to tell you, but I’m hesitant because I know dreams don’t always come true,” Guzman tells me. What he said next surprised me. “We want to open a Mariscos El Submarino in Times Square.” 

If that doesn’t happen, he says they’ll settle for Brooklyn.

You can visit Mariscos El Submarino at 8805 Roosevelt Avenue in Queens on Monday through Thursday from 11am to 10pm; Friday and Saturday from 11am to 11pm; or Sunday from 10am to 10pm. 

* This article was originally published here

Although vegan and vegetarian food has become a big part of New York’s culinary world, back when The Butcher’s Daughter opened in Nolita in 2012, plant-based diets were still a novelty. 

Still operating its original cafe at 19 Kenmare Street on the corner of Elizabeth Street, the food empire has now officially expanded down the block. At 1,650 square feet almost double in size, the destination now includes a separate restaurant that features a beautiful cocktail bar, a remarkable pizza oven and a whole lot of sidewalk seating.

“This opening feels very momentous and full circle, especially on the heels of our 11th anniversary,” founder Heather Tierney said in an official statement about the debut. “To think this all started with a small juice bar a decade ago and to now be expanding to a full-scale restaurant, bar and market feels like a homecoming.”

To be clear, the juice bar that once was is still in place, albeit transformed into a plant-based bodega, superette and cafe that will be stocked with healthy snacks by a variety of brands, plus fresh flowers, pantry essentials and the sort of travel items that you’ll probably carry around NYC in your purse for weeks. 

Familiar favorites like the all-vegetable squash carbonara and the avocado toast will now be served at the next door eponymous restaurant alongside a number of other dishes like the pad Thai, a zucchini and pesto pizza, a mushroom “calamari” starter that just begs to be devoured and a very interesting-sounding hearts of palm “ceviche.”

The brunch menu is heavier on the carbs, of course: buckwheat pancakes and the jackfruit “crab” cake Benedict stand out from a pretty full menu that also includes quinoa and acai bowls and bakery items. 

When it comes to the cocktails, the emphasis is also on all things veggie and “fresh.”

The scotch-based Queen Bee, for example, is made with elderflower liqueur, lemon, truffle honey and bee pollen, while the Le Naturel Sangria features berry and citrus-infused pinot noir, tangerine, yuzu and more. You might want to opt for a “booze and juice” order, though: select your spirit and pair it from one of the many cold-pressed juices available. At $17, that’s might be your best best money-wise.

In case you’re a more recent New York transplant or, perhaps, new to the whole plant-based world, and are wondering about the eatery’s moniker: it is a half-joke.

“I created a story in my head […] that if there was an old butcher today, his daughter would probably be a vegetarian because she grew up around all this meat and she’s bored of it,” Tierney said to Venue Report a while back. “She’s really excited about vegetables!”

That concept of a “rebel” daughter is also the focus on the new menu, which features some dishes created by a group of women “with a rebellious spirit and activities in their respective fields,” according to a release. These include James Beard Award-winning chef and activist Sophia Roe and choreographer and dancer Kristin Sudeikis, among others.

Check out some photos from both the market and the new restaurant right here:

* This article was originally published here

New York City is heading toward a warmer, wetter future.

A new report by the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice and the New York City Panel on Climate Change (NPCC), an independent board that analyzes local environmental impact, warns that NYC will see an increase in the frequency and duration of hotter-than-average days and overall rainfall. The risk stemming from the latter changes are something to be concerned about as well.

Officials are clearly aware of it all, having recently released their “rainproofing” plan detailing how NYC will deal with the heavy rain problem moving forward. 

What are the climate predictions?

In terms of temperatures, the city will likely get between 2 and 4.7 degrees warmer overall in the next 15 or so years.

According to the latest report, sea levels in the area will continue to rise between half-a-foot and just over a foot all the way through the 2030s. Rain wise, estimates predict annual precipitation to increase by up to 10% until then.

How hot will NYC be in 2050?

Although the latest findings pertain to the next decade more or less, a 2014 report by the New York City Panel on Climate Change noted how NYC’s temperatures will likely resemble those of Birmingham, Alabama (that is: it’ll be scorching hot) by the year 2050.

What are the hottest months in NYC?

According to the National Weather Service, in 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023, the hottest month in New York has been July, so it should be no surprise if this year’s pattern remains the same.

In 2023, in particular, August and June were pretty warm as well, with the average temperature reaching 75 degrees in the former month and 70 degrees in the latter. 

* This article was originally published here

Boerum Hill’s Grand Army Bar is a quintessential Brooklyn drinking den, but for summer 2024, it’s taking on a bit of a Southern twang. The bar has a tradition of regularly switching up its menu themes—previous iterations include a “Summer Camp” motif, a “CATS (not the musical)” concept, a Mean Girls-inspired beverage lineup and the most irreverent bar theme of all, “Nicolas Cage.” And its newest cocktail series for spring and summer will be “Grand Ole Army,” a spirited nod to Nashville’s iconic Grand Ole Opry, the iconic cultural institution that has played host to legendary country stars like Dolly, Garth and Reba. 

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The May menu features 10 brand new drinks—including one shot, one frozen drink and two spirit-free options— collaboratively dreamed up by the Grand Army Bar team, led by head bartender Patty Dennison. Available until early fall (the autumnal menu flip usually takes place around early October), the new drinks include the “Ain’t Woman Enough” (a mezcal highball highlighting woman-made spirits), the “Backwoods Barbie” (a summer martini with notes of cucumber and melon) and “Folsom Prison Blues” (a toasted coconut coffee Old Fashioned).

The shooter option, “Bless Your Heart” is a chilled, dill-infused tequila shot, while the frozen number is the rum and cachaça-based “Rhinestone Cowboy” (sweetened with strawberry and banana, and available with an optional floater). And those who want their cocktails without any alcohol can enjoy the “Highway Man” (an herbaceous, soba tea milk punch with bright pops of lemongrass), and “Kiss An Angel,” an orange passionfruit soda spiced up with ancho chili. 

As is tradition, there’s a custom illustrated menu to highlight the theme, including Mad Libs of classic country songs. In addition to the new menu, Dennison and the bar team has updated the bar’s “greatest hits” menu section, which features a curated selection of the staff’s most popular drinks since the bar opened in May 2015. Making a return this summer are the “Whisper Sweet Words” shaken gin cocktail from the fall 2018 Townes Van Zandt menu, and the “Spring Sazerac #3” from the Pink Drinks menu of 2016. 

* This article was originally published here