If there’s anything that’s constant in New York City, it’s change, and most New Yorkers have become hardened to the tragedy of seeing their favorite small businesses shutter. Since COVID, the trend has only gotten worse: Places like China Chalet and Coogan’s, which once defined their respective neighborhoods and the city at large, practically disappeared overnight. 

When I think of small New York businesses that have held out, Ollin, the small, orange Mexican restaurant in East Harlem, instantly comes to mind. Located on the corner of 108th Street between First and Second Avenues, they’ve survived multiple recessions and a pandemic, a testament to the power that their community—as well as their undeniably bomb food—continues to hold in the face of gentrification.

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Ollin’s story began in 1997, when Juan Perez immigrated from a small town in the Mexican state of Puebla and opened a deli called Rosas de Tepeyac. It was a place where other Mexican immigrants could buy ingredients that were hard to find elsewhere at that time, like jalapeños and tortillas. In addition to those ingredients, Juan also sold food he made himself, like tortas, tacos, and most notably, cemitas, a subgenre of torta that’s local to Puebla and that you can’t find in most Mexican restaurants. 

The deli blossomed, and it got so busy that Juan had to recruit his wife, Leticia, to help him out. Soon, their three sons got involved in the business, too. On weekends, Jonathan, the family’s middle child, worked closely with his parents at the register and mopped the floors. In 2008, Juan decided to close the deli and try his luck opening a restaurant just a few blocks away. That’s how Ollin—the Aztec term that means “to act with one’s heart”—was born. 

Shortly after Ollin began its operations, though, there was a rupture in the family: Jonathan realized he was queer and began to distance himself from the family business. He tells me that during this time he barely saw his parents. Instead, he found jobs at restaurants throughout Manhattan and found a chosen family among the Latino queer community in Jackson Heights. 

Then, in 2020, the pandemic hit and restaurants began to close en masse. Even though his relationship with his family was shaky at times, Jonathan worried for his parents. “I thought there’s no way Ollin was going to survive COVID if they already had a hard time when there was no pandemic,” he tells Time Out. He quit his job at the Japanese restaurant where he worked and decided to try and help his family’s restaurant survive.

The first thing he did was get on TikTok. Jonathan began making videos of himself talking about his family’s story, how they’d been in the neighborhood for several decades, and, of course, all their food offerings, including their iconic cemitas and homemade churros. Those videos resonated at a time when we were seeing small businesses close en masse, and Ollin quickly gained a following (today, the restaurant has 83k followers on TikTok). For several months throughout 2021, you could see a line out of Ollin’s door, and people would drive from Long Island and beyond just to see what the hype was about. 

Pretty soon, Ollin became a hub for the local community. They held sip and paint sessions and organized screenings of Coco for children in the neighborhood. They also set up an altar for Dia de los Muertos where neighbors could put pictures of their deceased loved ones and honor them. “Ollin has become a beacon for so many different communities,” Jonathan tells Time Out. “We’re so proud that beyond our food, we built a place of community and care.”

The family’s compelling story is the reason many people go to Ollin. But let’s be real, the food is the reason they keep coming back. For first timers, Jonathan recommends ordering their sope with chorizo, since the dough is made in house. For a main course, he recommends the cemitas, which are made with fresh papalo, an herb popular among Indigenous cuisines throughout Latin America, homemade chipotle, and quesillo, a type of cheese they source from Mexico (it’s also commonly referred to as Oaxaca cheese). 

Another very popular dish from the restaurant is their birria, the quesadilla-like dish that you dip into a beef broth. Ollin uses the dried chilis required in traditional recipes, as opposed to tomatoes, which some restaurants use as a substitute to cut costs. If you’re lucky, you’ll also get a chance to try their mole, which is made and shipped by the family’s grandma back in Mexico—which also means it’s not always in stock.

Another favorite is the Plato Juancho, named after Juan, which is a hearty plate that includes grilled potatoes, a whole cactus, onions, jalapeños, cheese and the meat of your choice. It’s the plate that the patriarch of the family would eat to keep him going after long days of work, and a dish that says a lot about the family’s origins.

Ollin is a restaurant that has survived out of a family’s grit, but has thrived out of the love of the surrounding community. Ultimately, Jonathan sees Ollin as a vessel that will propel his family into a more gentle era, an era where they can rest. He wants Ollin to be successful enough so that his family can build their house in Mexico, where Juan and Leticia eventually want to return and retire. “Once I see my parents’ house fully built, I can think more about my future,” Jonathan says. “I want my parents, who are in their 60s, to have somewhere comfortable to go once they are older.”

You can visit Ollin at 339 E 108th Street Monday through Thursday from 11am until 9:30pm.

* This article was originally published here

Pizza Fun House is a new parlor by the Serafina Hospitality Group set to debut at 63 West 8th Street by 6th Avenue in Greenwich Village tomorrow. To celebrate the grand opening, the staff is giving out a whopping 500 free slices of delicious, warm pizza from 1pm until supplies last. 

Although the promotion is enough of a reason to run to the new spot, the restaurant’s concept and menu deserve some attention of their own as well.  

The pizzeria looks just like what it sounds like: expect brightly colored geometric Googie-style interiors that are inspired by Serafina co-founders Fabio Granato and Vittorio Assaf’s pop culture memories from their Italian childhood. 

The menu plays on nostalgia as well, featuring hearty mains like the meatball parm dish, all served with a side of spaghetti marinara.

House-made pastas include penne a la vodka and meat lasagna but there are also sandwiches and salads on offer.

Of course, the main event is all about pizza, and for good reason. Each pie is cooked at a precise 240-degree temperature for five minutes inside a Roman Castelli oven that “allows for a versatile range of styles, all while maintaining the integrity of the dough’s sourdough-like profile,” reads an official press release. The ingredients are sourced directly from Italy—think tomatoes from Naples and olive oil from Sicily—when creating the pizze that are sold by the slice or as whole pies.

Let’s not forget about dessert: banana splits and cannoli are must-haves alongside a range of milkshake flavors that include the black and white, a variety inspired by the iconic New York cookie, of course.

As mentioned in the press release, Pizza Fun House sounds exactly like the classic Happy Days-style diner that plenty of New Yorkers look back fondly on. We’re here for all of it, especially when a visit involves free pizza.

* This article was originally published here

If you’re anything like me, you’re really enjoying the new X-Men 97 show by Marvel Animation on Disney+ and you want to tell everyone about it (episode 5, right?). 

Well, Airbnb can do you one better and you don’t even need powers! It’s launching a chance to stay at the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning in Westchester, NY. The stay, which is set up inside a four-bedroom mansion in High Castle and “hosted” by Jubilee, is a 2D experience that includes:

• A new student orientation video from Jubilee
• The opportunity to concoct experiments in Beast’s lab
• The chance to train like an X-Man in the Danger Room
• A stop in the iconic War Room for team briefings and to try on Cerebro
• Staying overnight in either host Jubilee’s bedroom straight out of the 90s, Wolverine’s room inspired by the series, Beast’s lab, or the new recruits dorm room.
• Beignets for breakfast (Gambit’s secret recipe)

On the Airbnb listing for the X-Mansion, Jubilee writes about the experience:

“Hey, I’m Jubilee! If I’m not at the mall, you can find me hanging with my fellow X-Men. We’re talking Cyclops, Storm, and Wolverine! I learned how to light up the sky at Xavier’s Institute for Higher Learning. Basically, I have the power to shoot fireworks from my hands. Rad, huh? Can’t wait to have you over to the house so you can see what we’re all about.”

Before you leave, you’ll get debriefed on your new mutant powers an official diploma and a class photo.

The space itself looks like the animated series come to life — certainly worth hosting the likes of Magneto and our beloved hero Gambit. 

Booking opens at airbnb.com at 5:30pm today (May 1) with stays starting in June. When you try booking, you’ll need to provide your preferred stay dates, your guests, and answer a question about why you want to go. Airbnb will randomly select potential guests and ask them to book it. 

Requests to book close at 11:59pm PT on May 13, 2024, and it’s $97 per person to stay the night.

If you can’t secure the stay, you can just go to the two-hour X-Men experience at the X-Mansion, which you can book starting May 9 right here.

This experience is part of Airbnb’s Icons program, a new category of “extraordinary experiences hosted by the greatest names in music, film, television, art, sports, and more.” 

“Icons take you inside worlds that only existed in your imagination—until now,” Brian Chesky, Airbnb co-founder and CEO, said. “As life becomes increasingly digital, we’re focused on bringing more magic into the real world. With Icons, we’ve created the most extraordinary experiences on Earth.” 

* This article was originally published here