Brian Halweil

Brian is the editor at large of Edible East End, Edible Long Island, Edible Manhattan and Edible Brooklyn. He writes from his home in Sag Harbor, New York, where he and his family tend a home garden and oysters. He is also obsessed with ducks, donuts and dumplings.

Perfect Potato Pancake Alert: Brooklyn Latke Fest Announces Chefs/Winners

Now that we’ve tested our spud-mashing skills at Thanksgiving, it’s time for those of us celebrating Hanukah to turn our attention to the potato pancake. Specifically, the third annual Latke Festival Edible Brooklyn is putting on with Great Performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on December 19th. (If you haven’t snagged your ticket here, now’s the time.)

The Editor of Edible East End Visits Isa, Perhaps Transversing Not Just the L.I.E but the Time-Space Continuum

For this Long Island boy Brooklyn sometimes seems endless. Like when you can exit the Bedford Avenue L station in Williamsburg, as we did last week, and head half a mile south on Wythe Avenue and come upon a whole neighborhood of little food shops and new and renovated condos that didn’t seem to exist a few years go. Perhaps its this vast newness–realtors citywide, we’re told, are now pushing the part of Williamsburg called the Southside–that was part of the inspiration for Isa on South Second Street.

Cold-Brew Coffee, Raw Oysters and Other Provisions to Weather Hurricane Irene

SAG HARBOR–Earlier today, in a dash of Hurricane-driven provisioning, my wife, who is always thinking ahead in a way that makes me love her, went to town for batteries, candles, bread and other essentials, including two pounds of already-ground coffee from our local roaster, Java Nation. We usually buy whole beans, but if electricity goes out, we won’t be able to use our grinder, of course.

Our Request for Best Food Songs Contest Winners, and Their Edible (a Bodum Grill!) Booty

Drum roll, please. Here are the four winners of our recent contest for best food songs. For best “song-about-food” nomination from our Brooklyn entrants, we agree with Rodney Bedsole that “Green Onions” by Booker T and the MGs is the coolest, hippest food song ever. (Plus the Times just did a whole feature on Booker T’s new solo projects this past weekend!) “Just try to listen to it without tapping your toes or feeling your body start to groove with the rhythm,” says Bedsole.

The Case for Oysters, Our Sixth Ingredient of the Week

What more could be said about oysters, and why they are the perfect Ingredient of the Week? For New Yorkers, the case for slurping Crassostrea virginica—not just during Eat Drink Local week, but year round–is historical, economic, ecological, cultural, as…

Eating with Clio: Why Tina Fey Would Approve of the Oink Tattoo in Honor of EDL

Forgive me, Tina Fey–whose “The Mother’s Prayer for Its Daughter” in Bossypants* begins with “First, Lord: No tattoos.” But, as a proud father, I must enter my three-year-old daughter Clio in the Eat Drink Local Challenge. Not just for her heroic oyster slurping, her prolific pea picking and her garlic scape gnawing. But for her […]