City Guide: New York City

What Chef James prioritizes with 24 hours in NYC

A history

When I was in high school, I flipped a lot of pizzas. In pizzerias, at restaurants, with friends. It was a part of my identity before I got serious about cooking - which was early - I made my email address as “chefrigato@” at 16. I also loved reading and writing and was in AP-anything literature-related but could barely function in math or science. One day, a mean girl called me a “pathetic, poetic pizza boy” and honestly, I wasn’t offended at all. It was fitting.

In my very early 20s, I befriended a tea girl coworker at The Townsend Hotel - a job I absolutely loathed but a place I did make a few amazing friends. Katie was headed to Pratt in Brooklyn to study poetry. I was jealous but couldn’t wait to visit her and NYC for the first time. I also had her send me her required reading each semester so I could do my best to read along: Jeffrey McDaniel, Sarah Manguso, Tracy K Smith, and Yukio Mishima to name a few.

I loved NYC then and I love it now. My first trip was on a single line cook’s budget so I crashed in her dorm, walked miles, drank affogatos, ate pizza, tried duck feet in Chinatown and napped under trees in the Brooklyn Botanical Garden. If you’re on that kind of budget, I highly recommend it. Katie also introduced me to Brown Bird, which became the Mabel Gray namesake. So many roads for me lead to NYC.