While you can hardly move for bagels, Polish bialys, named not after a character in The Producers but after Bialystok near Poland's north east border, are a rarity. They are baked without prior boiling, and their indentation only goes half way through.

 

The resume of Michael Santoro, new chef de cuisine at The Blue Duck Tavern, reads like a guide to good restaurants around the world. In England he’s worked at Heston Blumental's The Fat Duck and with bad-boy-but brilliant Tom Aiken, as well as Fergus Henderson. He’s been through the kitchens of the one-star Mugaritz Restaurant near San Sebastian, Spain. He’s worked at Mill’s Tavern in Providence, RI. He’s served as sous chef at the Michelin one-star Restaurant Gilt in New York. And before joining The Blue Duck Tavern he was chef de cuisine at Boqueria, a popular Spanish restaurant in Manhattan.