Great spot in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Modern, low-key spot for coffee, updated comfort food, draft beer, cocktails & an artsy patio.

XXXI (‘Thirty-One’) is ❶ a mixed-use community space for designers (and others) to exhibit, teach, and discuss self-initiated work; ❷ a shared studio space; ❸ a residency for designers; and ❹ an online (and sometimes physical) store. It purposefully lives outside (or against) the constraints of the city it exists in and traditional commercial practice to ask what design can do when its goal is not money.

I have been getting burgers here since I first moved to NYC. I think it is 1000 years old or something like that. Only two types of burgers, with or without bacon. I like easy decisions and this place is full of them. There is usually a line to be seated, but it always seems to go fast with $2.50 mugs of McSorley's. It's also at this strange vortex in the west village where 4th street and 12th street cross. Maybe that's why the line never takes too long and everything is so cheap.

The operators of the Peter Pan bakery make the best donuts I've ever tasted. This place is charming to its core. Decor and presentation: circa 1971 & virtually unchanged since.

I’m crazy for pork buns and ramen. The wait is always long at Ippudo but I never regret it.