Uptown To Do List - Week of Nov. 11, 2024

An ever changing list of things to do above the park

Hello and Happy Monday! Welcome to our second-ever edition of the Uptown To Do List. You’re still here, so that first edition must have been a-okay. Tell your friends, tag us on your socials, and thanks for reading!

EATS AND DRINKS

Sottocasa (227 Malcolm X Blvd between West 121st and 122nd Streets): The New York Times recently ran a piece called “The 25 Best Pizza Places in New York Right Now.” According to this article, the farthest north you can go and get the “best” pizza may be 40th Street. We disagree. Sottocasa and its wood-fired oven are tucked into the basement of a brownstone that is both warm and cozy, particularly in the winter months. All the pies are good but, Friday-Sunday (or until the cheese runs out), Sottocasa serves a burrata pie with fresh burrata from Italy.

The Good Good (1694 Park Avenue at East 119th Street): the Good Good looks like a speakeasy from the outside with its blinds and limited signage. The inside, however, is warm, welcoming, hip and fun. Everything we ate was outstanding but the curried carrots and jerk mushrooms stole the show for us. (For our dining companions, it was the hot chicken.) The Good Good serves classic cocktails but doesn’t really have house specials. This is the place you want to be for a relaxed date night. Bonus: the Metro-North station at 125th is only six blocks away, so this is both easy to get to from Grand Central and also an obvious choice for dinner if your guests need to go north after. The restaurant is not huge, so make a reservation before you go.

Archer & Goat (187 Lenox Avenue between West 119th and 120th Streets): Archer & Goat has a menu of Latin-South Asian fusion dishes and cocktails to go along with them. Although it feels more bar-like than restaurant, it is a mistake to sleep on the food. For dinner, you can’t go wrong with the chicken vindaloo arepas or the crispy brussels sprouts. But we really love this place for brunch—the decadent skillet lamb hash is a winner. We recommend you pair your hash with bottomless mimosas or an iced masala chai, depending on your afternoon plans. Pro tip: Archer & Goat runs a $48 prix fixe (app, main and dessert) on Thursdays and Fridays at 5pm and on Saturday and Sunday at 3pm.

HAPPENINGS

Harlem Wine Gallery (2607 Adam Clayton Powell between West 122nd and 123rd Streets): your friendly neighborhood wine store with great recommendations and knowledgeable staff (who also happen to own the place). It’s fun just to poke around in the store but ask for recs and you won’t be disappointed. If shopping in person feels too old school for you, join their wine club, which has delivery included and also comes with a very cute and functional Harlem Wine Gallery tote. Or do both. Pro tip: visit on Friday evenings between 5:30pm and 7:30pm when they often have free tastings that you can learn more about here. Don’t forget to bring your wine club tote—it’ll get you 10% off bottles in the store.

Harlem Stage (150 Convent Avenue at 135th Street): Originally an 1890 water pumping station, Harlem Stage is a real hidden gem. The space has no fixed seating, so there are benches, chairs or standing room, depending on the event you go to see. The space is very cool: arches and exposed brick that remind you of the building’s history. The first time we went, we saw a performance by Sunny Jain, who is a dhol playing maniac and the front man for a super fun band from Brooklyn called Red Baraat. Our $25 tickets got us a private bench at the show (it was a six bench show), free Skinny Pop and a Harlem Brewing Company “tasting” that turned out to be bottomless and also involved beer cocktails. Very cool, you’re sold already, yes?

Here is the thing: there are a lot of very awesome events at Harlem Stage but the website doesn’t always tell you about them (again, this little gem is “hidden”), so you need to focus on the cues. Like if something is “back by popular demand,” you should just go. Probably it will be great. It just so happens that one such show is making such a return this week: Liza Jessie Peterson’s Sistering: The Ever-Present Presence of Angels. The show will be at Harlem Stage on Thursday, November 14th at 7pm. There are three tiers of tickets: VIP ($50), Priority ($40) and General ($25)—and while the website won’t tell you what the difference is, there isn’t a bad seat in the house.

Uptown Night Market Summer Finale (701 West 133rd Street, Under the Arches on the West Side): if you aren’t at Harlem Stage on Thursday you should be at the Uptown Night Market Summer Finale in West Harlem. The open air market features more than 60 vendors and some awesome tunes. The party goes from 4-10pm on Thursday, November 14th, and has various levels of rowdiness and tomfoolery depending upon the hour. This is your last chance to hit up the Uptown Night Market under the Arches before next year! You can RSVP here, though you don’t need to in order to attend. The RSVP link has a raffle you can enter for $9.31 to win $100 to spend at the night market. That’s the real reason to click through.

Downstairs at Silvana (300 West 116th Street at Frederick Douglass): Upstairs, Silvana is a restaurant that will serve you a whole bunch of Middle-Eastern deliciousness. (Literally, everything we have eaten there other than the vegan shawarma has been delicious.) Some of those snacks are available downstairs too and I encourage you to order them when you go. But the real thing about the downstairs is that it is a hole in the wall music club. Not just a hole in the wall but exactly the sort of place you think of when you hear hole in the wall. The calendar has a lot of great shows you can go to see (click once on the timeslot and name and then click again on the name in the pop-up to learn more about the artists). Pro tip: go early. Happy hour lasts until 8pm, with wine and select beer for $6, some frozen things and well drinks for $8.

James Baldwin at the Schomburg Center (515 Malcolm X between West 135th and 136th): 2024 marks a hundred years of James Baldwin, darling of the Harlem Renaissance, and the NYPL is celebrating hard. (Fun fact: though Baldwin lived on the UWS, he went to the 135th Street NYPL branch 3 or 4 times per week!) But the NYPL understands you may not go to the NYPL as often as Baldwin did and therefore may need some help getting into James Balwin’s works. If so, they put together this list (“Where to Start with James Baldwin), which will keep you reading through 2025.

For everyone else, there is an excellent exhibit at the Schomburg Center called “JIMMY! God’s Black Revolutionary Mouth,” which has an accompanying audio guide hosted by Michelle Ndegeocello if you are interested: online or on Bloomberg Connects (free app). A lot of things are thumbs up about this exhibit but worth keeping in mind is the fact that the Schomburg Center is home to Baldwin’s personal papers, many of which have not been displayed before.

If you love the exhibit and still want more, there is a “Walk with Baldwin” walking tour, but be forewarned you will not be walking a route Baldwin once took. Instead, you’re just going to hit up five places Baldwin has been, like Harlem Hospital where he was born, which maybe you’re into, but also...

UPTOWN THANKSGIVING EATS

Thanksgiving is just around the corner and Uptown is full of Thanksgiving vibes and solid dinner options. If you’re hanging around for the holiday, here are three of our faves:

Ginny’s Supper Club at Red Rooster: Ginny’s Supper Club is the downstairs sister of Red Rooster (Chef Marcus Samuelsson). The vibe at Ginny’s is speakeasy but on Thanksgiving, Ginny’s opens up for a Thanksgiving Buffet for $75/person. For another $15, live music comes with dinner. Make your reservations here.

Bird in Hand is taking reservations for Thanksgiving in their super cute dining room. From 1pm to midnight, you can roll into Bird in Hand for a traditional turkey dinner accompanied by some traditional Thanksgiving football. Reserve your table here.

The ChefsGiving Vol. 5 Turkeys Don’t Fly STILL? by Reverence (2592 Frederick Douglass at West 138th Street): The name is verbose and also some turkeys do fly, but if you’re looking to impress your friends and family while applying heat to a turkey in the oven but otherwise serving a whole bunch of stuff you definitely could not have made yourself, then the Reverence ChefsGiving is for you. At $595, it’s not cheap but the meal kit feeds 4-6, includes a 15-17 lb heritage turkey, and all of things you never knew you needed, right up to the Almond-Pistachio Miso Cake for dessert. Oh and it comes with a bottle of wine. Reserve here.

DID YOU KNOW?

Harlem Brewing Company was founded by Celeste Beatty, the first Black woman in the United States to own a brewery. Sometimes, you can see her around town at various events, representing Harlem Brewing Company. She has also written a cookbook called “Harlem Brew Soul,” which sadly is not available at the NYPL (yet?) but can be purchased in hard copy or for Kindle. The book has a collection of family stories about soul food and homebrewing, more than 80 recipes, and historical notes on African brewing history.