“Food & Fashion” — an exhibit at FIT’s museum that coincides with Fashion Week — begins with a gallery that shows food themes in fashion then moves into a space designed like a food hall with stalls that explore how food and dining have dictated fashion from the 18th century forward. There is also a display that illustrate the intersection of food and art in fashion, and how fashion depicts foods, like Issey Miyake’s accessories made to look like sushi and Judith Leiber’s tomato minaudière. Sweets and femininity, fashion and its relationship to issues like activism and sustainability, and how the fashionable body dictates food choices are also explored. The exhibit was organized by Melissa Marra-Alvarez, the museum’s curator of education and research, and Elizabeth Way, an associate curator of costume.
“Food & Fashion,” Wednesday through Nov. 26, The Museum at FIT, 227 West 27th Street, no admission fee, fitnyc.edu.
New Vegetables Just Dropped
Dan Barber is reaping what he sows. About five years ago he started a company, Row 7 Seeds, to develop better tasting vegetables with input from chefs, farmers and plant breeders, a result of which has been some new winter squash varieties like Honeypatch, in stores. Now the company is starting to sell its own branded organic Row 7 Seeds vegetables in more than 100 Whole Foods markets in the Northeast. There is an entirely new cross between leek and garlic, the Sweet Garleek, which looks like a scallion, has the flat green leaves of a leek, combines the leek’s sweetness with garlic’s pungency and is excellent in a stir-fry. Upstate Abundance potatoes are small, ivory-skinned and when cooked are more fluffy than waxy. Super-sweet Badger Flame orange beets can be served raw, sliced in salads; when par-cooked and diced, they can enhance a dessert crisp. Stunning Midnight Roma tomatoes are meant for cooking but can go into a salad, as can the small Sweet Prince tomatoes. The vegetables should be available until the end of the year.
Badger Flame Beets, Sweet Garleek, Upstate Abundance Potatoes, Sweet Prince and Midnight Roma Tomatoes, Whole Foods in the Northeast.
Challah — the rich, traditional Jewish bread — is first blessed then served to start dinner for Rosh Hashana, the celebration of the New Year this year on Friday evening. Though classically braided, it’s usually a round loaf for the holiday. At Silver Moon Bakery on the Upper West Side, Judith Norell, an owner, offers a round braid and standard round challahs. Not only that: She has added to her usual inventory of variations this year with orange-chocolate, studded with tiny chocolate chips and a subtle whiff of orange. You might prefer the plain, whole wheat, multiseed or even raisin as a vehicle for chopped liver, but the new one is a winner for making French toast or snacking with cream cheese.
Orange-chocolate challah, $12.50, Silver Moon Bakery, 2740 Broadway.
Fall Popcorn, Hold the Pumpkin Spice
A fall flavor that’s not pumpkin spice? Count me in. Garrett Popcorn Shops, based in Chicago since 1949, has introduced Apple CaramelCrisp popcorn with diced apples and cinnamon added to the lustrous caramel veneer that coats the crunchy nuggets of corn. It’s a limited edition, sold online only through Oct. 8, and comes in tubs of various sizes, making it an excellent snack for tailgating or watching football at home.
$35 (14 cups), to $146 for (104 cups), garrettpopcorn.com.
Learn the How to Taste Food Like the Experts
Wine buffs swirl and slurp, olive oil connoisseurs suck the oil through bread, chocolatiers allow the subject to start melting on their tongues. These and many other tasting methods, all of which can enhance the appreciation and enjoyment of various foods, will be explored and demonstrated on Sept. 20 by Mandy Naglich, an expert on tasting. For the virtual session, part of the 92nd Street Y’s Roundtable program, participants will receive a list of items to have on hand, including rosé wine, tea, chocolate and cheeses, for tasting along with Ms. Naglich.
“How to Taste: A Guide to the World of Flavor,” 6:30 to 8 p.m., Sept. 20 online, $35, roundtable.org.
Unregular Pizza, the pizzeria notable for plopping whole burratas on top of its pies, is opening a bakery this week: Unregular Bakery, across Fourth Avenue from its flagship. Like the pizzerias, it offers innovations. Take the bomboloni, all with jelly-doughnut girth. A savory one (above), filled with stracciatella, capocollo and sun-dried tomato paste, is blackened from grano arso, the now prized burnt wheat of Apulia that was once the gleanings of the poor. Bombaspritz have Aperol spritz flavorings. An exemplary croissant is made with buffalo milk butter, and another incorporates coffee beans from the celebrated Caffé Sant’Eustachio, in Rome. Those beans are also used for espresso drinks at the bakery. The chef, Warren Rojas, employs his laminated dough to form thick filled disks of pastry and to reshape a pain au chocolat as a pull-apart confection studded with pieces of chocolate. The owners are Gabriele Lamonaca and Paola Sinisgalli.
124 Fourth Avenue (13th Street) 646-422-7262, unregularbakery.com.
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