Torch & Crown Beer Garden is back for its third season in the Union Square Park Pavilion, serving up locally brewed beers and fan favorites like the Lou Burger, pizza, and pretzels.
From now through early November, enjoy:
NYLaughs presents a free comedy night in Union Square Park on Thursday, June 5, from 6 p.m to 9:15 p.m., kicking off a weekend comedy festival around the neighborhood.
Enjoy top comedians—from TV headliners to rising stars—curated to showcase NYC’s diverse voices. Presented with The Stand and Union Square Partnership.
The Union Square Night Market by Urbanspace returns to the South Plaza, featuring over 35 rotating local food vendors serving a diverse mix of flavors and summer fun.
Open from 12 p.m. to 10 p.m., it’s the perfect place to enjoy bold bites, good company, and the energy of summer evenings.
2025 Schedule:
Thursdays & Fridays: Now through June 27
Thursdays only: July 24 – August 7
Thursdays & Fridays: September 4 – October 17
Garden of Eden is gone and missed. In its place will come Atherea, a more organic, health-food focused market and cafe. Does that mean $$$$? Probably. Here’s what they say:
Now baking at 64 University Place is Papa d’Amour, the new bakery from celebrated pastry master Dominique Ansel. It’s gonna be fancy. Here’s New York magazine’s take:
On a recent afternoon inside the kitchen that will open as Papa d’Amour later this month, the pastry chef Dominique Ansel was holding a spoonful of tomato-tinted scrambled eggs for the consideration of his wife, Amy Ma. “White pepper,” she said after trying it. “That’s not a bad thing.” She explained that Ansel will add vermicelli to the eggs to soak up any excess moisture so the mixture can then be stuffed inside a soft, steamed bao bun, which — because this is from the same chef who invented the Cronut all those years ago — will be folded in the shape of a croissant.
A single pastry that manages to reference a dim-sum staple, French patisserie, and the tomato-egg stir-fry that Ma’s mother cooked for her at home in Taiwan is but one of the many complex, globally collaged items on the menu of Papa d’Amour, which is Ansel’s “exploration” of Asian bread culture, as he puts it. More than that, it is a manifestation of love for his two children (the enfants to his papa) where customers will be able to find loaves of shokupan and sandwiches made on that Japanese milk bread (plain or laminated); pretzel-salt-crusted Chinese custard tarts; and a banana bread Malay cake derived not from the humble American home-baking staple but of Malaysia’s more elegant, fluffy, steamed sponge cake.
The Papa is particularly excited about a scallion-basil “blossom,” which, you’d never guess unless he told you, is his take on a Taiwanese scallion pancake. “I wanted something I can pull apart,” he says. He’d seen the way the pancake’s dough is fluffed by hand to give it a flaky, almost shredded surface and a chewy middle and wanted to come up with something that mimics that interplay. He was trained in France, so his mind went to two kinds of brioche: a regular version to encase the scallion component in the middle and a laminated, layered crown to encourage ripping.
After 3 years, 8 extensions, and 1,221 performances Off-Broadway, The Olivier Award & Lucille Lortel Award-Winning Musical Comedy Titanique will play its final performance of the NY run on Sunday, June 15, 2025.
Visit SmashyClub at 42 Union Square East for inexpensive burgers and fries.
What used to be the TD Bank at the corner of University and 11th will soon be a new outpost of the quickly expanding Blank Street Coffee Chain. OK, but isn’t better to support local businesses? Go to NewsBar instead.
