winzir A Cure for Winter Blues? Try These Cozy New York Restaurants.

It had been a terrible day. I woke up too late and too anxious. The heat in my apartment stopped working. All I wanted to do was wrap myself in blankets and watch a bad action movie.winzir

But I had a dinner reservation. Grudgingly, I trudged through whipping winds to Cafe Kestrel, a teeny, minimally adorned bistro that opened last summer in Red Hook, Brooklyn. As I stepped in, someone offered to take my coat. An amuse-bouche of warm, just-popped popcorn appeared on the table, followed by two cigars of fried halloumi, dusted in a sinus-awakening amount of Espelette pepper and shellacked with thick wildflower honey. I watched a server run a pot of tea and two mugs to a couple standing outside waiting for a table. My frosty mood melted as fast as the applesauce ice cream sundae.

A few weeks earlier, on a morning when the sun refused to come out, I found similar comfort in the cheery, electric-blue exterior of Cocina Consuelo, tucked off 143rd Street. Inside, this Mexican cafe felt as much Harlem as it did Puebla. Boisterous families squeezed into booths, tearing into plates of tortillas topped with Jackson Pollock-like splatters of salsa roja,fhm63 hoja santa and an oozing egg whose yolk matched the wall color.

ImageThe bright colors of Cocina Consuelo, a Mexican cafe in Harlem, offer cheeriness before you even enter the restaurant.Credit...Marissa Alper for The New York TimesImageMany of the homey decorations inside the restaurant come straight from the apartment of the owners, Karina Garcia and Eduardo Rodriguez.Credit...Marissa Alper for The New York Times

Only a few shreds remained of their croissant, from the nearby Bakery Mocana, which the restaurant fills with molten, glistening Cheddar and a crunchy swipe of salsa macha. Some children plunked errant keys on an old Kimball piano; others flipped through photo books arrayed on the stand. Was I at a restaurant or an auntie’s house?

These two dining rooms were cozy — a term now so inescapable that it has birthed an internet lifestyle (cozycore) and turned hygge (its Danish and Norwegian equivalent) into mainstream American lingo.

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But the move backfired in a way that few supporters expected. Californians in 2021 actually tossed nearly 50 percent more plastic bags, by weight, than when the law first passed in 2014, according to data from CalRecycle, California’s recycling agency.

His debunked claims about Haitian migrants stealing and eating their neighbors’ pets in Springfield, Ohio, helped stir a firestorm over immigration in that community, which has dealt with bomb threats and evacuations after Mr. Trump made his comments.

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