Grub Street

In Jon Favreau's new movie Chef, which had its Tribeca Film Festival debut this week, Oliver Platt plays a key role as a restaurant critic — excellent casting, since Oliver just so happens to be the brother of New York's own critic, Adam Platt. The two sat down to talk about the role, how chefs and actors react to reviews, and which critics Oliver looked to when honing his character's particular breed of vitriol.

The thought that springs to mind even before you’ve had a bite of Porchetta’s brand-new porchetta bánh mì: What took so long? Jenkins, an admitted bánh mì addict, already has a porchetta taco on the rotation, so a porchetta bánh mì always seemed to us like a no-brainer. It’s true, the trusty combination most Vietnamese sandwich shops list as a No. 1, consisting of various porky mystery meats, is hard to beat. But slow-roasted heritage-breed pork loins wrapped in bellies, combined with pickled veggies, Kewpie mayo, Sriracha, jalapeño, cilantro, and a squirt of lime is pretty much a match made in sandwich-mash-up heaven. They cost $10 each and will be available Thursday through Sunday, which means you can get your hands on one today.

On Monday, the owners of Tacombi at Fonda Nolita and La Brisa in Montauk will open a 6,500-square-foot food complex on West 24th Street, complete with a taqueria called Tacos Madison, as well as a tortilleria and a Veracruz-style coffee bar. The idea is that Cafe El Presidente will feel like a traditional Mexican market, where customers can visit different little shops and bars. Luis Aguilar, the head chef at Fonda Nolita, will produce tortillas made of beetroot, calabaza, nopal, yuca — both corn and flour styles. Jason DeBriere, most recently of now-closed Peels, will head up the brunch menu.

Citing sources close to the deal, New York Post real-estate columnist Lois Weiss reveals — somewhat mind-blowingly — that a branch of Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich's Eataly will open in the base of 4 WTC when the shopping-centric portion of the building debuts in the summer of 2015. The restaurateurs' first U.S. outpost of the Turin-based Slow Food mega-grocer opened four years ago, in advance of expansion nationwide (and world domination).*

National Security Adviser Susan Rice, Ambassador Caroline Kennedy, President Obama, and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe just took up four of the ten counter seats at the subterranean Sukiyabashi Jiro. (You may know it as one of the most respected, and most difficult to get into, sushi restaurants in the world, presided over by Jiro Ono, the octogenarian chef made famous in the 2011 documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi.)