Grub Street

Smorgasburg, a.k.a. Brooklyn's incredible edible buffet, has finally gotten their license to pour booze. This weekend is the official launch of SmorgasBar, a roped-in beer, wine, and spirits garden in the middle of the space, which, fittingly, highlights local alcohol producers. The lineup will change, but to start there's beer from Brooklyn Brewery, Kelso, and Sixpoint and wines from Brooklyn Winery and Brooklyn Oenology. Cocktails pair local mixers from the likes of Brooklyn Soda Works, McClure's, and the Stand with spirits from Kings County Distillery, Breuckelen Gin, and the New York Distilling Company. Anybody can go in (like kids in strollers), but only those over 21 can drink, and drinking is confined to the designated space. Smorgasburg runs Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; see you down by the water!

Cookbook authoress Dorie Greenspan is opening a cookie store with her son inside Essex Street Market. They've named the sweet — and occasionally savory — cookietopia: Beurre & Sel (butter and salt). A second small shop will also open at La Marqueta. Expect the little gems to be open by late summer. [NYT]

Talk about melting pot: The Institute for Culinary Education has gone and teamed up with the curry- and sushi-serving Russian restaurant group Dve Palochki and the International Hotel Management Institute Switzerland to create a new series of super-powered culinary schools set to open in St. Petersburg and Moscow starting this autumn. The ICE education director says the newly formed school is a "fascinating new example of globalization," and it's remarkable that "Russian entrepreneurs have sought out a culinary school in New York City for direction, inspiration and affiliation." Agreed, but we're just waiting for Dve Palochki to return the exportation favor and bring its Bollywood menu and Skywalker cocktails to New York. [ICE]

Just look what a bacon sundae can do for business: As of today, Burger King is a public company once again, trading on the NYSE after a two-year absence. (Ticker symbol: BKW — pretty sure the "W" stands for "Who the hell would want to buy Burger King stock?") But that's not the only news coming from the land of the Whopper: After years of mainlining a testosterone factor into its broad advertising strategies, the King wants a little family time. On the heels of its most ambitious menu expansion ever, NPR reports "the chain is abandoning its strategy of courting young men and going after a broader customer base of moms and families." Dads, you've been warned. [NPR, Earlier]

As summer dawns today, 10,000 kids on Long Island could be forced to endure the indignity of missing out on chocolate-eclair-, toasted-almond-, and cookies-and-cream-flavored Good Humor ice-cream bars, writes Newsday. Owing to some kind of distribution snafu, those choice flavors are not available from L.I. ice cream trucks, and this has parents so pissed they've started a petition to Good Humor and called a press conference for noon today. Only in the New York suburbs? [Animal via Newsday]

In a true kitchen nightmare, Jay Luther, a 47-year own café owner in Nashville, was found dead in his restaurant's freezer after being locked in over night. Reports say Luther, who owned Germantown Café East, likely died from accidental suffocation by carbon dioxide inhalation after too many hours trapped inside the walk-in with no cell phone. He was found by a co-worker. [NYDN]

Gather Journal, a new biannual recipe-driven food publication, is a mixed bag of eating, art, and all things edible and lusty. A spokesperson tells Grub Street that "each issue will be divided into chapters, much like a meal — amuse bouches, starters, mains, and desserts," infused with journalism and intellectualism and all that "this is not Ladies' Home Journal" electricity. The theme of the first issue, premiering today, is "float." As in ... root beer. Or the Macy's Day Parade. Or, yeah, probably neither.