Posts for November 6, 2012 -- Grub Street: New York Magazine's Food and Restaurant Blog

Posts for November 6, 2012

11/6/12 at 5:45 PM
Leftovers
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Mile End at LES Tenement Museum; Turn-of-the-Century Election Cake

• The proprietors of New York's favorite Canadian-Brooklyn Jewish deli, Mile End, will join the Lower East Side Tenement Museum for this month's Culinary Conversations. The tasting menu will include skewered chicken gizzards, lamb bacon, and latkes, with a healthy dose of New York immigrant history. [Grub Street]

• The New York Public Library tweeted a 1907 menu that included an "election cake," including the recipe. Apparently cakes and elections go hand-in-hand, probably because they soothe you if your candidate loses — or if your candidate wins, taste that much sweeter. [Gothamist]

• Walrus and Carpenter, a CSA-style oyster farm, assures us that it will fulfill its holiday oyster orders as planned. Pickup dates begin November 21 and run through December 31. [Grub Street]

• Buttermilk Channel will be offering 10 percent of its sales to St. John's Bread and Life, a Brooklyn organization that serves hungry New Yorkers. [Grub Street]

11/6/12 at 5:35 PM
The Feeding Tube
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Martha Stewart Ventures Into Sitcom Territory

By Hugh Merwin

Can't wait for this.

Gordon Ramsay is not the only TV food personality signing on to produce a fictional television series: Deadline reports (via Vulture) that Martha Stewart will produce Tao of Martha, which follows a "highly disorganized former party girl" who finds purpose in proper napkin-folding technique, true love at the specialty yarn-store parking lot, and heaven in a hot-glue gun. We're making those things up, of course, and plan on tuning into Fox next fall to find out how to really flip an omelette. [Deadline via Vulture, Earlier]

11/6/12 at 5:00 PM
The Feeding Tube
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Tom Colicchio Could Have Been Sex and the City’s Breakout Star

By Hugh Merwin

He probably still wakes up hearing that theme song.

Chef,Top Chef host, and all-around rocker Tom Colicchio tells the Hollywood Reporter about an early missed opportunity with television stardom. Apparently he was slated to appear in the pilot episode of Sex and the City. "It was shot in my restaurant when I had Gramercy Tavern," he says, "and they wanted me by the grill." Fate, however, had other plans: "I screwed up my leg, so I was on crutches, and we had a fire in the restaurant the night before so we couldn’t light the grill." [HR]

11/6/12 at 4:35 PM
Downtown
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Times Critic Loves Downtown

"There are the places we go not only for the food (and in a few cases, not at all for the food) but also for the feeling that we are downtown and nowhere else." — Pete Wells files a love letter to all downtown restaurants, from the palatial Del Posto to Chinatown's rice noodle joints, in place of his weekly review, approaching the scene and some of its star players (Dufresne, Lo, Liebrandt) with the awe and admiration of a kid who has just discovered a massive trove of beloved old baseball cards bundled with a rubber band. [NYT]

11/6/12 at 3:45 PM
Old Liquor
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Time Travel Is in Fact Possible When You Drink Old Liquor

By Hugh Merwin

Fernet? Only if it's 47 years old.

That's our takeaway, anyhow: The Times talks to a subset of bartenders who make cocktails with old bottles of liquor. Some are on a mission, others seemingly mix away for the hell of it. The Experimental Cocktail Club will serve you a fifties-era $200 cocktail made with Gordon's; Vintry Wine & Whiskey has plenty of old blended whiskeys awaiting your dabble; and the septuagenarian Chartruese at Pouring Ribbons runs $125 an ounce. Salvatore Calabrese, otherwise known as the guy behind the Most Expensive and Oldest Cocktail Ever Made, makes all sorts of cocktails with antique booze at the Playboy Club in London and explains all the decade-hopping whistle-wetting. “You can see history, read about it, touch it, so why not taste it?” [NYT, Earlier]

11/6/12 at 2:35 PM
Product Displacement
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Budweiser Does Not Want to Be in Flight Anymore

Anheuser-Busch says it had "no knowledge of the use or portrayal of Budweiser" in the movie Flight before it was released, reports Reuters. They're not too happy with the Robert Zemeckis film, which depicts Denzel Washington as a heroic airline pilot beleaguered with vices including cocaine and on-the-job drinking. Zemeckis's previous live action 2000 film Cast Away featured another unintentional product placement in the form of Wilson the volleyball which went on to inspire the sporting goods company to manufacture a special edition tie-in ball with a faux-bloodied handprint. There's really no chance of something like that happening this time around, and Budweiser has asked Paramount to digitally mask its logo in all extant digital copies of the movie and subsequent versions. [Reuters]

11/6/12 at 2:00 PM on Grub Street SF
Other Cities
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Alan Richman (Finally) Discovers Portland

By Jay Barmann

He's a little behind the pack on this one, but GQ critic Alan Richman today is among the last critics in the country to decide that Portland, Oregon, is now "the most fascinating gastronomic city in America." Eric Asimov in the NYT declared Portland food's "golden age" to have begun five years ago, and US News & World Report named Portland the No. 1 city in the world for street food not long after. The exporting of Andy Ricker (Pok Pok) and Matthew Lightner (Atera) to NYC has only helped build the city's legend. Also, Andrew Knowlton at Bon Appétit has made sure to swing through the past few years for his Best New Restaurants list, crowning Luce one of his top ten this year. [GQ]

11/6/12 at 1:40 PM
Rants
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No Reservations Ad Prompts Bourdain to Unleash Anti-Cadillac Twitter Bluster

By Alan Sytsma

More of a Chevy guy?Photo: Taylor Hill/Getty Images

Last night marked the series finale of No Reservations, but Anthony Bourdain isn't leaving the Travel Channel without pulling his own mini-version of a Keith Olbermann-style Twitter anti-corporation Twitter rant. The host took a break from live-tweeting during the episode to, once again, express his frustration over a promotional spot (which Eater has embedded at the bottom of this post) for Ann Romney's favorite car company.

"Greedy venal #travelchannel ad sales motherfuckers."

11/6/12 at 1:25 PM
I Sue Your Milkshake
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Tourondel Settles Boozy Milkshakes Lawsuit With BLT Burger

Today, on Election Day, many battle lines will be drawn deeper than ever, so the news of an agreement between Laurent Tourondel and his former BLT restaurant partners over their chilly, booze-spiked milkshake lawsuit is cause for a celebration indeed. No longer will anyone have to suss out the subtle difference between “Berry Me” and “Berry Good,” define the uniqueness of the “Campfire Marshmallow” versus that of the "Fluffer,” or testify about how the “Red Head” is definitely not the same thing as the “Brunette.”. Today you can visit BLT Burger and LT Burger and drink them all. Welcome to the democracy. [Bloomberg, Earlier]

11/6/12 at 12:30 PM
Grub Guide
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Poll Parties: 24 Places to Eat and Drink While Watching Election Results Tonight

By Julie Ma

"Let's grab a drink when this is over," said neither of them.

In a few hours, the polls will be closed, the heavy lifting done, and all that will be left to do is wait for the votes to be tallied. According to some, that last part might take a while, so you may as well turn it into a party. Here are two dozen places serving up food, booze, and company, so you can celebrate if the night goes your way (or drown your sorrows if it doesn't).

11/6/12 at 11:30 AM
Bombed
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Watch This Liquor Store’s Vodka Smolder and Explode

By Hugh Merwin

This display of Karkov vodka inside a Burnsville, Minnesota, liquor store was positioned underneath a ceiling fan and aligned with the shop's windows with such bizarro, Final Destination-esque perfection a few weeks ago that just the rising sun pouring through the vodka bottles set a fire that ignited the boxes. It took an hour and a half for the magnified sun to ignite the paper into a full smolder, but once it got going, tops blew off bottles, vodka geysers erupted, and twelve-foot flames shot through the air. "The firefighters were standing next to me like they were watching a new video game," the store's owner tells Fox. "They were going, 'This is so cool!'"

11/6/12 at 10:40 AM
Openings,
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Marc Forgione Eyes Duane Park Space for Southeast Asian Restaurant

The agenda for CB1 Manhattan's November meeting includes an appearance of representatives from a Southeast Asian-inspired restaurant seeking a liquor license for the Duane Park space. Chef Marc Forgione and his partner Chris Blumlo are attached to the project, and will actually present their plan at December's Tribeca Committee meeting, Tribeca Citizen reports. The project is called Kio (or perhaps Kyo) and Eater NY posits it's most likely the same restaurant Forgione was trying to get green-lit last year in Soho at 265 Elizabeth Street. [Tribeca Citizen, Eater NY]

11/6/12 at 09:50 AM
Lucali
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Mark Iacono Says Lucali Renovation May Last Many Months

By Hugh Merwin

Iacono.Photo: Melissa Hom

If they're in need of pizza, it looks like Jay-Z and Beyoncé may have to try Brooklyn Central, or Krescendo when it opens: Mark Iacono says his beloved Carroll Gardens pizza place Lucali won't reopen for a while. “Maybe for a month, two months, three months, however long it takes to get the work done," he tells the South Brooklyn Post, explaining that the restaurant needs a new office, pizza oven, and other assorted fixes.

Welcome to Miami.

11/6/12 at 09:10 AM
Ramen Relief
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Ivan Orkin Is Cooking Ramen at Smorgasburg on Saturday [Updated]

By Hugh Merwin

How about some nice, hot soup?

Two ramen masters will team up this weekend at Smorgasburg with a limited menu. Ivan Orkin, who is still on track to open his anticipated New York noodle shop, tells us he'll most likely be cooking a "pretty standard bowl of nice, hot ramen" with Shigetoshi Nakamura (of Sun Noodle), who's also a rock star in the greater pantheon of ramen chefs. The two are using their noodles for the forces of good: All proceeds will benefit a Sandy-relief charity. Orkin says he and Nakamura will prep for 300 bowls, and we'll report more details as we hear them. Update 11/08: Orkin tells us he and Nakamura will make tonkotsu-gyokai and toasted whole wheat noodle ramen and the proceeds will benefit the Brooklyn Recovery Fund. [Earlier, Related]