Posts for November 14, 2012 -- Grub Street: New York Magazine's Food and Restaurant Blog

Posts for November 14, 2012

11/14/12 at 5:55 PM
Leftovers
Comment

April Bloomfield Roasts a Pig; Danny Meyer Gets Into the Juice Game

• Eleven Madison Park is the latest restaurant to call on the dining public at large to help Governor, which was damaged during Hurricane Sandy, to rebuild. Tickets for the seven-course meal start at $250; details are here. [Eater NY]

• In a continued celebration of the release of her cookbook A Girl and Her Pig, April Bloomfield will roast a pig and serve fixings at Madava Farms in Dutchess County on Saturday, November 17, with seatings at 1:30 and 3:30 p.m. Tickets are $65, or $90 with a signed copy of the book. [Grub Street]

• Vinegar Hill's Hillside is serving lunch: Sandwiches include pork loin with chow chow and braised tongue with red onion and Bibb lettuce. The small menu is served daily from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. [Grub Street]

11/14/12 at 4:55 PM
Quote of the Day
Comment

Stiffed Waiters, in More Ways Than One

"As people argue over whether the New York Times is being classist in its scathing review of Guy Fieri’s restaurant, I’d like to point out the quieter classism that is inherent to the restaurant review: that very dispensable service employees are outed for minor errors by critics whose audience consists of those who can afford to eat at these places." — A former waiter whose tableside banter was singled out and enlisted by Frank Bruni to close out his negative, one-star review of Monkey Bar in 2009 explains how servers are often the first casualties of bad reviews. [WillyStaley/Tumblr via The Awl, Earlier]

11/14/12 at 4:15 PM
The Big Cheese
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Bruce Springsteen Once Ate a Lot of Strawberry-Flavored Goop

By Hugh Merwin

According to a new biography, Bruce Springsteen never did drugs, but instead maintained an alarming diet of nothing but horrible food, including Velveeta-and-mayonnaise sandwiches in the early days, and an unending succession of candy bars. His favorite dessert "was a big bowl of strawberry-flavored goop," it turns out, until the late seventies when his assistant forced him to eat more nutritious food. But that's bunk: We all know the Boss has always sustained himself on nothing more than the energy and love of concert crowds around the world. [LAWeekly]

11/14/12 at 3:40 PM on Grub Street SF
Quote of the Day
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Danny Bowien Reveals His Hair-Color Secrets

"I do it in my bathroom, sitting on my toilet. You have to not be afraid to fuck up your hair, put bleach on it, let it sit for an hour, put on foil, and blow dry it ... The other day I was talking to someone at a really big magazine, and they asked me about the story behind my hair, and I was like, I don’t know. Nothing. It’s just long." — Mission Chinese Food chef-owner Danny Bowien in a new interview about being called "the hipster chef," and which place he loves more, San Francisco or New York. [Refinery 29]

11/14/12 at 3:25 PM
Adorbz
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Eight Cute Truffle-Hunting Dogs and Pigs

By Monica Burton

Meet Gigi.Photo: GIUSEPPE CACACE/AFP/Getty Images

Earlier today we met Bruno, the truffle-hunting dog from the Italian village of Roccafluvione. But are there other adorable animals hunting for truffles in the woods of Europe? Of course there are. See what we mean, straight ahead.

11/14/12 at 2:55 PM
The Emperor of Ice Cream
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Sandy-Damaged Denny’s Delight to Close for Good

By Hugh Merwin

The unofficial mayor of Coney Island says the $50,000 of damage incurred by Hurricane Sandy is insurmountable and he will not reopen Denny's Delight. Dick Zigun has owned Denny's, which is famous for its banana-pistachio twist, since 1978. “There’s no more Denny’s Ice Cream,” he tells the Brooklyn Paper. “We are out of the ice cream business.” Zigun says he hopes another ice cream vendor will come along and sell sweets in his place, one block from the boardwalk. [BP]

11/14/12 at 2:45 PM on Grub Street LA
L.A. Diet
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Dita Von Teese Is Seduced by Uni, Eats Leftovers Wearing Lingerie

By Hadley Tomicki

Dita takes a drink.Photo: Charles Gallay

Dita Von Teese, burlesque royalty, designer of the Von Follies lingerie line, and Cointreau ambassador, satisfies her desire to eat well by chasing down delicacies in Paris, where she has a soufflé named in her honor at Le Cigale Recamier, and seeking out simpler charms when back home in L.A. "I'm spoiled. I get to go to a lot of great restaurants," Von Teese tells Grub Street. "But sometimes I just want real food and no sauces and foams and white tablecloths. Some days I just want to find a simple, old-school steakhouse with red leather banquettes, but I really love watching someone transform vegetarian food into something glorious." So what did Dita ravish this week? Come take a look in today's L.A. Diet.

11/14/12 at 2:20 PM
Closings
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Nab Your Piece of the Old Lucky Cheng’s

Now that East Village bachelorette-party central Lucky Cheng's has taken the party bus up to Times Square, many of the old bar and restaurant's artifacts are up for grabs. Jeremiah's Vanishing New York points us in the direction of some beat-up woks and an unsinkable "tiki canoe," while also filling in the backstory of the property at 24 First Avenue, which once was a sex club and was littered with "huge rubber dildos" by the time Hayne Suthon bought the building in 1986 for $2.9 million. The owners of Acme and Indochine are teaming up to open an Asian restaurant and lounge in the corner space. [JVNY, Earlier]

11/14/12 at 1:40 PM
Truffles!
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White Gold: A Look at the 2012 Italian Truffle Trade

By Bernhard Warner

A humongous Italian truffle in Alba.Photo: FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/Getty

For Americans, this time of year means turkeys and pumpkin pies. For Italians, and owners of the world's most expensive restaurants, it means white truffles. From late October until Christmas, the ten-week season is one of the shortest — and most profitable — on the culinary calendar. But this year, a hot, dry summer has left many patches barren, and some are calling it one of the scarcest truffle seasons ever. Even still, restaurants don't seem to be having too much trouble tracking truffles down this year. How so? We tracked truffles from Italy to restaurant tables in the U.S. to find out.

Ever been to a truffle nursery?

11/14/12 at 1:00 PM
Good Stuff
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Bid on This Dinner With Gwyneth Paltrow and Mario Batali for Your Own Good

By Hugh Merwin

Bittman not included.

There are currently three weeks left to bid and secure your spot at the table with Mario Batali and Gwyneth Paltrow. Proceeds benefit the Council of Fashion Designers of America Foundation’s Fashion for Sandy Relief Initiative. The dinner will take place in New York City, and terms specify the winning bidder must be polite and have manners. If you roll up in a convertible, it'll be just like that food-centric road trip TV show Mario and Gwyneth did a few years back. But just so you know, while the winning bidder's food and drink will be completely covered, prospective PBS reenactors should know the night will be B.Y.O.B. (that's Bring Your Own Bittman). Bid here now. [CharityBuzz]

11/14/12 at 12:20 PM
Video Feed
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Watch a Humble Bagelteria Café Bagel Change Two Lives

By Hugh Merwin

As a show of support for their friend Sam, who owns the Bagelteria Café in Williamsburg, the Kloons made a little commercial for the place. It turns out the bagel shop may be a little dingy inside, but its sun-dried tomato and jalapeño cream cheese spread will transport you into a carboloaded reverie filled with fireworks and dubstep.

Kaboom.

11/14/12 at 11:45 AM
Openings
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The Beatrice Inn Is Open; Here's Its E-mail Address

By Hugh Merwin

The restaurant and its inbox are open for reservations. It's just beatrice@thebeatriceinn.com. No dots, dashes, extra spaces, or dingbats. Brian Nasworthy, who cooked at Per Se, has put together a menu of standards like Iceberg wedge salad, shrimp cocktail, and a wagyu ribeye for two, which Diner's Journal reports will set you back $140. Just watch out for snakes. [Diner's Journal, Earlier]

11/14/12 at 11:15 AM
Community
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Toby’s Public House Once Again Denied by Community Board 2

By Mary Reinholz

Community Board 2's SLA committee last night swiftly and unanimously denied an application by the Nolita offshoot of Toby's Public House for an alteration to serve wine and beer at its sidewalk café. Neighborhood activist Georgette Fleischer characterized Toby's as a "loud sports bar" and produced photographs of its interior, comparing it to a "commercial for Budweiser." Toby's owner Christine Iu flatly denied that her restaurant is a sports bar, even noting that it served neighbors free pizzas and gave use of their phone lines after Hurricane Sandy, but to no avail. Toby's had a hard time getting approval for beer and wine earlier this year and was even NIMBY-paint-bombed before it opened. In March, Iu, who lives one block away from the restaurant, told Grub Street she had been harassed by locals who questioned her motives for opening in the neighborhood. [Earlier]

11/14/12 at 10:45 AM
The Other Critics
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The Other Critics: Wells Trashes Fieri, Sutton Applauds Maison Premiere

By Max Thorn

This week, our own Adam Platt puts sky-high Gaonnuri to the test, to see whether their barbecue lives up to the restaurant's name, which means "center of the world." but where did all the other critics dine? Read on to find out.

11/14/12 at 10:20 AM on Grub Street Boston
Lawsuits
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Papa John’s Sued for Pizza Spam

By Kara Baskin

Fanning the flames of controversy.Illustration: Mary-Louise Price

It's the middle of the night. You've downed a greasy slice or two of pizza and settled in for a peaceful slumber, Adult Swim flickering in the background, when your phone rattles. A text! You sit up, rub your eyes, and wonder if you really did give out your number at the bar last weekend ... and to whom. You grope about in the dark, trepidatious but a touch excited. And then you see it: The text is from Papa John's. And they want to sell you more pizza. You drop the phone and roll over. Until your phone rattles again. And again. And again. Up to sixteen times in a row. Well good news, person who was text-spammed by Peyton Manning's favorite pizza place — you aren't alone.

11/14/12 at 09:55 AM
Flavortown Lost
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Twenty-eight of the Best Twitter Reactions to the New York Times’ Guy Fieri Takedown

By Hugh Merwin

How's he doing today?

If you're like us, you were woken up at 2 a.m. by a call from your 80-year-old grandmother in Butte wondering who exactly this Pete Wells person is and what did Guy Fieri ever do to him that would cause the New York Times to publish such a negative review of the Food Network host's sprawling 500-seat restaurant in Times Square. The review — in which Wells compares the house margaritas to radiator fluid and formaldehyde and ruminates, in an all-question format, about the exact origins of Guy's "Donkey Sauce" — has now been tweeted around the world. As should be expected, Wells has some new fans, and Fieri has some staunch supporters here in New York. But the rest of the county? Let's just see what @teenmom4evr has to say about all of this.

Strong language and adult situations ahead.

11/14/12 at 09:25 AM
The Feeding Tube
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Of Course Someone Involved in the Petraeus Sex Scandal Appeared on Food Network

By Alan Sytsma

Jill Kelley, not cooking alligator.Photo: Chris O'Meara/AP/Corbis

Jill Kelley, the Florida woman whose initial complaints about harassing e-mails set the entire Petraeus sex scandal in motion, has apparently been in the spotlight before. Sounds like she and her twin sister appeared in a 2003 episode of a no-longer-in-existence Food Network show called Food Fight. There isn't any footage online (yet — give it like three more hours), but according to an old write-up in the St. Petersburg Times, Kelley and her twin sister took on two brothers in an alligator cook-off.

11/14/12 at 09:00 AM
Video Feed
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Take a Look Inside the Post-Sandy Red Hook Fairway

By Hugh Merwin

Here's a quick tour inside the waterfront Fairway supermarket in Red Hook, which was hit with 15-foot waves and flooded with five feet of water during the storm. The store is in the process of rebuilding. The good news is that they're adding a second-floor restaurant; the bad news, however, is that judging by the fact they had to throw all the food, groceries, and equipment away and the space is completely bare inside, it looks like Fairway 2.0 may take some time.

Even the coffee roaster is going.