Posts for January 3, 2013

Joe’s Pizza to Open Union Square Location; The Good Fork Rises Again

• Red Hook eatery the Good Fork, which suffered heavy damages during Hurricane Sandy, officially reopened yesterday after a month of furious repair and over $50,000 in donations. [Twitter]

• Chelsea fusion restaurant China Latina, home of the wonton taco and pork shumai, will begin to offer brunch on January 12. The menu features a protein packed tortilla casserole called the Ultimate Hangover Cure, as well as specialty drinks like Chinese Chili Bloody Mary and Skinny Asian Gimlet. [Grub Street]

• Manhattan's Tour de France restaurants, from low-key coffee shop The French Roast to Maison and Pigalle in Midtown, will launch Tapas Tuesday on January 8. As random as Spanish tapas (plus sangria) may be at French places, expanded menus will include them every Tuesday throughout the winter. [Grub Street]

Read more »

Are These the Twenty Most Unspoken Beliefs About the Food World?

By Hugh Merwin

The listicle also says New York bagels suck.Photo: Mete Ozeren/New York Magazine

Perhaps in order to begin the new year with a bang, upstart food site First We Feast has filed a master list of food and beverage industry gripes called "20 Things Everyone Thinks About the Food World (But Nobody Will Say)," which is exactly what it sounds like. This piece is devoted to "the unpopular truths that aren’t really polite dinner conversation" and "the shady stuff that goes down at our favorite restaurants." Critic Pete Wells, whose current reviews are called out for being of "far less importance" than those written by past Times critics, even called the listicle "provocative & smart" on Twitter.

Ten things I hate about chefs. »

Michael White Has a Green Thumb

“This dirt is from Dan Barber of Stone Barns. We grow Sun Gold tomatoes.” — The Marea chef gets all locavore-ish on the roof deck of his UWS condo, boosted, of course, by some compost-enriched magic made at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. [NYP]

Don’t Eat T. Rex

By Sierra Tishgart

Bad choice.

If you find yourself in a theme park on a deserted island populated with dinosaurs cloned from prehistoric DNA, there's something you need to know: Eating T. rex will make you sick. A professor of paleontology at Montana State University has taken the time to consider which dinosaurs would taste the best. Jaw abnormalities show that T. rexes ate fetid meat and were filled with parasites, so you'd be doomed to die inside a Porta Potty. Instead, hunt ornithomimosaurs (ostrichlike dinosaurs), velociraptors (wild ambush predators), and sauropods (the largest animals to ever walk the earth). Best of luck, and remember — these monsters breed. [Popular Science via HuffPo]

Introducing the Water Table, a ‘New England–Style Tavern’ in the Middle of New York Harbor

By Hugh Merwin

Message in a bottle.

Shuck yeah: Kelli Farwell, who grew up in northern Maine and has put in more than a decade of time at restaurants like Gramercy Tavern, Rye, and DuMont, is buying a tugboat and bringing it back to New York. If all goes as planned, here it'll become the Water Table, a fixed-priced restaurant that tours the harbor twice a night serving half-shell oysters, lobster rolls, clam chowder, roasts, fry-ups, and more to 35 to 40 passengers at a clip. In the video that accompanies the forthcoming restaurant's fund-raising campaign, Farwell, who is also a licensed master captain, says the finished Water Table will evoke a New England tavern. Craft beer and cocktails will also be served. For now, you can help float Captain Farwell's dream, and no barnacle-removal will be asked of potential donors. Check out the whole thing here. [IndieGoGo]

Foursquare Gives Restaurant Owners More Ways to Check-in on Customers

By Hugh Merwin

Foursquare overshares your ramen-eating habit.

It's unlikely to provoke the kind of outrage that followed Instagram's terms-of-service changes that gave the company more control of users' food porn, but Foursquare is now allowing participating merchants broader access to data revealing the eating, drinking, and spending habits of its users. Wired reports that Foursquare has amended its privacy policy, and starting January 28, the company will hand over more data to restaurant owners, for example, who will know the exact dates and times of any user's visit.

Read more »

Top Chef Seattle Recap: David Rees on Healthy Food and Sexy Knives

By David Rees

The judges are very amused.Photo: Bravo

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope some of you have made a resolution to treat the recappers in your life with more respect.

Read more »

Wretched Excess: More Writers Complaining About the ‘Tyranny’ of Fine Dining

By Sierra Tishgart

Daniel Humm and Grant Achatz: not actual tyrants.Photo: Jed Egan

"The meal felt like a form of torture," writes Corby Kummer in the February issue of Vanity Fair. But he's not referring to Guy Fieri's Times Square restaurant; he's recounting his meal at the French Laundry. In “Tyranny — It’s What’s for Dinner,”, Kummer argues that the world's most celebrated restaurants are becoming increasingly rigid in how they treat customers, and Graydon Carter agrees. To these two, it's almost criminal that Per Se and Alinea serve multiple courses, cost hundreds of dollars, take hours to finish, and don't allow diners to ask for substitutions. (Carter’s restaurants, on the other hand, are so relaxed that you usually need a special phone number and at least a B-list celebrity on your arm to score a table — but hey, at least you can get your salad dressing on the side!) Kummer believes that Chicago's now-closed Charlie Trotter's is the root of the problem that's making a generation of young chefs "no longer willing to take orders" from the one percent.

The horror! »

Citi Field Chef Fired for Taking Sick Days

A man who worked in the kitchen at Citi Field got axed after he took ten days off work because of heart problems. He'd been the executive sous chef at the stadium since 2008, and when he began experiencing chest pain and shortness of breath last year, his boss reduced his responsibilities and eventually fired him. The poor guy is now suing Citi Field's food contractor, the Aramark catering company. In solidarity, we suggest you smuggle in your own peanuts and Cracker Jack next time you go to a Mets game. [NYP]

West Village Chef Suffers Fart Attack

By Hugh Merwin

He who smelt it, dealt it.Photo: Ewing Galloway/Corbis

Well, here's a strange one: Basically, someone claiming to be a chef at a "somewhat famous" meatpacking district restaurant claims he assaulted his employees with flatulence over the last four years, and he will post a new vignette every day on Craigslist to tell that story. "I farted on every single one of my employees," he (or she) writes. "All 37 of them."

Scatalogical content ahead. »

Dean Poll Is the New Owner of Gallagher’s Steak House

By Hugh Merwin

Not closing after all.

The old meat locker is staying put, it turns out: The 85-year-old Gallagher's Steak House in midtown has been sold to Central Park Boathouse operator Dean Poll and will not close, the Post reports. It was reported in October that the restaurant would likely grill its last dry-aged strip steak if negotiations to sell to Poll, who also ran Tavern on the Green, stalled out. Everything has been resolved, and the incoming restaurateur says he'll keep furnishings and decorations, including "vintage photos of entertainers, politicians, athletes — and racehorses" intact. A press conference will be held tomorrow at the restaurant, according to a press release, where Marlene Brody, Gallagher's previous owner, will "hand over the reins" to Poll. This news is good, and reins are fine, but shouldn't that be a gold-plated steak knife? [NYP, Earlier]

Burger King Unveils Brand-New Menu of Fried Things

By Hugh Merwin

Boo-ya!

"Will Burger King brink back cheesy tots?" some intrepid fast-food eater asked the void otherwise known as Yahoo! Answers a few years ago, lamenting that "bk states have it your way but my way was with cheesy tots." Well, good news for you today, Jiggy35! The fast-food chain has brought the tots back, along with a new dessert, a riff on the flourless chocolate cake called "Molten Fudge Bites." (Somewhere, Jean-Georges Vongerichten has fainted onto a mound of heirloom radishes.) Burger King is now also offering something called a "Philly Chicken Sandwich," which no one in Philadelphia eats, and, finally, tempura-battered chicken nuggets, which will replace Burger King's chicken strips, which are being taken out of service, the Post reports. "They look like McNuggets," it notes. "They're as nutritious as McNuggets." That's because they are probably manufactured the same way as McNuggets. [NYP, Earlier]

John Fraser’s What Happens When Will Become the Cleveland

By Hugh Merwin

Cleveland!Photo: Danny Kim/New York Magazine

Bowery Boogie notes that two business partners are transforming 25 Cleveland Place, which was last home to John Fraser's ill-fated pop-up What Happens When, into a new, full-service restaurant called the Cleveland. The Dovetail chef's experimental supper club closed in June of 2011 when it found it could not secure a license from the State Liquor Authority. Few details are known about Paul Shaked and Hudson Solomon's plans for the Cleveland, but the former is a partner at Sofia's of Little Italy. The restaurant's new owners are expected to make an appearance in front of CB2 Manhattan's SLA committee in the near future. [BB, Earlier]

Advertising
Grubstreet Sweeps

Masthead

Senior Editor
Alan Sytsma
Associate Editor
Hugh Merwin
Assistant Editor
Sierra Tishgart
 
NY Mag