Video: Chris Cosentino Cooks Head to TailThere aren’t many out-of-town chefs who can draw a crowd, but California’s Chris Cosentino is one of them. The offal king cooked a “Head-to-Tail” dinner at the Astor Center last night, and Grub Street brought a camera along. Beware of graphic footage of coxcombs, tendons, trotters, and other delights.
Video: Cooking Head to Tail [NYM Video]
ByJonah Green
NewsFeed
Get the Best of West Coast Charcuterie at Mia Dona
If you’re not going to the Astor Center’s Head-to-Tail dinner with Chris Cosentino on Tuesday, you can also find his food at Mia Dona, the only New York restaurant serving Cosentino’s charcuterie. Cosentino met Mia Dona owner Donatella Arpaia when shooting The Next Iron Chef, on which he was a contestant, and goes way back with the restaurant’s executive chef, Jason Hall. “We use their lonza (pork loin). It’s amazing. The fat cap is like the finest lardo. And the meat itself expresses the purity of pork — it’s perfectly seasoned and cured, ” he enthuses. Mia Dona serves the lonza on two crostini — one with sheep’s-milk ricotta and Sicilian oregano, and the other with winter-citrus mostarda — but Hall would like to use even more: “I want to use a lot of Chris’s stuff, but we can’t overwhelm the menu all at once.” Cosentino, whom we think of as California’s answer to David Chang, also sells his charcuterie online. Visit Boccalone to order for yourself.
Related: Back-to-Back Feasts Will Break the Bank, Blow Your Mind
Video: Inside Mia Dona’s Kitchen
Foodievents
Back-to-Back Feasts Will Break the Bank, Blow Your MindAre you enough of a hard-core gastronome to attend Chris Cosentino’s and Seamus Mullen’s back-to-back event dinners? Cosentinois the famous West Coast offal master whom you may remember from his appearances on Iron Chef. Cosentino is doing a signature “Head to Tail” dinner at the Astor Center on Tuesday, March 4, hosted by Michael Ruhlman. Expect lots of tripe, testa, candied cockscombs, and the like. That one will set you back $250. On March 5, Seamus Mullen is doing a Basque “Homage to Euskadi” dinner at Suba, featuring regional specialties like hake tongues; tortilla de bacalao with poached hen’s egg; salt-cod brandade, pimientos de padron; beans and pork belly; and so on, all paired with big Basque wines. That one is $110 and should be a little easier on the old G.I. system as well. But what other city could produce two such feasts back to back? To reserve for the Cosentino dinner, click here; for the Suba dinner, call 212-982-5714.
Neighborhood Watch
Soul Food Comes to Bed-Stuy!; 2nd Avenue Deli’s Not Really KosherBedford-Stuyvesant: A “family-run seafood/soul food take-out spot” called 71.Ate has opened at 417 Nostrand Avenue, and while the fried whiting is tasty, the house-made banana pudding will definitely make you want to come back. [Eat for Victory/VV]
East Village: Ruhlman’s hosting a nose-to-tail dinner with “gut man” Chris Cosentino on Tuesday, March 4, at Astor Center. [Ruhlman]
Murray Hill/Kips Bay: Can the 2nd Avenue Deli really be called kosher if it’s open on the Sabbath? Many observant Jews, whom Frank Bruni has chatted with, say no. [Diner’s Journal/NYT]
Tribeca: Bouley has been denied a liquor license for his proposed Japanese restaurant and cooking school, Brushstrokes, “based on the history of the owner, having problems with the community in the past, and the way he runs his establishments.” [Eater]
Upper East Side: Mia Dona is currently BYOB until the liquor license comes through next week. [Eater]
Back of the House
Who Will Win the Golden Clog?Culinary writer and BFF to the stars Michael Ruhlman has announced the Golden Clog awards, a new unofficial contest, with multiple chef categories. The winners will be announced, no doubt with much facetious fanfare, at this year’s South Beach Food & Wine Festival. The categories are as follows:
FERGUS AWARD — for best achievement in offal.
ALTON AWARD — for the food personality who can actually cook.
MARIO AWARD — for the chef-restaurateur who best multitasked, merchandised, multiplatformed and generally whored himself yet still continued to make significant and valuable contributions to the restaurant landscape.
ROCCO AWARD — for worst career move by a talented chef.
CHEF’S CHEF AWARD — for the least heralded yet most deserving working chef.
