Brooklyn Food Fight!As much as we enjoy the ‘Edible’ magazines, they are seeeerrrrrrious about food. ‘Edible Brooklyn’ is also super-serious about its locale. Endless Simmer took the time to find the summer issue’s most ridiculous lines.
Are You a Foodie or a Foodist?The big discussion at last night’s “Brooklyn Eats” talk in Dumbo was the semantic difference between “foodie” and “foodist.” Phoebe Damrosch, author of Service Included pointed out that, in New York, “foodie” has become a derogatory term used to describe those who sit at home watching Semi-Homemade on the Food Network. Another type of foodie, an audience member added, is one who seeks out new restaurants, wines, and foods only to check them off a laundry list of places to see and be seen. Edible Brooklyn editor Gabrielle Langholtz suggested that bona fide food fans — those who read food books, travel to food destinations, and taste obsessively — could refer to themselves as “foodists,” as intense Star Trek fans go not by “trekkies” but “trekkers”. (Anne Saxelby, heirloom-tomato farmer Tim Stark, and beverage historian and panelist David Wondrich could all be identified as foodists.) To add to his cred, Wondrich served Hennessy punch (historically accurate, according to Bombay’s seventeenth-century regulations) out of a paint bucket. —Jennifer Lynn Pelka
Neighborhood Watch
Belgian Room Closed for Underage Drinking; Park Avenue Winter Preparing for ItsAstoria: Sweet shop Oleput is now offering a lot more savories in the form of small plates and panini. [Joey in Astoria]
Clinton Hill: Rustik Tavern has a warm interior, but the menu doesn’t sound too rustic: chili, wings, nachos, though for the last one the blogger liked “that it’s cheese sauce rather than real cheese.” [Clinton Hill Blog]
Dumbo: Food writers including Kara Zuaro (I Like Food, Food Tastes Good), Phoebe Damrosch (Service Included) and David Wondrich (Imbibe) and Edible Brooklyn’s Gabrielle Langholtz will talk about — what else? — eating, at Powerhouse Arena next Tuesday. [A Brooklyn Life]
East Village: Belgian Room has been closed for letting minors booze on Lambic. [Down by the Hipster]
Soho: Vosges bacon chocolate now comes in the shape of flying pigs. But they can’t escape. [Snack]
Upper East Side: Park Avenue Winter will turn into spring on March 26, just in time for Easter. [Zagat]
NewsFeed
Coming Soon: ‘Edible Manhattan’We’ve been longtime fans of Edible Brooklyn, a very cool magazine we wrote about a while ago. Edible Brooklyn doesn’t publish restaurant news as much as articles and essays about the life of the borough’s food culture, written by the people who love it. And now Manhattan will get the same treatment in Edible Manhattan, which will come out bi-monthly starting in the fall and is already accepting subscribers.
Mediavore
Tailor Open; Marcus Samuelsson in Cahoots With StarbucksPut down your roman à clef! Tailor had its soft opening last night. [Down by the Hipster]
Related: What to Read While You Wait for Tailor to Open — Sam Mason: The Novel
Five recipes from Marcus Samuelsson’s cookbook Discovery of a Continent: Foods, Flavors and Inspirations from Africa were developed by a team from Starbucks as part of a deal that also includes the introduction of baked items and coffee blends sold under the chef’s name. [Eat for Victory/VV]
The closing of Dévi makes Frank Bruni sad, and in his elegy to the restaurant, he ponders our take on Suvir Saran’s motives. [Diner’s Journal/NYT]
Related: Debriefing Dévi: Suvir Saran’s Suspected Side Projects
NewsFeed
The Brooklyn Food Mag You Should Be ReadingEdible Brooklyn’s summer issue just landed in our mailbox, and, as usual, we can’t get over how good it is. The Edible… series publishes magazines about regional food around the country, but we’ve looked at some of the others and they’re strictly from hunger. However, Brooklyn is right to have a better food magazine than, say, Missoula. But we’re proud that, rather than the semi-literate foodie ‘zine we would expect, editor Gabrielle Langholtz’s staff of one somehow manages to regularly compile so much good editorial and visual content for each issue. This issue’s includes a tour of Jonathan Lethem’s refrigerator, a mouthwatering profile of a live poultry market, and a big profile of Prospect Park’s food concessions by Grub Street regular Zoe Singer. After all that, there’s a piece on LeNell’s private-label rye whiskey, and a panegyric to Frankies 457 Spuntino, published alongside an almost pornographic photo essay featuring meatballs. When you think how lame the glossy food magazines are these days, you have to wonder what their excuse is.
Edible Brooklyn [Official site]
Trans-Fat Express
Biscuit Battles ChipShop, Part Two: Is Sushi Better Fried or Smoked?Yesterday, when we left the battle between new Park Slope barbecue joint Biscuit and batter-happy neighbor ChipShop to determine whether our off-the-menu requests tasted better smoked or fried, the competition was neck and neck: ChipShop’s owner Chris Sell impressed judge Gabrielle Langholtz of Edible Brooklyn with his fried PB&J — “My brain stem is like, ‘Gorge on the fat while you can’” — but Biscuit’s owner Josh Cohen bounced back when onetime Iron Chef judge Ben Schmerler lauded his smoked ribs as “savory and primal.” Who, then, will take the next two rounds?
Trans-Fat Express
Biscuit Battles ChipShop: Is PB&J Better Fried or Smoked?Next time you decide that peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich could use something extra, know this: Not only will Park Slope’s ChipShop deep-fry anything so long you make the request in advance (and suggest something that won’t compromise the oil) — it’s how fried macaroni and cheese wound up on the menu — but Fifth Avenue’s new barbecue joint Biscuit recently announced that they’ll “smoke anything!” (They charge $2 per pound and also require advance notice.) To help you decide whether that PB&J should be fried or smoked, we had ChipShop owner Chris Sell and Biscuit owner Josh Cohen prepare the sandwich both ways and invited a couple of local food obsessives — Gabrielle Langholtz, chief editor of Edible Brooklyn, and Ben Schmerler, formerly a senior editor of the Zagat Survey and a onetime judge on Iron Chef — to evaluate the results. And since this was clearly an exercise in excess, we didn’t just leave it at peanut butter and jelly. Today, we present the first two rounds of this epic battle, with the remaining challenges (including White Castles, sushi, and rice pudding) to come tomorrow and Wednesday.
