Smoked Lagers Coming to Park Slope; Shake Shack’s New Heat LampsClinton Hill: The pizza place at 37 Washington will soon become a brick-oven pizza spot called Il Porto. [Clinton Hill Blog]
East Village: The roasted shishito peppers at Jimmy’s 43 are so addictive they may drive you to try to “recreate this dish and drink a boatload of beer immediately.” Don’t forget, they’re prepared on hot plates. [Eat for Victory/VV]
Flatiron: Shake Shack’s fired up its heat lamps. [Eater] Flavor your coffee the old-fashioned way, with cardamom. At Gramercy Tavern, they’re “serving pots of the complex, medium-bodied Yirgacheffe coffee from Ethiopia brewed with cinnamon, cardamom and orange.” [Mouthing Off/Food & Wine]
Greenwich Village: Bellavitae’s new Neapolitan chef Raffaele Ronca is “exceptionally adept at deboning an entire Cornish hen.” [Bottomless Dish/Citysearch]
Little Italy: Luigi DiPalo of DiPalo Dairy can recommend a pizza joint for every palate. [Gothamist]
Park Slope: The new bar and snack spot on Seventh Avenue at 14th Street called Beer Table should be open and serving its “carefully curated selection of smoked lager, coriander-laced wheat beer and various obscure ales” by next Saturday. [NYT]
Neighborhood Watch
Charcuterie Continues to Wow on the UWS; Beer, Cheese, and Chocolate Go TogetherChelsea: Cain’s Website is already “pimping” a London opening. [Down by the Hipster]
East Village: Jimmy’s No. 43 is hosting a cheese, beer, and chocolate pairing on January 22. Luckily, cheese before beer, you’re in the clear. [Gridskipper] Danal on 10th Street has given up the ghost. [Zagat]
Hell’s Kitchen: Tasting World is hosting its first Wine Essentials course of 2008 on January 17. [Tasting World]
Midwood: The Amateur Gourmet’s “Best Place I Should’ve Been To Already and Where I Should’ve Already Gone Back To” for 2007: Di Fara Pizza. There are surely too many out there who can relate.
Upper West Side: Ed Levine is as wowed by Sylvain Gasdon’s charcuterie at Bar Boulud as we were. [Ed Levine’s New York Eats via Eater]
West Village: David Page and Barbara Shinn have left Home to focus on their North Fork winery and have taken the wine-sensitive heart of the restaurant with them. [Eater]
NewsFeed
Jimmy’s Secret Chef Performs Culinary Miracles in the East Village
We always like Jimmy’s — the Belgian beers, the sausage plates, the occasional bacon tasting. But nothing could have prepared us for our recent discovery of a living, breathing young chef working gastronomic magic in Jimmy’s ultraprimitive kitchen. Using only two hot plates and a toaster oven, Philip Kirschen-Clark, the former fish man at wd-50, is making surprising, inventive dishes every night at the East Village bar.
Click and Save
Real-Life Duff Man Will Bring You Beer at HomeAre you ambitious enough to try to figure out what kind of beer will go best with the your Super Bowl snacks but too lazy to attend the beer tastings at the likes of Jimmy’s and Bierkraft (or even consult this recent article)? Meet Sam Merritt, former brand manager of the Brooklyn Brewery and man behind Civilization of Beer, an organization that’s now offering private tastings. Merritt, in other words, brings the brew to you. (Thrillist, unsurprisingly, has already given him their grunt of approval.) We clamored to ask him a few questions.
NewsFeed
Did We Mention That This Post Concerns Beer?Starting today, every Thursday will be Cask Ale Night at Jimmy’s, the East Village gastropub run by Jimmy “Pots and Pans” Carbone. Cask brew is really something special — an unpasteurized, all-natural ale carbonated only by the action of the live yeast still fermenting inside the keg, and served up via hand-operated pumps from an unrefrigerated container. The taste is more raw and intense in every way: Typically sweet up front, it has a bitter finish, not mention a mouthfeel that’s comparable to food. Jimmy’s isn’t the only bar in New York serving it — nearby d.b.a. has it every night. But if you’re a regular there, you now have a new Thursday-night spot.
Jimmy’s, 43 E. 7th St., nr. Second Ave.; 212-982-3006.
Foodievents
Another New Orleans Event, You Say? Why, Yes, I’d Love to Attend!In case you missed last month’s New Orleans tribute party at 5 Ninth and can’t be bothered to experience it secondhand here, fret not. Jimmy’s, one of the cooler bar-cum-gastropubs in the city, will be having its very own N.O. bash this Saturday. It’s called Up All Night, and it’s a food-and-music shindig benefiting the reconstruction of New Orleans. From one o’clock through six o’clock, a $20 donation will get you Abita beer, red wine, Rick’s Picks pickles, Louisiana “triple creme” cheese, five different kinds of gumbo, jambalaya, and vegetarian red beans and rice. After six, there will be an eclectic mix of live music including New Orleans blues band Underpaid Robbie-Say and cult power-pop dude Mike Viola.
Up All Night, Jimmy’s, 43 E. 7th St., nr. Second Ave.; 212-982-3006.
Sat., Nov. 18, starting at 1 p.m.
The New York Diet
Restaurateur Donatella Arpaia Binges on Oysters and Snacks on Hot Pockets
There’s no other restaurateur quite like Donatella Arpaia of Dona and davidburke & donatella: She was the first to zip around town on a Vespa (“Everyone else copied me”) and, leaving aside her discerning palate, we’re quite certain she’s the only one food writers have characterized as “comely.” Between Friday, September 29, and Wednesday, October 4, she indulged in a singular combination of sea urchin, fat-free yogurt, and black-and-white cookies.