Vendors at Red Hook Ball Fields Postpone OpeningBrooklyn Heights: Brooklyn Pigfest, a major outdoor barbecue event at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, is slated for May 12. [The Food Section]
Financial District: Front Street sees the soft opening of New Zealand gastropub Nelson Blue. [Eater]
Midtown West: Haven’t made it to Insieme? Jason Perlow’s photo-essay chronicles, in loving and lingering detail, every course at Marco Canora’s new restaurant. [Off the Broiler] Landmarc at the Time Warner Center makes a mean-looking burger. [Gothamist]
Red Hook: A new stoplight at the intersection of Van Brunt and Sullivan streets should help ease traffic caused by Fairway. [The Brooklyn Paper] Opening day for the ball fields’ food stands has been postponed, for one more week! [Gowanus Lounge]
Flatiron: Eleven Madison Park declines to keep their trial pastry chef, Richard Bies; until they hire a permanent replacement for Nicole Kaplan, Daniel Humm himself is handling the dessert program. [Grub Street]
Related: Nicole Kaplan Ditching Eleven Madison Park
The New York Diet
Novelist Marisha Pessl Motivates Herself With Coffee, Rewards Herself With
As Marisha Pessl has it, she got so carried away describing food in her best-selling novel Special Topics in Calamity Physics that certain passages had to be edited down. It’s no surprise then that beyond the eight or nine cappuccinos she used to drink while writing (she’s now down to two or three) and the ’wichcraft cupcakes she rewards herself with afterward, the author and Tribeca resident is a self-confessed “absolute foodie.” Now that she’s between book tours and working on a second novel (the paperback of Special Topics comes out next week), she says she has “a license to feed all the time.” So how does she put it to use?
Mediavore
Yep, 66 Going Soba; Trans Fats on the Run in Long Island66 will become Matsu Gen in “late spring” and specialize in soba noodles. [NYT]
Related: Vongerichten May Deep-Six 66, Serve Sushi and Soba Instead [Grub Street]
Landmarc, in the Time Warner Center, is wildly inexpensive relative to its location and the restaurants around it, and Steve Cuozzo is predicting boffo business. [NYP]
Related: Will Landmarc’s Downtown Cool Play Alongside Its Ritzy New Neighbors? [Grub Street]
Think you’ll get your lard fix in Long Island? Not so fast: Nassau County is planning a trans-fat ban. [Newsday]
Openings
Will Landmarc’s Downtown Cool Play Alongside Its Ritzy New Neighbors?
The restaurants at the Time-Warner Center were conceived as a kind of dining Valhalla: a food court of the Gods, with prices to match. But now Per Se, Masa, Café Gray, and Porter House New York are getting a downscale casual neighbor with Landmarc, which opens today. Of course, it isn’t quite accurate to cast Landmarc’s arrival as a snobs-vs.-slobs sitcom; Landmarc is both well-liked and well-respected for chef Marc Murphy’s eclectic, hearty, well-executed American dishes. And both the wine and dessert programs were always a big hit downtown. Will that translate to filling the 300 seats of the new place? Hard to say. But it won’t be for lack of accessibility: the new Landmarc will be open from 7 am to 2 am every day, and will be delivering as well. We’d like to see you get that from Per Se.
Mediavore
Restaurant High Trains Chefs of the Future; Les Halles Takes a BeatingWelcome to Food and Finance High, which trains New York’s future chefs and restaurateurs. They diligently study the work of Dave Thomas, the origins of pizza, and read Fast Food Nation in preparation for the job market. [NYT]
Les Halles is taking a beating: They’ve got a Department of Health closure uptown and construction troubles downtown . [NYP]
The Red Hook ball fields, home to one of the city’s greatest gatherings of Central and South American food vendors, may finally see the trucks roll in this Sunday. [Eat for Victory/VV]
Back of the House
Landmarc in the Time Warner Center May Already Be DoomedIs it really possible that Marc Murphy’s new Landmarc restaurant in the Time Warner Center will have to support a rent of $72,000 per month? (That’s a figure we were given by a well-place member of the food media, although he says he also heard, through less dependable sources, figures as low as $65,000 and as high as $80,000.) “It’s a special space,” Realtor Alex Picken told us, referring to the Center. “$82 a foot isn’t even the highest [rent] in town.” Okay. But can another modest Landmarc really pull down the kind of income that Time Warner wealth magnets Per Se and Masa see?
Foodievents
Chefs Versus Firefighters!It doesn’t sound like a fair fight: firemen challenging chefs in the kitchen. But the organizers of the Iron Skillet Cook-Off, to be held Monday night at Strata, assure us that the event is no setup. “It’s been about 50-50 over the last five years,” Ingrid Maritato of World Cares Center told us. “The firefighters can hold their own.” The firemen create the dishes and the chefs, including Marc Murphy of Landmarc and Brian Bistrong of the Harrison, will try to execute their own, improved versions; the crowd gets to try both. There will also be a beer pairing by Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery. Admission is $150 and benefits World Cares Center, a disaster-volunteer organization. Go here to purchase tickets. Mon., Oct. 30. 6–10 p.m.
Iron Skillet Cook-Off