Bourdain Showing ‘Iron Chef’ Some Love; Dévi Back in ActionThe worst thing Tony Bourdain can say about the new Top Iron Chef is “that Ruhlman’s hair is the scariest and most offensive aspect of the show … In every other respect, the damn thing is pretty impeccable.” [Ruhlman]
Related: Who Will Be Cut Next on ‘The Next Iron Chef’?
Enterprising chefs Suvir Saran and Hemant Mathur will have their recently acquired restaurant Dévi reopen by Monday. [Eater]
Related: Debriefing Dévi: Suvir Saran’s Suspected Side Projects
Jessica Seinfeld’s Deceptively Delicious cookbook is uncomfortably similar to another cookbook published a few months before it, which also encourages moms to put spinach in brownies. [NYT]
Related: Hey Jessica Seinfeld! What Up? [Daily Intel]
Mediavore
Return of Dévi; It’s the Year of the DeliAfter all the hullabaloo over Dévi’s closing, its chefs, Suvir Saran and Hemant Mathur, have purchased the spot and will reopen it next month. [Diner’s Journal/NYT]
Related: Debriefing Dévi: Suvir Saran’s Suspected Side Projects
Yolato takes a swing at the fro-yo competition by opening three Manhattan shops this week. [NYS]
Related: The New Cold War: Frozen Yogurt Invades New York
Del Posto’s Nicole Kaplan says it straight: “I don’t really like innovations.” [amNY
]
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
Suvir Saran Plans to Open New Restaurant This SpringIt didn’t take long for Suvir Saran to get wind of our post earlier today, and we received a letter from the always media-savvy, and admittedly charming, food personality. Mostly, the “saran rap” — if you will — conjured up images of bucolic bliss: “I am at my farm, tending to our chickens and tasting recipes…” it began. But midway through the lengthy epistle, we came across this little tidbit: “Hemant and I will open a new restaurant in NYC sometime spring of 2008.” (Hemant, of course, is Hemant Mathur, the brilliant but bashful chef who actually did the cooking in Dévi.) We speculated earlier today that Saran’s outside projects may have led to Dévi’s demise; given how long it takes to find a space, make a deal, and create a place, one would have to assume that the new place wasn’t conceived yesterday. Saran also confirms the existence of American Masala, although he didn’t, of course, describe it to us as an Indian Olive Garden. But who can blame him for that?
Earlier: Debriefing Dévi: Suvir Saran’s Suspected Side Projects
NewsFeed
Debriefing Dévi: Suvir Saran’s Suspected Side ProjectsThe sudden closing of Dévi has raised a lot of questions, few of which were answered by photogenic front man Suvir Saran’s gnomic utterances to Eater, who broke the story yesterday. But we have some intelligence that might help shed some light on the restaurant’s closing. Part of what Saran told Eater is surely true: The curtain dropped as a result of “operational differences between the restaurant’s owner and our staff.” What follows is some informed speculation on the causes of those differences, brought to us by sources close to Saran.
User’s Guide
A Restaurant Week Guide to the Forgotten and UnderappreciatedThe Restaurant Week participants we’re about to endorse aren’t obscure, strictly speaking. You just wouldn’t find their names in the same sentence as the word “buzz” – not, at least, since the Clinton years. But they’re all more than worth the $24.07 you’ll pay for lunch ($35 for dinner) starting on Monday, and you might even beat the crowds.
