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Daniel

  1. The In-box
    How in God’s Name Do I Get a Table at Babbo?Dear Grub Street, I’m trying to make a rez for a two-year-anniversary dinner at Babbo, and the lines are busy. Ought I: Try to make a reservation in person? See if I can shake down anyone for the “special” number? Or enlist the services of a pal who is a concierge? Seriously — it shouldn’t be this hard in January, should it? UGH! Yours, Frustrated
  2. NewsFeed
    Show Them the Money: New York Chefs Make New Year’s Resolutions Being typical office drones, our New Year’s resolutions were fairly predictable: lose weight, use our time better, quit freebasing Lipitor. Thankfully, a few of the city’s chefs have shared some of theirs with us.
  3. What to Eat Tonight
    Eat Truffles, Ease Your Shut-In Grammy’s Misery If news that P. Diddy can’t get enough white truffles at Daniel hasn’t got you hankering after them — and if his habit of demanding that his server “shave this bitch,” as Eater noted, doesn’t inspire you — maybe altruism will. Daniel Boulud bought two baseball-size mushrooms at a Citymeals charity auction this past weekend for $6,000 and is donating the proceeds from the dishes he serves them with to the same charity. And what are those dishes? Simple, neutral landing pads for the magic mushroom: creamy risotto with Parmesan emulsion; spaghetti alla chitarra with fontina cream; and gnochetti with porcini confit and arugula. They go for a whopping $250 each, but since it costs Citymeals just $5 to feed one homebound, elderly New Yorker, you know the money will go a long way. And you won’t have to feel quite so bad about not visiting Grammy in the Bronx.
  4. NewsFeed
    French Chefs Prepare for New York Marathon With Eating Marathon It was an impossible-to-refuse invitation: Come to Nougatine to eat lunch with a group of French chefs here to run the New York marathon. The team, which was sponsored by the French tripe council (and whose members had all been given shirts featuring the slogan “Trip for the Tripe”), was clearly taking its preparation for the race with the utmost seriousness. Yesterday’s lunch was a multicourse affair, to be followed by a blowout dinner at Daniel. Today the plan is to lunch at Per Se and then dim sum at Chinatown Brasserie for supper. And on Saturday, the chefs plan to carb up for the race by going on a Chinatown eating tour, followed by a big dinner party Saturday night. A few highlights from the lunch at Nougatine.
  5. Ask a Waiter
    Daniel’s Bernard Vrod Serves Presidents, Gets Wife Free Meals An ex-pat of gloomy Brittany like so many classic French waiters, Bernard Vrod has been working under fellow farmboy Daniel Boulud for sixteen years, first as a waiter at Le Cirque and, these days, as a maitre d’ at Daniel. We asked him to take us into the latter’s hallowed halls and got tales of Secret Service shakedowns, fowl on the floor, and marriage proposals nearly gone awry.
  6. NewsFeed
    Daniel Under Attack! (Again)You may remember this Intelligencer item, from earlier this summer, about the face-off between Daniel Boulud and an activist group called the Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York. (Coincidentally, we just responded to an article quoting an ROC spokesperson.) Well, the advocacy group is once again on the attack: The group protested Daniel’s allegedly discriminatory employment practices outside the restaurant Tuesday night. A well-groomed Johnnie acting on behalf of the restaurant handed out flyers printed with, “Two, four, six, eight, Daniel does NOT discriminate!” and other lines defending the restaurant. It was signed by Daniel De La Rosa, a captain who has been with the restaurant for ten years. “This is all over four busboys who make over 50,000 a year,” Brett Traussi, the restaurant’s director of operations told us. “For the ROC to pick on a high-profile restaurant like Daniel to increase their exposure is regrettable.” No doubt. But watching the parade of aged grandees walking in between the Scylla and Charybdis of a ROC representative and De La Rosa was a spectacle we wouldn’t have missed.
  7. User’s Guide
    New Cookbooks You Might Actually Open Back in the day, of course, most kitchens could get by with a single massive reference tome; as the Times just pointed out, it was often Joy of Cooking. Now so many cookbooks come out every season that you could spend your entire grocery budget on them. Here are an exceptional handful by New York chefs or celebrities that have come out this fall.
  8. The Other Critics
    Michelin: Gastronomic Bible Reads Like In-Flight AdvertorialWhen we saw the new Michelin ratings on the Web, before getting ahold of the actual book, we were left scratching our heads. (Read our complaints and suggestions here.) Now that we’re reading the thing, we’re becoming even more confused. This is supposed to be a guidebook? The descriptions are all breezy, self-contained little blurbs which seem more like something you would read in an airplane magazine’s advertorial insert than in the American edition of the oldest and most powerful restaurant guide in the world.
  9. The Other Critics
    Michelin’s Explosive New Red BookMichelin dropped its ratings bomb today, and it’s safe to say that the New York restaurant world is, as usual, reeling. Though not as consequential as a Zagat snub, business-wise, the Michelin ratings are closer to the hearts of top chefs. (French chef Bernard Loiseau was widely believed to have killed himself over a Michelin downgrade.) The book is supposed to be in stores tomorrow (though our local Barnes & Noble says it’s not even at the distributor yet). We do, however, know of some surprises. Messrs. Boulud, Bouley, and Takahama are no doubt having lousy afternoons.
  10. What to Eat Tonight
    From Venison to Grouse: Game On! With Tim Love and Ted Turner having recently opened game restaurants here — Lonesome Dove Western Bistro and Ted’s Montana Grill, respectively — it’s a good time for us to consider wild animals: how free and beautiful they are and where you can currently eat them. There are some excellent New York restaurants that feature out-of-the-mainstream meats, especially in the fall.
  11. Eatiquette
    Warning: You May Be Stiffing Your Bartender It’s always a happy moment: You’ve been chatting at the bar, guzzling it up, when the host shimmies into place to tell you that your table is ready. So smooth is the transition that you don’t even have to pay! Your tab is added to your dinner bill, and some soigné functionary puts the drinks on a tray and whisks them to your table. Does this mean your tip on the meal covers the drinks as well?