Hung to Cook in Midtown Kitchen; Chirico Pleads Not Guilty to ExtortionTop Chef winner Hung Huynh will begin a one-month stint at kosher restaurant Solo on March 2; Justin Smillie, formerly of Barbuto, has replaced Akhtar Nawab at the E.U. [NYT]
Related: Akhtar Nawab to *NOT* Leave E.U., Will Open New Restaurant
If you’re clamoring for a Valentine’s Day tablecloth dinner at White Castle, you still might be able to get one. [Eater]
Master Purveyors will live on: The fire destroyed the offices, but the meat is still safe and sound in the warehouse. [Crain’s NY]
Related: Venerable Meat Purveyor Struck By Fire
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Windows on the World Creator Thinks About the Freedom TowerThe chance to put a restaurant at the top of the Freedom Tower seems like a peerless opportunity all right — at least, that’s what the Port Authority hoped when it invited restaurateurs to propose plans for the new space, set to open in 2013, earlier this week. But we only know one person who has created a major restaurant atop the city’s highest skyscraper: Michael Whiteman, who with his partner Joe Baum created Windows on the World (which the Freedom Tower’s restaurant will be the de facto replacement for). Whiteman is something of an expert on skyscraper restaurants: He also created the modern version of the Rainbow Room, along with top-floor restaurants in Singapore and Taipei. We asked him how hard it was going to be for whoever won the contract.
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Freedom Tower Seeks Restaurant Developer; Le Cirque Does Restaurant Week AllStarting today, the Port Authority is accepting early bids from developers for control of a two-story restaurant atop the Freedom Tower, with a grand opening slated for early 2013. [The Real Estate/NYO]
More bad news about the FDA: It’s “so understaffed that, at its current pace, the agency would need at least 27 years to inspect every foreign medical device plant that exports to the United States, 13 years to check every foreign drug plant and 1,900 years to examine every foreign food plant.” [NYT]
Le Cirque’s Restaurant Week menus are such a hit that the Maccioni clan is going to make them available every weekday in February. [Zagat]