Dr. Vino Brings First View of Wine Madhouse TerroirDr. Vino, one of our favorite wine blogs, drops the first images of the newly opened Terroir today. The wine bar owned by Marco Canora and Paul Grieco opened last night, and to judge by the pictures, it hit the ground running. As expected, the place reflects Grieco’s precarious sanity. Writes Dr. Vino: “The wine list is in a three-ring binder, which the designer described to me as being like the school notebook of ‘a 16 year-old boy’s whose obsession is not with cars or girls but obscure grape varieties,’ including one with Aglianico written on it multiple times.” Just wait til they look in the crawlspace!
Hipster wine bar, Terroir, now open! Wine by the glass starts at $2.75 [Dr. Vino]
Related: What You’ll Eat and Drink at Terroir
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Charlie Trotter Details Emerge; Frank Bruni’s Cross-Country TripThe first details on Charlie Trotter’s still-unnamed restaurant on Madison Square Park emerge: It will have 80 seats as well as a bar and lounge. [NYT]
Merkato 55 may be turning New Yorkers on to African cuisine, but there have been plenty of excellent, albeit under-the-radar, restaurants offering the continent’s cuisine for years. [TONY]
Related: Merkato 55’s Most Popular Dish: Doro Wat
The Modern’s new wine director, Belinda Chang, is the kind of sommelier we want to be someday: “I’m definitely obsessed with magnums. They’re so fun to pour!” [NYS]
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What You’ll Eat and Drink at Terroir
After reading Rob and Robin’s opening this week, we can’t wait to visit Terroir when it opens this weekend (or Monday, if there’s a last-minute construction problem). But what awaits us there? We reached out to the new wine bar’s guiding spirit, Paul Grieco, to see if he could get us a sneak preview of the menu, and possibly a hint of what he had in mind for his wine program. Grieco delivered both — the latter in spades.
In the Magazine
This Week: New Fusion, New Coffee, Repurposed Water
The city’s newest food-fusion trend is Latin American and Italian cuisines, says the Underground Gourmet in this week’s magazine. Miranda in Williamsburg and Matilda in the East Village are leading the charge, and Rob and Robin alternate between calling it “Mex-Italian” and “Tusc-Mex.” (Our pick: “Mexcellente.”) Outside of our regular reading route, Intel has a dishy item about David Bouley — apparently, his Tribeca neighbors aren’t so thrilled about his proposed Brushstrokes restaurant. Back in the food section, it’s a difficult time of year for the Greenmarket, but that doesn’t deter Damon Wise at Craft for offering up this week’s “In Season” recipe: pan-roasted salsify. Gael Greene visits Smokin’ Q on the Upper East Side this week and enjoys the ribs and the thin-cut fries, though she could do without the owner’s jokes. Rob and Robin introduce us to three new restaurants this week, and we can’t wait to visit Terroir, the latest from Marco Canora and Paul Grieco. Also in “Openings”: an East Village coffee bar co-owned by Sasha Petraske and a new burger spot in the financial district. If a recession breeds good $4 burgers, it can’t be that bad. Finally, if you want to reduce bottled-water waste, we found four restaurants with a DIY approach to filtration and carbonation.
NewsFeed
Terroir Video Reveals the Depth of Paul Grieco’s MadnessAnyone who knows Paul Grieco will tell you that he is patently insane. Final proof, if any were needed, lies in this video promoting his new wine bar, Terroir. Grieco, the co-owner, manager, and wine director of both Hearth and Insieme, is the mad genius of the city’s wine corps, and Terroir is his padded cell and laboratory. The teaser site gives some hint of the white-knuckle wine-geek intensity that courses through Grieco’s veins: Among the vitriolic mottos that flash are “Our wine world is now dominated by over-manipulated, oak-chip-flavored, micro-oxygenated wines that have nothing to do with what Mother Nature, God, or the Cistercian Fathers had in mind” and “To go to Friuli for red wine is like going to Las Vegas and expecting to catch Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.” But to really get a measure of his madness, watch this video. You won’t be sorry.
Related: Wine-Geek Heaven on the Way to the East Village
NewsFeed
Wine-Geek Heaven on the Way to the East VillageIt’s been a while since we first got wind of it, but the Hearth’s long-awaited spinoff wine bar, Terroir, is finally close to becoming a reality. The space, known in its former life as Bikes by George, will begin its transformation right after Thanksgiving, and co-owners Paul Grieco and Marco Canora hope to open the place by New Year’s. Grieco, the wine director, is a wine geek’s wine geek, which means he’s got some lofty plans.
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O’Reilly Amazed at Politeness of Black Diners; Insieme’s Paul Grieco Gets HisBill O’Reilly amazed upon dining at Sylvia’s in Harlem: “It was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun.” [NYP]
Related: Black People, They’re Just Like Us! [Daily Intel]
Insieme co-owner Paul Grieco seamlessly manages both the front and back of the house, a talent often overlooked in restaurants. [NYT]
The Post’s top ten overrated restaurants include Nobu, the Corner Bistro, and the Carnegie Deli. [NYP]
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Hearth’s New Wine Bar to Be a Very Low-key AffairWord of Terroir, Hearth’s new spin-off wine bar, got out faster than owners Marco Canora and Paul Grieco wanted, but with the genie now out of the bottle, Canora tells us he’s ready to talk about it. “We wanted to keep it low-key, because we’re low-key guys,” he explains. The place is only 500 square feet, the chef says, and they don’t even plan to pipe in gas. There will be eight seats at the bar, a communal table with twelve to sixteen chairs, and a “very minimal” menu created by Canora, who with Grieco just recently opened Insieme in midtown.
