Josh DeChellis Gives the ‘Top Chef’ Contestants High MarksThis season, we’re planning on kibitzing about the show every week with a variety of fellow viewers, all of whom will help us to dissect that episode’s round of flashy dishes and behind-the-scenes treachery.
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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.
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One Restaurant Opening This Week Isn’t Enough for Alex Garcia
These are busy days indeed for Nuevo Latino chef Alex Garcia. Having just opened Carniceria in the space formerly occupied by Porchetta, Garcia is about to open another restaurant, this one on Manhattan’s West Side. Gaucho Steak Co., which goes live today, is an Argentine steak concept based on the chef’s smaller establishment, Gaucho Steak, in Montclair, New Jersey. “In Argentina, if you want steak, they have a place called a parilla, which is just a guy behind the grill,” Garcia tells us. “He’ll make you a steak, French fries, chorizo on bread, whatever you want. It’s really casual, and that’s what we’re trying to do.” That plan seems to run counter to the fairly elaborate kind of cooking that established Garcia as an avatar of new Latin American cooking at Novo and Calle Ocho. However just as at Carniceria Garcia has found a way to express his style through the appetizers, presumably he’ll do something similar at Gaucho Steak. No Alex Garcia restaurant is ever likely to be really reminiscent of “a guy behind a grill.”
Earlier: Porchetta Reborn as Carniceria, With Alex Garcia at the Helm
Restroom Report
Keith McNally: A Restro-spective
As we noted when we toured the restrooms at Morandi, Keith McNally has pissed away a great deal of money to make his restaurant lavatories the gold standard. When Morandi failed to hit the mark, we were truly bummed, so to restore our faith in the master (and to make sure we weren’t remembering his previous works through Clorox-colored glasses), we decided to embark on an epic stall crawl of McNally’s previous loos, from Pravda’s Commie commodes to (pardon our French) the shitters at Schiller’s. Come flush with us.
Neighborhood Watch
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 Underground Gourmet
Sandwich Purists, Prepare to Swallow Your IndignationIntroducing the Underground Gourmet’s Sandwich of the Week, a special contribution to Grub Street.
Nothing rankles peevish sandwich purists more than the compulsion among today’s freewheeling chefs to improve upon a classic by substituting brazenly nontraditional upmarket ingredients for the tried and true (witness the Wagyu cheesesteak). Said purists, though, should swallow their indignation along with the spectacular “Three-Terrine Sandwich” that recently debuted on the late-night menu at Momofuku Ssäm Bar. The toothsome concoction is crafted from shards of succulent ham, chicken pâté, and a particularly heady veal-head cheese, all made in house and topped with pickled cucumbers, carrot, daikon, Kewpie mayo, and hot sauce. A gourmet bánh mì, for sure, but a bánh mì just the same, even if co-chef Tien Ho, its humble creator, abstained from using the name since he serves it on a Sullivan Street Bakery ciabatta instead of the traditional rice-flour-enhanced baguette. If only all sandwich maestros were such sticklers.
— Rob Patronite & Robin Raisfeld