Wylie Dufresne Creates a New Hot Dog for PDTCabrito and Benoit open, Wylie Dufresne makes a hot dog, and Rob and Robin bring news of BarFry’s replacement, Cabrito — all in this week’s issue.
Mediavore
Food Network to Publish Magazine?; Food-Porn Photos for SaleHearst Publications is supposedly in talks with the Food Network to publish a new food magazine and has been stealing editors from Every Day With Rachael Ray for months. The only problem? The channel’s big stars don’t seem to be a part of the publication. [Mixed Media/Portfolio]
Soto chef Sotohiro Kosugi responds to fears of too much mercury in tuna. “Eat with balance. Balance of meals is the key to a healthy life.” [Bottomless Dish/Citysearch]
Related: Sushi Eaters Face Tuna Fears
Neil Ferguson, Marco Pierre White, Gordon Ramsey, Jamie Oliver, and others are leading a full-on British culinary invasion on our shores. [Chicago Tribune]
NewsFeed
Restaurants Feeling the Effects of Mercury ScareEarlier today we showed you a letter Takahachi is giving its customers. It’s not the only restaurant around town feeling the fallout. “We were very busy yesterday, but today is so quiet,” a sushi chef at Hatsuhana in midtown whispered the evening after the January 23 article was published. “Even customers that are coming in are asking for no tuna.” In the Village, celebrities usually wait patiently in line for a table at Japonica. “I don’t know whether it’s the article, the economy, or our customers are on vacation, but all of a sudden our business has fallen down 20 to 30 percent, and 15 percent of those who come in have changed their regular orders. It’s even worse for my friends who have restaurants in Westchester and Connecticut. There is a lot you can eat at sushi restaurants other than tuna,” said owner Shingo Yonezawa. “It’s a nightmare.” And not only Japanese restaurants are affected. “When we put tuna on the menu, it was such an easy sell,” said Danny Abrams, owner of The Mermaid Inn and others. “We were selling seventeen to twenty per night. After the article we were down to six or seven. Even our tuna tartare appetizer stopped selling. I was surprised it dropped as much as it did.” —Beth Landman
Mediavore
NYSRA Fights Calorie Law Again; Bovine Waterboarding Video ReleasedThe New York State Restaurant Association filed another suit in federal district court yesterday to prevent a law requiring some restaurants to post calorie information on menus and signs from being enacted. [Grub Street]
Was the Times guilty of scaremongering with its slew of mercury-in-tuna stories? [Slate]
With the recent spate of wine bar openings, it’s worth considering what really constitutes a wine bar. A good wine list is a good start! [Mouthing Off/Food & Wine]
Mediavore
Pret a Manger Set for Huge Expansion Here; Ramsay Bans BluefinBritish sandwich chain Pret a Manger is launching an expansion of Starbucks-like proportions, announcing plans to open 33 more locations in New York — four times the current number. “If New York could support one on every corner, we’d love that,” the company’s head says. [NYS]
Related: Out to Lunch [NYM]
Urged by the Marine Conservation Society, Gordon Ramsay pulls endangered bluefin tuna from all his restaurants. [NRN]
The Department of Health’s current closure rampage continues with Union Picnic in Williamsburg, Café Angelique, and J’adore in Manhattan. [Eater]
The Underground Gourmet
Sandwich of the Week: The No Mayo Tuna Sandwich at Henri Bendel of All Places
Eating for a living takes the Underground Gourmet to all sorts of strange and mysterious places — the Upper West Side, for instance — but none more sinisterly exotic than the typical department-store café. As anyone who’s ever lunched on frozen yogurt and cantaloupe at Bloomingdale’s Forty Carrots or nibbled miniature quiche at the American Girl Cafe can attest, these shopaholic fuel stations are not the manliest places to tie on the noonday feedbag. So how the UG found himself ensconced at a petite table at Henri Bendel’s new third-floor Chocolate Bar the other day, God and Ms. UG only know.
Click and Save
Inside Surf and Turf: Watching a Tuna-Cutting, Eating Fancy SteaksTwo big, intense features recently stopped us in our tracks: a Slate piece going into great detail about contemporary steak, with a taste test comparing grass-fed, grain-fed, dry-aged, and wet-aged steaks; and On the Broiler’s photo-essay about the cutting of a 400-pound tuna in a Japanese shopping center in New Jersey. The tuna pics are just plain cool — in fact, our photographer happened to shoot a few of her own, which we’re featuring here — but the Slate article is a must-read for anyone who plans on passing within a few yards of a New York steakhouse, particularly the new breed of restaurants, like Craftsteak and STK, that specify the feed and provenance of their meat. And the upshot of the comparison test? The clear winner was grass-fed beef from Alderspring Ranch in Idaho. Grain-fed, non-aged beef from Niman Ranch came in second.
Which Steak Tastes the Best? [Slate]
The Mitsuwa Tuna Cut [Off the Broiler]
