Hot Sake - Food News You Can Use

- Shortly before the now infamous Bourdain post skewering the Food Network appeared, blogger Jinius put her newly acquired TV writing skills to the test with a piece funneling the stars of the much maligned network into the Lost model. Enjoy and don’t miss riding the wake still behind Bourdain’s post, hundreds of comments from readers, Josh at Grub Street defending RR and Nina Lalli piling on him.

- NYPress comes through with a nice piece on heifers in honor of the Year of the Golden Pig, which as we have been told is an extremely rare occurrence.

- Eater covers another round of “Morandi Fever!” - this time info on the current F&F status and a glimpse of some menu items. We will happily add that our man on the inside tells us the full public reveal is set for Wednesday. If you have the McNally special reservation line, word is that will be a better bet than the standard resy number.

- Happy Hour Fun:
L’asso – offering their excellent pizza at $1/slice with $3 pints from 5-7 weekdays.
Colors – the international effort that rose from the ashes of Windows on the World has half price apps (limited selection) and $5 pints of the superlatively crisp Kolsch till 9pm every night.

We are always glad to hear about colleagues trying to move social issues to the front burner within the context of the restaurant industries. The latest to bubble up is Le Snacklady posting about UNICEF's Tap Project, the goal pf which is to “provide safe drinking water for children around the world.” The gist is that “patrons of hundreds of participating NYC restaurants to donate $1 for the clean drinking water usually served for free” If you visit the TAPP Project site, they have an interactive map plotting who is participating. For your convenience, we will post the full list after the jump.

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