Food: February 2008 Archives

Fans of Ditmas Park favorite the Farm on Adderley, get ready: The newest venture from co-owners Gary Jonas and Allison McDowell, a French bistro dubbed Pomme de Terre, is on the verge of opening. Apparently the regular customers at the Farm are jonesing for another mid-range restaurant in the neighborhood, and it's unlikely a recent shooting on the very same corner will deter them.

If you work on the west side near 14th Street, consider your lunch plans settled: the Papaya King on 7th Ave. and 14th is giving away free hot dogs to the first 500 customers today and tomorrow. As of 11:06am, just 32 customers had taken advantage of the deal, which is part of a promotional for Unhitched, a new Farrelly brothers sitcom starring Rashida Jones, who plays Jim’s ex-girlfriend on The Office.

The area of Brooklyn’s Atlantic Avenue that stretches through the East New York/Stuyvesant Heights area isn’t exactly a culinary destination, but what it does have is the Carolina Country Store, a one of a kind grocery that has been covered here before. The tiny storefront is also favored by chefs like Zak Pelaccio, primarily because it specializes in southern style ham and cured meats that are hard to find elsewhere in the five boroughs.

Anyone who’s ever gotten off the 7 train in Flushing and walked to the Queens Botanical Garden knows that the majority of the area’s Chinese eateries and businesses are clustered around the northern end of Main Street. As you move further south, Indian sari shops, chaat houses and grocery stores start to appear. But lately a handful of Chinese restaurants have elbowed into the southern end; one such newcomer is Oriental Express Food Garden, which took over the old Rajbhog Sweets‎ space.

At the Ethnic Market highlights international specialty foods and ingredients you're very unlikely to find at your local Gristedes.

Whether it was a PR stunt or a legit "teach-in" on espresso, Starbucks shut down for three full hours last night to train baristas --leaving the 5:30 to 8:30pm coffee crowd out in the cold. Today they are back, with a new take on "the customer is always right" policy posted about their stores; it reads: "Your drink should be perfect, every time. If not, let us know and we'll make it right." Reportedly they'll also be introducing a honey latte soon; no word on whether the three hour espresso pouring course allowed time for the new beverage.

Today the Times’s Keith Dixon, a self-described “clumsy, overambitious cook,” offers tips for cooking dinner in a crowded city apartment made even more cramped by a newborn baby. Dixon has adapted his cooking technique to accommodate a light-sleeping baby who, awakened by a clattering spatula, derails dinner plans as he and his wife “labor to get her back to sleep.” So he’s evolved into a “Silent Chef” with “ninja stealth” and suggests, among other things, avoiding meats that tend to smoke the place up, trading metal utensils for plastic, and using the stove’s exhaust fan as “a makeshift white-noise machine.”

It's a no-brainer: Most recipes need exact measurements. But do you have what it takes to tackle that cookie recipe? Maybe, maybe not.

Today Starbucks all over are closing for 190 caffeine-free minutes. The blackout (hold the cream and sugar) is set for 5:30pm, so be prepared for a temporary Venti Soy Latte drought. Even more disturbing for Starbuckistas, however, is the sign above. The "Dear John" letter is from an 8th Street outlet (between 5th and University) and addressed to its loyal patrons. A closing Starbucks? Creepy, indeed.

On Moore Street in Bushwick, you'll be hard pressed to find a better place to eat than Roberta's, the newly opened and very discreet wood-fired pizza haven. A fire engine red wood-fueled oven with the restaurant's namesake painted in white churns out thin and perfectly crispy pizzas (and the occasional calzone) for a spacious wood-paneled room with a cafeteria-table set up that still sports remnants of industrial garage doors.

Tired of squandering your mornings laboriously spreading cream cheese on your freshly defrosted bagel? Kraft Foods, Inc. is here to blast you and your breakfast into the 21st century, with their new line of frozen bagels that come pre-filled with cream cheese!

Any Greenpoint residents still speculating about renovations to the cavernous space on the corner of Franklin and Green – the one with the big silver garage door and the new lights along the northern wall – now have their answer: A bar called t.b.d. Co-owner Diane Foley explains that she finally gave up trying to come up with a name and just went with what she was using for all the paperwork.

After news spread that Upper West Side institution Cafe La Fortuna would close today, many people came by to bid farewell.

Now that the cold weather is likely here to stay, at least until the next freak 60 degree day, you might want to hunker down with a cozy-sounding book.

Olana: The internets are doomed to failure unless someone invents a way to click on a photo at the end of a wet, snowy day and be immediately teleported to the desired location – like those plush chairs clustered around the bar, where one of Olana’s specialty cocktails would be presented at once.

When one hears there are caves at Murray’s Cheese, images of damp, subterranean chasms loaded with mounds of exotic fromage spring readily to mind. As a recent tour revealed, the cheeses aren’t stored and aged in actual caverns, but rather climate-controlled walk-in refrigerators designed by France’s leading affineur, Hervé Mons.

24-year-old chef Jessica Floyd has been working between 14 and 17 hours a day for the last two weeks at Islero, the new “modern Spanish” restaurant on 50th Street. The chef, who also handles the pastry program, hasn’t had a break since the place opened 11 days ago, and things aren’t slowing down any time soon. Islero will open for lunch service on March 3rd, and Floyd’s working on a bunch of ideas, such as a tasting menu paired with Spanish and Portuguese wines and a petit four take-home bag for every guest.

It would a bit too simplistic to blame the impending closure of La Fortuna, the Upper West Side café that first opened in 1976, entirely on the skyrocketing rents of a turbo-gentrifying neighborhood. While the ever rising rental tide was certainly a factor – the building was taken over by a real-estate group after the previous landlord died – three years still remained on the lease. According to amNY, the closure has more to do with the death of the original owner’s wife last month:

Vincent "Uncle Vinny" Urwand called the cafe a dream come true for him and wife Alice, who was the "heart and soul" of the place. Alice died in January, and it was hard, Urwand said Thursday, to think of the place without her.

Everything's coming up rosé on Staten Island: on the heels of the new aquarium unveiling in the ferry terminal, plans for the island’s first vineyard are coming into focus. Borough President James Molinaro (pictured, right) has pledged $2 million for the project, which will establish a 2 acre vineyard and demonstration winery at the Staten Island Botanical Garden.

Barbecue and sushi aren’t the first two cuisines you'd expect to find cohabitating under one roof. Leave it to Jim Goldman, a.k.a Brother Jimmy, to open Lucky Mojo, which features that oddball pairing – plus Tex-Mex and New Orleans fare. An eclectic, highly uneven menu isn’t the only challenge this new Long Island City spot faces. Lucky Mojo’s space has been afflicted with bad juju of late. In the ’90s it was home to the critically acclaimed Pearson’s Texas Barbecue.

After busy weeks of hype surrounding high profile restaurant openings like Adour and Bar Boulud, which feature a laser projected bar menu and standalone charcuterie kitchen, respectively, it's now time to catch your breath with some chefs who are mixing their concept food with a trace of nostalgia for after-school snack-time. (And opposed to the trendy new kids on the block, you can actually get a table to taste these fun foods.)

A judge has finally ruled on a long-simmering dispute between a restaurant and its deliverymen. Last March deliverymen at the popular Vietnamese restaurant Saigon Grill, which has locations in Greenwich Village and on the Upper West Side, demanded a raise from owners Simon and Michelle Nget. The deliverymen reasoned that since the chain was pulling in more than $2 million a month, they ought to earn more than $120 for a 75-hour week.

About a year ago, Village Voice restaurant critic Robert Sietsema attended a taping of Iron Chef America at the Food Network's Chelsea studios. Thanks to a friend's invite, the Food Network had no idea he was watching and waiting to blow the cover off the whole phony operation once the episode finally aired. Now Sietsema is here to report that the series is “more bogus than even I had imagined.”

Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay doesn’t give a damn about you, your girlfriend, or the special Valentine’s Day dinner you had planned – so drop your fork and get the hell off his set! That seems to be the way things went last Thursday night when diners at New Jersey’s fancy Hannah and Masons restaurant were summarily evicted – mid-meal – to facilitate production on Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares USA series. No matter how romantic the rabble, it just wouldn’t do to have them cluttering up Ramsay’s frame – one only hopes the cameras were rolling when the guests were asked to leave.

These thin, crispy cookies are the perfect garnish for any creamy dessert and, fair warning, they're absolutely addictive on their own as well. Try them with chocolate mousse, perhaps, or shape them into tiny cones to dish small bites of ice cream as an hors d'oeuvre.

Today the Times’s Frank Bruni marvels at Manhattan’s new wave of high tone restaurant openings during a recession, and pins the trend not on entrepreneurial bravado but on the fact that it takes years to get a fancy eatery open, and most of these new places were envisioned in flusher economic times. It is true that in 2005, the top fifth of earners in Manhattan made 52 times what the lowest fifth make – $365,826 compared with $7,047 – comparable to the income disparity in Namibia. Yet thanks to tax cuts and stagflation, the income gap has only widened in the past three years. Dinner at Per Se is as unattainable as ever for New York’s lower orders, but even with Wall Street turbulence it’s unlikely the ranks of the well-heeled will thin to the point where a fashionable restaurant can’t manage. Of course, chefs like Ken Friedman (The Spotted Pig) are artists and don’t chain their muse to the vagaries of the economy: “I’m certainly not the kind who would look at the Dow. Does a writer write or not write a book based on the economic climate? Does a songwriter write songs that way?”

The Department of Correction has begun serving New York City’s 14,000 prisoners a healthier diet of fruit, fiber-rich cereals, skim milk and whole wheat bread. Sugar-sweetened beverages are forbidden, and soon unsweetened muffins will replace sweetened ones. Fried foods have been off the menu for years, and has city has drastically reduced the amount of red meat served, placing a greater emphasis on chicken, fish and tofu.

One of the things that makes eating dim sum in New York City exciting is the seeming endless variety of savory and sweet morsels. Even veteran dim sum eaters are rewarded by new discoveries every so often.

The incoming president of the Obesity Society has filed a 33-page affidavit questioning the city’s new rules requiring chain restaurants to prominently display calorie information on their menus. Dr. David B. Allison (pictured), a professor of biostatistics and nutrition at the University of Alabama, cites a study indicating that dieters who get distracted by calorie information are more likely to overeat. And even if the daunting calorie details prompt diners to go for lower calorie items, they'll just end up overeating later because their healthier choice won't really satiate them.

The California based Westland/Hallmark Meat Company is recalling all its raw and frozen beef products distributed since Feb. 1, 2006 – a total of 143 million pounds of ground beef. The largest beef recall in history was announced after an undercover Humane Society video showed workers kicking sick cows, jabbing them in the eyes and using forklifts to force them to walk to slaughter. (See the video here.)

At the Ethnic Market highlights international specialty foods and ingredients you're very unlikely to find at your local Gristedes.

tre dici STEAK: The second floor of Chelsea’s Italian restaurant tre dici has been transformed into an intimate, 50 seat dining room (pictured) designed in the style of a sexy New Orleans speakeasy, circa 1920. Heavy fabrics covering the windows evoke a feeling of timelessness in the candlelit room, which is lined with luxuriant claret leathers and sensual artwork under an antique silver tin ceiling. The food arrives via dumbwaiter from chef Giuseppe Fanelli’s kitchen and features entrees like Kobe Beef Ravioli with black truffle, caramelized onions and parmigianino; and, no surprise, a 16 oz. Black Angus Hanger Steak. A lobster salad with watermelon, avocado, red onion & yuzo vinaigrette walks on the lighter side, and an elegant bar pours a selection of bourbons and scotches. [Closed Sundays.] 128 West 26th Street, 2nd Floor, (212) 243-2085.

When restaurants charge larger parties an automatic service fee – usually 20% – it’s generally understood that the money goes to the servers as a gratuity. But some restaurants have been keeping the lion’s share of the fee and passing along just a small fraction to the staff. Now a state appeals court has ruled that the practice is as illegal as it is outrageous.

For a pair of diners with zero romantic involvement, Soba Totto proved the perfect refuge from the relentless Valentine’s Day spirit. Thanks to owner Ryuichi “Bobby” Munekata, the man behind upscale yakitori joints Yakitori Totto and Torys, Soba Totto is one of the few Japanese spots in town offering both top-notch soba and top-flight yakitori. In a begrudging acknowledgment of the so-called holiday, two juicy skewers of hatsu, or chicken heart, were ordered.

Sorry Reverend Billy, it’s only for three hours. For those of you who haven’t heard, all 7,100 “standalone” Starbucks in the United States will close for 180 tense, irritable minutes, starting at 5:30pm on February 26th. (That’s a Tuesday.) Now don’t let panic take over – this has nothing to do with Starbucks' "sinister Phase Two" of operations; it’s planned to facilitate the retraining of their 135,000-strong army.

Here's some good news for all you offal lovers out there, specifically those with, ahem, a foot fetish. Hakata Tonton plans to reopen tomorrow. The West Village Japanese spot specializing in all things pig feet has been closed for a little over a week after recently failing a Department of Health inspection. The gal who picked up the phone at the restaurant today said the temple of trotters plans to open tomorrow. DOH gave them the go-ahead after they passed their inspection yesterday.

Forget going out to a restaurant -- the way to woo your sweetheart (or potential sweetheart) is by cooking. Before the fear courses through your veins, don't think that "cooking a romantic meal" needs to be overwhelming or complicated. The simple act of cooking a meal for someone, no matter what the menu, is romantic and special in and of itself. Perhaps the most romantic meal possible is breakfast in bed, and it doesn't have to be as elaborate as this delicious sounding menu from epicurious; if someone's cooking you breakfast, odds are they were there the night before, which is always (hopefully) a good thing.

We recently went to check out Amai Tea & Bake House, because we love tea and because we are big on supporting food bloggers in their endeavors (Amai is run by the blogger behind Lovescool).

There may be satisfaction on the horizon for fans of the southern comfort food dished out at Pies 'n' Thighs, the beloved South Williamsburg hole in the wall that shut down last month. Upon closing, the owners vowed to reopen a “bigger, better, more miraculous hole in the wall!” Eater caught wind of a local Community Board hearing last night, during which the owners' plans to obtain a license for beer and wine was scheduled for review.

Or so they say. Well, maybe, maybe not, but regardless, we wanted to give you some options for food and drink-related events on Valentine's Day.

A.J.: I think the word needs to get out there.Like it or not, it's out there, thanks to Daulerio’s thorough reportage, in which he quotes a chief of clinical gastroenterology at the University of Wisconsin, who explains that “escolar is laden with an overwhelming amount of wax esters.” So unless your partner has a serious Cleveland Steamer fetish you want to spice up for Valentine’s Day, consider yourself warned to stay the hell away from the stuff.

Frank Bruni, the Times’s top restaurant critic, awards the new 2nd Avenue Deli one star today, which isn’t bad considering it is, despite all the history, still a deli. We popped in there for food and photos just before it reopened at its East 33rd Street location and found the sandwiches (pictured) as monumental as ever; a second visit turned up no sign of the free bowl of gribenes (chicken skin fried in chicken fat) that the owner Jeremy Lebewohl had promised free at every table.

The atmosphere at Ploy Thai, a newish restaurant on the corner of Elmhurst Avenue and Broadway in Queens, seems promising in its authenticity; upon entering for the first time we were pleased to find a few tables of Thai families, a specials board written completely in Thai and karaoke of girl band Girly Berry playing on a flat screen TV.

Just last week, the Crosby Connection opened in its new location, continuing its tradition of serving delicious, reasonably priced sandwiches. If you were fortunate to get to Crosby early enough last week, owner Joey Cramarossa was giving away samples of a pizza that he planned on selling from his new location. When we previously talked to Cramarossa, he said that there was nothing like this pizza in the area, something that is painfully obvious to us everyday.

Roses or chocolate or, credit card be damned, both? Since time immemorial, men have spent February 14th scrambling to buy the right things without paying through the nose. But now there's a way to get both classic gifts in one package, and have some of the proceeds go to a good cause, thanks to Rhonda Kave of Roni-Sue’s Chocolates.

Okay, it's freezing. Not just freezing -- bone chillingly bitter. We've been at our desk for hours now and still can't manage to fight off the chill from our morning commute. This kind of weather makes us crave warm, cozy comfort food -- hopefully at least one of these options is close enough to you for a quick dash out, or even better, to deliver to you.

Photo: Food of the Future

On Sunday afternoon, the fourth day of the Lunar Year, the streets and restaurants of Flushing's Chinatown were packed with families celebrating the Year of the Rat. In case you're wondering, that headline – like many of the Chinese people in Flushing – is Mandarin. It translates roughly to "Congratulations and best wishes for a prosperous New Year."

Mercato 55: The other buzzed-about opening this week is this Meatpacking District African brasserie. The menu at Mercato 55 – the name means “market” in Italian – is intended to evoke the vibe of Africa's largest outdoor market, Addis Merkato in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. Two floors accommodate 150 diners; earth tones, exposed wood and murals painted with scenes from African markets add to the intended ambience. The food isn’t confined to Ethiopian fare, but there are Ethiopian classics like a dish of chicken stewed with onions, ginger, garlic, and spices served in a cast-iron pot, accompanied by traditional injera bread. A small plates menu has a wide range of dishes, such as merguez sausage, corn pap and chili mustard sauce. Large plates cost $16-$32; the cheapest being a burger with green tomato and awase mayo. And dessert brings out Homer Simpson’s inner soul brother: African doughnuts. 55 Gansevoort St. (212) 255-8555.

In the territory immediately surrounding NYU, and therefore Washington Square Park, fine dining isn't always the first thing to come to mind. Instead, there's Mamoun's for late-night falafel, the Dosa Man, or the Dessert Truck – great for meals on the cheap and meals on the go. But on nights when you feel like you deserve a glass of wine with dinner, have a downtown date, or just crave a real sit-down meal, the Washington Square Hotel's North Square Restaurant (formerly C3) is a another subterranean option that'll dig slightly deeper into your wallet, but is well worth the price. In the L-shaped dining room on the corner of Waverly and MacDougal, the art deco-meets-contemporary furnishings set the right tone for some fancied up home-cookin'.

Gothamist finally got to try Sakae Sushi, the new kaiten – or conveyor belt sushi restaurant – the other night. We were quite pleased to find the Singapore-based chain’s first New York City location actually open; when we stopped by last week it was temporarily closed. Given that it’s Fashion Week it was vaguely appropriate to see the plates parading down the runway in the sleek, hypermodern space. Some might dis the pastel-colored plastic plates – beige, blue, green, pink and red – as unfashionable, but there’s a reason behind the candy-colored madness: tabulating the bill. Just like in an old-school dim sum house, the waitress counts up the number of dishes at the meal’s end.

After looking at the nitrogen tanks that live on city sidewalks, a reader asked us to look into another city mystery. She wanted to know "Why is the expiration date on milk different for New York City? Does it really take that many more days for the milk to get here?" The NY Times looked into this in another shelf-life (1982), and reported:

New York City is the only place in the state and one of relatively few in the country that has its own dating system for fluid milk, which may legally be sold only up to 96 hours after 6 A.M. on the day after pasteurization. The rule is the same for whole, skim or low-fat fortified milk.

Continue reading "NYC's Milk Expiration Date Mystery"

Here is an absolutely luscious, rich winter dish. We started off working with an Alice Waters recipe, but then we were inspired by Michael Ruhlman's love of veal stock to meat things up a bit to great effect.

What happens when Antonio and Mario Cerra, former owners of Da Antonio, take over the space that once housed Sichuan Palace? If you said another Italian restaurant, you’re only partially right. The father (Antonio) and son (Mario) team have created Padre Figlio, an Italian steakhouse of exceptional quality. The menu offers Piemontese beef and such exotic fare as rack of Canadian wild boar in limoncello reduction and also pays tribute to the family’s Neapolitan roots.

This week in the Times, Bruni three-stars Le Cirque, bumping the restaurant's rating up from the two stars he awarded it in 2006. Executive chef Christophe Bellanca’s menu “nimbly straddles the line between predictable decadence… and creative flair,” he says. He also says that you’ll pay—a lot—for what you get, and that Le Cirque isn’t quite as reliable as other three star restaurants.

The Waldorf Astoria loves to brag about how every president since Herbert Hoover has been a guest at their hotel, but they rarely disclose what delicacies our rulers savor while there. But starting this month, guests at the Waldorf Towers and diners in the hotel’s Bull & Bear steakhouse can have a taste of presidential luxury that, until now, only taxpayer money could buy.

It's time for the Lunar New Year, which starts February 7th and lasts for 14 days, and this year is the Year of the Rat, 4706. Sure, there are plenty of things to do to celebrate the holiday, but to us, it means one thing -- a new year banquet. We've found a few places that are offering banquets in honor of the Year of the Rat, including variations of traditional Chinese Lunar New Year foods that bring prosperity, happiness and good fortune to all who join together to feast, like dumplings, uncut noodles, whole fish and chicken.

Fellas, if you’re in some sort of relationship and haven’t nailed down the V-Day itinerary yet, it’s about time to start making some quick decisions and, regrettably, commitments. Reservations fill up fast and no matter what she says about ‘not expecting anything special’, we all know that’s a big trap. But it doesn’t mean you have to submit to an overpriced prix fixe dinner at a stuffy, overcrowded restaurant; here are some less predictable ways to impress your date this Love Day. (We suggest starting now by ordering one of these fine Law & Order SVU Valentine's cards.)

Just how well do you know your morning snack? [Cue ominous music] Find out tonight at KGB Bar when Dan Koeppel, author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, reads from his book. Koeppel’s dedication to unpeeling the history of the fruit (turns out it’s actually a berry) admirably resists puns like the one found at the beginning of this sentence, and what seems at first to be another “single item history” nonfiction food book (Potato, Salt, Beans, Caviar, Vanilla) at times brims with manic, even evangelical writing, but Koeppel has good reason: It turns out the modern banana crop is the lynchpin for more than a half dozen topical issues, everything from terrorism (including state-sponsored terrorism) to the locavore movement.

A veteran of Nobu and Ruby Foo’s, Chris Cheung was hired 5 months ago to replace Patricia Yeo at Monkey Bar, the red satin and black lacquer midtown institution known primarily for its, well, monkey theme. In an effort to reemphasize the food quotient of the restaurant, the 38 year-old chef maintains an inventory of global tastes and reassembles them using the template of traditional Chinese food: The curly fries, for example, that come with the burger are made with taro, and the burger itself is served on a bao bun made in-house. The result is not fusion, or an eclectic cook-by-numbers approach to food; Cheung seems to spend a lot of time thinking about ingredients, so the food at Monkey Bar isn’t really served with anything added for dramatic effect, and the plate presentations are relatively uncomplicated. Cheung calls his style “Evolutionary Chinese Cooking.”

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Wouldn’t be caught dead with a “latte” from Starbucks or a Coolata from Dunkin Donuts? Well, you haven’t reached the summit of coffee snobbery until you’ve had the self-proclaimed “ultimate” cup of coffee, expertly prepared by computers and pneumatic tubes at the Lower East Side’s Roasting Plant. Since opening last spring, business has been hopping at the sleek Orchard Street café; coffee aficionados are drawn back as much for the fresh coffee as for the experience of seeing it made.

Here's one of our favorite munchies, a healthy(ish) and interesting snack to add to your game plan for Sunday. It's also quick and easy enough to whip up during the commercials.

Pinch & S’MAC: Dejected fans of Pinch, the defunct Park Avenue South “pizza by the inch” joint, will not only be reunited with their favorite Pinch pizza, but they can even slather it with the incredible mac-n-cheese from East Village favorite S’MAC. The new cheese and carb cartel will bring the best of both menus together on the Upper West Side, forming a single, unified, belt-busting celebration of starch. If you’ve never tried S’MAC, you’re best off staying away; those who’ve tasted their mac-n-cheese speak of it with glazed-over eyes befitting a Shake Shack devotee. Opening “soft” on Monday, Pinch & S’MAC promises a casual environment with take out, delivery, catering and a separate room for private parties. 474 Columbus Ave., between 82nd and 83rd, (646) 438-9494.