Food: December 2009 Archives

    

Click on the photos for this week's new arrivals, including Numero 28's new location, M Noodle Shop, the Brooklyn Wine Exchange and the Wright Restaurant at the Guggenheim Museum.

Mayor Bloomberg might not be a fan of grace periods, but he is an avid supporter of running to re-fill your Muni-Meter. The Mayor, along with Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, put out a request today for "100 professional gut-busters willing to help New Yorkers get fit for free."

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has vowed to dedicate the next four years to food. She has a dream that the city can create jobs, improve food quality, support local farmers, and improve the environment by bringing NYC's "food infrastructure" into the 21st century. At a press conference to announce the city’s FRESH supermarket initiative, Quinn unveiled her big FoodWorks New York plan. Over the next six months, the Council will work with experts from a wide spectrum of fields to examine every step in NYC’s food cycle: production, processing, transport, retail, consumption, and post-consumption. During her remarks, Quinn said:

Smaller-sized disposable cans of carbonated corn syrup water will arrive in NYC next week!!! The 7.5 oz Coca-Cola Mini, which has 50 fewer calories than your fat grandpa's boring old 140-calorie 12 ounce can, was celebrated yesterday by children, parents, and The Radio City Rockettes, who taught families a 90-second, "mini" dance routine on the legendary Radio City Music Hall stage. According to a corporate press release pasted on Popsop, the event was emceed by "award-winning journalist" Laurin Sydney, who said, "[Dancing] is something families can do together or people can do alone, and it not only burns calories but it generates joy." Guess what else generates joy!

Before she left West Village restaurant Centro Vinoteca to embrace her new life as a Food Network star, Anne Burrell spent her days toiling in the kitchen, making killer meatball sandwiches, pasta, and offensive insults about the female front-of-house staff, a lawsuit alleges. The suit, filed in March, accuses Burrell of repeatedly harassing employees with offensive slurs, and claims that after they complained to the restaurant's owners, they were terminated. A bartender says Burrell called her a "ho" and told her she had "saggy boobs," while others were constantly called whores by Burrell, who once allegedly told a waitress, "You must be tired today from f--king all night."

       

Click on the images for details on this week's new restaurants and bars, which include Baba, Ofrenda, Vintry Wine & Whiskey, and The Norry at Kampuchea—plus news on this weekend's free Ketel One Canteen, Marfa's terrific new chef, and a new menu at Aretsky’s Patroon.

This week Sam Sifton at the Times tosses one measly star to SD26, the big glitzy Flatiron district reboot of San Domenico, which used to operate on Central Park South. Given the restaurant's lofty ambitions, one star is certainly a disappointment for gregarious owner Tony May, who used to run what many agreed to be "Manhattan’s best classically Italian restaurant. Some elements of that excellence remain in the cooking at SD26 and in the wine list put together by the affable Jason Ferris, the restaurant’s wine director. Others have been buried beneath attempts to modernize the kind of dining that Mr. May says has gone out of fashion: the elegant Italian cuisine he helped bring to New York.

Earlier this year Queens became the latest borough to join the Edible magazine family, a national network of about 60 magazines that cover local food trends and everything artisanal. The second issue of the Queens quarterly drops later this month, and the Daily News marks the occasion by interviewing publisher Leah McLaughlin, who moved to Long Island City three years ago. "We're not just an offshoot of Manhattan," McLaughlin insists. "We're not second fiddle to Brooklyn. Our community is incredibly vibrant and incredibly vital to the success of the region." Okay, fine, nobody's picking on Queens—but when will Staten Island and the Bronx get the Edible treatment?