Slice's Adam Kuban takes his life into his hands by conducting a taste test of all the slices in his neighborhood, Park Slope. Although Kuban claims to have learned secrets of such intense pizza samplings "like only sampling slices, not entirely consuming them," he still manages to ingest over 15 slices in some way, shape, or form. In the mozzarella-hazed-aftermath, Kuban deems Tomato & Basil (226 Fourth Avenue, 718-596-8855) the "best in the Slope overall.........

It seems like every other weekend, Brooklyn is home to some kind of homestyle cooking competition, with a constant rotation of cupcake-offs, chili massacres, a big jerk-off, and probably some vegan tofu spread-a-thons somewhere. Prizes at these things are typically anything from homely trophies to a few cans of PBR, but the just-announced, upcoming inaugural Risotto Challenge is something special indeed: The prizes are going to be very nice. More on that below. On April......

Photo of pizza by Tien Mao 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......

Imagine that final beach scene in Planet of the Apes, but substitute every small patch of sand for a chain restaurant and that’ll give you an idea of where the NY restaurant scene might be heading – all blown up, with Charlton Heston eventually smashing his fists into a huge pile of thermal cardboard coffee cup sleeves instead of foamy surf. Just a few weeks after Heston’s 2nd birthday in 1926, the very first White......

Food bloggers from around the world are offering delicious prizes as part of Menu for Hope 4. Menu for Hope is an annual fundraising event hosted by Chez Pim. Last year, Menu for Hope raised an incredible $62,925 to help the UN World Food Programme feed the hungry. Want more details? Well, here’s the FAQ. From December 10-21, you can buy raffle tickets to bid on any on the food-related prizes being offered. Tickets cost......

Bourdain takes the food network to task yet again, this time for its Food Network Awards that aired last night. In his post on Ruhlman, he shows sympathy for the poor pimped out Food Network talent and the comments are well on their way to the century mark.We could hardly believe it when we read it over the weekend, but the FDA's “point man on E. coli” does not believe prewashed and bagged leafy greens......

Some love it to the point of being freakishly cultish. Others don't see what the big deal is. But everyone can agree on one thing: you can do plenty of productive things with the time you spend waiting on line to get a burger at Shake Shack. We checked in hamburger expert Adam Kuban of A Hamburger Today, who wrote last week, "Ai yah. It hasn't even opened yet, I'm already getting sick of......

In the crossroads of the "Can't Beat 'Em, So Join 'Em" chronicles and the "____ Diner, R.I.P." annals, there's is the Moondance Diner. The NY Sun reports the SoHo fixture will be razed for - you guessed it - luxury condos. But that's not all: Moondance owner Sunil "Sunny" Sharma was originally going to sell the property, but decided to develop it himself with Extell's Gary Barnett and others. Plans for a 66,743 square......

If you're serious about eating, you should check out the latest addition to the food blog/community scene, Serious Eats. The brainchild of Ed Levine, of Ed Levine Eats and author of New York Eats, the site bills itself as "the first website for serious eaters" with the goal in mind "to provide the best, most satisfying food- and drink-related experience on the internet." Ed is joined by other illustrious food bloggers, including Adam Kuban of......

The NY Times covers the turf war between Domino's new Brooklyn Style Pizza and actual Brooklyn style pizza. Reporter Kim Severson actually brought a Domino's pie into Totonno's, where owner Louise Ciminieri said, "Get that thing out of here." Heh! The article is great reading if you want to catch up on the hallmarks of chain-style pizza and what Totonno's uses ("unadulterated tomato sauce and thin slices of fresh mozzarella hand-pulled with just a......

- Thing you've got bocce balls? Then you should test your stuff this weekend at the 12th Annual Citywide Bocce Tournament. Over 200 bocce enthusiasts from around the New York City area will compete Saturday and Sunday to see who's got the best. The tournament is free and open to adults of all ages. The prelims are in four of the five boroughs (sorry Manhattanites) with the finals to be played Sunday in Pelham......

-- Queens Democratic bigwig Thomas Manton died over the weekend; Bloomberg called him a ""classy guy". -- Our Town has a good backgrounder piece about Gothamist, complete with quotes from Craig Newmark and Adam Kuban. -- South Bronx residents miss their vacant lots; but it may take awhile to fill all 1300 of them. -- Speaking of total destruction, Gowanus Lounge went up to Astoria and took some pix. -- Did you know Fabio......

Last night was the Gothamist-A Hamburger Today QBQ BBQ at Water Taxi Beach that, despite the weather, was a great success. There was a great turnout with people sampling four different burgers and some also eating an elk burger. In fact, Gothamist is still recovering from our meat induced coma! The first interpretive burger on the menu was the Motz Burger, followed by the Guber Burger, the Green Chile Cheeseburger and finally the Butter......

- A judge says that noncitizens can be detained indefinitely; clearly, there will be an appeal - A naked man running from the police crashed into a livery cab; the driver died from the accident - Jacob the Jeweler has been indicted for laundering $270 million! That's a lotta bling! - A sophomore with HIV leaves her Bronx high school (Belmont Prep), after students started taunting her; she will attend Travor Day in Manhattan,......

Whoa, tonight's wild thunderstorm has hit Staten Island in a serious way: There's an island-wide power outage right now, not to mention "starting fires, flooding streets, causing car crashes downing tree branches," according to SILive. Also, we're hearing that a police officer was struck by lightning. Be careful out there! There will be thunderstorms tomorrow as well. Photograph of lightning in the sky from barek176 on Flickr Here's another good shot of a strike--......

Jay Smooth caught this quintessentially cheesy moment at Joe's on Bleecker Street on Sunday. Improbably, Adam Kuban from SliceNY did not get an invitation to the event. Related: White Castle wedding, McDonalds wedding.......

The NY Times reports that six waiters at Jing Fong, the dim sum palace in Chinatown, have sued the restaurant over their tips, claiming that the money is actually going towards paying the dim sum cart ladies. Plus, the 35% service charge that Jing Fong charges for parties over 30 has also not made it back to the wait staff. Tips make up the bulk of servers' wages (even Times food critic Frank Bruni seemed......

- The feds show their incompetence with the Moussaoui trial and, boy, is that judge ANGRY - Interesting background on food vendors to NYC public schools in the Village Voice (no wonder they love junk food- lunch food really sucks) - The two cops shot in Crown Heights this morning were saved by their bulletproof vests - Queens fire is being investigated... we remember another Queens fire that also hit a pizzeria - eefers......

- There have been 1,407 shootings in the city so far - WNBC has 50 ways to save on your heating bill - Man admits that fighting over a girl led to him pushing his friend off the subway platform and into the oncoming 7 train - Catch Adam Kuban of Slice on Sirius or online, talking about 'za, of course - Goldman Sachs breaks ground on their new office space across from Ground Zero......

Yesterday, LIFE Magazine held a "Battle of the Boroughs" pizza contest to determine the best pizza in New York. Competing for the trophy were DeMarco's in Manhattan, Joe & Pat's in Staten Island, L&B Spumoni Gardens in Brooklyn, Louie & Ernie's in The Bronx, and Singas Famous in Queens. Because it involved pizza, Adam Kuban from Slice was there, not only to cover it, but as one of the judges. Adam writes that the......

Gothamist Food editor Laren Spirer was one of the judges last night at the Vendys-- but she seems to have overdosed on street meat, and hasn't yet reported in! If you see her wandering around downtown, dazed and smelling like sausage, please let us know so we can come pick her up. Until then, we'll just have to rely on the mainstream media for accounts of the fierocious vender battle that ended with Rolf Babiel......

In August, we told you about the Vendys, the first annual streetfood awards sponsored by Streetvendor.org. The awards are a wonderful idea-- they celebrate the hard working people that produce some our city's most delicious food, and help dispel those old notions that everything you buy on the street is poisonous, tastes bad, or both. From the looks of it, the four finalists are tightly matched: Thiru “Dosa Man” Kumar -- "the fresh made......

- New York is the only city in the country (with a population of 1 million plus) to record an increase in the poverty rate... expect Mayor Bloomberg to refute the Census' figures somehow, as that totally screws with his re-election platform - The NYPD flunks 42 police cadets from the Police Academy, leaving 42 people who will not have to endure Steven Guttenberg and Michael Winslow jokes anymore - The NY Press looks at......

Gothamist is happy for evergreen NYC topics that everyone can revist over and over again: What the MTA can do better, what the Mayor can do better, when is a NY team going to win a championship, and what is a great slice of pizza. Newsday chats with the cutting edge of pizza conoisseurship. Experts include Ed Levine (whose book, Pizza: A Slice of Heaven, is just out), Long Island pizza chef Geof Grayson, Audrey......

Wow, it seems like Christo and Jeanne-Claude are like the Sean Penn and Madonna of the art world - at least for a few moments - as Newsday reports that the most famous public-art touting-and-building couple, plus their photographer Wolfgang Volz, tussled with a Newsday reporter and photographer:Jeanne-Claude, whose saffron hair has evoked comparisons to the billowing bright sheets in Central Park, seemed to see red yesterday when a Newsday photographer tried to take......

Adam Kuban, Pizza Enthusiast...

The Post happily gets on the pizza bandwagon - the online-pizza-guide-for-Republican- National-Conventioneers bandwagon that is, by mentioning GOPizza today. GOPizza, which was launched last week from the Slice empire, is called a way "to help the uninitiated avoid major embarrassment," because if there's one thing the Post knows about, it's major embarrassment. Read Gothamist's exclusive interview with GOPizza creator Adam Kuban, which includes his thoughts on what will happen to GOPizza after the convention (yes,......

With less than a month until the Republican National Convention at Madison Square Garden, the editors of Slice (Gothamist's favorite pizza site) have released GOPizza.net for the thousands of people in town for the convention. No news on whether there will be an Counter Convention pizza site from Slice. Now on the site, those hailing from the nether-regions of the country can learn how to order pizza in New York - it's a slice,......