Results tagged “cheap”

Records obtained by the NY Post confirm that many NYC nightclubs, bars, and restaurants have been doing what many of us long suspected: refilling top-shelf liquor bottles with cheaper alcohol and watering down drinks. It's unclear exactly which establishments have been committing the crime against sobriety, but Marquee paid a $100,000 settlement to the SLA in October; violations included allowing a "disorderly" climate that led to fights, unregistered security guards and "contaminated" bottles. SLA spokesman Michael Smith says, "We may find contaminated liquor or contaminated products, which may include refilling of liquor bottles with inferior liquor or fruit flies contaminating the bottle." According to Marquee, fruit flies were the problem, not well liquor in top-shelf bottles. Meanwhile, BLVD/Crash Mansion paid a total of $16,500 in fines to the SLA last year, but the club's owner says, "We paid $8,000 for a fruit fly" in a bottle of Jack Daniels. And in April, an anonymous bartender griped to the Feedbag about the DOH: "The obsession with fruit flies is a bit absurd. In the warm weather months they’re here and places do everything they can, but fruit flies will always be around."

Here's the latest installment in our ongoing quest to find a good, cheap meal that won't kill us or our budget.

Here's the latest installment in our ongoing quest to find a good, cheap meal that won't kill us or our budget.

This week the Times's Frank Bruni piles on Shang, a restaurant in the Thompson LES Hotel helmed by the acclaimed, formerly Toronto-based chef Susur Lee, whose first mistake is making Bruni exercise: "The staircase was the first befuddlement and miscalculation I encountered — and a clue that the evening and restaurant might not be all I’d hope for. It’s a long, drab, foreboding rise of steps from the sidewalk to the host station, an entrance less inviting than aerobic. I’ve gone on runs that didn’t leave me as winded." As for the menu, some dishes are "intensely pleasurable," but overall it's "inconsistent and uneventful. The magic that Mr. Lee reputedly made in Toronto hasn’t followed him here."

Here's the latest installment in our ongoing quest to find a decent cheap meal that won't kill us or our budget.

Here's the latest installment in our quest to find a decent cheap meal that won't kill us or our budget.

In the spirit of these desperate times, let's try to see how little we can spend and still get a decent, filling meal. Aussie eatery Tuck Shop takes pride in being “drinking man’s food at its best,” but we posit they could also claim sober man’s food at its best, too. And with these prices, you can use your leftover money on their homemade ginger beer ($2) to see if it works for the blotto man as well.

The Fridays aren't going to get less Black any time soon, and only bottles of red and bottles of white can lighten them up...right? The NY Post reports that, like Two-Buck Chuck Shaw before them, some magical drunken fairies called The Wine Group have saturated New York City with $3.99 bottles of merlot, cabernet sauvignon and chardonnay. And you better believe that Manhattanites are hittin' that juice hard; "At Gotham Wines on 94th Street and Broadway, the cabernet sauvignon has become the store's best-selling California wine." Ah, cheap wine, the cause of and the solution to all of life's problems (to paraphrase the immortal Homer J.).

The CEO of Swich, John Gargiulo, has hipped us to a serious lunch special tomorrow at his sleek and tasty pressed sandwich shop on Eighth Avenue between 15th & 16th. All their "Swiches" and "Deconstructeds" will be sold for $.67 cents to commemorate the anniversary of the stock market crash of 1929. Gargiulo writes: "It's a crappy time for everyone out there and we thought we'd cheer NYC up! I personally would take a train for a .67 cent sandwich and I imagine many Gothamist readers would too (wait, I am a Gothamist reader). We're doing it from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. tomorrow (Wednesday) and it is sure to be a madhouse (it is between 12-1 already!)" So to beat the madhouse you'll probably want to start lining up tonight—an inconsequential sacrifice for delicious, steeply discounted panini.

On Monday Mayor Bloomberg announced a lawsuit against the Poospatuck Indian reservation on Long Island, in an attempt to stop the untaxed sale of 11.3 million cartons of cigarettes on the reservation per year. Today the Times has a great, long article about how the smokes travel from the wholesaler through the reservation and to the streets of New York, where "$5 Men" like "Paco" stand on corners and whisper, "Newports. Loosies. Shorts. Longs." Reporters at the reservation describe a booming business, where cigarette sales are made on a bustling main street and even out of residential trailers. One reporter saw a sign for Justin’s Smokes "on a tree outside a residential trailer. An occupant of the trailer ordered the reporter off the property, telling her it was not a cigarette shop. 'That’s just a sign on a tree,' the woman yelled."

More details have emerged in that “magic MetroCard machine” story the Post broke yesterday. Turns out it that it wasn’t a MetroCard machine, but a LIRR ticket machine (which also dispenses MetroCards). And make that machines; the Times reports that from 2004 until last May, countless people have unwittingly used the machines to get free tickets and MetroCards, exploiting a software glitch that let riders with insufficient funds on their debit card or credit card obtain the tickets for free.

A trio of grifters allegedly bilked the MTA out of $800,000 over the past three years by exploiting a software glitch in a single MetroCard machine in Penn Station. According to the Post, police have arrested a Roosevelt, Long Island resident named Cary Grant (ha), his wife Lisa Foster Jordan, and their friend Christopher Clemente, a former student at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School whose scholastic career ended in 1990 when he was convicted for heroin and weapons possession.

This week’s New York Magazine is all about finding the cheapest eats in the city, but the most obvious source of cheap (illegal) food may be clumsily flying right before our eyes. “Eating pigeons is as American as eating pumpkin pie,” says Wired’s Alexis Madrigal, who's made a persuasive argument for pigeon as the next logical step in the locavore trend. He argues that all pigeons need “is a re-branding. Just as the spurned Patagonian toothfish became the majestic Chilean sea bass… pigeons can merely reclaim their previous sufficiently arugula-sounding name: squab.” Poach at your own risk!

Biryani is classified as any number of spiced South Asian rice dishes, heavily spiced, and layered with meat—often chicken, lamb, or beef. The biryani at Sangam, a new hole in the wall spot on Bleecker Street just east of 6th Avenue, receives what owner Ishrat Ansari calls “an authentic royal haute cuisine preparation.” The description is definitely merited when it comes to his wife Rafat’s homegrown recipe, which is served all vegetable, with chicken, and—on special nights—with lamb. Her biryani is intricately flavored with freshly ground herbs and spices, bursting with heat and the taste of spices that have long simmered and melted into one another.

Two weeks ago, it was reported Con Ed would offer victims of the 2006 blackout--which affected businesses and homeowners in Astoria, Long Island City, Sunnyside, and Woodside, Queens for many sweltering summer days--$100 each. Now it's confirmed Con Ed will be giving the money--$100 to residents, $350 to some businesses--in the form of a "credit on their monthly bill, which will also include a brief apology from the company." That makes everything all better!

Typical: Con Ed has decided to offer victims of the 2006 blackout a measly $100 each. To businesses, such as restaurants and markets, that lost thousands of dollars of merchandise, it's an insult. Mezzo Mezzo restaurant owner Charlie Kourakos told the Daily News, "We lost, I can say, around $50,000. It's ridiculous for them to even offer us a hundred bucks."

Back in 1933 Popular Science reported on New York engineer Walter H. Judson's new railway which would have trains running from San Francisco to New York in 18 hours, and Chicago to New York in 5.5 hours. Now it's the buses battling it out to have the quickest times and cheapest fares to and from New York.