Results tagged “chefs”

    

Umi Nom, the Brooklyn outpost of the Lower East Side's popular Kuma Inn (one of Tyra Banks' favorite spots, incidentally), opens tonight on DeKalb Avenue, along the border of Clinton Hill and Bedford-Stuyvesant. The pile of bricks, broken concrete and odd bits of old electrical conduit have now become an open kitchen. Chef/owner King Phojanakong and co-chef Soulayphet “Phet” Schwader have gotten rid of the washing machines in the former laundromat, but managed to salvage many of old building's interior details, including its exposed brick and an old skylight that was uncovered during the renovations.

The nutritional counselor Jared Koch has a few ideas about what makes for a good, nutritious restaurant meal, but the last thing he wants to do is get preachy about it. He wants you to enjoy your food. Together with food writer Alex Van Buren, he’s written a guidebook called Clean Plates NYC, which eschews numerical grading systems, star systems, and riffs on restaurant design in order to just focus on supper. Rather than cast a myopic eye toward the antioxidizing properties of plums, or romancing the red cabbage, Clean Plates aims to identify some of the more nutritious, decent meals to be had in the city for the vegan, locavore, and meat-eater alike. We spoke with Clean Plates NYC founder Jared Koch yesterday; the book is available in stores now.

       

The word "marea"— which happens to be the name of the new restaurant just opened by business partners Chris Cannon and chef Michael White, in the fabled, former San Domenico space—means tide. But White and Cannon’s spot has become the object of such intense speculation in the months leading up to its opening to the point that Crucible might have been a more fitting name. How come? Because of its prime Central Park South location, for starters: the restaurant’s rent is somewhere in the $750,000 per year ballpark. On top of that there was the massive renovation undertaken by Cannon and White. "How do you define 'brazen' in the dining world?" the Wall Street Journal asked earlier this month. “By opening an opulent, multimillion-dollar Italian eatery on Central Park South as many other restaurants struggle to fill seats.”

The chef Daniel Boulud unveiled his newest space, called DBGB Kitchen and Bar, to the media this past weekend. Located on the Bowery, the 194-seat “sausage and beer” restaurant (including a 14-seat private dining room and 40 more in the more casual bar area) has a projected opening date of the first week in June and is still very much under construction: On Saturday, chairs were wrapped up in paper and buckets of Spackle were stacked behind the bar. The chef nonetheless took the unusual move of laying his plywood bare and sharing some bites from the restaurant’s opening menu.

An article in the Times today confirms that the most exciting thing to happen to food—like, ever—are the numerous cook-offs and takedowns oozing these days from the creative wellspring of Brooklyn. These events usually focus on a single ingredient or theme such as bacon, casserole, guacamole, quiche, risotto, curry, hot dogs, pork, chili, apple pie, tofu, cupcakes, ramen, or no-knead bread, for example, and hearken back to State Fair Blue Ribbon contests, where winning the peach pie contest meant you were allowed to keep the family farm. Now, as it was then, the events are a recession/depression thing, often minus some of the food-craft. Welcome to the liberal arts dustbowl.

Home bartenders have been busy riding out the recession with crafty survival tactics like tapping the full flavor potential of plastic jug vodka with essence of Skittles, for example, and it seems fitting that a new wave of cocktail books is now being unleashed on the public. The good news is that Food & Wine has just published Cocktails ’09, a soft-cover easy read that combines bar listings (NY is represented by spots like Apothéke, Employees Only, and newcomer Dutch Kills) with lots of make-at-home recipes including some compiled by the talented Jim Meehan of PDT. The bad news, as noted by the Wall Street Journal, is that there aren’t a lot of vodka-based drinks in the volume (down 50 some recipes from the ’05 edition).

Looks like The City of New York has stepped in to examine how Bed Stuy-based Kings County Barbecue Truck owner Chris McGee makes ends meet from serving burnt ends. A few weeks back, the pitmaster’s Twitter went dark, and one week ago the truck’s Facebook page was updated with the following wall post: "Kings County BBQ is sorry about the absence. The "man" is demanding the truck do its part to balance the city budget! Have to clear up some administrative nuisance before we are smoking again. Hopefully soon, but not likely real soon. Keep posted." McGee—who is originally from KCMO but also cooked at Jean-Georges and Blue Smoke—is known for his apple-brined wings, pulled pork, and duly serving all BBQ with “pickles and white bread for mopping up the sauce.” Reached earlier today, McGee declined to comment; in the meantime, we'll speculate that any smoked brisket loving lawyers might eventually benefit by befriending the pitmaster on Facebook.

Regarding the Momofuku Milk Bar, around the corner from the Ssam Bar, there are two things you should keep in mind: one is that the soft serve samples are pretty sizable (and free); the other is that pastry chef Christina Tosi’s Crack Pie™, Cereal Milk™, and Compost Cookies™ are now all trademarked by in process with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. File under inevitable. This effectively dashes the hopes of several thousand would-be entrepreneurs seeking to market the leftover dregs of their morning breakfast bowls and parlay Alpha-Bit gastronomy into a suprême haute cuisine multi-million dollar empire, worldwide. If you think this is all a joke, son, consider that this should also effectively stop the deranged, Dr. Frankenstein-esque, Compost Cookies™ copycat experiments of the Oatmeal Cookie Blog (banner: “Developing unique oatmeal cookie recipes and answering the ultimate question: Are they bring-in-able?”). Or perhaps not. In any event, the first Momofuku cookbook, written by David Chang and NYT writer Peter Meehan, will be published in October, and again, the free samples at the Milk Bar are generous. Donut-inspired flavors this week. UPDATE: Murray Hillster, in the comments section, has pointed out the Milk Bar offerings listed above are all in process, and Momofuku Ssam Bar is Mr. Chang's only (currently) registered trademark.

Plated delivers the origin story of a dish as told by a restaurant’s chefs and/or owners. Today’s plate is a decidedly non-vegetarian Rabbit, Foie Gras, and Bacon Terrine off the Chef’s Tasting Menu at Le Cirque. The menu honors the famed restaurant’s 1974 grand opening (perhaps you’ve seen the recent documentary); Craig Hopson joined Le Cirque as executive chef last November. This dish is one of six that Hopson cooked for the Maccioni family, and one that ultimately got him the job.

With business partner Chris Cannon, chef Michael White of Convivio and Alto is opening Marea, a high-end seafood restaurant on Central Park South in the old San Domenico space, sometime next month. The restaurant has already enjoyed a spectacular avalanche of pre-opening hype: Eater ran photos of a fiberglass ladder and spackle buckets inside the raw, under-construction space, others followed suit, The Feedbag fumed at Metromix because of their exclusive food porny preview, then The Feedbag published Marea’s architectural renderings.

The tiny, well-regarded French West African restaurant Korhogo 126 in Carroll Gardens apparently closed its doors for good a couple of weeks ago. Calls to the restaurant are answered with a full mailbox message, and a yellow sign tacked to the front door reads “thank you for all your support,” reports The Word on Columbia Street. You may recall that Korhogo 126 was once called Bouillabaisse 126 back in the day when chef/owner Neil Ganic was on board; Ganic left the business in 2007 (allegedly after “screaming bizarre obscenities in the middle of the sidewalk, muttering to himself incoherently”) then opened La Bouillabaisse in Red Hook and Annabelle’s last year. Both of those establishments have apparenty closed. In the meantime, Korhogo 126’s Abdhul Traore, formerly of Les Enfants Terribles, has presumably moved on to a new restaurant.

Swine flu may be preventing Hugh Jackman from promoting X-Men Origins: Wolverine in Mexico City, but the virus won’t stop Sunday’s Pork Off at the Loki Lounge in Brooklyn from happening. Although Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has released a statement stating “you cannot get H1N1 flu from eating pork or pork products,” the pork industry is nonetheless taking a beating. On the restaurant front, Grub Street reports that Zarela Martinez of the Mexican restaurant Zarela has experienced a steep drop in business, and elsewhere, pork belly stock is down.

The Post set their fine-print gumshoes loose on the city’s restaurant menus and uncovered numerous crimes against the dining public, like restaurants charging for normally free items like bread, butter, and tap water. Times dining critic Frank Bruni thinks that charging extra for nice bread and butter is perfectly acceptable, but for the most part, everyone’s like holy crap, this is totally outrageous. Apparently there’s “A 20 percent mandatory tip on all checks at the Little Italy tourist spot Grotta Azzurra,” and bobo in Greenwich Village charges $1 per-person for filtered tap water.

Looks like Stumptown Coffee is not the only fresh off the bus, piece of straw-chewing newcomer to the city’s artisanal food scene: as of yesterday, pints of the acclaimed Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream are available at Foragers Market in DUMBO. Introductory flavors include Dark Cocoa Gelato, Salty Caramel, Pistachio (with Ohio honey), Bourbon Buttered Pecan, and Black Currant Yogurt. Owner Jeni Britton Bauer was the subject of a Food & Wine article last year that named her of the country’s best ice cream producers; following the seasons, pints contain fresh fruit and are made in small batches. Also, Jeni’s ice creams do not contain eggs—Britton Bauer adheres to the belief that “I love the taste of cream so much that I hate to cover it up with anything.” Pints are a steep $10 each at DUMBO's Forager’s Market; Columbus-based blog Restaurant Widow assures that each (roughly 20-cent) spoonful is “worth every bite.” Board up your windows and shove towels under your door now so the ice cream cannot get in.

The acclaimed and iconoclastic 32-year-old chef Paul Liebrandt is today the subject of a New York Times profile. The news: after years of working in restaurants all around the world, it seems as though the Zimbabwe-born, French and English-trained chef at Corton now considers New York City home. In its way, the article all but assures the dining public that because Liebrandt ♥ NY, his days of restless culinary experimentation are over (we certainly hope not). The article even ineluctably evokes the madcap memory of Papillon, a short-lived radical dining experience where Liebrandt once played Pinky and the Brain with pastry chef Will Goldfarb. That restaurant was all about courses like the one where guests were fuzzy handcuffed to their chairs while the dinner plates got all animated and Battlebots-like and fought each other to the death with whirring chainsaw forks. You were supposed to eat the victor.

The new issue of all things meat, all the time magazine Meatpaper has just been published, and it’s called The Pig Issue. Features include a story on an obscure medical treatment for the ailment called furuncular myiasis that uses rendered bacon fat. The treatment is named— what else— Bacon Therapy. This newest Meatpaper is sort of like Prevention magazine, but with pig products instead of cardio tips. There’s also a profile on Tennessee ham maker Allan Benton, whose hams are considered the best by chefs like David Chang and the folks at PDT, who use his products to make a drink called the “Benton’s Old-Fashioned.” Craft chef Damon Wise is also a big fan of Benton’s bacon— visit his damonfrugalfridayeverydayexcepttuesdaywebsite.com to see what the Colicchio protégée is doing with the stuff this week. The new pork-themed Meatpaper also features a spread on pork-themed tattoos, including a photo from Brooklyn-based photographer Michael Harlan Turkell. For vegetarians there’s a comparison piece on vegan bacon. Issue #7 of Meatpaper is available at St. Marks Bookshop, Barnes & Noble locations, Project No. 8, and at The Brooklyn Kitchen.

    

Brooklyn Fare, a new non-chain Downtown Brooklyn grocery store, will open tomorrow. The man behind the refrigerated counter is Cesar Ramirez, a Bouley/Bar Blanc vet who’ll create and maintain Brooklyn Fare’s line of hot and cold prepared foods. Next month, Brooklyn Fare will also introduce a small restaurant inside the store’s standalone commissary kitchen, located a few doors down on Schermerhorn Street. Its single dining table is actually one seamless, stainless steel table in the center of the kitchen. Here, Ramirez says, he will serve five-course meals for a “super reasonable price.”

   

Click on the images for details on the other dishes, which are each $10 or less.

The case for locally produced and consumed food will once again be discussed next Tuesday at a Museum of the City of New York forum that includes Blue Hill chef/owner Dan Barber and Greenmarket director Michael Hurwitz. Another speaker is Ian Marvy of Red Hook’s Added Value, whose farm will be just one of many volunteer sites comprising tomorrow's massive Earth Day initiative called the Green Apple Festival. The forum, an affordable $12, will be moderated by Gabrielle Langholtz, editor-in-chief of Edible Manhattan and Edible Brooklyn (the new Brooklyn issue features a behind the scenes look at Williamsburg biscuit lair Egg, and a tour of Brooklyn’s many tortillerias). Looking ahead, one more tidbit of locavore news— New Amsterdam Market announced today that June 28 will be the date of the first Monthly Market for 2009; details, including a location, are forthcoming.

Red Hook, the Brooklyn neighborhood on the brink of perpetual change, is about to see some lobsters move into the neighborhood. Pardon Me For Asking has the scoop on the soon-to-open Red Hook Lobster Pound, a new business at 284 Van Brunt Street that will deal in retail sales of live Maine lobster at around $10-11 a pound.

Pork and bacon, of all things, are decidedly the new engines of charity events: First off, Tom Mylan and Brooklyn Kitchen have decided to auction off 10 upcoming seats at Mylan’s immensely popular pig butchering class to benefit Just Food and the Greenpoint Interfaith Food Team, according to Serious Eats. Secondly, the “Park Slope Pork Off” next month at Loki Lounge will garner the winner $100 and bragging rights; moreover, all proceeds benefit survivors of toxic waste in the Philippines. “Fakin’ bacon,” the organizers advise, is also acceptable, however “you best fool us but good.” We hear that Jonathan Proville, winner of last month’s epic Bacon Takedown, is angling for a second victory at next month’s event. More information on the “Pork Off” here. On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, the New York Times has an excellent piece this week on vegan advocate and author Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, and across the pond, BBC correspondent Richard da Costa has spent four days eating, cavorting, and sleeping 24/7 in a sty with pigs. The resulting documentary called My Life as an Animal plays tonight; more information here.

As if to prove a point that LES vegan bakery Babycakes is both a little bit rock and roll and a little bit frosting, chef/owner Erin McKenna and team Babycakes have released a high-def trailer for their upcoming cookbook, wherein the shop becomes a de facto, Joan Jettified site of a girl power and gluten-free frolic. Badass. The four-year-old spot is not only kosher vegan, but most of its recipes substitute agave for refined sugar and are (of course) gluten-free. Coconut oil is used in placed of butter, and Jason Schwartzman apparently approves, as do others. Babycakes the book is blurbed by Natalie Portman and Zooey Deschanel; its foreword was written by none other than Tom Colicchio. Babycakes also supplied the starch-modified blueberry pie eaten by Norah Jones in Wong Kar Wai’s little-seen My Blueberry Nights (recipe here). The Telegraph has an interview and more recipes from McKenna, and includes this nugget about the shop’s sugar-dairy-frosting: “Some people just come in for a $1.50 frosting shot that they can knock back like a tequila, or a 12oz take-out tub to devour at home.” Babycakes will be published May 5; Babycakes' Twitter, for fresh-baked updates, here.

None other than New York’s original three-term mayor Fiorello LaGuardia is poised to make a comeback (of sorts), and in turn influence the way New York eats. Last week, contents of the former Caffé on the Green—one-time Queens home of “the Little Flower” mayor—were auctioned off in order to make room for a new Italian restaurant operated by vets of restaurants Aureole and Tribeca Grill. Caffé on the Green’s owners were evicted by the city January 1; the new restaurant will be called Valentino’s on the Green (after another famous tenant) and will serve “classic Italian cuisine elevated to meet today’s tastes.” Elsewhere, the LaGuardia-founded La Marqueta in East Harlem, a longtime destination for fresh food, is once again angling for redesign and a reopening. Founded in 1932 (La Marqueta’s Brooklyn sister opened in 1941), the five-parcel Harlem spot spans two buildings and 50,000 sq. feet of land from 111th Street to 116th Street. NYC EDC is currently looking for food-related ideas for La Marqueta; its Brooklyn counterpart, also founded by LaGuardia, was given a reprieve in January.

Crosby Connection, the longtime sandwich haven operated by an ex-cop from Jersey named Joey Cramarossa, has found a yet another new retail space: the Bleecker Street Theater will now sell its famous $6 subs. Cramarossa famously instituted a Wimpy-esque, pay-you-Tuesday-for-a-sandwich-today policy at Crosby Connection and even helped the homeless; nonetheless Crosby Connection has been a lonely NoHo wanderer in the past year. After an untimely eviction from a 45-square-foot space last year, Crosby Connection moved to Parisi Bakery on Elizabeth Street, where it began selling pizza in addition to its sandwiches. Then, late last year the shop "divorced" from Parisi and became “homeless” itself. Eater reports today that Crosby Connection is now operating M-F out of Bleecker Street Theater, and instead of pizzas, will offer coffee drinks “once owner Joey Cramarossa figures out how to work the machine.” Attention all Peace Corps baristas: head over to 45 Bleecker and give the guy a hand.

After a few hiccups, Anselmo’s opened in Red Hook on Friday afternoon. Keeping it simple, the pizza place will serve only pies and calzones baked in its brick oven.

Some kind of food and beverage renaissance is once again happening in Prospect Heights: for starters, Brownstoner reported last week that a new bar is slated to open in the neighborhood sometime this summer. The 1500-square-foot space will be called Flying Monkey and is located at 706 Washington Avenue. The word from the Brooklynian boards is that the same people behind Bushwick’s whiskey-friendly Kings County are behind Flying Monkey.

Brooklyn Fare, a new, independent grocery store located in downtown Brooklyn, will open April 22nd at 200 Schermerhorn Street. Owner Moe Issa, a borough native, is working with chef Cesar Ramirez to outfit the 6,000-square-foot space with a deluge of pret-a-manger goods to be available alongside the regular groceries: sandwiches, meatballs, soups, terrines, and so on. The store will sell such a vast amount of cheese and beer it will likely blow your mind. Ramirez has snagged a real sushi chef to make sushi throughout the day (as in, not just some dude to oversee each morning's epic batch of outsourced California rolls that are left to hang out all day in a refrigerated display). The idea here seems to be real food, not boutique food.

Will this site be home to the next wave of cheap outer borough eats? All will be answered later this month when a new flea market debuts in the 25,000 square foot space behind the Al-Noor School on 20th Street in Brooklyn.

The IACP Awards, or more informally—the “cookbook awards”—were given out somewhere in Denver over the weekend. A few Gothamist interviewees from the past year were honored: The big Chanterelle book, by David Waltuck, Andrew Friedman, and photography by Maria Robledo, won for Food Photography & Styling. Bottomfeeder, a first person chronicle of the sustainable seafood movement by essayist Taras Grescoe, won the Literary Food Writing award, and Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, by Jennifer McLagan won in the Single Subject category. Eat Me Daily’s Helen Rosner offers some smart criticism of the judges’ choices and how they'll inform the future of cookbooks; here’s a decent-sized preview of the award-winning Chanterelle. Meanwhile, we’d be remiss if we failed to mention another Gothamist interviewee’s ascendancy to some kind of specially selected, niche list: Food Party host Thu Tran has just been named one of Paper magazine’s Beautiful People 2009.

    

It’s beginning to look a lot like Umi Nom: moving along, right on schedule, is the Pratt-area Brooklyn outpost of the popular LES restaurant Kuma Inn, at 433 DeKalb Avenue. Chef/owner King Phojanakong gave us another tour of the space last week; the rubble has gone and the drywall is up. Phojanakong also recently received some special sake pouring equipment to install at what will become a wood paneled bar where twenty sakes by the glass will be available. The chef is in process of refining the new restaurant’s menu, which will follow Kuma Inn’s small-plate format, including the ever popular Chinese sausage and sticky rice dish.