Results tagged “employeesonly”

Some "hidden rich people" were recently profiled by the New York Post, and now we regret not considering a different career path. A limo driver, for instance, makes $250,000 a year/up to $20,000 a day driving around celebrities. A personal trainer pulls in $300 an hour and between $200,000 and $250,000 a year, and Soho dog walker Eddie Bimonte earns about $4,000 a month, $230 a day. "My job is to make sure they pee and poop," he explains. "I love it when they poop!"

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).

Plated delivers the origin story of a dish as told by a restaurant’s owners and chefs. Today’s featured plate is a sort of nose-to-tail meets Applebee’s kind of affair from the speakeasy-style Employees Only.

The Daily News talked to some bartenders and alkies about today's significance. 35-year-old Daria Dennhardt from the Bronx said she can't wait to squeeze into The Back Room for the "classic cocktails," adding, "Thank God it's still legal." Can't you just smell it on her breath when you read that? As a side note, have fun tomorrow with this website that calculates the calories in how much you imbibed, then shows you the (shocking) the equivalent in food. [Via Grub Street]

Some West Village restaurants can’t catch a break this week; first an old water main broke and flooded them out during Memorial Day weekend, now the city has been stone cold shutting them down. Eater has it that the Department of Health ordered Diablo Royale on West 10th Street to close yesterday for “unsanitary conditions” – a tipster says the inspectors faulted the restaurant’s flooded basement. Now the swank bar/restaurant Employees Only has gotten the hammer. The DOB’s sign on the door reads:

The Department of Buildings has determined that conditions in this premises are imminently perilous to life. This premises has been vacated and reentry is prohibited until such conditions have been eliminated to the satisfaction of the department.

Apparently, the city is thoroughly inspecting every establishment in and around the flood zone for sanitation issues and structural damage. A necessary step, but full closure is a bitter pill for restaurants trying to get back on their feet after the costly incident, which the DEP admits was caused by an old water main they had not yet gotten around to replacing.

Leaving Employees Only one night, a friend asked, if we can't afford these drinks -- and don't go in expecting anyone to buy them for us -- why do we go to these places? It's not rhetoric. It is really expensive. And we don't like the people in the bars. We're our favourite lushes and we already know where we live.

The waitress slid the martini in front of us with the grace of a blindfolded, 300 lb linebacker. Much of it didn’t survive the 10-foot journey from the bar to our table, and as we looked down at the half-empty martini, it was hard to remain optimistic about the cocktail we ordered. With hesitation we slowly brought the drink to our lips. Why did we select a martini as our cocktail of choice at the Steak and Lube in the Pittsburgh Airport? It may have been desperation that sets in when you have a two-hour flight delay on a Friday night. Unfortunately, the foreshadowing was a good indicator of what was about to come. The warm liquid coated our mouth with a sweetness that screamed too much vermouth. The vodka was harsh and the olives…well, mushy is the best we can describe them. If a martini is such a basic cocktail then why is it so difficult to get a great one? We can’t blame this solely on Pittsburgh, as the Steak and Lube is probably not a fair representation of the city’s potential. But even in New York, there is so much martini-deviation from place to place. This week New York Magazine did a piece with Jean-Luc Le Du, to find the best gin Martinis in the city. While their selections represented a great cross section of cocktail bars in the city – after all Employees Only, Angel's Share and Milk & Honey are some of New York’s staples, we did a little research of our own, to seek out the best vodka martinis – unfortunately the Steak and Lube didn’t make the cut.

September 12: Save New Orleans Cocktail Hour

The other night, Gothamist had the most decadent dream: in one night, we ate at Hearth, WD-50, Asiate, Public, Cru, Sumile and Per Se. We sipped wines from all over the world, and nibbled on delectable desserts from Spice Market. When we woke up the next morning, we realized that it wasn't a dream after all -- it was the StarChefs.com annual Rising Stars Revue, and Gothamist was there.