Results tagged “gourmet”

On Monday, Condé Nast trimmed the fat by folding four of their magazines: Modern Bride, Elegant Bride, Cookie, and Gourmet. Jon Stewart promptly followed that news with a pragmatic solution, consolidating those four titles into Jon Stewart's Pregnant Gourmet Bride. Surely there's an audience who would eat that up! Stewart himself says, "what's going to happen to those modern and/or elegant brides who enjoy high-end cuisine and who have or are having children?"

The magazine massacre rolls on at publishing empire Condé Nast, with the company reportedly cutting three more magazines: Gourmet, Cookie and Modern Bride. While NY1's Pat Kiernan is sad about Cookie crumbling, the gourmands out there will not be happy with the news of the nearly 70-year-old Gourmet folding, a mag the Times declares reached "biblical status in the food world."

The upscale gourmet grocery Balducci's is closing its two NYC locations. The Post reports that Lincoln Center-area West 66th location and the 17,000-square-foot store on Eighth Avenue at 14th Street will shutter at the end of April. Back in 2003, the longtime Balducci's location on 6th Avenue at 8th Street closed, after the store was sold to a larger supermarket chain, Sutton Place, after some Balducci family in-fighting. But now Sutton Place is closing other Balducci's locations—one in Ridgefield, CT and one in DC—a Balducci's marketing director told the Danbury Times, "Right now we are restructuring our company. We had to close some of our under-performing stores." Perhaps the store's prices weren't helping these days: The Post article leads with, "There will be two fewer places for Big Apple foodies to buy $39.99-a-pound triple-cream goat cheese and $23.99-per-pound veal chops" while a 2003 NY Times reader wrote, "If you wanted to spend $6 on a jar of imported marmalade that could be had for $4 elsewhere, then Balducci's was the store for you."

A new Gourmet article by Barry Estabrook explains how migrant farm workers in Florida often end up in positions of involuntary servitude, essentially over the production of crappy wintertime tomatoes destined for supermarket bins or as garnish for some jumbo/burger/gordita concoction plucked off a dollar menu. That includes most restaurants in New York City—fast food or otherwise—that buy tomatoes; more information can be found here. Estabrook writes about one worker in particular who was locked up and beaten by a handler, but it’s no isolated case: "Law-enforcement officials have freed more than 1,000 men and women in seven different cases" since 1997, and it’s not just the tomato growing industry. The piece has so far provoked a predictable cavalcade of xenophobic comments, such as, "I wish I could feel sorry for them, but when you go to a foreign country illegally, can't speak, read nor write the common language, then you're asking, no, BEGGING to be taken advantage of like this man was."

Start sweating, Mister Softee. As promised earlier this month, artisanal ice cream company Van Leeuwen has brought high quality scoops to the city's streets at last. Soho is the first neighborhood to have their screams answered; scoops (starting at $3.50) are being dished out as you read this near the intersection of Greene and Prince Streets. Van Leeuwen reps tell us the truck will be there daily from noon to 7 p.m., including weekends – barring any savage turf wars with rival sweet pushers.

As DUMBO NYC pointed out today, it’s that time of year when the city is crawling with ice cream trucks. The only problem is – other than the maddening repetition of hit jingles like “Pop Goes the Weasel” – these Kool Man and Mister Softee purveyors don’t sell ice cream; it’s all synthetic soft serve or pre-packaged frozen products that ought to be shut down by Children's Services. Even the aesthetically appealing retro Good Humor man is peddling sub par processed treats. What’s an ice cream snob to do?