Results tagged “littleitaly”

Little Italy is fighting back against Tucker Max's controversial ad campaign. Yeah, that poster on the right says, "Blind Girls Never See You Coming." Va fan culo, indeed.

Yesterday afternoon, the city evacuated 273 Mott Street in Little Italty (or Nolita) because a rather large crack emerged in the building's facade. The NY Post reports the crack was three inches wide at the top of the building, "The building, which has 15 residents, and a Japanese/Thai restaurant on its first floor and apartments above, has a 20-foot tall crack in its facade that seems to have grown since last year, a caller complained to the Buildings Department." The Department of Buildings had actually issued a complaint to the building's owner on Tuesday about the crack, but yesterday the FDNY and DOB were on the scene after complaints of the building shaking. On Sunday, a four-story building, which had a substantial crack in its exterior wall, in Brooklyn collapsed, perhaps partly due to the recent rain. And EV Grieve passed by 273 Mott, where one onlooker muttered, "This is what happens when it rains for 30 straight days."

Residents and business owners who have been complaining about the new Grand Street bike lane now have a video that they say demonstrates the traffic mess caused by the lane, which provides a dedicated space for cyclists separated from traffic by a row of parked cars. Sent to us by the Soho Alliance, the video depicts a truck driver turning from West Broadway onto Grand Street and mistaking the parked cars for idling traffic.

The new bike lane on Grand Street that a local shop owner recently called the possible "demise of Little Italy" continues to draw attention with complaints that fire trucks are struggling to maneuver around the new setup of the block. Ernest Lepore, owner of Ferrara Cafe who originally talked to Villager, appears to have taken his case against the lane to the Post, telling the paper, "I saw one truck back up four or five times before being able to squeeze into the lane. The firefighter was visibly frustrated."

The new bike lane that extends along Grand Street between Varick and Chrystie Streets has been warmly received by many cyclists who like the way it's separated from traffic by a row of parked cars. Not so pleased are business owners through Soho, Little Italy and Chinatown, some of whom fear the bike lane will "hurt business and create a dangerous situation," according to The Villager.

A new restaurant in Little Italy, Dolce Vita, has been trying to serve food that would make the tourist-flooded neighborhood "authentic" again, but according to an open letter posted on Eater, the other restaurateurs are jealous and trying to destroy them: "If you are the new guy on the block and not in everybody else’s back-pocket or part of Old Little Italy, you apparently do not have a prayer of making it. Police are sent to my establishment from these restaurant ‘ghosts’ regularly checking for a liquor license, or a sidewalk café license or what ever else citation they can come up with as soon as a whiff of a busy Dolce Vita is caught from around the block." The jeremiad goes on, but the moral is simple: You're asking for major agita trying to serve good food in Little Italy.

Luigi Di Palo, a youthful 56-year-old better known as Lou, runs Little Italy’s century-old Di Palo’s Fine Foods with his brother and sister. The store started out as a latteria, selling only fresh cheese, milk and butter. Di Palo likes to say that he and his family are among the “last of the real, original Little Italy people.” These days the store is a little Italy in its own right with hundreds of Italian specialties – salumi, cheese, olive oil, preserves, and Balsamic vinegar among other things. Di Palo’s still makes its own cheese daily and as one customer kvelled, “There’s no ricotta like his ricotta.” And they were right, the bit we tasted was like eating a cloud made out of milk. We chatted with him about his family’s store as well as the neighborhood and its upcoming Carnevale festival, which runs through February 3 and will feature special dishes at area restaurants as well as impromptu shows by Italian performers and singers on weekends.

Rainbow cookies are quite possibly our favorite cookies. Ever. Whenever someone brings a cookie assortment from an Italian bakery we always eat all the rainbow cookies first and usually discard the rest.

In time for next week’s Columbus Day festivities, the Post’s Steve Cuozzo lets his Ital flag fly with two gushing columns on Italian cuisine. He points out that Italian restaurants outnumber all other kinds of restaurants in New York by a big margin (and that’s not because of the ever-metastasizing Olive Gardens.) He cites seven “marvelous” eateries – Del Posto, A Voce, Abbocatto, Insieme, Fiamma, L'Impero and Alto – that “establish Italian as the cuisine to beat.” Nobu can sleep with the fishes.

It would seem to be nothing less than dereliction of duty for an Italian-American food writer to have never been to the Italian food mecca that is Arthur Avenue, but it does on occasion happen. This oversight is even more glaring given that said food writer is half Calabrese and had never set foot in the Calabria Pork Store.

Bruni goes to Franny’s in Brooklyn, rates it a top pick, awards it two stars, and calls himself a newly converted “besotted Franny’s believer.” Says Franny’s simplicity—they serve crostini, cured meats, pasta and pizza (along with a few other items)—“is deceptive. The restaurant finds transcendence in dishes and genres that wouldn’t seem to yield so readily to invention or open the door to so much pleasure.”

Feast of San Gennaro. Manhattan’s Little Italy may be constantly shifting borders and shrinking, but this event seems to get bigger every year. Plunk down $3 for a big plastic cup of Italian bianco with peaches. When you’re done sipping, you can fish out the large hunks of wine-steeped fruit with your straw. It’s worth waiting on the long lines for kettle-fried zeppolis that come by the half or full dozen, shook up in a plain brown paper bag and coated with confectioner’s sugar. Just give them a couple of minutes to cool down before you start eating- they’re about 300 degrees fresh out of the oil. September 13-27, sangennaro.org

Separately, yesterday witnessed the 5th Annual Tuttorosso Pasta Eating Contest on Little Italy's Mulberry Street. The event was woefully undercovered by the mainstream press, so what information we have is from the flickr photos of dietrich, who got frighteningly close to the gaping maws of the contestants. Experience won out, as the winner was a veteran of the four prior competitions, but the second place contestant made a breakthrough as the highest-placed contestant who shoveled pasta into his mouth with his hands.

Learn about Friuli-Venezia Giulia through a study of wine and food. Friuli's whites will keep you cool during the summer, but the red varietals hold their own as well. 1:00 - 3:00 pm, $75.00. Register online or by calling 212-473-2323 x106. Italian Wine Merchants - Studio del Gusto, 108 East 16th Street between Park Avenue South & Irving Place.

The Hamptons may reek of money, but Coney Island is getting its very own scent, courtesy of downtown fragrance company Bond No. 9. Inspired by all the recent development along Brooklyn's bayshore, parfumeur Richard Harpin designed a location-based scent that is the borough's first from the company. It will retail for $40 an ounce, $125 for 1.7 ounces or $180 for 3.4 ounces, indicating to us that the value lies in the increasing size of the bottle, rather than the contents inside.

No more Drown the Clown? No more zeppoles, chased down by some gelato? Or walks through Little Italy in a crushing sea of humanity? The Daily News reports that Community Board 2's street events committee is recommending that the board reject permits for San Gennaro.

Joseph Barbera, one part of the famed cartoon duo Hanna-Barbera, has died at the age of 95. In his life, which started out in New York (Little Italy and then Flatbush), he created Tom and Jerry, Huckleberry Hound, The Flintstones and also worked on The Smurfs...all of your childhood favorites, over 100 cartoons in 4 decades.

Fusion cuisines are all the rage, but the idea of mixing flavors across boundaries is hardly new. On Grand Street, Nyonya sits among the remnants of today's Little Italy; the restaurant's name refers to "the ladies" -- the women of Chinese-Malay marriages. Also known as Straits Chinese food or Lauk Embok Embok, the flavors of Nyonya mix Chinese and Malay components, deriving from grandmothers' recipes and the influence of Indonesian and Thai cuisine. Coconut milk figures heavily in dishes, adding sweet, rich flavors pared with kaffir leaves, ginger flower, coriander and cumin. Thai flavors reign in hot chilies, black prawn paste, and sensations of sourness, resulting in ingredient-heavy complex flavors throughout.

-- Speaking of bridges, the entire lower deck of the Manhattan Bridge is going to be closed for a year. That's not going to be good for traffic on Flatbush Avenue or Canal Street.

-- According to NY1, the owners of the cars that got crushed in Inwood will get paid for them-- including the removal.

Stephanie Gray writes:

Ooh - Goggla on Flickr saw Boy George yesterday and took some pictures of him doing his community service. She writes:

Ah, I've waited 25 years to meet this man and here he was, picking up trash along my walking route to work. It was rather sad seeing him there with everyone on the sidewalk pointing and staring, but he looked to be in pretty good spirits.

Finally: Boy George has reported for his community service (after he falsely reported a robbery in his apartment) - sweeping streets in Chinatown and Little Italy. However, the paparazzi likes a celebrity in an orange Department of Sanitation vest, so they have followed him around, leaving him a bity crazy:

As he went about his duties, the singer was swarmed by reporters and photographers while he stood on the median of a Lower East Side Street. He used his broom to sweep dust and leaves into the lens of a video camera.

Continue reading "Boy George, Sweeper Chameleon"

In this heat it’s time to turn to all things frozen, which brings up the eternal question: What is the ideal receptacle for ice cream? Cups are really are a wimp’s way out and cones can be too kiddy. The answer may be found at Villabate Pasticceria in Bensonhurst. There you can get outstanding gelato served inside a brioche roll. This is not your usual ice cream sandwich. Villabate is known for its bread—its semolina is baked more than once a day—and the brioche rolls are baked here too. Light and airy, puffy and round, they are crowned with a beautiful brown glaze (recipe).

- Great slide show of Weegee photographs to accompany the NY Times review of the ICP show

It's Memorial Day in the city, and there are many events, from parades to concerts - a commemoration at the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monuments in Riverside Park at 10:30AM, a parade on City Island at 2PM, a concert with Frank Sinatra Jr. at 3PM in Little Italy, and a free concert from the Philharmonic at St. John the Divine at 8PM. For more info, check out NYC Visit and go to their calendar of listings.

- Oddly enough: The original Carol Seaver from Growing Pains went on to have a one night stand with Bill Clinton.

the way it is in the movies! Here's testimony from Michael DiLeonardo, Gambino loan sharker and star government witness, via the NY Times:

He went to an apartment on Mulberry Street in Little Italy, a few blocks from the Ravenite Social Club, home base of the Gambino family. There he waited in a room with four other men, including John A. Gotti, the son of the family boss, to be inducted as "made men" into the family.

Continue reading "Showing Up Gotti"

Allyson Jacobs, fashion designer