Results tagged “spottedpig”

              

One of the season's more buzzed-about restaurant openings is The Breslin, which will soon be joining Stumptown in the trendy Ace Hotel in the Flatiron District. The hype in this case is not without reason, as the proprieters here are restaurateur Ken Friedman and chef April Bloomfield, of The Spotted Pig fame.

When Daniel Boulud and Jim Leiken started putting the new restaurant DBGB together, they decided one hamburger would be topped with pulled pork. Rather than to start recipe testing, the chefs decided to use Daisy May's pork and serve the whole thing on a cornbread-cheddar bun. It's like the restaurant world's version of a co-operative: Chefs and restaurants are outsourcing a lot of ingredients from other restaurants these days. Take Kyle Bailey's Lower East Sliders on the bar menu at Allen & Delancey, for example: the pickle is Guss's, the salami is Katz's, and the Grafton Cheddar is from nearby Saxelby Cheesemongers.

This week Frank Bruni at the Times bestows two stars on chef April Bloomfield and Ken Friedman (The Spotted Pig) for their new high-end seafood pub The John Dory (pictured), in the Meatpacking District: "In what is clearly a labor of not just love but also vivid (sometimes too vivid) imagination and real guts, [they] have fashioned a place that doesn’t look like any other and that doesn’t taste like any other, either...But experienced in aggregate, too many dishes are too blunt. The overall flavor spectrum is too narrow, a wallow in buttery, creamy and salty effects. I sometimes left feeling overwhelmed — maybe I should say capsized — in a way I seldom do." Still, Bloomfield's menu is full of "nervy surprises."

         

Fans of SpongeBob SquarePants and anyone who attended Phish shows circa 1993 are in for some serious flashbacks upon entering The John Dory, the new seafood-centric restaurant that's wildly decorated with an aquatic theme and murkily lit in submarine hues of dark turquoise and sea green. An illuminated fish-in-water inlay in the floor runs the entire length of the space, echoing a similar inlay in the bar, where a massive fish tank bubbles.

Last night, for the second year in a row, visiting English chef Fergus Henderson (pictured) returned to The Spotted Pig to cook with chef April Bloomfield. The event was dubbed 'FergusStock.' Chefs and cooks from all over attended: in one corner, Tom Colicchio sat with his family and Ken Friedman, one of The Spotted Pig's principal owners. The bar was crowded (more than usual) with prospective diners angling for dinner spots.

Today the Times’s Frank Bruni marvels at Manhattan’s new wave of high tone restaurant openings during a recession, and pins the trend not on entrepreneurial bravado but on the fact that it takes years to get a fancy eatery open, and most of these new places were envisioned in flusher economic times. It is true that in 2005, the top fifth of earners in Manhattan made 52 times what the lowest fifth make – $365,826 compared with $7,047 – comparable to the income disparity in Namibia. Yet thanks to tax cuts and stagflation, the income gap has only widened in the past three years. Dinner at Per Se is as unattainable as ever for New York’s lower orders, but even with Wall Street turbulence it’s unlikely the ranks of the well-heeled will thin to the point where a fashionable restaurant can’t manage. Of course, chefs like Ken Friedman (The Spotted Pig) are artists and don’t chain their muse to the vagaries of the economy: “I’m certainly not the kind who would look at the Dow. Does a writer write or not write a book based on the economic climate? Does a songwriter write songs that way?”

There are a number of restaurants opening in 2008 that we've been eagerly awaiting and we thought we'd highlight some that particularly piqued our interest and have us drooling in anticipation.

Coming up next Monday is a benefit event celebrating East New York Farms, an organization that seeks to remedy the dearth of good nutritional choices in the Brooklyn neighborhood by growing and distributing its own food, along the way inviting a wealth of community participation. “Our first season was one gardener out on the sidewalk with a table,” says Sarita Daftary, Project Director of East New York Farms! (the exclamation mark goes with the...

Cooking last night at The Spotted Pig for a sold-out crowd is visiting English chef Fergus Henderson, author of the newly released Beyond Nose to Tail, a sort of sequel cookbook. Spotted Pig chef April Bloomfield worked side-by-side with Henderson, who is best probably best known for his offal-centric food at St. John, his London restaurant, but is also considered to be a renegade, iconoclast cook: a chef’s chef.

In case you missed it, earlier this week, Rebecca Charles, owner of Pearl Oyster Bar, filed an intellectual property suit against former sous-chef Ed McFarland, alleging that he had stolen recipes and design ideas when he opened his new restaurant, Ed's Lobster Bar. Here's what has gone down since then. Ed held a press conference. Grub Street describes Ed's response: “I am deeply saddened to learn that Rebecca Charles has brought an action against me,” McFarland announced. “I believe her action has no merit. I harbor no ill will and wish her safely to port.”

• Bruni puts in his two cents about the latest crop of contestants on Top Chef. Season three premiered earlier this week, and Frank has already highlighted some of his favorites, including CJ ("I've got a false testicle and I'm ready to cook." If only for that quote alone), Hung, and Lia.
• In a Times Op-Ed, The Zagats tout the idea of a culinary visa program to open up America's tastebuds to something beyond the lackluster Chinese cuisine to which we've become accustomed. Get ready for "tea-flavored dishes from Hangzhou, the cult-inspiring hairy crabs of Shanghai [and] the fabled honeyed ham from Yunnan."
• The Post dishes about the Spotted Pig's latest restaurant inspection, during which it receive 34 points, putting it over the 27 point pass mark.

• Hate airport food? Well, if you're flying out of JFK, they've just opened a Balducci's in Terminal 2. We're also partial to the Cibo Express in Terminal 6, pictured at right. [New Yorkology]
• What happens when you mix chefs, booze, fire, and egos? A mess, some broken glass, and an accidental stabbing. Seems that Marco Pierre White was demonstrating a flaming Sambuca trick to Mario Batali, Tony Bourdain and others at the Spotted Pig when things went awry. [NY Post]
• Herring, herring, and more herring. 'Tis the season at The Oyster Bar and Aquavit. [Eat for Victory]

• Ken Friedman, owner of the Spotted Pig, has been approved for a liquor license in a space between Craftsteak and Del Posto over on 10th Avenue, reports the NY Post. Not sure what it will be yet, but apparently it will be named after a different animal.
• Down by the Hipster reports that Danny Meyers' plan for a second Shake Shack in Central Park is a no go: "The sticking point was the lease term, with USHG wanting a long-term deal, but the parks department not willing to give any more than 5 years."
• Gridskipper brings us two excellent roundups this week for anyone looking to take a trip to the outer boroughs: Queens Eats under $10 (including Vendy Award winner Sammy's Halal, pictured) and Staten Island Eats -- sounds like a trip on the ferry is in order.

-Food and Wine magazine released its Best New Chefs 2007 list earlier this week. April Bloomfield, the 32 year-old chef and co-owner of West Village gastropub The Spotted Pig, is among the ten honorees to be featured in the magazine’s July issue. Eater attended Wednesday night’s announcement party at 7 World Trade Center and watched “everyone who has ever been on an episode of Top Chef” party like it was 1999, the not-so-distant year that Rocco DiSpirito was named a F&W Best New Chef.

Pictured: Assari Ramen from Menchanko-Tei.

The good folks at The Spotted Pig are ringing in the Year of the Pig with, you guessed it, a pig roast. 314 W. 11th Street at Greenwich. Call 212-620-0393 for details.

- It's strange that in this arctic weather that the best food news we've heard today is that NYC Icy is returning. NYC Nosh snapped a photo of this sign in Hell's Kitchen. Bring on the summer!

After getting its liquor license some time back and entering 2.0-dom, the next upgrade for this release here with Ned Elliot and his flameout closing the logs on version 2.1. Tomorrow another chapter of the European Union story, potentially the most promising yet, begins when Akhtar Nawab takes over the stoves for his first day. After Allen & Delancey failed to open in the fall, Nawab’s next move was not known but this will be a great thing for the neighborhood. At Craftbar, his dishes were well-conceived and smoothly executed, providing many a gustatory delight for diners. His sous chef will be Josh Miller, who appears to have been working at the restaurant prior to Chef Nawab's arrival.

That would be Michelin stars. The 2007 guide was released today, with ratings for 526 restaurants, including several newcomers from the past year. Del Posto debuts with a bang: two stars, joining the ranks of Masa, Bouley, and Daniel (Danube, which also had two stars last year, dropped down to one). All of those who earned three stars last year (Le Bernadin, per se, and Jean-Georges) held their ground with the exception of Alain Ducasse at the Essex House. According to the New York Times it "was dropped from the guide this year because it plans to close and relocate in early January."

Bruni no-stars Freemans: doesn't much like the food, though he does like the decor. He compares it unfavorably to The Spotted Pig, and says, "Most of its dishes... could be quickly and easily replicated at home."

What is it about stars that gets people so worked up? New Yorkers went ballistic over the stars doled out by the Michelin Guide (the Spotted Pig?!?), and the addition of one extra star from the New York Times can make all the difference when you're trying to get a reservation. And now, New York Mag has jumped on the star bandwagon, with Adam Platt dishing out stars to his 101 favorite restaurants in the city. He describes the new rating system in detail:

Five stars is an ethereal, rarely used designation, the equivalent of foodie heaven. Four stars means that we consider the restaurant and its chef to be among the city’s very best. Three stars means the restaurant is excellent, though not elite. A two-star rating is very good—though not necessarily so good for the many establishments in town that aspire to be a foodie heaven. Classically, one-star restaurants tend to be simple, more neighborly, and often more satisfying than their multi-star brethren, and that will often be the case here, although one star for a restaurant with elite aspirations is really not much better than no star at all. No stars on a review doesn’t necessarily mean a restaurant is bad; it means our critics don’t recommend you go out of your way to eat there.

- We hear that East 93rd Street, between 1st and 2nd Avenues, is closed due to plates electrifying dogs! Con Ed is investigating

Charlie Suisman over at Manhattan User's Guide broke the French omerta on the New York City restaurants Michelin guide and listed the restaurants receiving 1, 2 or 3 stars. Only thirty-nine restaurants were reviewed. Here's a quick analysis:

Spotted Pig's Pumpkin Salad