Results tagged “thomaskeller”

The Times visited Jonathan Benno, the outgoing chef of the four-star restaurant Per Se, and also managed to get a behind the scenes peek at the multimillion dollar kitchen, described in part as "an inhumanly immaculate expanse of burner rings and countertops." But that's not all: there's also a video screen with a real-time uplink to Per Se’s sister restaurant, the French Laundry, all the way on the West Coast! "When it comes to fine dining in New York, the fiscal situation is often irrelevant," writes Alan Feuer. "Elites will always and forever be elites." Of course this is true, but Feuer calling a restaurant kitchen "something akin to a gold vault or the Queen of England’s bedroom" takes things a little too far. Dude, it's a kitchen. Filled with really expensive equipment. It probably smells a little bit better in there than a royal bedroom, too. And for certain, Per Se costs a lot of money—the last (and only) time Gothamist visited the place, the post-dinner report was followed by a Piranha-style frenzy of comments that somehow even managed to namecheck the economist Thorstein Bunde Veblen.

Can't swing New York's top rated restaurant, Per Se, for Thanksgiving? Enjoy chef Thomas Keller's cuisine at a fraction of the cost with this selection from his cookbook, The French Laundry. Some of these meals can take hours of preparation and require obscure ingredients and advanced cooking techniques, but there are also plenty of simpler, shorter recipes here; you just need to know where to look.

One of the better parts about the culinary juggernaut that is the collected restaurants of Thomas Keller— which include per se and Bouchon here in New York— is that you can bet that any and all pies, cookies or cakes associated with said juggernaut are going to be good. Especially if you forgot to place your special orders for baked goods you’ll need to be lugging somewhere on Thursday, Bouchon Bakery will be your friend, confidant, and possibly your lover, all gussied up with pumpkin and chocolate shavings.

Corton, the anticipated collaboration between Drew Nieporent and English chef Paul Liebrandt, may not be opening this weekend, but shown above is a possible preview of the restaurant’s food: Lamb with cooking juices, salad, and pommes fondant.

A Times article on the popularity of “fast-casual” restaurants continues to cause some major head scratching. In straightforward expansionist news, the article reported that the Five Guys burger chain plan on opening 29 new local outlets in the next 8 years, and Hale and Hearty is busy putting the finishing touches on its 20,000 square foot Williamsburg production facility.

We don't have the luxury of forgetting indefinitely because this is not a sustainable proposition. By the time my kids are my age, they're going to look back and say, "You did what with the last drop of fossil fuels? You pushed a watermelon from Chile to your door so that you could eat it out of season? What were you thinking?"

• Over 120 waiters from Sparks Steakhouse, both current and past employees, have been permitted to join a class-action lawsuit in federal court over money alleged to have been deducted illegally from tips. The plaintiffs' lawyer classified it as "the largest class-action ever against a restaurant." [NY Post]
• Pete Wells chimes in on the lobster roll legal battle between Rebecca Charles and Ed McFarland, and focuses for a moment on the fiduciary duty aspect of the claim rather than the intellectual property issues: "In legalese, a 'fiduciary duty' is like a kind of loyalty that you owe somebody who places their trust in you. You’re not supposed to put your own interests above theirs. . . . Ms. Charles’s lawyers are arguing that as sous chef of Pearl Oyster Bar, Mr. McFarland had a fiduciary duty to the restaurant." [NYT Diner's Journal]
• A former executive from Cipriani got sent back to the slammer yesterday for filing false insurance claims. He had previously served time for tax evasion and racketeering. [NY Daily News]
• The sushi spreadsheet has been updated for 2007! [Snack]
• And food-lovers are going crazy for Ratatouille, Pixar's latest animated blockbuster, featuring a rat (modelled after the likes of the French Laundry's Thomas Keller) who dreams of being a chef. [NY Daily News]
Continue reading "Tidbits: Litigious Edition"

- While browsing this NYT article about pulperías in Galicia, Spain we are reminded about how good the octopus is at the initially-jeopardized E.U. was when we went Friday. Come to think of it, the Baked Rigatoni with Milk-Braised Berkshire Pork, the Fried Smelts and the meatballs were darn tasty as well.

Foodies attack the silver screen! In today's Times Arts & Leisure section, the long history and current feast of food in film is given another look. Would there have even been a Big Night if not for the food? In the coming months, Russell Crowe, the first person we think of when the phrase "good taste" coming up, will star as a man who inherits a vineyard and Nora Ephron is working on an adaptation of Julie & Julia, the Julie Powell book that came from her blog. Fast Food Nation has been filmed, too, and, there will be acompetitive eating movie, All You Can Eat, to add some low-to-middle-brow enjoyment to all the wineries and roux.

- The UK Guardian weighs in with its picks for food blogs from around the world.

Nestled on the corner of Prince and Crosby Streets in SoHo, Peter Hoffman's Savoy has been wowing its guests for years now with an ever-changing menu. Hoffman consistently serves food purchased from local greenmarkets, keeping his focus on what's in season. The menu also reflects his obsession--shared by many chefs, such as Mario Batali and Thomas Keller--with charcuterie. Gothamist got a chance to sample some of the house-cured meat in a recent special appetizer featuring guanciale aside cubes of roasted winter squash, frisee, and hazelnuts. Guanciale is a fatty cut of pork traditionally prepared in Italy. The meat is cut from the hog's jowls and dried for three weeks. Eww, you say? Taste first, then judge: it was fantastic. Is it worth all the chef's work? Well, to be honest, it tastes like bacon, but very good bacon.

New Yorkers may think we're the best in the world generally, but as far as restaurants of the world are concerned, we only made it to number eight. Thomas Keller's Per Se was the only New York restaurant to make the top ten of the world's 50 best restaurants, as named by Restaurant magazine, although his West Coast restaurant, French Laundry, came in at number four. Other New York eateries on the list include Jean Georges, Daniel, Le Bernardin, and Gramercy Tavern. As the New York Post notes, you're going to have spend a decent chunk of change to sample the world's best -- approximately $95 and Jean Georges, $100 at Daniel, and $210 at Per Se (prices have gone up since our visit). Not that reservations will be any easier to come by, thanks to the honor.

Gothamist knows that the best restaurants in the city use the best ingredients they can find. But there are many chefs that go to extremes to find the best of the best. Chefs like Thomas Keller of Per Se fame develop relationships with local farmers, fisherman and wild mushroom cultivators in the maticulous pursuit of the best ingredients. Unfortuntely, most of these ingredients are not always available to the passionate home cook.

Anyway, we'd forgotten about it until we spotted the remaindered link to Collective Detective, who reveal the recipe from the DVD extras, as well as the fact that the sandwich recipe was provided by none other than Thomas Keller. He personally taught Sandler how to make this sandwich for the movie. Somewhat fitting, since Sandler's background in the movie is quite similar to Keller's background (a celebrity chef who owns a highly-regarded restaurant in California).

Per Se's Creamy Tapioca Pearls

Bouchon by Thomas Keller (Artisan, 2004)

The Sweet Smell of Success plays Friday and Saturday at the Film Forum at 1:35, 5:25, 9:15. Read Andrew Sarris's review of The Sweet Smell of Success; it's also a Great Movie according to Roger Ebert.

Veritas Tender Braised Veal

Eating In: Neptune Room's Crispy Fish,Creamy Pasta

Frank Bruni awarded four stars to Thomas Keller's Per Se in today's New York Times, noting that, although it certainly deserved the rating,

Don't blame yourself. Gothamist was fooled too. We thought the fancy-schmancy food court at the Time Warner Center was going to be the second coming. But with Thomas Keller's Per Se going up in smoke in its first week, Frank Bruni's one-star spanking of Jean-Georges Vongerichten's V Steakhouse, and openings for Charlie Trotter and Gray Kunz still months away at best, things are looking glum on the upper floors of the Columbus Circle über-mall.

Gothamist Cooks (Kind of) by the Book

And Gothamist's own food entries.

Gothamist Eating In: Cooking Our Favorite Restaurant Dishes at Home

The nicotine-fits smokers have at bars or restaurants remind us how chef Thomas Keller made a tobbaco-y treat for Anthony Bourdain when Bourdain visited The French Laundry. You can read about in A Cook's Tour.

Dana Cowin, Food & Wine magazine

Gothamist wonders how Thomas Keller (pictured, right) feels about being fate's bitch, but we guess he's probably cool with it since French Laundry was named the world's best restaurant by Restaurant Magazine (although we feel the list is definitely UK-biased). [via kottke]

Laurie Woolever, Cook/Food Writer

More winds today, which made Gothamist think of some of the city's windiest places: Anywhere near the water, any of the big north-south or east-west streets (like up Church Street or across 86th Street), so pretty much a lot of the city. Gothamist gets ready for those windy areas by wearing two coats and a ski mask, so we look like a bank robbing Michelin Man. If anyone has more information about wind tunnel/funnel effects that are caused by skyscrapers, please let Gothamist know in comments.