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bellastraniera
a.k.a. Marcy Swingle - obsessed with food and fashion.View my photography website.
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Tag Archives: food news
NYC Wine & Food Festival: Serious Eats Slice: The Pieman’s Craft
Two legendary pizzaiolos, one 700-degree oven, dozens of pizzas, and 35 lucky diners: imagine the pizza feast that followed. Serious Eats founder and Pizza: A Slice of Heaven author Ed Levine and Slice founder Adam Kuban got these two major talents in the same kitchen (once Una Pizza Napoletana, now Motorino) to talk about the craft of pizza and then dish it out.
A pizza shop in a central Jersey strip mall doesn’t seem like a natural starting point for a celebrated chef, but that’s one leg of Anthony Mangieri’s unusual path to pizza stardom. Before Mathieu Palombino owned his own pizza place in Williamsburg, the French-trained chef rose up through the ranks in Laurent Tourondel’s restaurants. After the talk, both chefs got to work in the kitchen, dishing out dozens of pies until everyone was stuffed. A transcript of the talk and some delicious photos, after the jump. (more…)
NYC Wine & Food Festival: Tour de Beef
You can taste the difference between an aged cut of beef and a supermarket steak, but what exactly goes into the aging process? DeBragga and Spitler, one of the few remaining butchers in the Meatpacking District with a facility that ages millions of dollars of beef, let a few of the curious in to witness the process, and Marie Fromage was one of them.
photo via Marie Fromage
Turns out that aging beef is a lot like aging cheese, with elements like temperature, humidity, and bacteria working over a specific period of time to yield the desired results. As you might have guessed, the main difference between wet aged beef, the sort you find in supermarkets, and dry aged beef, the sort you find in a steakhouse, is the expense: Up to 50 percent of the dry aged beef product can be lost due to water loss and trimming of the less attractive aged bits. Mary Connolly a.k.a. Marie Fromage gives some details on the aging process, after the jump. (more…)
NYC Wine & Food Festival: Bruni Unveiled
This weekend’s NYC Wine & Food Festival reflected the current state of the food industry: corporate sponsors mixed with independent chefs, TV cameras were everywhere, and the competition was fierce. One of the kickoff events was a particularly good interview of Frank Bruni by Eater cofounder Ben Leventhal, who, after some initial palling around, leveled some tough questions at the former Times restaurant critic. Let’s hope the interview cleared up some questions about whether or not a “blogger” can be a “journalist.”
Bruni recounted some memorable times he was recognized at restaurants, discussed the evolving NYT star system, bristled at some feedback by restauranteurs, and chose what he would eat if stranded on a desert island. Some key excerpts from the evening, after the jump.
Le Fooding
Marie Fromage and I headed out to Long Island City last night for Le Fooding, billed as a celebration of food and drink featuring six great chefs each night (three French, three American) and benefiting Action Against Hunger. Started in Paris in 2000, Le Fooding landed in NYC for the first time this year and still has some kinks to work out.
The long line at the door was the first bad sign and made us draw comparisons to the well-organized City Harvest benefit we attended last year, where a team of event workers always kept the crowd flowing. Inside P.S. 1 for Le Fooding, between the fabulous displays of food, like this one above, there were lines, lines, and more lines, curling into spirals so long that when one guest was asked what food item he was waiting for, he joked, “I don’t know. My friends just texted me and told me to meet them in line.” (more…)
Rudest Service Ever
Given the difficulty of getting people into restaurants these days, you’d think that once you got there, they’d be happy to see you. But a certain breed of establishment, the type that cares more about getting Page Six dish than dishing out good food and service, is still upholding the standard of rudeness that gave New York a bad rap in boom times. Pete Wells’ experience when reviewing Hotel Griffou, started by veterans of the Waverly Inn, Freemans, and La Esquina, sounded familiar:
I checked in on time for an 8 p.m. reservation. “Three people?” asked the man at the desk. No, four, I said. He replied, with evident sorrow, that he had me down for three.
“I called a couple of hours ago to change it to four,” I said.
“Our reservations line closes at 5,” he said, as if he’d caught me. Why did it matter? At every restaurant I’ve seen, a three top is a four top missing a chair.
Not at Hotel Griffou, where we were sent to the bar while someone hunted down our table. The restaurant has four dining rooms, and we had an excellent view of one, a bright space with long beer-hall tables that sat empty. We imagined that they were being held for a group. Naturally, this is where we were seated, 50 minutes after we had arrived.
I am still getting over the rudest restaurant service I’ve ever had. It was at a downtown no-reservations restaurant in 2005, during the height of that restaurant’s popularity. Two of us arrived at 7:30 to put our names in for a table of three – our friend was meeting us there at 8pm. At 8pm, we were informed that a table might be available any minute now.
“Where is your friend?” the host said. “We can’t seat you unless the entire party is here.”
Our friend was nearby but lost, circling the block in a cab, since the restaurant was in a very hard-to-find location. We offered to start ordering right away but still were denied the table until all of us were there. Meanwhile, the location of the table was a mystery – all we could see open was a two top by the door. The host checked in another time, and by the third time at 8:10, he was having a conniption. (more…)
Google Maps of the Stars
There’s something new and cool on Google Maps: a “featured map” by various famous personalities about town. Though there is a corporate sponsor lurking behind the effort (nycgo.com), it’s still a fascinating way to see how the other half lives.
From bigwigs like Mayor Bloomberg and Diane von Furstenberg to industry players like Fern Mallis of IMG, a few key New Yorkers let you in on their favorite places in the city. While some are lame—can anyone imagine Bloomberg saying “The lights! The crowds! The bustle!” when recommending Times Square?—many of the suggestions sound like they’ve been written by the personalities themselves. Moby says of Billy’s Antiques on Houston: “you can find sex toys from the 1920′s and shrunken heads and fetal pigs in jars and cocktail shakers and world war 2 binoculars and books on taxidermy and etc. when billy’s closes i leave the lower east side.” (more…)
Louboutin X Ladurée Macaroons
The gorgeous and delicious pastries were some of the most fabulous things about Paris.
Now Chic Report tells us that famous patisserie Ladurée is teaming up with equally-delectable Louboutin to create an even more irresistible package: Louboutin macaroons. (more…)
New Spot: The National Restaurant
Rarely do you make the news for not making the news, but that’s just what’s happened with new restaurant The National, which quietly opened over a month ago and is literally off the (Google) map. According to WWD, first-time restauranteurs Julie Dickstein and Jeremy Hogeland wanted to get everything right before alerting the media – unlike so many new places that launch a multi-platform press attack.
Located next to Freeman’s, The National looks like it has a quaint, homey vibe, with antique pieces collected over the span of five years. Chef Zoë Feigenbaum is also a first-timer and graduate of the French Culinary Institute, and is serving up a mostly-seasonal menu that Dickstein describes as “schizophrenic,” because it runs the gamut, Blue Ribbon-like, from Korea to Maine.
So no press, next to Freeman’s, very few seats inside. You know what that means: It’s going to be mobbed.
The National
8 Rivington Street between Chrystie and the Bowery
New York, NY
212-777-2177
More Underappreciated Fish: Haddock
We already went wild for bluefish this summer – as did Sam Sifton in this Sunday’s Times Magazine (NYT: Something Fishy)- but maybe there’s something to this whole underappreciated fish thing in general. NPR ran a story today on James Beard-award-winning chef Sam Hayward of Maine, who’s weathering the recession by adding cheaper entrees to his menu at Fore Street Restaurant. One sustainability success story is haddock, a mild white fish, which is now much more prevalent – and therefore cheaper – than cod or tuna. Hayward makes it into fish cakes and serves it with sauteed local Maine marifax beans, once the year-round food of lumberjacks. Give it a listen and check out the recipes, which can easily be adapted with your own local greenmarket finds.
NPR’s Morning Edition: Top Chef Cooks up Ways to Cut Costs, Not Quality
Dining Psychology: Confessions of a Hoarder
What’s surprising about Bruni’s hilarious article today on the psychology of diners, What They Brought to the Table, isn’t that his guests didn’t behave as scripted in restaurants, it’s that they would ever agree to the bargain at all. You couldn’t pay most people to only eat a quarter of what’s on their plate, then pass it dutifully around the table.
And by “most people,” I mean me. Years of sharing with female friends who insisted that they weren’t that hungry, didn’t order much, then ate half of what was on my plate have definitely turned me into a hoarder. The “shared plates” trend has only exacerbated the problem. What’s the point of ordering the arancini if you only get half of one delicious fried rice ball? And no, the fact that I get some of your sauteed spinach in return isn’t much consolation.
There is nothing rational about saying, “I’m going to get the rice balls. But I am going to eat them all, so if you guys want some, maybe we should order more.” Yet I have said this to my friends. In restaurants. Aloud.
Other than hoarders vs. sharers, here are a few more categories I’ve noticed over the years: the Manglers, the Impatients, the Meg Ryans, and the Switch Orderers. (more…)
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