By Foster Kamer 6/05/12 4:46pm

THE HIPPING POINT

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Bushwick and The $180 Per-Person Dinner: We Are Here, Now

Roberta’s of Bushwick, Brooklyn, has traditionally been the only restaurant that could ever inspire Manhattanites to take a safari out to the young, hip, and tres chic post-apocalyptic, post-Williamsburg neighborhood.

It is a restaurant that does not take reservations for most parties, which on a busy night, will lead to a wait of anywhere from half an hour to 90 minutes (if you arrive in the middle of a dinner rush). Compared to the other restaurants in the neighborhood, it is slightly pricey.

It has a radio station, and their own garden (with its own blog), and they make their own honey, too. It is also fairly well-regarded, and was undoubtedly instrumental in putting the neighborhood on the map for many people who’d otherwise never venture past the Bedford Stop.

Today, erstwhile New York Times food critic Sam Sifton took a break from his gig as the paper’s national editor to report on the existence of Blanca.

Blanca is a restaurant that sits behind Roberta’s.

Blanca is a restaurant with twelve seats.

Blanca is a restaurant in Bushwick with a $180 per person entry fee.  Read More

By Foster Kamer 5/30/12 8:00am

Babbo's Big Boy

Joe Bastianich

Joe Bastianich and The Gospel of Restaurant Man

Joseph Bastianich isn’t content being a mere Restaurant Man, as he’d have it. Or even a haute grocer.

“Hopefully, we’re going to change the way people consume,” he said, sitting at a table in Eataly, the Flatiron grocery store he opened in August 2010 in a partnership with Mario Batali, his mother, Lidia, and Italian businessman Oscar Farinetti. Before him was a plate of lentils and a glass of red wine. Asked about the rising price of food, he quickly fired off his reply in his distinctly outer-borough-bred baritone: “We’re going to change the balance of the plate. Less proteins, more carbs, more legumes, more rice, more barley. The era of cheap, abundant food is gone.” Read More

By Matt Chaban 4/30/12 12:42pm

THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD

A match made in Heaven—by which we mean Brooklyn.

Just What Park Slope Needs: a Hooters

Much attention has been paid to the changes the Barclays Center has wrought on the surrounding brownstone neighborhoods: eminent domain evictions, property values both falling and rising, construction noise, a starchitect fight and a rat tsunami. Yet nothing could have prepared the borough of kings and kombucha for this: Hooters “desperately” wants to open an outlet near the new Nets arena. Read More

By Foster Kamer 4/04/12 8:00am

Profile

Eddie Huang by Drew Friedman

Well Huang: How Culinary Enfant Terrible Eddie Huang Dishes it Out

“They called me a chigger.”

Eddie Huang, the gleefully iconoclastic chef-cum-troublemaker, was in a back room at the Ace Hotel, remembering high school. He’d just finished serving as the host of a Jeremy Lin viewing party for a crowd of the chef’s friends and “three random girls from Twitter.” The wax-paper wrapped bao—the signature Asian bun sandwiches that have been drawing crowds to his restaurant, Baohaus, since December 2009—were long since emptied of their pork-packed glories. The Knicks had fallen to the New Jersey Nets. And Mr. Huang was in a reflective mood.  Read More

By Foster Kamer 3/19/12 6:12pm

Great Quotes

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Keith McNally Reveals Secret to Success, Did Not Invent the Cosmopolitan

Keith McNally is the famed New York City restauranteur behind Pastis, Schiller’s, Bright Lights Big City locale The Odeon, Minetta Tavern, and of course, Balthazar (which just today recieved a James Beard nomination), to name a few. They are restaurants as much as they are scenes (figuratively, as they’re stacked with celebrities, or literally, as they’re occasionally television backdrops). Tellingly, Keith McNally’s interview responses couldn’t be better if they were scripted by a brilliant writer (which they basically have been), if not moreso. Take, for example, like the one posted to the site of Bon Appetit today, with news of McNally’s forthcoming first London restaurant. Read More

By Aaron Gell 2/28/12 6:42pm

You've Been Served

Mr. Chow & Mr. Chow001

How Now, Mr Chow? The Sweet ’n Sour Saga Behind the City’s Epic Food Fight

On a recent evening at Mr Chow, the venerable Chinese restaurant on East 57th Street that has catered to free-spending New Yorkers since 1978, a chef wheeled a metal trolley onto the balcony overlooking the dramatic sunken dining room. Taking a large ball of dough in both hands, he began to pull and massage it, thwacking the mass against the butcher’s block, then doubling it over, letting it twist, stretching, thwacking, twisting, doubling, while the room watched in silence.

This was the “noodle show,” a demonstration of starchy prowess that has occurred every night for 44 years.

The Observer was seated at a two-top, doing research (the best kind) on the federal lawsuit then being tried in Miami pitting Mr Chow against the upstart Philippe by Philippe Chow, a strikingly similar chain started in 2005 by a longtime member of Mr Chow’s New York kitchen staff.

There’s a noodle show at Philippe as well—performed by Mr Chow’s former noodle man, in fact—but that wasn’t what had the guests in tight minidresses pulling out their point-and-shoots when The Observer arrived a little later that same evening (stashing our Mr Chow doggie bag on the way in). Despite Michael Chow’s contention that Philippe had ripped off his concept wholesale, the difference in ambiance was striking.

Whereas Mr Chow was refined and understated, the vibe at Philippe could be described only as bumpin’. The bar was tightly packed. Servers wore red Chuck Taylors. Smashing Pumpkins was blaring on the PA. A woman in a tube top was sitting on a banquette in the entryway, eating out of a take-out container. Everyone was texting.

The excitement that evening turned out to be on behalf of the several New York Giants who were following up their Canyon of Heroes moment with a celebratory dinner in an upstairs dining room, while a photographer working for Cîroq vodka captured the scene.

We approached defensive end Osi Umenyiora to ask what the appeal was. “Great restaurant,” he said.

Maybe so, we thought, but whose?

Read More

By Aaron Gell 2/27/12 2:07pm

Food Fights

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Legendary Sandwich Shop Manganaro’s Grosseria Italiana Says Basta!

Manganaro’s Grosseria Italiana, the venerable Ninth Avenue sandwich shop, is serving up its last sub today, according to DNAInfo, ending a long-running feud with Manganaro’s Hero Boy next door. The closing was first reported by Vanishing New York. The shops are owned by different branches of the Dell’Orto clan, who have not been on speaking terms for years.

The news comes almost a full year after the Wall Street Journal prematurely reported the news.  Read More