Posts for December 20, 2012 -- Grub Street: New York Magazine's Food and Restaurant Blog

Posts for December 20, 2012

12/20/12 at 5:50 PM
Leftovers
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Vinegar Hill House Gets Gluttonous for New Year’s Eve; Sakamai Offers Japanese Cocktails

• Newly opened midtown venture the Sea Fire Grill is the Benjamin Steakhouse Group’s first deviation from red meat into the world of high-end seafood. Ted Pryor, formerly of Michael Jordan’s Steakhouse, is its new appointed head chef, replacing Richard Pims. [Grub Street]

• Vegetables get dressed up for a New Year’s Eve meatless dinner at the Fat Radish. The menu features turnips with licorice, white bean soup, carrot cake with maple mascarpone, and an optional biodynamic wine pairing. [Grub Street]

• Vinegar Hill House offers an array of luxury meats, including veal kidney and wild boar, for its four-course New Year's Eve dinner. They're calling the meal "La Grande Bouffe" in honor of a 1948 French-Italian film in which Marcello Mastroianni and three friends make a pact to eat themselves to death. [Grub Street]

• SakaMai, a LES sake bar that will also offer Japanese cocktails and one-of-a-kind bar food (including sea urchin filled with white sturgeon caviar and scrambled eggs), opens officially this evening. [Thrillist]

• Go! Go! Curry will soon be displaying its irritated-gorilla logo at 12 John Street in the financial district. This marks the Japanese chain's third installment in the city. [Midtown Lunch]

12/20/12 at 5:20 PM
Openings
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Ivan Ramen Will Open on the Lower East Side

By Hugh Merwin

Getting his noodle on.

Ivan Orkin, the 49-year-old Long Island native who made his way to Tokyo and improbably opened two wildly successful ramenyas, will likely open his first New York noodle shop at 25 Clinton Street, former home to Ed's Lobster Bar Annex, Diner's Journal reports. The restaurant will have 60 seats, says Orkin, who will present his plans to CB3 Manhattan early next month. [Diner's Journal/NYT, Earlier]

12/20/12 at 5:00 PM
Sandy
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The City Lost 8,500 Restaurant and Food Jobs After Hurricane Sandy

By Hugh Merwin

Catherine Slip, after the storm.

A staggering 8,500 restaurant and food-service jobs were lost during November, an economist with the New York State Labor Department said today. Lower Manhattan was hit the hardest, the Times reports. Because of an abundance of year-end and holiday parties, it's this time of year when many restaurants are hiring extra help, but that doesn't seem to be the case after Hurricane Sandy. “Restaurant closings and layoffs were widespread in impacted neighborhoods," said economist James Brown, "and the relocation of workers from damaged downtown office buildings is hurting holiday catering and corporate cafeterias." [City Room/NYT]

12/20/12 at 4:40 PM
Restaurant Power Rankings
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Grub Street’s Restaurant Power Rankings: Where to Eat Before the World Ends

By Alan Sytsma

Photo: iStockphoto

The last few weeks of the year aren't typically full of buzzy new openings (the Marrow notwithstanding), so as 2012 draws to a close, the Power Rankings don't see a ton of change this week. And yet! Maybe the world really will end tomorrow, in which case you should really try to eat as well as possible tonight. (Tip well regardless — karma and all that.) Here are the city's buzziest places to grab a bite.

12/20/12 at 4:10 PM
Closings
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The Highliner Is Closed

Eater reports that the Highliner, the restaurant owned by the Coffee Shop team and that replaced the iconic Empire Diner in Chelsea, closed on Sunday. The restaurant had been open for about eighteen months. [Eater NY, Earlier]

12/20/12 at 2:55 PM
Openings
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First Look at the Marrow, Harold Dieterle’s European-Influenced West Village Restaurant

By Hugh Merwin

After deftly wielding a palette of Asian ingredients at Perilla and Kin Shop, Alicia Nosenzo and chef Harold Dieterle are channeling the flavors of Germany and Italy for the Marrow, their third restaurant, which opens tomorrow in the old Paris Commune space in the West Village. Reflecting Dieterle's heritage, there's pan-fried duck schnitzel served with quark spaetzle, hazelnuts, and wolfberries. Elsewhere, a riff on vitello tonato is made with stone bass, tuna belly, and sweetbreads, and the pickled-herring salad is served with baby beets, greens, horseradish cream, and pistachios. Those feeling less continental may opt for the wood-grilled, 40-day-aged rib-eye steak or whole grilled fish. The wine list is Eurocentric, and the list of seven house specialty cocktails includes one called the Wayward Son, which is made with Buffalo Trace White Dog, yellow Chartreuse, and turmeric syrup.

Take a look, straight ahead.

12/20/12 at 2:00 PM
Overnights
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Top Chef Seattle Recap: David Rees on Beautiful Berries and Shredded Jeans

By David Rees

Padma doesn't do pink.Photo: Bravo

On the last Top Chef before the Feast of St. Christmas, we find Josh moaning about his shattered reputation as a pork expert. He vows to never cook pork again. Pigs across the country breathe an oink of relief, then go back to rolling around in their own fecal matter.

"Beautiful, beautiful berries ... "

12/20/12 at 1:20 PM
Video Feed
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Watch These Adorable Old People Try to Get Through Their Lines in This Truck Stop Commercial

By Hugh Merwin

This older man and lady having lunch at Dysart's Restaurant in Bangor, Maine, are having a bit of a hard time saying their chicken potpie is "baked in a buttery, flaky crust" during the filming of a commercial for the place. They keep trying anyhow, though, which really just makes them the best.

"Flaky!"

12/20/12 at 12:45 PM
Burgerangelo
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Lucky’s Famous Burgers Is Looking for a LES Michelangelo

By Hugh Merwin

The affable Lucky's Famous Burgers is looking for a muralist to add some Lower East Side flavor to its Houston Street store, Bowery Boogie reports. "Lucky’s is looking to bring some Houston Street vibe into the atmosphere," a sign in the window reads. "I want to make our logos and ambiance a little more artsy and 'Houstanized.' While I cannot provide financial compensation I am providing the opportunity for your artwork to be displayed in one of the most well-known artist communities in the city." Con: You don't get paid. Pro: If you get the gig, everyone can know how you really feel about drunk tourists, ATM fees, fake I.D.'s, and roving squads of inept pickup artists from Long Island. [Bowery Boogie]

12/20/12 at 12:05 PM
Sloshed
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Sloshed: The Pro-Am Guide to New Year’s Eve Drinking

By Matthew Latkiewicz

Don't be this guy.Photo: Bettmann/CORBIS

New Year's Eve is our one mandatory holiday — you must celebrate. Try telling people you're staying in on December 31 and you will see them go through stages of confusion, disbelief, moral outrage, and activism that will end with them making plans for you. But while the idea of everyone being out is fun in theory, it's sloppy in practice. Seasoned party veterans mingle with nightlife n00bs, and nobody can get a drink because every bartender in America is in the weeds. This has to stop.

12/20/12 at 11:15 AM
Grub Guide
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Ten Awesome Bottles of New Year’s Bubbly That Aren’t the Big Brands

By Chris Cohen

How about some sparkling wine from the Jura?Photo: Melissa Hom

Sure, when New Year's Eve rolls around this year, you could grab a magnum of Krug or Moët and call it a night. But when you know which farm your pork comes from and are on a first-name basis with the person who makes your goat cheese, there's no reason to ring in the New Year with champers that's made by multinational luxury conglomerates a million bottles at a time. Far better to pop a few bottles of wine produced by small operations in limited quantities with minimal additives. New York is full of sparkling wine that's easy to find, often cheaper than the brand-name stuff, and much, much more interesting.

12/20/12 at 10:40 AM
Starbucks
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‘Starbucks Evenings’ Menu Includes Beer, Wine, Bacon-Wrapped Dates

By Sierra Tishgart

Now you can spike your grande-skinny-vanilla-soy-frappucino-whatever.

Another Starbucks location started selling beer and wine this week, and it looks like the coffee behemoth is taking booze seriously. The company’s moving forward with its “Starbucks Evenings” menu, which also includes small plates like bacon-wrapped dates, truffle macaroni and cheese, and chocolate fondue. It’s all part of Starbucks’s greater plan for world takeover through “nonbranded” coffee shops; apparently there’s even a sommelier at Starbucks HQ (enlighten us: Which wine pairs well with a pumpkin-spice latte? Does Riesling or Chardonnay complement a mediocre pound cake?). Right now, the stores with “Starbucks Evenings” are limited to Chicago, Seattle, Washington, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Portland, and Washington, D.C., but the company’s already feeling it out in New York. Yikes. This could go down as the worst date spot ever. [HuffPo, Earlier]

12/20/12 at 10:10 AM
Video Feed
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Watch the Real-Life Fruit Ninja Slice Melons, Spare Kittens

By Hugh Merwin

The best fruit-slicing video game you've maybe played on your phone comes to life in stunning detail in the short made by Scott Winn, who makes a lot of wonderful things. This ninja bisects pineapples, watermelons, and lemons (sort of) with the greatest of ease. He would never hurt a flying kitten, and, at the 1:02 mark, he pummels a Twinkie. This really ought to be a feature film.

Watch out, tiny kitten!

12/20/12 at 09:40 AM
Racist Receipts
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2012: The Year in Racist Restaurant Receipts

It'd be great if at this time next year there weren't enough instances of restaurant employees getting creative with the point-of-sales computer feature that allows them to enter names for customers. In 2012, Stick a Fork in It reports, cashiers and other restaurant employees around the country nicknamed customers "Chinx," "Lady Chinky Eyes," "Ching," "Chong," and "N----- Don't Tip," among others. Earlier this month, a bartender at Chilly D's in Stockton, California, departed from the script and branched off into more general hatefulness when he called three women "Fat Girls" on their check. That's not progress. [OC Weekly, Earlier]

12/20/12 at 09:00 AM
Beetle Juice
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Of Course You Can Drink Vegan Cocktails in Bushwick

By Hugh Merwin

Finally.

The owners of Pine Box Rock Shop in Bushwick are wary of liquor produced with byproducts derived from animals: While it may not seem like liquor wouldn't be vegan, because of production methods there may be bone meal or eggs in your Irish cream, or an extract made from crushed up beetles may be giving that fruit-flavored gin its deep pink hue. So Jeff and Heather Rush put together a 100 percent vegan cocktail menu, with some creative workarounds. Their bloody marys have no blood, of course, but that smoky flavor you're getting with that first sip? It comes from a healthy jigger of vegan bacon vodka. [Brooklyn Paper]