Posts for January 2, 2013

Brown Cafe on the LES Closes; South American Wine Tasting at Corkbuzz

• The LES's much-beloved Brown Cafe is shuttering its doors after twelve years of business to "focus on the development of multifaceted projects which include a nonprofit food awareness program for public schools." [The Lo-Down]

• Recently(-ish) closed Overseas Taste Restaurant in Chinatown is to be replaced by Makan-Lah, a Malaysian street food tapas restaurant/wine bar. [Bowery Boogie]

• Union Square's Corkbuzz Wine Studio is hosting a South American tasting class January 12; register here for $50. Plus: Throughout this month, Sunday nights are corkage-free! [Grub Street]

The Marrow's menu came out today. »

Subway Is Putting ‘Creamy Sriracha Sauce’ on Its Sandwiches

Can a hot sauce as virtuous as sriracha jump the shark? Foodbeast reports that a somewhat cryptozoological condiment called "Creamy Sriracha Sauce" is being put on Subway sandwiches at the chain's Santa Ana, California, stores. It will be available for a "limited time only," according to the in-store sign, which is currently the best proof of its existence, and the field report indicates the sauce tastes "less sweet and much more spicy" when applied to a turkey sandwich. Any more rooster sauce sightings out there? [Foodbeast via Gawker]

Eggplant Is Also Trying to Kill You

By Hugh Merwin

One dangerous aubergine.

More bad food news: Eighty restaurant patrons in Beijing had to be hospitalized after they ordered and ate eggplant stir-fries that were spiked with clonidine, which caused immediate fatigue, dizziness, and vomiting. 34 of the restaurant's customers needed to have the drug cleaned from their bloodstream, the Salt reports, quoting a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. According to the folks from the No. 307 Hospital of the People's Liberation Army, who authored the study with members of Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences, the intentional poisoning was designed to draw customers to a rival, presumably clonidine-free restaurant back in 2010, so we should all be safe.

A meal ticket of bad food. »

Watch the Meatball Shop Guys Explain the Ins and Outs of Style

By Hugh Merwin
Watch Video

They may be restaurateurs, but Daniel Holzman and Michael Chernow (who modeled for J.Crew) are also style gurus of a sort, as this video from Birchbox makes abundantly clear. "Nobody had really, like, hit the hammer on the meatball," says the Meatball Shop's Michael Chernow, trying to explain the secret of the restaurant empire he shares with chef Daniel Holzman. The guys may continue to riff about shaving cream, badger brushes, work boots, and the importance of good takeout, but after about two minutes of banter, it becomes clear that the real secret to Holzman and Chernow's partnership is that the guys don't take themselves too seriously.

Takeout. »

Starbucks Tops 2012 Most-Expensed Restaurants List

By Hugh Merwin

America runs on venti.

Hot diggity Frappuccino! What, if anything, does it say about the state of the collective American workplace that Starbucks ranks No. 1 on a list of last year's most popular expensed restaurants? There were 20,084 receipts for things like lattes and babyccinos filed with the expense-management company Certify between January and November, Bucks reports. “They’re not taking clients there," says Certify executive Bob Neveu. "It’s an individual running between planes, grabbing something quick.” Neveu says McDonald's, Subway, Panera Bread, and Burger King round out the top five, and while there aren't any real surprises here, does this mean that more and more "meals" are being consumed at Starbucks? A "night menu" of bacon-wrapped dates, truffle mac and cheese, and chocolate fondue suddenly doesn't sound like such a wacky idea after all. [Bucks/NYT, Earlier]

The Other Critics: Pete Wells Travels to Jersey City; Tejal Rao to Bushwick

By Max Thorn

Whether cooking a holiday meal or splurging on one the city's innumerable New Year's Eve prix fixe menus, we've all had food on the mind these past few weeks. The critics are no exception. Our own Adam Platt skipped a formal review to put together the 2013 edition of the Where to Eat list. Where have the other critics dined during the holidays? Read on to find out.

Thirty Acres, Arlington Club, and more ahead. »

Overweight People Somehow Less Likely to Die Than Skinnier People

By Sierra Tishgart

Happy for a reason.Photo: iStockphoto

Something to tell your annoying friends who made New Year's resolutions to eat more lettuce and enroll in cultlike exercise classes: The "largest and most carefully done" study of body-mass index and mortality suggests that people whose BMI ranked them as overweight are less likely to die than normal-weight people. “Fat per se is not as bad as we thought,” Dr. Kamyar Kalantar-Zadeh, professor of medicine and public health at the University of California, Irvine, told the Times. “What is bad is a type of fat that is inside your belly,” he said. “Non-belly fat, underneath your skin in your thigh and your butt area — these are not necessarily bad.” As it turns out, fat may even be protective and nutritional for the elderly. As expected, some experts are critical of this enabling study because factors like blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes weren't taken into consideration. So maybe don't give up jogging just yet. [NYT]

Prime Grill Moving Into the Beacon Space

By Hugh Merwin

Once Beacon, now Prime.

That was fast: Thirteen-year-old kosher steak house Prime Grill will replace Beacon, which closed last week after thirteen years of business at 25 West 56th Street. In a letter to its regular customers, the restaurant's owners explained that it will close its current 49th Street location on January 18 and reopen shortly in the space most recently home to Waldy Malouf's contemporary American restaurant. The new Prime Grill will have 360 seats, the old restaurant's wood-burning oven, and a separate room where a dedicated sommelier will pour old and rare vintages of Herzog wine, which is also kosher. [Earlier]

Pizza-Man Says He’s the World’s Fastest

Old Greenwich, Connecticut pizza chef Bruno DiFabio will try to make five pizzas in less than 28 seconds, the Post reports, and set a new world record in the process. To earn his place in the books, the veteran pie-maker must produce uniform discs of dough that completely cover the regulation screens, and you can be sure that Guinness officials will have their finely tuned custom pizza calipers out when they visit the Harry's Italian Pizza Bar, which will host the record-shattering attempt in a few weeks.*

Read more »

Looks Like Bill Telepan Is Opening a Tribeca Restaurant

By Hugh Merwin

Headed downtown?

The agenda for next week's CB1 Manhattan meeting indicates we'll not only learn more about Pane Panelle's Mexican-Spanish replacement, but Tribeca Citizen points us to an even more intriguing liquor license resolution item for "Telepan Local" at 329 Greenwich Street, most recently home to the Industria Argentina. It certainly seems like Bill Telepan, the Wellness in the Schools co-founder and chef whose UWS restaurant will turn eight this year, is looking to open a downtown establishment. The unofficial Lord of the Greenmarket ran a Tribeca pop-up in 2011, and while we're totally ready to roll out the fiddleheads, we also reached to the chef for more details.

Read more »

Joe Bastianich Wants You to Quit Smoking

By Hugh Merwin

It's high time for resolutions, and restaurateur Joe Bastianich is imploring the smokers of America to quit with the help of a cessation program called Blueprint to Quit. Joe smoked for eighteen years, especially throughout the early days of his partnership with Mario Batali, when he says he'd routinely be on his third pack by the time he was on the "way home from Babbo each night." Though he's been done with tobacco for fifteen years, Bastianich recently became a paid spokesperson for pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, which manufactures nicotine gum and patches. Like those Pumpkin Pie Spice Pringles, and possibly Twinkies in the near future, Blueprint to Quit is available only at Wal-Mart. [People, Earlier]

Will Chumley’s Reopen in 2013?

By Hugh Merwin

The speakeasy abides.Photo: Mike Rogers

The April 2007 partial wall collapse that threatened the structural integrity of five buildings in Greenwich Village and closed one of the city's most famous bars has been mended, but it's nonetheless been a hard road to recovery for the former speakeasy Chumley's, the Times reports. Chumley's managing partners have kept its interior furnishings in storage for the last five years and are practically ready to start serving cocktails and burgers at the refurbished watering hole where F. Scott Fitzgerald once drank; they'd even previously set reopening dates, but it turns out that Chumley's will have to get "city permission to reclaim its status as a bar and restaurant grandfathered into a sleepy, residential street," and it remains possible that 86 will go residential. Still, hope looms: The Times reports there are 75 years left on the 99-year lease. [NYT, Earlier]

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