Grub Street presents the Grub Report, a survey snapshot of the restaurant world in summer 2009. We polled eleven prolific eaters from around the country and in various parts of the restaurant business on ten questions, ranging from Most Important Chef to Most Overhyped Trend. What did we learn? Dave Chang is both one of the most important and most overhyped chefs cooking today. Fine dining will return, but in different forms. Portland, Oregon, could be the model for how we’ll all eat one day. And, if these people have anything to say about it, the end of the burger craze, and of chalkboard menus, may be nigh.

With thanks to Tony Bourdain, Jonathan Gold, Gael Greene, Kate Krader, Ed Levine, Michael Nagrant, Adam Platt, Alan Richman, Lee Schrager, Regina Schrambling, and Bret Thorn.

1. Who are the three most important chefs in the U.S. today?

Winners: Mario Batali, David Chang, Grant Achatz.

Kate Krader, Food & Wine: I’m going to paraphrase the New Yorker’s Zev Borow here: Dave Chang is to most chefs in America as excellent heroin is to Capri Sun juice boxes. Also: Roy Choi and the Kogi truck. You cannot overestimate the power of Twitter and spontaneous information in the world of food, and Kogi really put it out there. Not only do they get their message directly to customers but they also get instantaneous feedback — “the short ribs today were overcooked.” It’s an amazing way to build communities.

Jonathan Gold, LA Weekly: Mario Batali is probably more devoted to authenticity than any Italian chef in America at the moment, but more important, he has an unerring sense of what tastes good — and he seems to have mastered a formula for choosing interesting chefs for the restaurants in his empire and leaving them more or less alone.

Bret Thorn, Nation’s Restaurant News: Grant Achatz, because he helps keep molecular gastronomy (for lack of a better word) relevant by making the results of it taste good.

Honorable Mentions: Daniel Boulud, Guy Fieri, April Bloomfield.

Regina Schrambling, Gastropoda: Daniel Boulud because he’s an American go-getter in a French package and leads the way in less-than-obvious ways. You have to wonder if the burger insanity would be so insane if not for his DB reinvention.

Michael Nagrant, Hungry Mag: Guy Fieri has more frat boys wearing sunglasses on the back of their heads at a single Dave Matthew’s concert than Thomas Keller has served meals in his lifetime. Go to any non-foodie cocktail party in the nation and I’m willing to bet seven out of ten people won’t even know who Ferran Adrià or Grant Achatz are. The road to eating at Robuchon for the majority of people goes through Rachael Ray. Ray and Fieri are the culinary versions of marijuana, the food-TV gateway drug to eating and cooking either bigger, better, and badder food, or, for lazier folks, a lifetime of the cooking equivalent of smoking really bad weed.

Tony Bourdain: April Bloomfield. Because she worships (appropriately) at the Church of Fergus — and because she’s good for the world.

2. What is the most important restaurant city in the country right now?

Winner: New York.

Alan Richman: Alas, it remains New York, and the reason for the regretful tone is not because I think less of New York but because the competition has backslid in these hard times even more than New York has, if you can say that New York has backslid at all. Life is more fun, where food journalism is concerned, when New York is under pressure. Economically, Vegas is in trouble. Not much is going on in Chicago. Oddly, L.A. restaurants seem to be doing quite well, with a number of impressive new places, but it’s got too far to come to be a challenger. New York just got Aldea and Marea, both significant. On the low and medium end, nothing on earth is more important than pizza these days, and New York is so far ahead of any other city that the race for pizza supremacy is done. Finally, there’s the David Chang factor. He’s been America’s hot young chef seemingly forever, even if he must be 65 by now. The next challenger might be the city with a young chef to supplant him.

Kate Krader: New York City, but I think L.A. is really interesting because they have the chance to do more idiosyncratic ethnic food than we do in general. Besides Kogi, I think Sang Yoon’s noodle bar is going to be super interesting. And the upscale-Mexican trend there is terrific. I also like that it’s home to José Andrés and his wacky bazaar concept.

Bret Thorn: New York is still the center of the culinary universe, although I wish New Yorkers would remember that it’s not the only place in the universe, and I don’t understand why it’s so hard to find a good biscuit here.

Honorable mentions: Los Angeles, Portland.

Jonathan Gold: I’m duty-bound to say Los Angeles, aren’t I? But even if I weren’t, there is no city in the world with nearly as much diversity in its restaurants, as much access to splendid ingredients, or as much devotion to the competing concepts of tradition and change. It is not for nothing that such a huge percentage of national trends begin here.

Michael Nagrant: Portland, Oregon. Here you have a progressive semi-urban setting nestled in the cradle of agricultural milk and honey. The cooks who are innovating and feeding people here have every tool at their disposal and they’ve done it at a relatively accessible and diverse cultural level. I really believe Portland has everything at hand to be the model for how everyone in the nation can eat well. Places like Chicago or NYC are undeniably influential, but there’s an artifice to the locality and sustainability, because even the closest good farms are still hundreds of miles away and everything has to be trucked in. There’s also a general cost inaccessibility to everything that happens in those places. Portland is the goddamned Fertile Crescent. If they can’t make it work, we’re all doomed.

3. Who is the most overrated chef cooking today?

Winner: David Chang. Many respondents declined to answer this question, but Chang scored the most votes from those who did.

Adam Platt: You’d have to say Chang, and I think he’d agree. His food is great, but there are all sorts of chefs around who are technically superior.

Regina Schrambling: I hate to pick on Mario Batali, but it seems as if he’s where Emeril was ten years ago: The shtick has overtaken what kitchen brilliance he had. But then, American Italian is even less my favorite food than Italian Italian.

Gael Greene, Insatiable Critic: How can I say Ferran Adrià when I’ve not eaten his food, only the imitations? He’s certainly the most toxic chef to date.

4. Which current trend is least deserving of the hype?

Michael Nagrant: Chalkboard menus. I’d rather you burn down a forest of trees printing menus instead of invoking cheap Parisian-brasserie- or Italian-trattoria-inspired lemminglike interior-design nostalgia and thus forcing me to crane my neck and squint to see the night’s specials.

Regina Schrambling: Burgers. It’s out of control. It’s like chefs are retreating to the nursery or the fallout shelter in scary times. The greatest burger in the world is never going to be the revelation a fully and artfully conceived dish would be.

Kate Krader: Pizza can’t go for one more minute, but I feel like we’ve gotten a lot of good pies out of it. Also, this isn’t necessarily a trend, but I wish people would stop applying the steakhouse label to every single restaurant that has steak on the menu. After the Minetta review, everyone is trying to get extra credit for having a good steak; it’s ridiculous.

Honorable Mentions: Cocktail “programs” (Bourdain). Cupcakes (Bourdain, Levine). Beer pairings (Bourdain). Restaurants with no phone numbers for reservations (Schrager). Lounge-restaurants (Gold). Air and foam (Greene). Rooms so dark you can’t see your food (Greene). Faux speakeasies (Platt). Pork belly (Thorn).

5. What is the last restaurant to which you voluntarily returned?

Bret Thorn: Aquavit, partly because it’s across the street from my office, but also because, although more than twenty years old, it still has a distinct style and food that’s different from anyplace else that I’ve been to in New York.

Adam Platt: Num Pang Sandwich Shop, on 12th Street between University Place and Fifth for the lunchtime five-spice glazed pork belly special (garnished with crunchy pickled rhubarb).

Michael Nagrant: The Bristol in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood (which ironically has a chalkboard menu). I returned because I’d been super hard on it in an early review and felt a responsibility to see if anything had changed (God strike down any critic who relishes knocking a place down), and also out of a piqued curiosity spurred by one particular dish of pork liver, maybe the best thing I ate in 2008 that I had on one of those early visits. Doing so, I was rewarded with the finest hunk of tender grilled pork heart swimming in a smoky chili broth that was one of the best things I’ve eaten this year so far. Chris Pandel may be one of the best organ-meat cooks in the country right now, a Yankee Fergus Henderson on the rise.

Honorable Mentions: Per Se (Bourdain), Ssäm Bar (Krader), Locanda Verde (Krader, Greene), Spotted Pig (Krader), Pizzeria Veloce (Krader), Europane (Pasadena; Gold), Aquavit, Standard Grill (Greene), DBGB (Greene), Salumeria Rosi (Greene), Marea (Schrager), Gramercy Tavern (Levine), Bar Bao (Levine), West Branch (Levine), Bar Boulud (Levine), The New French (Schrambling).

6. When and how will fine dining rebound?

Adam Platt: A new, stripped-down version of “Fine Dining” was already emerging prior to the recession, in places like Blue Hill, Momo[fuku] Ko, Craft, and even Per Se. As the money comes back, this snooty, pared-down, back-to-nature style will continue to flourish, dominate, and then, like everything else under the sun, it will crash under its own weight.

Tony Bourdain: “I think some things will soon be gone forever. A certain style of service, abandoned during hard times, will be looked back on with incredulity and a sense of relief that it’s not around anymore. You already see the direction the grandmasters of fine dining are going — the smart ones, anyway: toward the type of food and types of places they themselves like to eat. It’s also a function of a newly empowered chef class — they don’t have to create a whole bogus, front-of-the-house stage set. People will trust them — and will pay what’s needed for top-quality ingredients. They don’t need the bullshit anymore. So why complicate their lives? I mean … who likes dealing with expensive linens and crystal?

Ed Levine, Serious Eats: By the end of the year, fine dining will rebound thanks to an improving economy. But only those fine-dining establishments that understand that the price/value ratio is just as important in what they do as it is in fast-food joints will flourish.

Bret Thorn: Give it about two years. It will rebound in part because of economic recovery, and in part because fine-dining restaurants are responding to customers’ desire for flexibility, especially with regard to the amount of time it takes to enjoy a meal. Customers who have the money (and they will have it again someday) will spend it on food that they like, but many of them don’t want to spend three hours eating it.

7. What should be the next big ethnic food?

Bret Thorn: It should be Indian, which keeps emerging in fits and spurts just to vanish in the shadows again. I hope at some point soon it will achieve the critical mass of popularity that it needs to cross over to the mainstream. It’s varied and delicious and our country’s palates would benefit from further exposure to it. But I think the next big ethnic food just might be Korean.

Jonathan Gold: It’s all ethnic food, from Le Bernardin to Babbo to Apple Pan. That being said, in my corner of the universe, extremely regional Mexican food seems to be coming into vogue.

Gael Greene: I’m perfectly content with Vietnamese as the ethnic food of the moment. Certainly I’m not panting for Croatian. I’d welcome a revival of classic French cooking à la Julia with lots of butter.

Honorable Mentions: Singaporan hawker food (Bourdain). Peruvian (Schrager). Indian (Thorn). “Real goddamned” Chinese (Platt).

8. What’s the best thing you’ve eaten this year for less than $10?

Michael Nagrant: For $8.23 (based on $140 for a seventeen-course meal), Curtis Duffy’s (of Avenues) King Crab, Steelhead Roe, Kalamansi, and Togaroshi. It was as revelatory and ultimately as fun and satisfying as Thomas Keller’s Oysters and Pearls and Grant Achatz’s Black Truffle Explosion.

Jonathan Gold: So many of the best things cost less than $10. But I just got back from Umbria, so I’ll say the hot torta al testo from Failero on the south shore of Lake Trasimeno, about twenty minutes west of Perugia. It’s a sandwich of flatbread baked to order over a roaring olivewood fire and stuffed with oozy stracchino cheese and a handful of lightly boiled greens. Ten bucks gets you both the torta and a half-liter of wine to go with it.

Sandwiches at Num Pang (Platt, Levine)
Signature baogette at Pho Sure (Platt)
Gray’s Papaya Recession Special (Levine)
A slice of pizza bianco from Sullivan Street Bakery (Levine)
A slice at Sal & Carmine’s (Levine)
A mini-bagel with scallion cream cheese at Absolute Bagels (Levine)
Hamburger at White Manna in Hackensack (Bourdain)
Greek spreads for two at Kefi (Schrambling)
Special bánh mì at Fatty Crab (Schrambling)
Clam pizza at Veloce Pizza (Schrager)
Macaroni and cheese at the Smith (Greene)
Coffee-caramel ice-cream sundae with brownies, candied pecans, and chocolate sauce at DBGB (Greene)
Sunflower shoots from Evolutionary Organics at the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket (Thorn)

9. What should Dave Chang do next?

Jonathan Gold: Clone himself so the magazines/blogs/networks could obsess on someone else for a change.

Tony Bourdain: He should relax and rest on his laurels — somewhere warm where he can cook crabs, drink beer, and argue about the New England Transcendentalists with a good friend.

Adam Platt: Chang should do whatever he wants. Just don’t open a burger bar.

10. Which foreign chef would you most like to see come to America?

Jonathan Gold: Albert Adrià, the brother of (and pastry chef for) his more famous brother, when he isn’t at his fantastically wonderful Barcelona tapas bar Inopia. Ferran may aspire to be the best chef in the world, but Albert aspires to make the best sardine sandwich in the world. I know where my sympathies lie.

Martin Picard (Bourdain), Francis Mallmann (Bourdain), Andoni Aduriz (Bourdain), Ferran Adrià (Platt, Levine), Jamie Oliver (Schrambling), Heston Blumenthal (Levine), Fergus Henderson (Levine), David Thompson (Thorn), Even Thais (Thorn), Teksuya Wakuda (Greene), Michel Guerard (Greene).

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This just in, via an e-mail from the man himself this morning: Keith McNally has tapped none other than Nate Appleman to helm the kitchen at his forthcoming pizzeria on the Bowery, Pulino’s Bar and Pizzeria. Appleman, who will be chef and partner, was last seen looking for a point of entry into the New York market, having parted ways with his partners at A16 and SPQR in San Francisco. He’s also this year’s recipient of both the James Beard Rising Star award and Best New Chef honors from Food & Wine magazine. While the last time McNally experimented with a name chef on an Italian restaurant, at Morandi, the results were initially mixed, the McNally-Appleman one-two immediately catapults Pulino’s into the territory of places like Otto and Co., where top operators and chefs are in tandem, and puts it on a path for epic success. It’s a (characteristically) very shrewd move for McNally and a virtual lottery win for Appleman, who has something to prove in NYC. Pulino’s, a breakfast, lunch, dinner, and late-night proposition — per the McNally standard — will open sometime in December.

Related: Is Nate Appleman the Next David Chang or Mario Batali?

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Filed Under: bowery, epic pairings, keith mcnally, nate appleman, pizza, pulinos

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Animal’s pop-up restaurant at the Backyard Restaurant at Sole East is now up and running, two days into its weeklong stint in Montauk. Jon Shook, and not his partner Vinny Dotolo, is the half of the operation that made the trip east, and a spot inspection last night indicates that he is indeed putting people in seats. The various Animal staples they’re offering are for the most part excellent (their seven-item pop-up menu is below), every bit as good as you can get them on Fairfax. Saturday is fully booked, and spots for the rest of the nights are going fast, according to Jon. If one were to head east, the ideal order is a three-courser: first, crispy hominy and petit basque, the latter something of a French onion soup without the soup; second, the pig-ear salad; and finally, the pork-belly sliders and their famous Foie Gras Loco Moco. If you stick around past service, ask Jon for a shot of the excellent tequila he’s got stashed back in his room, unless he killed the bottle after we left last night.

Animal at Sole East
Crispy Hominy, Lime 7.
Pig Ear, Chili Lime, Fried Eggs 12.
Melted Petit Basque, Chorizo, Garlic Bread 12.
BBQ Pork Belly, Brioche 12.
Foie Gras Loco Moco, Quail Eggs, Spam, Hamburger 35.
Balsamic Pork Ribs, Green Beans, Sungold Tomatoes, Arugula, Chili Lemon Vinaigrette 37.
Bacon Chocolate Crunch Bar, S & P Anglaise 8.

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Filed Under: animal, hamptons, jon shook, meanwhile in the hamptons, pop-ups, sole east

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As our How to Start a Food Truck guide dropped this morning, the Daily News reported that the Parks Department has evicted the hot-dog vendor who had a lease in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He couldn’t pay his $53,558 monthly rent — one of the most expensive leases in the city. Truck guru Zach Brooks of Midtown Lunch annotated our guide: “Saying that ‘high volume and excellent margins can be a reality for trucks’ is like saying that recording an album of music can net you millions of dollars.” Which it can, but there is a valuable lesson here nevertheless, that not every Churros y Chalupas hipster truck outfit is a gold mine. Indeed, for some, the prospect of returning to i-banking doesn’t look so bad.

So You’re Still Thinking of Opening a Food Truck!?! [Midtown Lunch]
Parks Department Evicts Hot Dog Vendor [NYDN]
Earlier: User’s Guide: How to Start Your Own Food Truck
Has the Food Truck Backlash Officially Begun?

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In the two years since New York published an extensive guide called “Cartography,” the city’s enthusiasm for street food has only increased. Trucks and carts, once the purview of recent immigrants, are now alternative gigs for displaced recession victims or starter dream jobs for anyone who ever wanted to own a restaurant but couldn’t make the numbers crunch. Before you fire her up, however, there are a few things you should know about operating a food truck, from getting a license to making sure you don’t get knifed by the halal guy next to whom you just parked (spoiler: You’re going to get knifed by the halal guy).

Startup/Operating Costs: Though trucks are a small business, they still require a significant investment. Costs include the truck, permit acquisition, supplies, security, insurance, and truck storage, among other things. Some of the costs are obvious, and some are not. Truck parking, for example, may not seem like an expense, but the Department of Health requires all trucks to be stored and maintained at a food-truck commissary, where you’ll pay rent for things like access to clean water and refrigeration. The less you need your truck to do, the cheaper it is. Treats Truck, which bakes its goods off-site, was born in 2007 with $80,000 in capital.

According to one business plan we’ve seen (but never came to fruition), a pizza truck seeking $300,000 in start-up capital expected to make money right away. High volume and excellent margins can be a reality for trucks. For this pizza concept the profit margin was estimated to be over 50 percent, as compared to a good restaurant, where the margins aren’t greater than 10 percent, if you’re lucky.

Permits: The Rules of the City of New York, the abstruse, hulking set of guidelines that regulate activities ranging from operating a street cart to carrying a handgun, stipulates that two permits are required: a Mobile Food Vendor License for you and a Mobile Food Vending Unit Permit for your truck. The former is a matter of paperwork and a few classes. The latter is not, as the city stopped issuing them ten years ago, according to a representative at the Department of Consumer Affairs, and there has been a cap of 3,100 licenses since 1979 (5,100, if you count fruit and vegetable carts, too; a bill has been introduced to raise the cap to 25,000). The permits are distributed via lotteries. Veterans are eligible for certain exceptions and receive priority status in the permit lotteries, which are held periodically, according to Elliot Marcus, associate commissioner for the Bureau of Food Safety and Community Sanitation. And the rep over at the Department of Consumer Affairs did tell us that you can get an exception from the Parks Department or a hospital to operate on their property.

Indeed, the process is extremely complex and loopholed, and any exception will increase your start-up costs significantly. The Times ran a story on this recently, as did the Village Voice. Also, “some people are operating carts legally and some aren’t,” hinted our Consumer Affairs operator.

The upshot: Your only real option for getting a permit is the black market, where you can either buy a permit illegally, mostly in Queens, for between $5,000 and $20,000, or partner with an existing license holder, for cash and a portion of profits, say 10 percent of sales. If you’re interested in pursuing one of these options, head to a food-truck commissary (we’ll get to those in just a moment) or ask your favorite truck operator, who might have heard about an available permit via word of mouth. (Note that the NYPD arrested six people last month on charges of fraud counts related to illegal food-vending permits, so brokers — and permits — are harder to find.)

One important footnote here is that while the brokering of permits is highly illegal, once you’ve secured the permit, the Department of Health does very little at present to police these rogue permits. And, Marcus concedes, there are many loopholes. For example, “There’s absolutely no requirement that a permit holder works the cart. I could have a permit and hire people [to work] seven days a week and monitor what they do,” he says. “And that would be completely legal .. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not the biggest health priority for us.”

The Truck: This is the relatively easy part, as food trucks are readily available online. Budget $75,000 to $100,000 for the acquisition and retrofitting of the truck. (Kenny Lao bought his Rickshaw Dumpling Truck on the “Commercial Trucks” section of eBay.) To ensure that your rig passes Health Department approval, Sean Baskinski of the Urban Justice Center’s Street Vendor Project recommends Workman Cycles in Ozone Park (800-BUY-CART) for the job. The garage does enough truck work to be well versed and up-to-date with DOH code. (There’s also Steve’s Sheet Metal in Woodside, but ’Steve’ just got arrested for permitting fraud. True.)

Location, Location, Loc … hey, who slashed my tires?: City codes make certain streets and areas off-limits to food vendors, so consult the list by the Street Vendor Project when you’re picking a spot. There is an unspoken law of the street that says seniority plays — and that if you try to park on a corner or stretch that has long been occupied by someone else, you will pay a hefty price. We asked Kenny Lao why he doesn’t just set up shop in the meatpacking district, which on a weekend night would seem as high-volume as locations come, and he indicated that the reason was in part the threat of violence from existing vendors.

Still feeling the Churros y Chalupa truck, champ? Most of the big restaurateurs in the city have passed on trucks because of the complications around permits and location. (Indeed, the Street Vendor Project is now actually offering a class on it.) But, don’t let that scare you: good luck. Let us know when you fire up the Twitter.

Related: Rather eat at trucks than own one? Check out our street-food map with over 60 New York vendors. Then compare our trucks to others in Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

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Filed Under: cartography, food carts, truckin, user’s guide

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The new Café Boulud, rendered.

In the restaurant business, the weeks of August and early September are as slow as they come, and various places around town take advantage of the lull in the name of rest and renovation. Per Se, a perennial summer-vacation taker, will stay open this year, but here are some places recharging for the busy fall season:

Café Boulud: Daniel Boulud’s Upper East Side clubhouse will close on August 16 for several weeks, aiming to reopen in “late September,” according to official word from DB’s camp today. The Feedbag has details and behold, a new rendering of the the renovated space is pictured here.

Chanterelle: As we’ve reported, the venerable Tribeca New American will close on Monday, August 17, for at least a couple of months for extensive renovation. A full bar will be added, and other touches to refresh and dress down the restaurant are planned.

David Burke Townhouse: Official word spread today that David Burke’s de-Donatella’d restaurant on East 61st Street will close tomorrow for a seemingly extensive overhaul. Both new menu and design are promised, when the restaurant opens “later this month.”

Bar Blanc Bistro: True to its pretentious European roots, Bar Blanc will take off still more time this year (it closed briefly for a dress down earlier this year), this time for its annual summer vacation. The place will be closed from September 2 through September 8.

The Blue Seats: Per Eater, the Lower East Side sports bar will be closed this week until Wednesday for some quick rehab, including the addition of a communal table up front.

Harbor: The nautically inclined restaurant will take off the last week of August, from the 24th through the 31st.

Others? To the comments, please!

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Filed Under: bar blanc bistro, blue seats, cafe boulud, chanterelle, david burke townhouse, harbor, summer holidays

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Would the real Frank Bruni please stand up?

Eat Me Daily posts its Bruni Dopplegänger Matrix (allow us: the BDM), which is just what it sounds like, from Mandy Patinkin to a young Steve Martin. [EMD]

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Gastrolounge threatening to open on your block? Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York offers some tips on waging your “own personal Noise War.” [Vanishing New York]

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Is it a sign of how mainstream food culture has become that Julie & Julia is being shown in many New York area theaters at 12:01 a.m. Thursday night/Friday morning — the for-crazies-only showtime usually slated for blockbusters like Batman and Harry Potter? Or is this just another indication of how insanely good a job Sony Pictures has done at hyping the flick (thank you kindly, Eater, for the wrap). Let’s go with both. Yes, tickets are still available.

Julie & Julia Movietimes [NYM]

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People, meet Frank Bruni. Frank, these are your people.

Publishers Weekly has an interview with outgoing Times critic Frank Bruni today (his last review drops August 19) in anticipation of the August 20 release of his memoir, Born Round. In the book he reveals, among other things, that he’s battled bulimia for many years. Here’s an excerpt from the PW story:

PW: Why tell [your story] now?

FB: One of the editors who actually offered me the job had met me when I was at my heaviest. Later on, I repeatedly heard the comment, “Gee, I expected you to be a little fatter. You must be one of those people who never had a weight problem.” These were people who didn’t know me as anything but a restaurant critic and didn’t know anything about my struggles.

But what’s far more interesting about this article is that a current photo of Bruni runs alongside it.

Indeed, the reviewer who may come to be regarded as the last rigorously anonymous critic in the business — the extent to which he went undetected successfully would be a separate discussion — has revealed himself. Although three of his reviews are still set to run, this may very well signal that he’s finished with his review meals. While he would not confirm or deny this idea when we asked this afternoon, in our time knowing and observing him, Bruni has been extremely calculating and careful about broadcasting his whereabouts. It is almost inconceivable that he would allow a photo of himself to be published, the man unmasked at the eleventh hour, unless he’d concluded eating in his official capacity of restaurant critic — and just wanted to spend another week or two torturing newbie restaurants for fun. So while you may not want to let your guard down fully just yet, chefs, you can probably exhale: Frankie Boom Boom is finished with you.

Cooking the Books with Frank Bruni [Publishers Weekly via EMD]

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And while we’re on the topic of ethical eating, now that we’ve had a chance to read it, we might as well again mention Michael Pollan’s epic, self-indulgent, and intermittently persuasive essay on the end of cooking from this past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. Seems the ritual of cooking has all but vanished, save for the increasing amount of time we spend defrosting, microwaving, and waiting for delivery (and grilling, but that’s just on weekends). This has made us obese and less communicative. But the Food Network is awesome! With apologies, Julia Child.

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Four new things guaranteed to keep your productivity in check.

And now a quick look at some of the new or improved things to happen in the restaurant webspace of late.

I Still Ate It: Perhaps inspired by our post last week on death-wish-style eating, there is now I Still Ate It (”It was a little gross, but …”). If it can keep pace, it stands a good chance of being a blog-to-book success, and in the meantime, others’ poor judgment is our entertainment. Sample entry: “Last night I found week-old lo mein in my fridge. I tasted it; it was gross. I threw it in the garbage. Fast-forward three hours. I am stoned. I wander into the kitchen and remember the week-old lo mein nestled in the trash. I take it out and inspect it. Still gross. Grosser, even. I still ate it. Tasty.”

NewYorkPicks: Annoying interstitial caps aside, this site just launched in beta to track restaurant buzz on Twitter. Here is what people are tweeting about Kesté, for example. At the outset, it seems somewhat less susceptible to shills than other public forums, plus, in theory, it’s in real time. It needs a slightly larger user-base to kill, but if nothing else it’s eliminating Twitter noise and is nicely focused, which are never bad things.

NBC New York: The Peacock’s local effort was out of beta as of the end of last week, with a new look and streamlined navigation. Food and restaurant content is here, and this mood thing could be something — the crowd is “bored” by, for example, Thrillist’s Hamptons party photos. Seems, too, NBC will do some amount of reviewing, such as of blog darling JoeDoe’s.

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