“The Lion equivocates artfully” between its high-end and populist impulses, says Shauna Lyon. The food is good, and “for all the self-conscious spectacle, the staff is highly skilled and courteous, if precocious.” [NYer]
Related: Ivygate: The Lion Gets Tangled Up in Fake-Ivy Fiasco

The five food stands at FoodParc are “given to remarkable fits of almost maniacal creativity,” raves Gael Greene. “I have tasted pleasures on the menu so totally over the top thrilling I plot to return even though the crush from 11 to 3 is daunting and my guy isn’t comfortable doing dinner in what looks a lot like an airport food court.” [Insatiable Critic]
Related: A Look Inside FoodParc, the Midtown Food Court Inspired by Blade Runner

Tu Do is “merely good,” Robert Sietsema declares, though “the food is often worth it.” Skip the pho and go for the beef bo lac, “a warm salad of butter-basted cubes, tender as hell, tossed with sweet onions, green peppers, and ripe tomatoes, dripping enough meaty juices, you’ll wish you had a baguette to sop them up.” [VV]

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Filed Under: the other critics, foodparc, the lion, tu do

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It’s been a year to the day that Condé Nast announced that they were folding Gourmet. Former editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl commemorated the anniversary with pancakes, tweeting, “Foggy, melancholy morning. Gourmet’s end one year today. Fat fluffy pancakes, drizzled maple syrup, crisp smoky Benton’s bacon. Full.” We’re honoring the somber day with a look at where the mag’s major players have landed in the past twelve months. (New Grub Street network editor Alan Sytsma once worked there before its demise, but he assures us he was definitely not a major player.) We considered assessing their new lives — Better off? Worse off? Call it a draw? — but really, compared to the way Condé’s food properties are going, they’re all winners.

Ruth Reichl, Editor-in-Chief
America’s most beloved food editor spent a year eating fabulously and tweeting about it. Last week she announced her new relationship with Random House, where she’ll be an editor-at-large and also churn out three books over the next few years.

Lawrence Karol, Managing Editor
After a six-month tenure as the executive managing editor at W, Karol jumped ship in September to be the managing editor at Architectural Digest, part of the design mag’s masthead overhaul in conjunction with its move from L.A. to New York.

John “Doc” Willoughby, Executive Editor
The longtime America’s Test Kitchen contributor, and former Cook’s Illustrated executive editor, went back to a full-time gig there. He’s hitting the road on a tour to support his latest, The America’s Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook.

Kemp M. Minifie, Executive Food Editor
The former Test Kitchen overlord returned to the brand, overseeing Gourmet’s repackaged, special-edition one-offs. She’s also a contributor to AOL’s Epicurious-esque home-cooking and recipes site, KitchenDaily, under supervision of editor-in-chief Cheryl Brown, herself a former Gourmet editor. (A handful of other Gourmet folks also landed at KitchenDaily, including senior editor Jane Daniels Lear, and food editor Gina Marie Miraglia Eriquez.)

Richard Ferretti, Creative Director
Shortly after Gourmet folded, Ferretti joined the team at Coach — the leather-goods company — where he’s the senior vice-president and creative director of both Coach and their new super-luxury brand Reed Krakoff. (Former Gourmet special projects editor Jacqueline Terrebonne is also at Coach, as a senior accounts manager.)

William Sertl, Travel Editor
Dropping the travel beat pretty much entirely, in December Sertl was named New York editor of BlackBoardEats.com, a TastingTable clone. He’s called on his old Gourmet pals for content: Reichl and Willoughby, among others, have made cameo appearances in his daily newsletters.

Francis Lam, Contributing Editor
Lam was one of the first ex-Gourmet staffers to land a new gig, hired almost immediately by Salon.com to run their food vertical.

Sari Lehrer, Articles Editor
Lehrer jumped in bed with Martha Stewart, taking an editor-at-large role in charge of food content at WholeLiving.com, Stewart’s online portal for mom-types.

Colman Andrews, Contributing Editor
The Saveur founding editor wrote a biography of Ferran Adrià, Ferran, for which he’s about to start on a big promotional tour. He was also tapped as the editorial director of the Daily Meal, former Forbes.com CEO Jim Spanfeller’s food site that’s scheduled to launch October 15.

Condé Nast, Magazine Conglomerate
Almost a year after tanking Gourmet, Condé still hasn’t figured out exactly what their food strategy is: Attempts to sustain the Gourmet brand have been met with less than positive receptions, mostly thanks to the deep sense of betrayal that the magazine’s readers felt in response to its unceremonious shuttering. (Though if the Gourmet Live iPad app can make good on its promise of consistently new content — at before-the-fall levels of quality — it stands a chance of earning back some of the lost goodwill.) By hauling Bon Appétit’s operations to New York from its longtime home in L.A., Condé’s other food magazine didn’t just lose longtime editor-in-chief Barbara Fairchild, it lost its editorial identity. Bon App seems likely to be reborn as a wholly new editorial enterprise that just happens to have the title of an established magazine known, for much of its life, as “that food magazine that isn’t Gourmet.”

The company’s great hope, food-wise, is Epicurious.com: The site pitches itself as an aggregation of recipes from Gourmet and Bon App archives, but as far as readers are concerned, it’s essentially an independent content provider (do you really care which magazine your recipe for chile-lime tilapia came from?). Editor-in-chief Tanya Steel is one of those rare senior-level editors who seems to really understand how the Internet works — now all Condé needs is to start listening to her.

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Filed Under: following up, bon appetit, colman andrews, conde nast, epicurious.com, francis lam, gourmet, john willoughby, kemp minifie, lawrence karol, richard ferretti, ruth reichl, sari lehrer, tanya steel, william sertl

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Oh, those crazy Scandinavians. Just when we thought we couldn’t love Ikea more than we already do thanks to their insanely beautiful baking guide Hembakat är Bäst, they go and release the Sweden-only coffee-table book as an everyone-everywhere iPhone app called Kondis (”stamina”). The app delivers all the staggeringly cool ingredient photography of the original cookbook — plus the recipes — with the brilliant addition of an exercise component. Just pick which dessert you’re going to make, then select whether you prefer walking, jogging, or biking; then you have to work off the calories in a serving of your Kanelbulle or Prinsesstårta, while a helpful voice informs you exactly how many miles you have to go until you’ve earned that slice of cake.

As app trailers go, the one for Kondis is up there with the best: It features a jovial grandma-type nattering in Swedish (with helpful English subtitles) as she bakes a cinnamon roll, laces up her running shoes, and goes for a semi-surreal calorie burn through the Scandinavian countryside.

IKEA Kondis [Official site]

Related: Let’s Play a Guessing Game With Ikea’s Flat-Out Gorgeous Baking Book

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Filed Under: app-etizing, baking, homemade is best, ikea, videos

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New York Times book critic Dwight Garner pulls precisely zero punches in his gleefully devastating review of Colman Andrews’s biography of Ferran Adrià, Ferran, a book he says is so fawning and hagiographic that it “lays on the cream sauce with a heavy hand.” Yes, it’s a terrific piece of balls-out criticism — and the paragraph where Garner tears into Adrià himself is a master class in paralepsis — but oh, the zingers! “Reading “Ferran” is like being waterboarded with truffle oil,” writes Garner. Elsewhere: “Good luck getting a reservation at his restaurant … Good luck, too, wading through more than 50 pages of ‘Ferran.’ Mr. Andrews’s awestruck observations are an appetite suppressant.” You can test your mettle against the first nine pages, which the Times helpfully includes as a PDF excerpt. Feel free to report back with your page count (and related thoughts) in the comments.

A Chef as Visionary, Poet and Chemist [NYT]
Ferran Excerpt [PDF]

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Filed Under: bookshelf, colman andrews, dwight garner, el bulli, ferran, ferran adria, teardowns

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On this chilly Monday, why not watch David Chang teach Opening Ceremony’s Rory Satran how to shuck an oyster and top it with melon-shiso purée? The act of shucking itself is quick work, and we commend Chang in particular for conducting himself with absolutely no trace of innuendo, even when he says, “We’re doing an east-west motion inside” while wiggling his knife around. Watch him explain his dislike of cocktail sauce (it kills the flavor of the oyster) and tell the story of his all-time favorite bivalve experience (shocker: It involves beer) in the video.

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Filed Under: video feed, david chang, oysters, videos

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La Pizza at Eataly

In the magazine this week, Adam Platt checks out Eataly, where he finds “all sorts of unexpected pleasures” in the ingredient-specific mini-restaurants, particularly the meat-centric Manzo. (The salumi-and-cheese-oriented La Piazza fares less well.) Rob Patronite and Robin Raisfeld I.D. the newest drinking trend: wine on tap, which flows (or will soon) at restaurants like Terroir Tribeca and the John Dory Oyster Bar. They also take a peek inside Michael White’s recently opened Osteria Morini, and look ahead to three other openings: Jeffrey’s Grocery, Lowcountry, and Mehtaphor. Rachel Baker assesses the scene on a Thursday night at Lavo, the nightclub trying to bring hip back to midtown.

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Filed Under: in the magazine, eataly, jeffrey’s grocery, john dory oyster bar, lavo, lowcountry, mehtaphor, osteria morini, terroir tribeca

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In a world in which Thomas Keller dresses up like Superman, Groupon launches a dating service, Graham Elliot considers running for mayor of Chicago, and a bust of Kevin Bacon is made out of actual bacon, absolutely anything can happen. But we’re still shocked by some of the stuff that happens in this week’s James Weird Awards.

• A server at posh London restaurant Yauatcha claims that he was sexually harassed after he began losing weight and his tight work uniform showed off his body. “On one occasion, my nipples were popped out due to low temperature and one manager said to me it was sexy,” he said, also noting that his nipples were tweaked by customers. It’s unknown whether allowing such behavior from customers contributed to this restaurant receiving its Michelin star. [LondonNet UK]

• Police cited a West Manchester, Pennsylvania, restaurant after it was discovered to be serving too many free drinks to its patrons. In what universe is this a practice deserving of reprimand? [York Daily Record]

• After the owner of a Waterville, Maine, pizza restaurant couldn’t calm a spontaneous mêlée that broke out among his packed house of 50 to 75 guests, he called the police and shut off the lights — which didn’t help, the fights just got rowdier. Police blame the flash mob Fight Club on a Facebook group called “Get Naked,” whose page says they like “being wild and crazy which involves drinking excessively, having casual sex and … We like to wake up in the morning and say DAMN that was a good night with a smile, lol.” [KJ Online]

• A man wearing a black cape, mask, gloves, and a black wig pulled a gun out at a Subway in Boulder, Colorado, and demanded cash from the employee at the register. The employee bolted into the back room, and the masked supervillain left without incident. [ABC7 Denver]

• Two employees of a Sunnyside, Washington, Jack-in-the-Box were arrested for buying and selling drugs after they attempted a covert hand-off in the restaurant parking lot right in front of an off-duty police officer. In related news, this totally screwed over their shift manager. [Tri-City Herald]

• A Santa Barbara, California, man walked into a closed restaurant and told employees he would kill them unless they gave him food. They refused, and he hung out peacefully until police came to arrest him. [Daily Sound]

• A Kamloops, British Columbia, restaurant full of shrieking girls and extra security were disappointed when the Justin Bieber visit they were expecting turned out to be an elaborate prank by one of the restaurant’s employees. After e-mails requesting attractive servers and chicken nuggets on demand, a stretch limo pulled up carrying a 20-year-old wannabe actor who works in the restaurant’s kitchen. “I’m not Justin Bieber cute, but I’m a pretty good looking guy,” he said by way of appeasing the fans’ disappointment. [Kamloops News]

• A Louisville, Kentucky, man was arrested after a Sav-a-Lot employee spotted him shoving an entire box of chicken wings down his pants in the grocery store. [WLKY]

• A man whose real name is Harley Davidson Ironwing was sentenced to eighteen months in jail for injuring an 85-year-old man while attempting to flee a grocery store after stealing string cheese. The dairy product was — you guessed it — shoved down his pants. [HeraldNet.com]

• Perhaps taking a cue from Carmen Sandiego, a band of enterprising French thieves stole an entire crop of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes, using a harvesting machine to haul out 30 tons of the fruit from a Villeneuve-les-Beziers vineyard in one night. [BBC]

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Filed Under: the james weird awards, crime, hoaxes, justin bieber, michelin, sexual harrassment, wine

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Holzman relaxing outside the Meatball Shop.

Daniel Holzman isn’t sure how he’ll do at next Thursday’s Meatball Madness competition, part of the New York Wine and Food Festival. “I’m feeling very pessimistic in general,” says the Meatball Shop chef. “I have a very negative outlook on life. But you know, at the same time, I think we have a fucking damn good meatball, and whoever competes against us is going to have a run for their money.” Holzman and his partners have been toying with the idea of expanding their single restaurant into a mini-empire, but they’re stuck on finding the best location for their second shop. “The question is whether we should open in a cool, expensive neighborhood or be a more regular, hard-hat lunch spot,” he explains. “I don’t want to shack up in a shed and hang out by Walden Pond or anything, but I like the idea of not really being in the middle of everything.” Find out what he had to eat this week — including, yes, lots of meatballs — in our latest New York Diet.

Friday, September 24
I met my mom at the Greenmarket in the morning, where I had an apple and some Concord grapes. I had a mango from the lady that stands across from the Bank of America and makes the mango with the spicy sauce. If I see a street stand that has spicy, salty, lime, and fruit, I’m known to stop off there. I’m a real slut for a piece of fruit with some spice on it. We went to Grey Dog for a cup of coffee, and I had a latte, of all things. It seemed a little late in the day for a latte; I guess I have a European mentality when it comes to breakfast. I don’t have ham and eggs; I prefer to have toast or a piece of fruit, and then have my eggs in the afternoon.

I went to Soba-Ya for lunch. They have spectacularly delicious soba noodles, the best in the city. I had an iced green tea, and a tartare don, which is pretty awesome, and a gomae tofu, which is tofu made out of sesame seeds. I had zaru soba, which is a cold soba noodles with seaweed that you dip in a hot sauce, and they bring over the broth at the end and make a soup out of that. I had burdock, which I’m really into. They do it pretty traditionally Japanese, julienned with carrot and braised in soy sauce and some sort of sweet element. It’s super-crunchy; it’s like a pickle, but it’s cooked forever.

Then I went to Meatball Shop with my mom. There was a Yelp review that was talking smack about the beef meatballs, saying they weren’t “beefy” enough, so I brought my mother to taste them. She’s the only honest person I know; she would tear me apart if I deserved it. The review said they weren’t “beefy” enough, and the verdict was that the reviewer must have had an off meatball because my mother said they were delicious. I know she means it, because she’s been known to tell me something is really horrible. She doesn’t mince words, she borders on downright rude about it sometimes. I could tell that she was ready to dig into me, too, but she said they were really good. We also had a fennel thing — I’m really into fennel right now — that’s roasted with walnuts, raisins, lemon, and parsley.

For dinner, I went to STK; it was a rehearsal dinner for a wedding I was going to the next day. I had roasted chicken with creamed spinach, and some sort of weird green bean with soy sauce thing that was crunchy and strange. I didn’t get it. I had way too much to drink, for sure — I mean, it was a rehearsal dinner. There were just bottles and bottles of wine and beer. I skipped dessert that day. I came back to the shop and had a BLT with my brother, because he had just gotten in to town that day. We had a couple of beers and hung out.

Saturday, September 25
I don’t usually eat before noon, but had jujitsu that morning, and I always have a Vitaminwater and a Clif bar before I go. After that, I met my family at the Meatball Shop and we had a whole big lunch at the restaurant. I had my favorite meal there: the veggie balls with spicy meat sauce, with steamed spinach. There’s something about the veggie balls, they’re the ones that I never get bored of. We just put Concord-grape lemonade on the menu — I’m pretty stoked about that — and we had that as well.

I biked my ass home to Carroll Gardens, where we all met up and drove out to this wedding at Alder Manor in Yonkers. It’s crazy, it’s such a cool spot. There was a great appetizer and cheese-and-meat plate selection that was awesome, though the actual sit-down food was pretty terrible. We didn’t eat much of that, though, because there was so much appetizer food that was really delicious, and we were all satisfied and so drunk at that point that it didn’t matter — we were doing shots of tequila, whiskey sours, it was a party. There were little roasted lamb chops with this mustard sauce, there were some salty empanadas, that huge platter of cheese and salami and bread, and some strange dipping sauces that freaked me out a little when I ate one and it tasted like fish. I definitely had, like, a quarter-wheel of a brie-esque cheese. And then obviously there was a selection of dessert, cakes and cupcakes, and they had a whole room filled with cigars. It was fun except for the part where I woke up in the morning and was like, Jesus, my mouth tastes like an ashtray.

I wasn’t going to go back to the shop, but this chef Melissa Perillo was in town from San Francisco doing that thing at Le Fooding, and someone called me and said “She’s coming over here! You should come down!” I really should not have come because I was way too drunk to be at work, but I guess I pulled it off because everyone was like, “You seemed completely lucid and sober.” I don’t know if they were just being nice, though, because I woke up the next morning with my lights on, in my underwear, with my door open and one sock on, on top of the sheets. But I’m a good drunk, apparently.

Sunday, September 26
I went uptown, again with my brother and mom and everyone, and we had breakfast at H&H on 83rd and First. They have some of the best bagels, I think. Not the best, that’s Ess-a-Bagel, but definitely pretty delicious. I had a cinnamon-raisin bagel with salmon salad, and an everything bagel with cream cheese. Cinnamon-raisin and salmon salad sounds disgusting, but apparently my closed-minded attitude has been holding me back: It was incredibly delicious. I had a light and sweet coffee, which was because my brother screwed up when I asked him to get me black. It was amazing; it tasted like melted coffee ice cream.

I went down to the Cake Shop on Orchard Street later. We don’t really have an office at the restaurant, so that’s our go-to meeting place. One of the kitchen managers at the restaurant is a chess master, so I went there to play a game with him. I had a piece of banana bread and a cup of English Breakfast tea.

I went to the restaurant and worked on the balls for Meatball Madness for a while. I’ve been tweaking the spicy-pork balls, and this was a good excuse to get back into it.

Then I went home early because I had a lot of writing to do on our cookbook. We’re pretty stoked about it and it’s taking a huge amount of time; we’re at the halfway point where you have to put together some initial something or other, so we had to get it all together. I ordered in to my house from the WingBar. Honestly, I’m not convinced whether I’ve ever ordered shitty food to my house from a restaurant because I’m like, I’m a New Yorker, I go out to eat. But I’d had this incredibly intense craving for hot wings that was going on for weeks and weeks and weeks, and I finally broke down and was like, I need to get some hot wings in me. I ate them and had some Budweiser, and then I slept better than I have in a long time because I finally had my hot wings.

Monday, September 27
I spent the entire first half of the day at the restaurant, because we have a new recipe we’re developing for Jamaican-jerk-chicken balls. I was catering my friend’s art show, and he’s been asking me to do Jamaican-jerk-chicken balls forever, and I thought it would be a fun surprise to put the Rasta Balls on his catering menu. One of our sous-chefs is Jamaican, and he came in and worked on these balls with mango chutney. They were the special that day, and we’re going to have them all weekend as the Daily Ball.

I had a Clif bar and a Vitmainwater and went to jujitsu.

I went to Balthazar with the friend whose art show was the next day, and we had the Grand Balthazar Plateau. That’s usually a thing I would get for a date, and we were really the talk of the bar area when it showed up. We had a bottle of Champagne with it, we did it right. Plus we had some French onion soup, because my friend was like, you can’t go to Balthazar without having the French onion soup, and I agree. It might be the best version anywhere.

We had profiteroles for dessert, and one of those ricotta banana tarts that are so fabulous. I had just drunk through a bottle of Champagne and at one point I was like, “Let’s get a bottle of Marsala!” They didn’t have it, luckily, because I finished my dessert and was like, No, good, I should not have had a bottle of Marsala. I checked back in on the shop and then headed straight home for bed.

Tuesday, September 28
I had a meeting with my partner in the West Village, so we went to Café Cluny. I had a ham and cheese omelette with fines herbes, a salad, and a cup of joe. The way the menu read I was worried the restaurant would be fairly generic, but the food was really well put together and delicious. It was filled with ladies who lunch and hot West Village folks, which was a fun thing to check out.

Back at the restaurant, we were doing recipe testing for the cookbook. I was doing this weird rutabaga-turnip thing that didn’t work at all. I don’t think it’s going to work, it probably won’t be in the book. It’s not a mash, but a smashed rutabaga with horseradish and sour cream. It sounds really good, but I might just skip it. For lunch, I had pasta: rigatoni with spicy meat sauce, and I like to wilt some arugula in there, plus tons of Parmesan cheese. I’m not a big fan of soda, which is very sweet, but I like the flavor, so I’ll do three-quarters seltzer with a splash of cream soda.

My friend had his art opening that night. He had Budweiser for the opening, but he ran out. I had to go to the gas station in Chelsea to buy more beer, and I bought beef jerky for myself. I’m stoked on beef jerky, I only eat it on a road trip, and I was wondering recently why that is. And I had this epiphany while I was in the gas station: I realized I don’t have a car, I ride my bike everywhere, so the only time I’m in a gas station is on a road trip, and whenever you’re in a gas station they have beef jerky. I was like Wow, that’s why it is how it is. And you know, when you get one of those bags of jerky there’s like a 98 percent chance it’ll be inedibly disgusting, but this was pretty good.

Wednesday, September 29
I don’t drink a lot of coffee, but I had an iced coffee. Our pastry chef is doing our new fall menu, and she was testing some new ice creams. She had cinnamon and butter pecan for me to taste; the cinnamon was great, I loved it.

I went to Eataly for lunch. I was actually going there to pick up some polenta — we had run out at the restaurant, so I’d called them to see if we could borrow some. It was a busy lunch hour and completely crazy in there, and I couldn’t communicate with anyone because they spoke Italian. I was like, Wow, this is really like being in Italy! I went to the lady at the front counter and she was like, in a thick Italian accent, “Our polenta is on order and we will have polenta in December.” I was like, you have 2,800 items here, I’m pretty sure you have polenta. So I gave up and ate lunch: I had a focaccia de genoa, and then I sat down at the fish counter and Dave Pasternak was there, which was cool — I had lunch cooked by the boss. I had a trio of crudo, calamari alla piastra with a parsley and arugula salad, and some braised Brussels sprouts. And then of course when I got back to the restaurant the chef from Eataly was like, “Your polenta is here if you want to come get it.” So we sent someone to go pick it up.

T. Edwards has this German wine lineup, so I’m going to check that out this afternoon; we’re working on the wine list for the whole fall thing, and then I’ll have Clif bars and Vitaminwater for jujitsu at six. And I’m going to Hakata Tonton for dinner, and I’m totally stoked.

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Filed Under: the grub street diet, alder manor, balthazar, cafe cluny, cake shop, daniel holzman, eataly, hakata tonton, meatball shop, soba-ya, stk, the new york diet, the wingbar

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“I love to eat food that I don’t know anything about,” Thomas Keller told the crowd gathered at the James Beard House yesterday to hear him talk about his cookbook Ad Hoc at Home. He was answering the old chestnut of where he likes to eat while he’s in New York, but beyond a specific shout-out to Marea’s fusili with red-wine poached octopus and bone marrow, Keller explained that it’s not about where he eats, it’s about what: “I love going to restaurants like Jean-Georges or Daniel, of course, places I love and cook the kind of food we cook,” he explained. “But for me, eating there is a little bit like work. In my mind — and of course I’m never saying this out loud — I’m going, Oh, I would have done it this way, or God, I wish I knew how they did that. But if I go to a Japanese restaurant, or a Korean restaurant, or an Indian restaurant, for me it’s about enjoying the experience of being there without thinking about how they did it.”

How things are done has been a theme for Keller, particularly since Ad Hoc at Home was published last year. The book has been heralded as his most “accessible” cookbook, a designation with which Keller has some beef. “I’m not really sure what accessibility is,” he said. “We have a roast chicken in the Bouchon cookbook, and we have a roast chicken in here, but in Bouchon it’s called “poulet rôti” and here it’s called “roasted chicken.” It’s like, you know, which is more intimidating?”

But that’s not to say he and his team didn’t go a little out of their way to make sure his most recent book had points of entry for the reader who might be put off by the tweezers-and-a-magnifying-glass ethos of his earlier volumes. “We went to town on this one,” Keller said of Ad Hoc, noting in particular the cookbook’s very last page. “It’s me in a Superman cape saying ‘Until next time, boys and girls!’” says the famously buttoned-up chef. “I’m not sure why I let that happen, but, you know, when you have two domineering women like [co-author Susie Heller and photographer Deborah Jones] telling you ‘Hey, Thomas, that’s really cute, you should do it,’ you say okay. I realized a long time ago that women are much smarter than men.”

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Filed Under: party chat, ad hoc, ad hoc at home, per se, the french laundry, thomas keller

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Looks like erstwhile Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl has landed a new gig. The New York Times reports that not only has Reichl abandoned her old publisher, Penguin, to write in the greener grasses at Random House (she’s working on a memoir of her time at Gourmet, among other things), she’ll also be on the publishing company’s payroll as an editor-at-large, acquiring and editing titles. We do hope that her new editorial role leaves her plenty of time for languorous days of cooking and eating easily tweetable, deliciously poetic food. [Media Decoder/NYT]

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Filed Under: personalities, gourmet, random house, ruth reichl

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Fatty ‘Cue.

In advance of the 2011 Michelin Guide, which will wreak havoc on the egos of New York chefs when it is released next Wednesday, the Michelin team has teased the full list of their “Bib Gourmand” restaurants, which they describe as “New York’s tasty hidden gems.” These spots don’t get any of the coveted stars, but they’re acknowledged for their general excellence as restaurants where you can get two courses and a glass of wine for under $40. The 91 honored restaurants contain 21 new additions from last year, including Northern Spy Food Co., Fatty ‘Cue, Paulie Gee’s, and Tanoreen. Read on for the complete list.

Al Bustan
Andy’s Seafood & Grill
Àpizz
Aroma Kitchen & Wine Bar
Asia de Cuba
Baci & Abbracci
Bahari estiatorio
Belleville
Beyoglu
Bianca
Bistro 33
Blue Ribbon Bakery
Blue Smoke
Bohemian
Boqueria
Buttermilk Channel
Char No. 4
Cho Dang Gol
Congee Village
Crispo
Daisy May’s BBQ
DBGB Kitchen & Bar
Dim Sum Go Go
Diner
Dinosaur Bar -B- Que
Dirt Candy
Ed’s Lobster Bar
Egg
El Parador
El Paso Taqueria
Emporio
Fatty Crab
Fatty ‘Cue
Frankies 457 Spuntino
Franny’s
Garden Court Café
Gennaro
Golden Unicorn
The Good Fork
HanGawi
Hecho en Dumbo
Hunan House
‘inoteca e Liquori Bar
Jack the Horse
Jaiya
Jean Claude
J.G. Melon
Katz’s
Kif
L’Ecole
Les Halles
Lil’ Frankie’s
Little Pepper
Lupa
Mapo Tofu
Marlow & Sons
Mercato
Mesa Coyoacan
Momofuku Noodle Bar
Momofuku Ssäm Bar
Motorino
M & T Restaurant
Northern Spy Food Co.
Nyonya
OBAO
Park Avenue Bistro
Paulie Gee’s
Phoenix Garden
Prime Meats
Prune
Quinto Quarto
Red Egg
Robataya
Rye
Saravanaas
Seo
Sette Enoteca & Cucina
Sip Sak
Snack
Soba-Ya
Supper
Surya
Szechuan Gourmet
Taco Taco
Tanoreen
Tori Shin
Turkish Kitchen
202
Uva
Uvarara
Vida
World Tong
Zabb Queens
Zarela
Zoma

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Filed Under: lists, fatty ‘cue, michelin, michelin guide 2011, northen spy food co., paulie gee’s, tanoreen

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Marc Forgione.

What can Times critic Sam Sifton do to follow his first four-star review? Maybe hand some stars to a chef who kicked a Times writer out of his restaurant not too long ago. Immaculate Infatuation tweets “NY Times photographer in the house @MarcForgione — looks like they’ll finally get the review they’ve been waiting for next week.” Wonder if he’ll order the $89 steak and eggs. [ImmaculateinFat/Twitter via Eater NY]

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Filed Under: the other critics, marc forgione, sam sifton

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