“You’ll see Curly Cakes in New York soon,” Todd English promised Grub Street at the Beard Awards last night. Indeed, spokesperson Lindsey Valdez confirms that English’s cupcake bakery will open in the Plaza Food Hall by month’s end. Curly Cakes is a joint project between English and his 16-year-old daughter Isabelle: The teen spent last summer apprenticing for her dad, attending meetings with contractors and realtors, and giving feedback on the menu. The cupcakes are basic: red velvet, lemon with pomegranate vanilla frosting, and toasted coconut. Curly Cakes was supposed to open its first store in Boston’s Beacon Hill, but that’s been pushed back till summer. Delivery is still available out of Olives.

Curly Cakes [Official site]

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Filed Under: openings, cup cakes, curly cakes, isabelle english, plaza food hall, todd english

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• Michelle, Malia, and Sasha Obama ordered three pizzas at Grimaldi’s yesterday. [Brooklyn Paper]

• Sales of kombucha tea are rising and proponents claim it can do everything from cure a hangover to increase T-cell counts. [NYT]

• Wine-shop tastings may be the best bet for truly free alcohol in New York. [Frugal Traveler/NYT]

• Long maligned by mixology types, vodka is slowly returning to the high-end cocktail menus; even PDT serves vodka drinks. [Serious Eats]

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Filed Under: mediavore, endless summer, grimaldi’s, kombucha, ma peche, michelle obama, pdt, van leeuwen, vodka, williamsburg

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• The folks behind the Brooklyn Flea will curate this summer’s food selection at SummerStage in Central Park. [NYT]

• Beef from Creekstone Farms has taken the city by storm, popping up everywhere from Babbo to the Shake Shack. [NYT]

• India will make grenades out of bhut joloika (ghost chilis) to fight terrorism. [Discovery News]

• Union Hall and Brass Monkey are good bars to which to bring your baby. [NYP]

• Orthorexia, an eating disorder in which sufferers are inordinately concerned with healthy food, is on the rise. [NYDN]

• The portions in paintings of the Last Supper have been steadily growing, say scientists. [NYP]

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Filed Under: mediavore, babies in bars, brass monkey, brooklyn flea, creekstone farms, summerstage, union hall

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• The Brooklyn Flea will continue its Sunday run at One Hansen Place beginning in April, and new food vendors are coming onboard. [Diner's Journal/NYT]

• The three-martini lunches of the Mad Men days have been replaced by power lunches of salad and Diet Coke. [NYP]

• The theme of this year’s holiday windows at Barneys will be “Have a Foodie Holiday!” [Racked NY]

• Sherry-Lehmann is considering becoming the first wine store to back legislation allowing wine to be sold in grocery stores. [Crain's]

• Subway will launch a breakfast menu next month. [NRN]

• There is no real scientific basis for the claim that eating six small meals a day, as opposed to three big ones, will speed along your metabolism. [NYT]

• The new health-care legislation will mean big changes for restaurants, between the requirement to provide health insurance, and the compulsory menu labeling. [NRN]

• A new law in Dubai bans all cooking with alcohol. [National via Eat Me Daily]

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Filed Under: mediavore, barney’s, brooklyn flea, sherry-lehmann, subway

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• A group of cocktail waitresses are suing 1 Oak, alleging wage violations. [NYP]

• The “typical” American eater is a thing of the past. [NRN]

• The maker of Lay’s and Cheetos is developing a “designer salt” with crystals shaped in a way that will allow consumers to ingest less sodium. [WSJ]

• Vanderbilt Avenue in Prospect Heights is the hot new food and booze destination. [NYP]

• China is producing more high-end wines than ever, but clear labeling is still a major problem. [WSJ]

• An urban-planning professor hopes to open a farm beneath a pedestrian bridge in Windsor Terrace. [NYDN]

• After leaving a McDonald’s Happy Meal on a shelf for a full year, a Denver nutritionist was shocked to find that the food did not decompose. [NYP]

• The Department of Agriculture will soon begin spot-checking organic produce for illegal traces of pesticide. [NYT]

• An anonymous Midwestern public-school teacher is eating school lunch every day and blogging about it. [NYDN]

• In an effort to keep hungry animals out of shelters, animal rights organizations are setting up pet food banks. [NYT]

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Filed Under: mediavore, 1oak, mcdonald’s, prospect heights

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• Brasserie Cognac chef Florian Hugo likes to change the furniture in his Upper East Side rental as often as possible, never keeping a sofa for more than two years. [NYP]

• Activists protested outside an East Village Dunkin’ Donuts yesterday, calling for the chain to switch to vegan donuts. [A Fine Blog via Gothamist]

• Recipes on the backs of food boxes are more adventurous than ever: Nestlé baking bars have a recipe for sea-salted smoky-almond bark, and Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup comes with instructions for chicken with sun-dried tomatoes. [WSJ]

• Nine more businesses from across the country joined in the class-action lawsuit suing Yelp for extortion. [Eater National]

• Chain restaurants expect a boost in business from March Madness. [NRN]

• McDonald’s may sell sodas for a dollar this summer. [WSJ]

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Filed Under: mediavore, brasserie cognac, dunkin donuts, florian hugo, lawsuits, march madness, mcdonald’s, yelp

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from Grub Street Boston

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will publish As Always Julia, a book of letters between Julia Child and her agent Avis DeVoto, this fall. The book will include over 200 letters written between 1952 and 1966, fourteen years that included the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and the debut of The French Chef, says the Globe. Julie & Julia viewers will remember DeVoto, played by Strangers With Candy’s Deborah Rush, as the friend Child visits in Cambridge who passes along Child’s cookbook manuscript to Houghton Mifflin, who, ironically, declined.

Julia Child Letters Coming This Fall [Globe]

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Filed Under: julia child, as always julia, avis devoto, books

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• Assemblyman Felix Ortiz now says salt in restaurant food is okay if it’s “part of the recipe.” [NYP]
Previously: Insane Bill Would Ban Salt in Restaurants, Impose $1,000 Fine

• The Board of Health lifted the ban on beekeeping yesterday. [City Room/NYT]

• Top Chef contestant Marcel Vigneron will star in SyFy’s reality show Marcel’s Quantum Kitchen. [Futon Critic via Eat Me Daily]

• Starting this summer, Starbucks will offer customized Frappuccinos. [WSJ]

• A former dishwasher is suing Patsy’s Pizzeria, alleging wage violations and appalling working conditions. [NYP]

• Rocco DiSpirito’s Now Eat This! is No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list. [PR Newswire]

• Adam Dell, the alleged biological father of Krishna Lakshmi, supposedly wants more time with the baby. [NYP]

• Frequent food and wine columnist Janelle Carrigan has left The Wall Street Journal. [Eater National]

• Salsa might be Mexico’s most misunderstood food, prepared differently in different countries and states. [NYT]

• Food giveaways are a relatively inexpensive way for chains to promote themselves, hence their ubiquity. [WSJ]

• Pepsi plans to remove all its full-calorie sugary drinks from schools worldwide by 2012. [Crain's]

• Guinness pops up as an ingredient in recipes everywhere from Southern Hospitality to PDT. [NYP]

• At Irish bars in formerly Irish neighborhoods, like Washington Heights’ Reynolds Café, Irish patrons are now a novelty. [City Room/NYT]

• New kitchen appliances are based around the idea of ultraconvenience, like a device that browns toast and poaches an egg at the same time. [NYT]

• Biodegradable containers replace polystyrene trays on “Trayless Tuesdays” at New York City schools. [NYP]

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Filed Under: mediavore, adam dell, beekeeping, felix ortiz, guinness, lawsuits, marcel vigneron, marcel’s quantum kitchen, meatballs, padma lakshmi, patsy’s pizzeria, pepsi, pickle backs, rocco dispirito, starbucks, wall street journal

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• Governor Paterson’s proposed soda tax is not likely to draw the 32 votes it needs for passage. [1010 WINS]

• Current plans for Brooklyn Bridge Park include an elevated wine bar. [Brooklyn Paper]

• A bride is suing the owner of Allen & Delancey for failing to return her wedding deposit after his upstate catering hall went bankrupt. [NYP]

• USA Today is for sale at Starbucks, ending the Times‘ decade-long exclusive run at the coffee chain. [AdAge]

• Qdoba Mexican Grill owes tens of thousands of dollars in taxes and is being sued by a supplier. [Boston Globe]

• Continental Airlines will soon charge coach passengers for food on all flights of less than six hours. [Crain's]

• Restaurants and consumers are not likely to see any relief from this winter’s tomato freeze until mid-April. [NRN]

• Eating alone can be very relaxing. [NYT]

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Filed Under: mediavore, 2 bros pizza, 99 cent fresh pizza, allen and delancey, brooklyn bridge park, continental airlines, qdoba, soda tax, starbucks, tomatoes

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from Grub Street Boston

Mixology classes are gaining in popularity in Boston, but a lesson at The Boston Shaker to No. 9 Park is a cheap night out compared to the costs incurred at culinary school.

One consequence of the recession is an uptick in enrollment at for-profit trade schools. Le Cordon Bleu schools had almost a third more students at the end of 2009 than they did in 2008. The tuition is about $41,000 for the entire program, and the school’s own job-placement results indicate that many graduates earn about $10 an hour. Former students of Portland’s Le Cordon Bleu program, known as Western Culinary Institute, are suing the school for fraud. Stick with studying the hard shake.

What’ll It Be? For Many, It’s Learning Mixology Tricks [Boston Herald]
In Hard Times, Lured Into Trade School and Debt [New York Times]

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Filed Under: foodienomics, culinary school, mixology, no 9 park, stir, the boston shaker

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• Mayor Bloomberg called the proposal to ban salt in restaurant cooking “ridiculous” on his radio show. [NYP]
Previously: Insane Bill Would Ban Salt in Restaurants, Impose $1,000 Fines

• Some feminists are turning to ultra-locavorism, but “if a woman is not careful, it seems, chicken wire can coop her up as surely as any gilded cage.” [NYT]

• The Department of Health may lift the city’s ban on beekeeping this week. [NYT]

• Children are increasingly turning to vegetarianism, even if their parents are meat eaters. [NYP]

• The man arrested for last week’s brutal beating at Social says he was acting in self-defense. [NYDN]
Previously: Nurse Assaulted at Party Bar

• The Sneaky Chef author Missy Chase Lapine is suing Jerry Seinfeld for allegedly slanderous remarks he made about her while she was suing his wife for cookbook plagiarism. [NYP]

• Companies are removing high-fructose corn syrup from many products, including Hunt’s ketchup and Gatorade. [AdAge]

• Chile lost about 13 percent of its wine in the recent earthquake. [WSJ]

• Gastrohotels are popping up alongside some of Spain’s top restaurants. [NYT]

• Parents in Brooklyn’s School District 21 are making their own bake-sale rules that ban chips, but allow yogurt. [NYP]

• Jamie Oliver would like to name his next baby Thorn because: “You would want to go out with someone called Thorn. You’d want to be his friend. When he gets his first date it’ll be like, ’show us your thorn, Thorn’.” [STV]

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Filed Under: mediavore, beekeeping, bloomberg, chile, jamie oliver, jerry seinfeld, locavorism, missy chase lapine, salt ban, social, vegetarianism

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from Grub Street Boston

Yes, let’s!

Lady Gaga and Beyonce’s video for “Telephone” is chock full of food imagery: the climactic scene takes place in a diner, a Food Network-esque recipe for a poison cocktail appears on screen, Beyonce feeds Gaga a honey bun, and a man uses a head of lettuce as a telephone. Perhaps the high point, however, is when the chyron “Let’s Make a Sandwich” appears on the screen and Gaga and her backup boys dance while holding spatulas, whisks, and knives. As the Lady herself puts it, “You know what they say: once you kill a cow, you gotta make a burger.” Indeed! Check out the full video over at The Cut.

The Ten Best Things About Lady Gaga and Beyonce’s ‘Telephone’ Video [The Cut]

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Filed Under: funnies, beyonce, lady gaga, let’s make a sandwich, telephone

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