Your eyes aren't playing tricks on you folks. That's a pair of Mickey D's Chicken McNuggets in their natural habitat slurping down some barbecue sauce. They're part of the Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill that opened in New York City's West Village earlier this week. Other critters at this decidedly strange pet store include a pair of fish sticks swimming happily around a bowl. There's also a wide selection of hot dogs that behave oddly like snakes as they enjoy the warm rays of heat lamps. There some more conventional pets too, like a rabbit that preens in its cage applying her makeup.
I haven't been to the Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill yet, so I'm not sure what kind of food they serve. It strikes me as kind of cruel to eat chicken nuggets and hot dogs once you realize they're sentient beings. If I were a betting man I'd say the whole operation is a big hoax and that they don't sell any pets or cook anything on a charcoal grill at all. And that's because it is a hoax of sorts. All of the "pets" at the store are actually animatronics designed by the prankster artist Banksy as part of his latest show.
Village Pet Store is located at 89 7th Avenue between West 4th and Bleeker Street and is open from 10 a.m. to midnight until Halloween. Those not in the New York City area can check out the bizarre goings on in this video. I'll leave it up to the critics to decide whether this weird little emporium qualifies as art. At least the dude found an amusing way to repurpose Chicken McNuggets.
.000001%* of the population will be paid actual cash money to step foot into the on deck circle at Yankee Stadium. Still, that doesn't stop hordes of fans from TiVoing Inside Baseball, poring over box scores and suiting up in team regalia on game day. For some of us, food holds an equally compelling balance of gut-level devotion and wonkish stat-based compulsion. A reservation at elBulli is akin to scoring home team dugout seats for the seventh game of the World Series. Food fans -- here's your program.
It's said that 2,000,000 requests a year come in for just 8000 seats at Ferran Adrià's Spanish temple of molecular gastronomy. The closest many of us will come is grazing through this brand new 528 page play-by-play, A Day at elBulli An insight into the the ideas, methods and creativity of Ferran Adrià. It's not so much the common parlance's "food porn" as it is a post-millennial culinary junkie's process orgy, documenting each staff motion and motivation, every microgram of alginate and liquid nitrogen, and fetishistically breaking down quantity and custom and customer/server semiotics.
The proverbial sausage has never been so obsessively, graphically made for public consumption, and rarely has it been so deliciously presented. There are pleasing pictures and recipes, to be sure (Hazelnut praline air, anyone? Perhaps some Garrapi-nitro pine nuts?), but sans easy access to an Isomalt-R-Us, it's a fever-dream cookbook. It is, however, a deeply heartening food-ifesto.
"Who doesn't love Wii?" says the manager I spoke with at Wildwood BBQ, a restaurant on Park Avenue at 18th Street in Manhattan.
Every Tuesday night since August, Wildwood BBQ, a classy new ribs joint off Union Square, has hosted Wii Boxing with cheap beer and big prizes. There's a pre-tournament warm up at 8:00pm, when anyone can play, then signup for the tournament begins at 8:30. Sixteen guests can play for a chance to win $100 gift certificates good at any of BR Guest's restaurants.
Sign up at the 50-foot bar for a chance to play, and starting at 9:30 pick up a $12 pitcher of Cold Ass beer (pardon my English; that's really what it's called).
Rumor has it that some undisclosed celebrities may be stepping into the ring one of these weeks! Get there if you can.
Here's what's cooking in the Los Angeles Times Food Section today: What's hot, what's not: Russ Parsons and Amy Scattergood weigh in on what a kitchen essential really is.
Celebrity chefs will cut some costs to keep their restaurants afloat in this economy. But cutting quality remains verboten.
Spice your own: Combine spices to create something special...and uniquely you.
So, as a followup to my story on unsnobbycoffee.com, the new campaign by McDonald's, I hit a McDonald's on New York's Upper West Side to try out some unsnobby coffee. I intended to write this there, but unfortunately, the free McWifi was a McMyth.
If you've never been to a NYC McDonald's, well, it's an experience. The low prices really throw off the normal-person-to-crazy-person ratio. There was one man in a security guard uniform (not a McDonald's employee) camped out by the soda machine, drinking various sodas one inch at a time, and then refilling. Well, that's one way to kill your lunch break.
That's the message on the cover of Empanada Joe's new brochure. Empanada Joe's has two (and soon to be three) locations in New York City, and brings a traditional Mexican favorite to mainstream culture.
How mainstream? Well, you can get a Mediterranean Caprese empanada stuffed wth mozzerella, tomatoes, and basil. If that's any indication.
We've mentioned it a couple of times before, in our review of GQ's Best Hamburgers and our Ten Best Burgers in NYC, but it's time to take a proper look. It's the Soup Nazi of burger joints, it's a best kept secret in New York City: it's The Burger Joint at Le Parker Meridien.
Located at 118 West 57th Street, Le Parker Meridien is one of those hotels that epitomizes New York class. It's where you can get a $1,000 omelette, where guests on Regis and Kelly are kept, and it's a $499.00 minimum if you want to sleep there tonight.
Upon entrance, one is immediately struck by the spacious marble lobby, accentuated with giant mirrors. One corner appears to be under construction. Like, there's this large, velvety tarp hiding something. A curious person might try to peer down the little hallway which appears to lead to an employee's only area next to the big tarp. That curious person would see this neon sign.
Unsnobbycoffee.com sounds like it might be something really good for your dad or uncle who still can't pronounce "grande" and thinks "frappuccino" is a made-up word (and to be fair, "frappuccino" is a made-up word, by Boston's The Coffee Connection chain which was bought by Starbucks).
Actually, unsnobbycoffee.com is the website for McDonalds' new ad campaign.
"McDonald's has made it simple and easy to get the delicious espresso drinks you crave. No crazy names or sizes. No second language required. So hang out and have some fun."
If you're prone to chef crushes, you could do a lot worse than Matthew Kenney -- and that's solely on the basis of his food. Though Kenney is now a primary practioner of the raw food movement, foodies who found themselves in SoHo during the late 1990s/early 2000s will remember him for Canteen, a restaurant that emphasized the fusion influences that pre-date his raw food conversion and are the highlight of Big City Cooking. But don't be intimidated: Kenney's magic is in revealing the essence of a flavor, an ingredient, or a technique, and thus, though it is essentially a restaurant cookbook, Big City Cooking is very easy to understand and use -- always with delicious results.
The thesis of the book is that the abundance of ingredients and mash of cultures in a city can be the inspiration for a cook's creativity. That's a great idea, and a true one, but I don't believe that fusion influences are specifically urban -- in this day of super supermarkets, including those online, one doesn't have to live in a big city to have za'aatar in one's spice cabinet or, accordingly, on one's flatbread. (In fact, most of those "urban" ingredients or techniques originated with indigenous cuisines.)
The strength of this cookbook is the dishes themselves, which are organized by technique and which highlight a diversity of ingredients. Thus there are sections on raw and steam cooking, sauteeing, grilling, roasting, and stewing. Within each are recipes from appetizers and salads straight through to desert, all of them accessible to the home cook.
Restaurants part of the chain Nobu, partially owned by Robert De Niro, were caught last weekend selling endangered fish. It looks like De Niro should keep a closer eye on his investments. The people over at Greenpeace tested the DNA of fish served at a Nobu in London and discovered that it came from endangered bluefin tuna. Apparently, Nobu's principal manager carelessly labeled the endangered fish with an asterisk on the restaurants' menu, rather than stopping to serve it.
The eco-blog Planet Save posted an article harshly criticizing the fact that Nobu had not taken the fish off the menu and that De Niro hasn't taken a stronger stance against the decision of the chefs to serve the fish. Refering to an article from The Telegragh, Planet Save explains that although bluefin tuna is not illegal, a crisis meeting will take place in November to discuss a possible ban on fishing it.
Do you think restaurants have a moral obligation not to sell endangered species? To me, this seems like an obvious yes! However, the problem arises when the food being banned is part of a culinary tradition. In other words, if you outlaw an ingredient, you may neglect cultures that depend on it for sustaining its cuisine.
This past Monday was the beginning of autumn, which in years past been somewhat of a sad time for my meat and fire loving alter ego, Joey Deckle, because it marks the end of the competitive barbecuing season. But not this time around. For in addition to being the start of fall and the autumnal equinox, Monday was also Il Buco's fifth annual Sagra del Maiale, or pig festival. There's nothing quite like an afternoon spent on a downtown Manhattan street eating roast pork with a bunch of like-minded carnivores to cure the end-of-summer blues.
This wasn't just any old roast pig though, it was a heritage breed called a Farmer's Cross, or Crossabaw. For those of you not up on heritage hogs, a Crossabaw is breed based on the Ossabaw blood line, the very pig Peter Kaminsky praised in his book Pig Perfect. It yields exceptionally rich moist meat and luscious fat. Lest I forget, it wasn't exactly a tiny pig either, it weighed in at 200 pounds. Such a beast would take a good 24 hours if it were to be cooked over smoke. When I asked Chef Ignacio Mattos how long it would take, he responded, "That's a good question. Hopefully about six-and-a-half hours. It's going on at 6 a.m."
The reason behind such a relatively short cooking time for such a large hog? A cooking method known as infernillo, literally little hell. When Chef Mattos told me that it took some 400 pounds of fuel, including lump charcoal and oak and cherry wood to cook the beast, I thought it sounded more like a big hell. Infernillo, is an Incan method of cooking that Chef Mattos learned from his mentor, the Uruguayan chef, Frances Mallmann. Essentially it involves roasting the pig on a shelf with an intense wood fire above and another below. Chef Mattos butterflied his Crossabaw and then seasoned it with rosemary, fennel pollen, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper. The intense heat yielded some incredibly crunchy skin.
Ever seen the phrase "corkage fee" on a restaurant menu and wondered what it meant? Here's the 411: some restaurants let you BYOB, but they charge a small amount ($5-35) to cover the glasses, service, etc. While $20 might seem like a hefty fee for the server to spend 15 seconds pulling a cork, the corkage fee is really just a gentle reminder to you that your BYOB is cutting into their profit margin. Restaurants make a lot of money from drinks markups, including wine, and when you bring your own they aren't raking in the dough.
BYOB is a good dining strategy whether you're a connoisseur or a cheapskate. As a connoisseur, you can bring a special bottle the restaurant wouldn't possibly offer. As a cheapskate, you can save money by paying the corkage fee instead of exorbitant markups.
Just remember the rules of etiquette when you BYOB:
Call ahead and ask first so you don't show up with your $8 Merlot only to find out the corkage fee is three times that.
Don't bring wine that's on the restaurant's list. It's rude.
Offer your server/sommelier a taste. (He or she may say no, but it's the right thing to do.)
Don't stiff the server: factor the wine in when you calculate the tip.
On more nights than I'd like to admit, Scott and I succumb to the blue flicker of the television screen while eating dining. We park ourselves on the couch with our plates and watch Jeopardy or reruns of The Daily Show. But when we go out to eat, we avoid places with TVs, knowing that we get plenty of tube viewing time in at home.
However, CBS has recently opened a restaurant where the point is to watch television while you eat. Over the weekend, they opened a 15,000-square-foot restaurant that will serve upscale pub food and will prominently feature approximately 130 high-definition televisions. Included in that number are table-side flat-screens programmed with CBS content, so that you can choose from 60 years worth of CBS programming while you dine.
The restaurant, called CBS Scene, has been opened in partnership with New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and is located in Foxborough, MA, adjacent to Gillette Stadium. Video about the new restaurant is after the jump (it starts playing as soon as you open the page).
I like to think that I generally have good taste. I try to avoid wearing stripes with plaids, am careful to pair robust red wines with my Big Macs, and only eat Sweet Tarts on days that end in "y." That having been said, I must admit that I have a few weaknesses, the most egregious of which revolve around sweetened pork products. To put it bluntly, I can't resist them.
For a long time, I was able to hide this predilection. Basically, it only came out around Thanksgiving, when I would bake a huge Virginia ham, slather it in brown sugar and orange juice, and cook it on high heat until it was sheathed in a crunchy candy coating. Resisting the urge to hoard all the sugary goodness, I would thinly slice the ham and serve it up to my family, only snagging a few pieces with the lame excuse that I just had to test the flavor.
Ultimately, I blame my wife, who introduced me to what she euphemistically called "pig candy." Basically thick-sliced bacon that has been rolled in brown sugar and baked until crispy, the sugary tidbits are sweet, salty, and only slightly less addictive than crack. Luckily, the shame of munching on grease, sugar, and salty pork is a pretty big deterrent, and I've been able to resist my pig candy urges. Still, late at night, I sometimes dream...
At any rate, I was recently reminded of the addictive wonder of pig candy when I came across this review of Voodoo Donuts' bacon-maple bar. Basically a buttermilk long-john, it apparently combines all the delight of maple sugar with the salty smokiness of bacon in one wonderful, fatty package. I immediately forwarded the review to my wife, who used to live in the Pacific Northwest. Needless to say, she'd already been there, tried that, and found it to be everything that I could imagine.
At the end of the day, it's nice to know that I'm not the only one in sugared pork rehab!
.000001%* of the population will be paid actual cash money to step foot into the on deck circle at Yankee Stadium. Still, that doesn't stop hordes of fans from TiVoing Inside Baseball, poring over box scores and suiting up in team regalia on game day. For some of us, food holds an equally compelling balance of gut-level devotion and wonkish stat-based compulsion. A reservation at elBulli is akin to scoring home team dugout seats for the seventh game of the World Series. Food fans -- here's your program.
So, as a followup to 
"Eat Beautiful. Feel Beautiful."
We've mentioned it a couple of times before, in our review of 
Unsnobbycoffee.com sounds like it might be something really good for your dad or uncle who still can't pronounce "grande" and thinks "frappuccino" is a made-up word (and to be fair, "frappuccino" is a made-up word, by Boston's The Coffee Connection chain which was bought by Starbucks). 
If you're prone to chef crushes, you could do a lot worse than 
Ever seen the phrase "corkage fee" on a restaurant menu and wondered what it meant? Here's the 411: some restaurants let you BYOB, but they charge a small amount ($5-35) to cover the glasses, service, etc. While $20 might seem like a hefty fee for the server to spend 15 seconds pulling a cork, the corkage fee is really just a gentle reminder to you that your BYOB is cutting into their profit margin. Restaurants make a lot of money from drinks markups, including wine, and when you bring your own they aren't raking in the dough.
New York Times Magazine's food issue
Chicken McNuggets frolic at New York City pet store
Eat your broccoli orbs! 
