"Celebrity Chef Gordon Ramsay Accidentally Burns His Genitals" [Feed Syndicate]

Server Lynnea Scalora is feeling alienated from her labor: "When you're a server, you're someone's slave," she tells Grub Street. Why does she feel this way? Probably because she works at Enid's, which as any Greenpoint/Wburg resident can tell you is the innermost circle of brunch hell. The restaurant epitomizes everything that's wrong with the brunch ritual: insanely long waits, ostentatiously hip crowds reeking of booze from the night before, lots of sceneiness and and little emphasis on, you know, food-eating. Scalora has an interesting take on what makes Enid's patrons so intolerable, and maybe also some insight into why the wait is so long.

As mentioned yesterday, Bill Clinton made an appearance on "The Rachael Ray Show" to talk about the childhood obesity epidemic. Clinton knows all too well the perils of poor eating habits, as he mentions in this clip. And yes, fast food can be dangerous, and sometimes that message—mmmmmm, IHOP's Stuffed French Toast Treasures!

Habitu s of Section F of the New York Times will notice a couple of changes in today's Dining section layout. Most notably the Times' love of briefs have made the move from Styles to Dining. On F11, where one might expect to see Peter Meehan's weekly $25 and Under Column, one finds "Dining Briefs." It's notes 'n' news, updates and bits. The feature will alternate on a biweekly basis with Peter Meehan's usual $25 and Under. So not only is the Times' recognizing its own fallibility and tempering the overly weighted effect of a Frank Bruni review with the column, it's also picking up the pace. When Bruni reviewed Gilt, for instance, in 2006 (2 stars), the chef was still Paul Liebrandt. Now the place is run by the very different Christopher Lee, so it makes sense to revisit. Section editor Pete Wells explained it to us today: "I felt we weren't covering a lot of restaurants critically. I was looking for a way to help readers sort out what's new."

Our nightmarish vision of a post-agency-relocation Century City mall food court clotted with lunching, nattily attired drones left with no recourse by the dearth of local culinary options but a hastily devoured Fuddruckers baby-burger, it seems, has fully come to pass: Today's LAT looks at the turf war raging between new CC residents CAA and ICM, who have quickly made their presence felt on their neighborhood's lunchtime scene:

• Caffe Falai stays open until 10:30 pm starting Thursday. New menu as of next week.
  

Yesterday we mentioned Steven Rinella, a bird-killing dinner-party thrower and the author of The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine. Turns out he could easily transition from cuisinist to criminal. Rinella recently hunted a number of small Brooklyn critters, including two sparrows and a few mourning doves, and gathered a couple of the literary world's more cavalier eaters for a dinner party. According to the Audubon Center, among the common sparrow species that call Brooklyn home are the field sparrow, the swamp sparrow, the song sparrow and the American tree sparrow. And those who kill migratory birds are not only making Baby Jesus weep, they're breaking the Migratory Bird Treaty Act (16 U.S.C.

It's time once again for everyone's favorite game, Rewriting the Post! In this installment, please enjoy this article about a Center for Science in the Public Interest report noting that Chinese food is full of calories and sodium (no shit, eggheads, that's why we eat it). Here's the Post lead: "The food police have a Mongolian beef with many meals served at Chinese restaurants." We've got a few rewrites, but we're sure the perfect opening pun is still out there. After that, we will all have fortune cookies.

Frank Bruni needs to get drunk more often. That's our only conclusion after reading today's two star review of uptown Italian Sfoglia. Usually you can feel Frank at least trying to restrain himself from overwriting, but get a few glasses into him and all caution is cast to the wind. Yes, he will have that last metaphor, thank you very much!

Let us start by stipulating that we love both Momofuku and Ssam Bar, David Chang's East Village restaurants. Let us also mention that we've enjoyed his occasional posts on the Eater blog thus far. And let us further add that we rather liked today's, which instructs on the concept of soign , the V.I.P. treatment chefs accord reviewers or other special patrons. Especially because now he's making soign into a random lottery.

Yes, yes, that Frank Bruni review. We admit to being flummoxed. We're like deer in the headlights, frozen with fear, unable to avert our gaze. Let's be honest, a piece that starts off with the lines "It may be laughable when someone says he gets Penthouse magazine for the articles. It's no joke when I say I went to the Penthouse Executive Club for the steaks," defies parody even as it begs for it. Bruni butches it up throughout the entire review, giving as much attention to the strippers as he does to the strips, although he winds up paying more mind to the meat (bone-in, rib-eye for two, porterhouse for two) than the, uh, fish.

Two weeks ago Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni reviewed Kobe Club, the newest highly-contrived chowhouse from restaurateur/felon/Rocco DiSpirito co-star Jeffrey Chodorow. The Brunster did not find favor with the place, granting it zero stars and noting that "it presents too many insipid or insulting dishes at prices that draw blood from anyone without a trust fund or an expense account." Today Chodorow strikes back, taking out a full-page ad in the back of the Dining section (click to enlarge) that rambles on in crazy-person tiny type about how Bruni is out to get him and ends with this inevitable warning:

Breaking! Important! Pinkberry! Our Pinkberry Correspondent, who earlier today complained of not being allowed to mingle froyo flavors, thereby establishing the supremacy of Tasti-D, reports she received a response from "someone at Pinkberry"!

Pinkberry! Ever since we first heard that the West Coast haute froyo chain would soon be colonizing Manhattan, Jamba Juice-steez, we've been waiting with bated breath to see how our town's Tasti gals would handle the transition. Would the ladyfolk cotton to the new lo-cal dessert on the block? Well, word on the street (or at least, in our inbox) is that Pinkberry is some Pink Bullshit.

Grub Street's Daniel Maurer is all over the community board meetings where angry residents try to effect the revocation of neighborhood saloons' liquor licenses. The most recent victim? East Village hot spot Death & Co. on East 6th Street.

With its baby-preparation facilities crippled by last week's kitchen explosion (quickly: do you remember exactly where you were when the Creative Artists Death Star nearly blew up?), nearby Century City eateries find themselves increasingly responsible for the feeding of swarms of hungry agents unwilling to gobble down their brown-bagged infants while sitting at their desks. The Knife looks at Century City bistro La Cachette, which has seen a healthy increase in business since CAA moved to the neighborhood:

Next month in Styles: "For Lockhart Steele, Quotewhoring Is More Than Just a Night Out."

Yesterday we noted Eater's seeming obsession with the reservations-scalping service PrimeTimeTables, which will sell you a reservation to a hard-to-get-into restaurant. But one question that's remained unanswered is just how PTT gets all those reservations (presumably not by opening dozens of OpenTable accounts, either). Today a tipster reports that the roots of PTT might run deeper into the city's food media world than previously assumed:

So you mean sort of like this?

Today's DI/DO shows the two diametrically-opposed facets of food critic Frank Bruni's personality: He's both the avenging angel of the high-end nibbles set, and the whimsical stylist with tongue in a cheek full of truffles. In Batman mode, Bruni decries the trend toward dictatorial dining experiences, where the cruel culinary overlords charge you a ridiculous (and often unspecified) amount of money to choke down tiny portions of whatever's on offer, whether you like it or not. Batman blames the huge publishing deals, the TV programs, the diners themselves ("It's largely our doing. Chefs and restaurants wouldn't behave the way they do if we penalized them for it, instead of readily demonstrating our fealty."), and finally dons the hairshirt and takes his own share of responsibility: