Last week, the food and restaurant website Eater.com suspended its restaurant editor, Nick Solares, after former associates presented evidence of his involvement in New York City’s skinhead punk rock scene in the 1980s. Today staffers at Vox Media, which owns Eater, were informed that Solares would be invited back to work, according to several sources with knowledge of the internal announcement.
Eater.com, a popular food and restaurant website owned by Vox Media, placed an editor named Nick Solares on leave for at least one week, effective immediately, after he apologized for participating in New York City’s skinhead punk rock scene in the 1980s, according to several sources with knowledge of the decision.
The world of restaurants, be it chefs or food writers, has always been fantastically bitchy: remember Jeffrey Chodorow's taking out a ranty full-page ad in the Times in response to Frank Bruni's no-star review of his Kobe Club? Thank goodness it's continuing the grand tradition, even on the web. Yesterday Eater, the restaurant blog that's part of the Curbed Network (Curbed, Racked, Eater), published by former Gawker Lockhart Steele, posted a rumination on their competitor, Down By the Hipster. Yeah, they got a little catty! "[Blogger] Scott Solish isn't making money on DBTH, has a day job, and has begun to talk of such things as book deals and joint ventures...Are Down By the Hipster's best days behind us?" DBTH's equally snide response ("Lil' [Ben Leventhal of Eater] secretly seethed, desperate to know why anyone dared challenge his authority as the ultimate insider") was inevitable. We'd go so far to suggest that public bickering isn't becoming to either party, but we're glad they did: the exchange is this morning's guilty pleasure...
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.
Restaurateur David Chang (mmm, asian burrito!) makes our hearts go pitter-pat. So we wanted to be right there with him as he anxiously awaits reviewage of his new-ish Ssam Bar by notorious Times touch-football tackler Frank Bruni. (See what we did there?) Luckily, Eater gave him the opportunity to share his feelings and predictions with us. Chang forsees a one-star review for Momofuku Ssam, however, if he gets a goose egg, he has a plan:
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.
When Eater LA reported that Top Chef contestant Ilan Hall had resigned from his position at New York's Casa Mono, we knew something was up. We just didn't know exactly what. And now we do, because we clicked on the link below. It's up to you, of course, to make that fateful decision for yourself. But an extra special warning goes out to Gawker commenter SeeingI: you might just find yourself blowing chunks of chocolate-covered chicken livers.
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?
Yesterday we alerted you to Eater's coverage of the new reservations-scalping service PrimeTimeTables, which sells reservations to hard-to-get-into restaurants to their "select" group of members. Needless to say, the Eater boys have flooded the zone on this one, and their detective work has yielded bounteous fruit in the form of an interview with Karine Bakhoum, the wife of PTT owner Pascal Riffaud and a PR agency owner in her own right.
Remember our extensive 'is the ramen worth it' 'yes' coverage of East Village noodle bar Momofuku a while back? Well, today we were heartened to see more evidence of Ramen Fever: Momofuku's Asian burrito bar cousin, Momofuku Ss m, will now be open longer hours. It will also serve stews. Eater isn't afraid of being accused of overhyping these developments:
An Eater correspondent complains to the site:
