We're still intrigued by what exactly goes on behind the scenes at reservations-scalping—or shall we say, concierge—services like PrimeTimeTables and Sorted. Just how do they get those reservations? A tipster sheds some more light on what we're coming to believe is the seedier underbelly of the food-writing biz in this town. Really, is nothing sacred?
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:
Because we're sure that you're curious about what theme-meal goodies your peers at Fox might be enjoying right at this moment while you joylessly pick at your on egregiously atopical commissary offerings (Paramount, Sony, WB, and CBS employees—it's clear your employers don't care about you), we share the menu from their lot's Fire Prevention Day BBQ, wrapping up right now on the lawn outside their dining facility. Historically, Fox has reserved the efforts of its finest thematic chefs for the glorification of series launches or season premieres, but with the network's new crop of Fall shows hardly meriting their timeslots, much less a gustatorial show of company support, they were forced to apply their promotional gifts to a more mundane source of inspiration. By the out-of-the-box combining of the activities of eating delicious food and learning about fire safety, we're sure that the number of on-lot conflagrations will be significantly reduced in the coming weeks.
Grub Street takes a moment to sing the praises of deli buffets, in particular those foods which age well after 6-12 hours under heat lamps. Salisbury steak? "Jump on this!" Sure, if first we've gotten so cross-eyed with late-night booze that we'd happily chew on a pig's ear, long as it's hot. The other recommendations involve burrowing to the center of congealed mashed potatoes or glutinous pasta tumors; in other words, tactics which rely on faith in unseen goodness. However, this brings up a perennial New York question, which is: What happens to the acres of unsold crapfood you always see suppurating under the lamps at the city's numberless bodegas? One assumes that tonight's leftovers go into tomorrow's omelets, and other such recycling. Anyone with firsthand experience or observation, please let us know via tips or the comments below. Be as graphic as you can stand.
We've had some issues with New York in the past, but we've got to say we're loving Grub Street, the new food blog written by Josh Ozersky. It's one of the first launches in the mag's incipient blog explosion; here's hoping the rest are just as good. Also, the picture above? It speaks to us for some reason.
Homebrew snackie cakes! But where do you buy bags of polysorbate 80 these days? In one of the grander experiments in Web 2.0 (or maybe Web 1.8) post-consumer recycling, CNET's eatable megasite Chow has pretty much launched. The "portal" (cringe) is made up of two main components stitched together by the power of CNET's deep pockets. First, there's defunct foodmag Chow, which closed down in 2005 as a print magazine; now it's back in online-only form, complete with editor-in-chief Jane Goldman once more at the helm. The other piece of the newly giant robot is Chowhound, the old-school food-forum digs of legendary restaurant critic Jim Leff. How's it all hang together, you ask?
"Coca Cola is coming to have a meeting onsite at Google on Monday," an employee wrote in this weekend. According to an internal e-mail, "Google is removing all competitors' beverages from the cafes and mini kitchens." Naturally, we got shots of a Pepsilicious Google fridge on a normal day:
Poking around a bookshop in Paris last December, I came across a small handsome book. It was an unjacketed volume, bound in severe black cloth of the sort usually associated with spanking erotica. Picking it up, I found that it was actually more like a breviary, the title embossed in gold, the edges of the pages gilt, with a ribbon bookmark in ecclesiastical red; "La Base" is, in fact, a stylish little cookbook.
There's no small irony — that's right, you heard us, irony — in a regular column entitled "What's Fresh" turning out stale as a desiccated corn-cob. The very idea of not just one post, but an ongoing series of Gothamist blog posts dedicated to whatever greenmarket item comes to hand is deadly dull enough to make grandma's cat hack up a doily in disgust. But perhaps the column gives us a colorful, intrepid culinary adventurer who hunts down the most exotic and startling ingredients available in this cosmopolitan city? What exciting things have recently been fresh?
The Village Voice runs an article focused on Ronald Hoeflin, a Hell's Kitchen-dwelling intelligence nerd who's founded four different societies to further subdivide and celebrate those in the most lofty ranks of the IQ scale. (Mensa? Fine, if you're a retard.) Apparently there's plenty of inter-society feuding and melodrama ("it's our Brangelina" says one society member of the theatrics). However, what caught our eye was this:
So first there was just Martha Stewart's new Blueprint. Then there was the centrist Dems' wonky Blueprint. And then also the British design mag called Blueprint. And now a reader in Chicago writes in with perhaps our favorite version: Blueprints, which bills itself as "the produce professionals' quarterly journal." We think that means it's a whole magazine about fruits and vegetables. Which, come to think of it, means you'd really think Martha would have heard of it.
Half of us was on vacation in Los Angeles last week — oh, that's sweet; we missed you, too — and so you can imagine our excitement when, walking back to the car in Santa Monica, we found ourselves passing the original Michael's.
Famous Fat Dave is a cabbie. He's also a gourmand, and he's also a bit of self-promoter (we say that admiringly), and so we found in our inbox a few weeks ago a press release from Mr. Fat Dave pushing his "Five Borough Eating Tour on the Wheels of Steel." There was no question we were interested, and there was no question who'd go a-touring; this was the perfect assignment for Gawker mascot (and glutton for all things) Andrew Krucoff. After the jump, Kruc, avec photog, hails Fat Dave's cab, picks up his roommate and a pair of comedians to help punch up his material, and heads out for a night of taxiing and eating, taxiing and eating.
Just dying to spend the day outdoors, frolicking in the chilly rain? Have we got the event for you, then. It's exciting, it's suspenseful, it's something you've always wanted to see! At 12:30 p.m., in Madison Square Park, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! — and, for the record, we can't believe it still exists! — will unveil its brand-new spokesman. Yay! A passer-by reports that the finalists are four soap stars you've never heard of, and that "two poor schmucks in tuxedos" are spending their morning passing out flyers promising the unveiling will go on rain or shine.
The front page of today's Times dining section carries a story about the increasingly sophisticated food sent to U.S. forces stationed around the world, both by patriotic citizens who send individual troops things like organic granola, power bars, and Starbucks coffee beans, and by the Pentagon itself, which is upgrading the food offered.
Today's dining section carries a huge Frank Bruni piece (or, at least, a hugely arted Bruni piece) detailing a cross-country drive on which he sampled nearly ever sort of fast food known to Americans — 9 days, 15 states, 3,650 miles and 42 visits to 35 establishments, as he reports. He ate In-N-Out burgers in California, Whataburgers in Louisiana, Varsity hot dogs in Atlanta, Sonic tots in Kentucky, and White Castle sliders in New Jersey. He did it all in a rented Taurus.
It doesn't officially open, for normal people, for another week. But, even so, today is apparently New Le Cirque day in the New York press. The are nearly 4,000 tag-teamed words on the cover of the Observer about it — and, in fairness, about the Bloomberg building in which it resides. David Carr has another 1,500 words on the front of the Times dining section about the restaurant and its many opening parties. There's even a Carpetbagging-style video report on the opening party on the Times site, reminding us of both Le Cirque's fabulosity and why Carr became a print reporter in the first place. The message of all of this? That it's a big, very fancy, important restaurant for a big, fancy, very important people. That it's exclusive and in-demand, and high society is quietly calculating how to get a table and which table to want to get.
