We reported Monday on the Great Cafeteria Switchover of 2006 underway at The New York Times — it seems the Times Co., in its infinite nickel-pinching wisdom, outsourced food-service duties to Restaurant Associates, which promptly canned many longtime employees. The Upper West Siders who staff the paper know they should detest this, and yet they're conflicted. A Timesperson submits this early report:
Big changes afoot — big, outsourcing, job-costing changes afoot — at the New York Times cafeteria. Word came Friday:
The Internet has brought the world many things, and at the moment one of our favorite things on the Internet is the city's online database of restaurant inspection results. Now that this information is so readily available, our lovely and talented readers like to email us results from the database every now and again. Today, for example, a clever little birdie delivered the most recent inspection report from Soho House, the overhyped playpen for the (moderately) rich and hip, which we're not nearly cool enough to visit with any regularity.
Jack Lebewohl's workmen didn't cart off every last bit of Second Avenue Delitritus last week. One last relic remains: This Deli-logo'd garbage can. Streetwalking photog Bucky Turco sends along the above image and reports that the thing is a hell of a lot harder to remove than you'd think. But if you show up with a crew of stout-hearted men, we're sure you can finagle it.
A few days ago, inexplicably, a perfectly intact pepperoni pizza was seen resting between the tracks of the uptown 6 at Astor Place. A befuddled reader writes:
When news broke in the Times last week that the Second Avenue Deli was shuttered, at least temporarily and perhaps more permanently, in a rent dispute, it seemed partially tragic but also partially perhaps just a particularly intense game of real-estate chicken between the hondlers who own the deli and the hondlers who own the building. The latter option seemed increasingly likely when the second-day story revealed that the rent increase sought by the building's new owners was in fact built into the existing lease, negotiated 15 years ago.
• Go forth, little mischief makers, and make your own subway sign — just because you can. [Subway Fun]
• If you read that Times article about a month ago about the magically irritating converted schoolhouse shared by a bunch of creatives in Bushwick and thought, "Hey, that's neat," now's your chance to move in. You're an idiot, but, hey, we're not judging. [Craigslist via Lindsayism]
• How she gets the scoops: Daily News gossip girl Jo Piazza is a kissing bandit. [NYO]
• Three of the top seven most emailed Times articles pertain to macaroni and cheese, and yet we wonder why America is the land of the obese. [NYT]
• Only the brave should listen to the new Kevin Federline track. We, as we've noted before, are total pussies. Knock yourselves out, though, and tell us how it goes. [Yahoo! Music]
• Whether or not author JT Leroy is real, at least the experience of figuring him out is decidedly surreal. [Guardian]
Remember when the Michelin Guide for New York launched? How everyone who even tangentially cared got their cloth napkins in a twist over it? Too French! Too elitist! (Which is much like calling the Atlantic too wet and too salty, but never mind.) The Spotted Pig?! Jean-Georges better than Daniel?! Oh, people were angry. And, oh, those were good times.
A very reliable, double-super- secret, you'll-never-ever- figure-out-who-it-is Spring Street source checked in this morning from Balthazar, where he'd learned these interesting bits of news:
This is why people hate publicists.
Times trendmonger Jennifer 8. Lee has sold her first book, the Observer reports today:
By the by, we finally gave in and ate some of Norm Pearlstine last night. (We'd previously said we wouldn't touch any of this smuggled swag — from the secret ceremony anointing John Huey as Time Inc.'s new EIC — until we received a personal waiver from our double-super-secret source that he or she didn't want it returned. Watching The O.C. and craving chocolate, we decided 48 hours without comment constituted a personal waiver.)
We've never before heard of the "Nut Lovers" candy bar from Hershey's.
A correction in today's Times, rectifying a shitty mistake:
Sad. Sadder: And just before her big day.
The Post helpfully offers eight tips today for preparing a perfect Thanksgiving feast, on everything from avoiding uncooked stuffing to avoiding "raging house fires." Here are two others:
The Daily News reports the sad finding that more and more New Yorker are finding it difficult to afford the food they need. Particularly troubling are these facts:
The Washington Post's discovery of Michael's — it's a midtown see-and-be-seen power-lunch spot, apparently — is so boring and late and unoriginal (and cringingly headlined) that there's nearly no need to mention it. Except for this one bit: Finally, there's an explanation of why in God's name the restaurant allows Laurel Touby to skulk around the place with a seating chart and a notebook:
