Convivio: The Tudor City restaurant formerly known as L’Impero has been reborn as Convivio (pictured), a more casual but still swish venture from the same team, Chris Cannon and chef Michael White. Located in a historic 1920s building, the space is made deluxe with burnt orange banquettes, a hand-hammered copper bar top, and reflective lacquered ceilings. White – who spent seven years studying Italian cuisine in Imola – emphasizes the southern part of the boot on his menu. Standouts include Maccheroni (handmade pasta twists with red shrimp and pesto cetarese) and Malloredous (Sardinian saffron gnocchetti, crab and sea urchin). The wine list also hews toward Southern Italy with over 550 bottles, and there’s an exclusively Italian beer list as well. 45 Tudor City Place, (212) 599-5045.Sweet Revenge: This Carmine Street treat shop is not just another West Village cupcake bar, owner Marlo Scott tells Cupcakes Take the Cake: “I wanted to create the feel of a world bistro. I wanted to get away from the cutesy cupcake bakeries.” To that end, during lunch and dinner Sweet Revenge features non-cupcake options like a cheese plate and salads, among other edibles, with a selection of beer and wine to wash them down. But let’s face it, it’s about the cupcakes here, which thus far include raspberry red velvet, peanut butter, vanilla/vanilla, and Mayan chocolate. 62 Carmine Street, (212) 242-2240.
Delicatessen: Opening last night in SoHo, this snazzy new restaurant/lounge from the owners of Cafeteria had a soft-opening Thursday with an Interview Magazine party. Grub Street reports: “There’s not much new about the sleek surfaces, backlit back bar, and the cabinlike (odoriferous!) wood panels upstairs, but we were wowed by the square, eight-table room downstairs, where there’s a D.J. booth, a wall mural by José Heredia, and a sunroof offering a view of the tenement buildings above.” Chef Doron Wong’s cosmopolitan comfort food menu ranges from a breakfsast-time Delicatessen Benedict, made with pastrami and spicy spinach hollandaise sauce, to Matzoh Ball Chicken Soup and Cheeseburger Spring Rolls for dinner. 54 Prince Street, (212) 226-0211.
Photo of Convivio courtesy Ryan Charles.
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The New York City Triathlon is this Sunday and for the 3,000 plus competitors who have the pleasure (privilege? punishment?) of taking a swim in the mighty Hudson at the crack of down, ingesting carbs is a priority between now and then. So what are some of the best pasta dishes in the city to fuel these athletes? Here are our suggestions.
Chain restaurants that haven’t been complying with the city’s new law requiring them to display calorie information for all their food and beverages can be fined by the Health Department starting at midnight. But some establishments like Olive Garden remain defiant; they’re refusing to cooperate in hopes that a Restaurant Association appeal succeeds in court. Over 252 violations have already been reported, but not until tonight can fines be levied. Other places are scrambling to display the calorie stats and avoid a possible $2,000 fine. “We waited quite late in the day,” Hale & Hearty’s Simon Jacobs told Crain’s. “And at some point we just realized we were running out of time.” ]]>
Although the F.D.A. has been unable to pinpoint the source of a recent salmonella outbreak that infected over 1,190 people in 42 states, officials have announced that all varieties of tomatoes currently in the fields and in stores are safe to eat.
Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of that horrible steam pipe explosion in midtown that left one woman dead and others seriously injured. And Public House on 41st Street has some theme drink specials tonight to commemorate the occasion. We're talking $8 Car Bombs, $6 PipeBomb Drinks, and a “Taste Bud Explosion Platter” with wings, nachos and calamari. This is going to be the best steam pipe explosion anniversary party in town!
Picnics always look so appealing in the movies, like that scene in O Brother, Where Art Thou? where John Goodman breaks off the tree branch and starts swinging. But here in the real world, picnics take a lot of work and schlepping, and if you don’t have one of those deluxe picnic baskets an unspoken feeling of inadequacy can quickly turn that potato salad to sawdust in your mouth. Thankfully, there are a number of places where you can spend your way to the picnic of your dreams. And one of them even delivers.
The NY Times delved into the legalities of public drinking during this hot and hedonistic summer season. Is it illegal? Yes. But they do note that "in the summer of 2003, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg suggested that drinking wine at concerts in Central Park was O.K. At Bryant Park on July 7, a security guard said he turned a blind eye to booze on movie nights, 'so long as it is covered, like in a bag.'" Some outdoor revelers really do set up shop in the parks: One man described his elaborate makeshift bar that includes 12 bags of frozen mix, light, dark and coconut rums, 20 blankets, and a potato masher for mixing. Gonna need more than a brown paper bag to conceal that set-up!]]>
GQ's Alan Richman gives props to his five favorite burgers in the city. As expected, the list contains several of the usual suspects -- Shake Shack ("Not a great burger, but a very good one."); the Burger Joint ("No matter how you take it, your burger will be perfect, a manifestation of caring and know-how."); and Peter Luger ("There’s only one correct way to eat meat this wonderful, and that’s unadorned.") -- but others were deliberately snubbed.
Urbanspoon is a free iPhone application aimed at the indecisiveness gripping a certain subset of young moneyed urban dwellers. Sometimes it is really hard deciding between dinner at Pastis, Spice Market or Buddha Bar! So with a shake, your iPhone becomes a cross between a Magic 8 Ball and a slot machine that uses GPS technology to land on a nearby restaurant, categorized by price, proximity and cuisine. But the app was not so killer for the Times’s Frank Bruni, who recently cruised around town testing it:
The Post has the latest "oh sweet Christ, what the hell is this thing in my food!?" story, and this one’s a keeper: 27-year-old John Agnesini plans to sue Subway after he found a large serrated knife baked into the bread of his 12-inch cold-cut sub. Agnesini bought it from a Subway on West 35th Street last month during his lunch break:
This week the Times’s Frank Bruni reminds everyone about Oceana (pictured), that fancy three star “seafood restaurant in Midtown that looks like an ocean liner.” After more than fifteen years in business, he says it’s still “very much worth boarding.” And save room for dessert, which is “splendid.” The frozen banana mousse, “presented with both sticky rice and puffed, caramelized rice, [is] the transmogrification of a bowl of Rice Krispies with bananas into dessert, and it’s killer.”
Eater is reporting that chef Cesar Ramirez is out at West Village restaurant Bar Blanc. Stepping up to the stove will be, like Ramirez, another veteran of David Bouley's restaurants, Sebastiaan Zijp. According to the restaurant’s PR, Bar Blanc’s “partners decided to go their own ways and [the parting is] quite amicable, believe it or not.” Eater cites an additional report in their inbox that “puts the parting at less than ‘amicable,’” and “that it was more of a firing.” Contacted by email about the future, Ramirez confirms the split and writes: “I have no plans yet, but I’m looking for something new, and to take my food in a different direction. My partners and I parted in a good way. I felt it was best for me to move on.”
The Red Hook Latin street food vendors will finally be returning to the ball fields this weekend after a three month delay that has left some of the 13 merchants drowning in debt. The Brooklyn Paper has it that some have spent over $35,000 to purchase new stands and satisfy Health Department inspectors, who threatened to shut the vendors down last year until a huge public outcry forced the city to reconsider. But was it a Pyrrhic victory? “The losses are major,” said Marcos Lainez, who runs a Salvadoran papusa cart. “It’s going to take at least two and a half years to recover all the money we have lost.” ]]>
20 years ago this summer, Fabio Trabocchi started his culinary career in the Marche region of Italy. The chef-to-be was fourteen at the time, and found himself occupied with odd jobs such as shucking mussels, cutting vegetables, and even serving as ad hoc valet at a small restaurant close to the beach. Next month marks Trabocchi’s one-year anniversary at SoHo restaurant Fiamma, where, with a kitchen staff of 12, he serves plates like Burrata di Andria with olive oil and radish salad, and black mission figs with pea tendrils and sautéed porcini mushrooms. Fabio Trabocchi won a Best Chef award from the James Beard Foundation in 2006 for his work at the McLean, Virginia restaurant Maestro, and also won a Best New Chef award from Food & Wine in 2002. The chef spoke with Gothamist last Friday morning at Fiamma, on Spring Street.