Photo courtesy Mike Lewis. If you passed by St. Paul’s Chapel near the World Trade Center site yesterday you may have felt like you’d stepped back through time to the city’s raw, post-9/11 days, when the chapel’s fence was festooned with photos and tributes to the attack's victims. The new Nora Ephron movie Julie & Julia recreated the makeshift memorial, which was dismantled in November 2002. (Using a crane, the crew also pasted leaves to......

October 22: Wine Dinner at Aix This five-course wine dinner will feature nine top wines from Alsace, Austria and Germany paired with regional dishes such as Alsatian Onion Tart with Thinly Sliced House-Smoked Brisket and Raclette Fondue and Riesling-Marinated Poulet Rouge with Glazed Baby Turnips and Carrots Crispy Sauteed Spaetzle, and Riesling Jus. Doesn't that sound like fall to you? $125, tax and tip excluded. For reservations, call 212.874.7400. 7pm, Aix, 2398 Broadway at 88th......

October 6: Strategies for Building a Balanced Wine Collection The experts at the Italian Wine Merchants can show you how to build up your wine collection beyond those bottles that were left over from your last party. During the course of the afternoon, you'll taste eight Italian wines including vintage Barolo, Brunello, Super-Tuscans, and more while sampling assorted antipasti. $125 per person. Reservations required and can be made online or by calling 212-473-2323 x106. 1:00......

Anthony Bourdain has repeatedly professed his undying affection for Fergus Henderson’s roasted marrow bones with parsley salad, and even considers the British chef to be his “favorite food person.” For eaters who willingly choose seared squab hearts over heart-healthy turkey burgers, Henderson’s offal-heavy cookbook The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating is considered a classic. It contains recipes such as Blood Cake with Fried Eggs, Tripe Gratin, and Crispy Pig’s Tail. Stuff like that. This......

Beard on Food: The Best Recipes and Kitchen Wisdom from the Dean of American Cooking was first published in 1974. This collection of Beard's favorite newspaper columns has been reissued to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the James Beard Foundation, the culinary haven and educational institution created in his honor. The short columns are a pleasure to read, combining culinary education and history with easygoing recipes, travel stories and are brimming with his love......

A basket of country bread and baguette slices come to the table in a basket on a wooden cutting board. To one side of the bread is a shallow ramekin of homey duck rillette, made with shredded leg confit and duck fat. A few squares of butter, cornichons, and a dish of tiny pickled onions complement the breadbasket. So Côte d’Or, the newest addition to the Tour de France restaurant group, opened earlier this week......

December 7: Alex Prud’homme at O&CO. Join Alex Prud’homme, Julia Child's grandnephew, as he recounts stories about Julia and reads from her memoir, My Life in France, which he co-authored. He will also be available to sign books, which might make a great present for someone on your holiday shopping list. O&CO. store, Grand Central Terminal, Graybar Passage--Lexington Ave & 42nd St. (212-973-1472), 6:00 pm, Free. December 8 - 17: Gingerbread Homes for Animals Pastry......

R.W. Apple, whose byline could be seen on articles about politics and hot dogs and had been the NY Times bureau chief in seven cities, died this morning in Washington, DC. His NY Times obituary (written by Todd Purdum) shows the amazing sprawl of his life and career:Drama, and a lot of dash, followed Mr. Apple as night follows day. He was the pool reporter sent to the deck of the U.S.S. Forrestal in 1967......

Over the weekend, Gothamist started to read Julia Child's My Life in France. A collaboration with (and completed by) her grandnephew Alex Prud'homme, Julia gets to describe her experience living in France after World War II, falling in love with cooking, and loving her husband, Paul. And there's writing Mastering French Cooking, too. While the book is absolutely wonderful, we faced the problem of being totally hungry for whatever Julia would describe. Roasted chicken, quenelles,......

Julie Powell, author, Julie & Julia, creator, The Julie/Julia Project...

Gothamist has been a fan of the Julie/Julia Project for quite some time. We were sad to see it come to an end, but at least we knew that Julie had gotten a book deal, so we had something to look forward to. And now, we can revisit our favorite Julie/Julia moments in the form of Julie's new book, Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen: How One Girl Risked Her......

Guerrilla Girls On Tour...

Serena Food and Stories: Feeding Friends Every Hour of the Day, by Serena Bass (Stewart Tabori & Chang, 2004) It often happens when Gothamist gets a "celebrity cookbook" that the book seems like more of a vanity piece for the celebrity chef and offers very little in the way of real recipes that we can actually use. Sometimes these cookbooks are not even readable, for all the wacky and artistic design tricks thrown in, or......

The New York Times reports that the James Beard Foundation, the non-profit organization founded by Julia Child and others after Beard's death nearly 20 years ago, appears to be in deep trouble. The Foundation, which owns the Beard House on West 12th Street, cannot account for hundreds of thousands of dollars it took in, and generally appears to be so poorly managed that they will be hard pressed to maintain their non-profit status once......

The news is spreading over the wires: America's beloved French Chef, that giantess of the kitchen, Julia Child, has passed away. Gothamist, like many others, cut its culinary teeth on Julia's famous two-volume magnum opus, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. This masterwork laid bare the subtleties and secrets of French cuisine for an American audience, and managed to launch one of the first great food bloggers to superstardom. Julia's decades-long television career took......

Julia Child, who brought French cooking into American homes through her PBS program, has died at age 91 in her sleep. Much loved, for her passion and wit, as well as for her tendency to add in some extra alcohol to a dish, Child will be missed, but Gothamist is happy she had a full life. A recent MNBC article about Child. - PBS' page about Julia Child - Snopes on Child's Play - The......

The Times has a fabulous feature on the city schools' search for a chef to plan menus for its 1.1 million public school kids: "Meals must appeal to youthful but discerning palates from Staten Island to the Bronx and cost about $2 each, if not less, to produce." The city is always trying to improve cafeteria food, but kids, raised on fast food, are dismissive. eporter Elissa Gootman went to check out Bronx students......

- Tourist muggings of late in the city. - Gothamist on the Angelika and art house moviegoing. - Blogs aren't alternative cool anymore? Damn it all. - Arguably the grossest post ever on Gothamist: Ladies and their boyfriends' zits. - Iguanas on the loose in Brooklyn! - Inside the apartment of Gizmodo. - One blogger's trials of cooking like Julia Child. - Alfred Hitchcock ain't alive, but Google celebrates his birthday. - Why are the......

In anticipation of the close to the Julie/Julia Project, Julie Powell's marathon cook-and-blog-a-thon to cook every recipe from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blog about it, Amanda Hesser visits Powell and her husband for a meal of veal kidneys, saut�ed potatoes, glazed onions and a cherry clafouti. Hesser also finds out more about Powell (secretary at the LMDC) and that the cooking has taken a toll on the marriage (her husband,......

Gothamist was directed to a great weblog by an eGullet article. The blog, The Julie/Julia Project, is the diary of a woman trying to cook everything in Julia Child's classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking. "365 days. 536 recipes. One girl and a crappy outer borough kitchen." Unfortunately, if she's sticking to the one-year format, she's near the end of her run. But the quality of her writing and the vivid descriptions of the......