at the sign of The Pink Pig

A is for A Voce

[Pigging by Wilfrid, April 27 2007]

Introducing the under-construction "Wilfrid's A-Z: Eating the Apple".  And where better to begin?  Ah, Andrew Carmellini, how we've missed you.  How the gastronomes of the Upper East Side must miss you too.

(Spaghetti with ramp leaves)

Zum Schneider Celebrates Win

[The War on Fun by Wilfrid, April 27, 2007]

Congratulations to the Zum Schneider family, celebrating in style their lease extension through 2021 with three days of free beer and sausages (too late, ya missed it).  Their settlement with a pesky landlord (citing noise complaints, of course) includes the landlord's consent to maintain the sidewalk cafe (this is one of the few places in the neighborhood where al fresco refreshment can be taken).

In the Tides articles above, mention is made of the role of restaurants and businesses in making previously forbidding parts of Manhattan safe - fun, even - after dark.  Zum Schneider, on the corner of Avenue C and 7th Street, was a true pioneer.  Along with Esperanto, a few blocks up, it was one of the few outposts of enjoyment five or six years ago on a strip which now boasts a string of bars, lounges and restaurants.  The popular bar gathered 3,800 signatures for its petition to stay open (including mine).

Proost to you too, bier guys.

Mehr.

Tides and Dash Dogs: At Home on the Lower East Side

[Pigging: By Wilfrid: April 27, 2007]

(Allen Leung and Daniel Moy at Tides)

May 7 Update: 2007 Spring Menu Highlights

BLT Salad:  Mesclun greens, vine ripened tomatoes, thin shaved red onion, tossed in a creamy sun-dried tomato dressing.  Garnished with Tomato/Garlic Crostini and torn thick sliced bacon.

Tides’ Lobster Roll:  Succulent sweet lobster meat, tossed lightly with lemon juice, lemon zest, diced cucumbers, fresh ground black pepper and mayonnaise.  Served with sweet potato chips.

Pan Seared Salmon Fillet:  Served medium-rare, with Creamy Barley (pearl barley with sautéed yellow onions, carrots, butter, flour, spices, milk, grated Gruyere cheese and parsley chiffonade).

Pan Roasted Cod Fillet:

Day Boat Chatham Cod lightly dusted with flour and pan roasted.  Served with a Ragout of Wild Mushrooms with fresh herbs and grilled Asparagus spears.

(Dash Dogs on Rivington)

Internet food forums and weblogs?  "They absolutely own this industry now."  Music to my ears, of course, and all the more welcome coming from the owners of the classic American seafood boite Tides, a  favorite on my local restaurant circuit - not to mention the round-the-corner snackshack Dash Dogs.  "They're more honest than the critics who come in, eat one or two meals, and never come back.  They're interested in what we're doing, they know what we're about, and the forums are a good venue for listening to customers and finding out what we're doing right and wrong." 

And Tides, as Allen Leung and Steven Yee happily admit, was launched by an internet foodie.

[Continue reading for a special Pink Pig/Tides offer.]

Day Boat Chatham Cod lightly dusted with flour and pan roasted.  Served with a Ragout of Wild Mushrooms with fresh herbs and grilled Asparagus spears 

Grace Hartigan's Imagination

[New York Peasant by Wilfrid, April 27 2007]

This show of photographs, prints, letters, and other attractive detritus, shown by Syracuse University at its New York outpost on East 61st, would have been better titled "Grace Hartigan and the New York School".  Grace Hartigan, a gifted artist and, on this evidence, a beautiful woman, was part of a loose network of painters, poets and film-makers that consituted a kind of second-coming of the New York School, and her portrait (by Walter Silver) forms the frontispiece of the attractive and entirely free catalogue. 

The original New York School of painters was informally constituted of husky drunks and geniuses born before the Great War: Pollock and de Kooning, of course, as well as Franz Kline, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, and marginal mavericks like Arshile Gorky and David Smith.  As this exhibition confirms, the name lingered to describe a much younger generation of painters influenced by, but always exceeding, New York abstract expressionism, and continuing to drift and drink together in loose social formations.

Herodotus in Hollywood

[The Cunning Tower by Wilfrid, April 27, 2007]

"If the Persian arrows blot out the sun, we shall fight in the shade." More or less. A stirring line from the movie 300, and taken straight from the account of the Battle of Thermopylae in Herodotus' Histories. As indeed, is the rest of the movie's plot, scene by scene (okay, discounting Lena Headey in a clinch and some of Xerxes' camper moments). Question. Is this the oldest line of dialogue ever to find its way into a Hollywood movie?