at the sign of The Pink Pig

The Grand Ole Oak Room: Antunes At The Plaza

[Pigging by Wilfrid:  November 24, 2008]

Diamond Jim Brady would love this grand old joint.  I rather liked it myself.

This may not be the most obvious season to be launching a dramatic, costly, somewhat classic French restaurant, with lashings of caviar and truffles.  But at least the task is accomplished with aplomb.

Quick Bites: Happy Birthday, Belcourt

[Pigging by Wilfrid:  November 24, 2008]

Congratulations to chef Matt Hamilton and owner Mehenni Zebentout on entering a second year with their successful East Village bistro au coin, Belcourt.

Successful not only in the fundamental sense of attracting a fairly steady stream of customers (it always seems quite busy in the evenings, but there's rarely a long wait for a table), but also in maintaining the integrity of Hamilton's cuisine and the honest  "everything that can be made in house, is" attitude.

Where Exactly Is Camberley: Ten Years Ago

[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid:  November 24, 2008]

I had thought Camberley was located somewhere in that uncharted terra incognita casually referred to as "South London".  I suppose it is, but South London extends, if I'm any judge, almost as far as the White Cliffs of Dover, and possibly into the Channel.

In The Small Dirt Candy Restaurant

[Pigging by Wilfrid:  November 17, 2008]

Times do change.  From the nineteenth century hobo dreaming of gin lakes and cigarette trees and the big rock candy mountain.

 

To twenty-first century downtown New Yorkers crowding into the tiny Dirt Candy to eat moderately priced and well-made vegetarian/vegan dishes  with not a gin bottle or cigarette pack in sight.

Quick Bites: Veritas (The Tête Is Back In Town)

[Pigging by Wilfrid:  November 17, 2008]

Veteran readers will remember my rave about the tête de veau  at L'Atelier de Robuchon, which I nominated as my best Manhattan dish of 2007.

It's back, courtesy of the very same chef who prepared this heavenly puck of headmeat and jelly at Robuchon's place; Grégory Pugin, now at Veritas.

Still In London: Ten Years Ago

[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid:  November 17, 2008]

Randall & Aubin was a thing of beauty.  A real food store.  I was lucky enough to know it during its final flourishing in the 1990s.

Da Umberto: Va Tutto Bene? No...

[Pigging  by Wilfrid:  November 10, 2008]

There's a certain New York state of mind, I suppose, in which you still get mama's best home cooking in some nebulous neighborhood called Liddle-Iddly, and Irish bars are really like the old house at home in County Galway, and Irving Berlin works the Bowery as a singing waiter.

Da Umberto waddles an awkward tightrope between that fantasy and the realities of New York dining in 2008.

Biding My Time In London: Ten Years Ago

[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid:  November 10, 2008]

Despite the excitement of the new apartment in Gramercy Park, I was destined to spend extended periods of time in London in the winter of 1998-99 for melancholy family reasons.  I still needed to eat, though.

Miró, Miró On The Wall: Joan at MOMA

[New York Peasant by Wilfrid: November 10, 2008]

The capacious Miró show, "Painting and Anti-Painting: 1927-1937"  which currently monopolizes MOMA's entire 5th Floor (which regulary has space for two blockbusters) is not only exciting but profoundly illuminating.

Joe The Chef: New American On First Street

[Pigging by Wilfrid:  November 3, 2008]

A tough season, perhaps, for anyone named Joe, although calling a restaurant "Joe Doe" does leave something of a blank canvas for the critical imagination.

For a time, I had it mentally filed as John Doe, with all the unappetizing associations of a label tied to the toe of a stiff in the morgue.  But Joe is Joe Dobias.