at the sign of The Pink Pig

Chilling At Puro Chile

[Free stuff by Wilfrid:  June 28, 2010]

Chilling was very much required on a baking hot evening as New York Chileans and their guests piled into the a.c.-ed space of the Puro Chile store to sample wines and snacks.

I was happy to accept an invitation, and even happier to accept several glasses of Cantaluna Sauvignon Blanc from the Colchagua Valley.

Dumb Burger: Home Of The Dumb Burger

[Pigging by Wilfrid: June 25, 2010]

Something for the weekend, dear readers?  The first instalment in a summer series paying tribute to the fearless gastronomic swashbucklers who would re-invent, tweak, kick up and otherwise meddle with the simple burger.  Welcome to Dumb Burger.  Home of the Dumb Burger.

Tasty?  Oh.  Forget about it.  After the break, the Twinkie Toploader.  We are really cooking here.

Lina Frey: World Cup Appropriate

[Pigging  by Wilfrid:  June 20, 2010]

We have entered tenatively upon a strange and hopefully brief passage of the city's history in which traditional gridiron, baseball and hockey bars ringing to the rafters with cries of "the go-ahead goal!"

 

If you must watch the copa mundial communally, why not seek out a sleek Euro-venue with authentic atmosphere and quite decent food.  Lina Frey for example.

Snoozing Into Summer: Ten Years Ago

[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid:  June 17, 2010]

A lousy journey home from London, the flight being held on the runway at Heathrow for a very long time.  I see that I had started on Proust.  Not to show off, but I had finally discovered that the way to get through Proust was to take volumes on transatlantic flights.  You can read a lot of pages in seven hours.

Pulino's: Meat Me On The Bowery

[Pigging by Wilfrid:  June 14, 2010]

Suddenly we are all Bowery bums, headed to Boulud's DBGB or McNally's Pulino's or criss-crossing the old cattle track in search of kicked-up meatballs or Taiwanese gua bao.

For once, restaurant pioneer Keith McNally didn't need to breathe life into a wasteland neighborhood.  The Bowery came off life support when a pizzeria on the corner of Bowery and Houston was no more than a gleam in McNally's eye.

Rabbit In The Moon: An Early Peek At A Gastro-"Pub"

[Pigging by Wilfrid:  June 11, 2010]

I have been looking forward to the Rabbit since I read in last fall's previews that it would seek to evoke an English country house.  I scoffed.

But I now kind of see what they mean.  That ivy sure crawled up the building fast.

Call Me Animal!: The End Of Fine Dining?

[Pigging by Wilfrid:  June 7, 2010]

The fate of New York dining has been much on my mind over the last twelve months; not just because so many New York venues crashed and burned as the economy slumped; rather, because a whole new model of what it means to dine out is steadily supplanting the traditional model which served so well for over two hundred years.

 

Pig?  Check.  PBR?  Check.  The word "suck"?  Check.

And a good thing too, many of you will cry.

My melancholia crystallized around a New Yorker article published in April which actually profiled a restauran not in New York but in Los Angeles.  Call it Animal.

London And Liverpool: Ten Years Ago

[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid:  June 11, 2010]

Fresh back from Atlantic City, it must have been work which took me to the U.K. at the turn of May/June ten years ago, but it was certainly an extended stay with some recreation time thrown in.

Flowers And Faces: At The Galleries

[New York Peasant by Wilfrid: June 7, 2010]

The showing of Claude Monet's late works at the Gagosian in Chelsea is in the running to be the most popular private gallery show of the summer.  Even on a weekday morning, there's a scrimmage around the door - partly caused by attendants enforcing the obligatory bag check.

Scroll down for Helmar Lerski.

Quick Bites: A Second look at Northern Spy Food Co.

[Pigging by Wilfrid:  June 3, 2010]

It seemed a good idea to drop by this East Village farm-to-table hotspot again, especially as experts had advised that I'd underrated it somewhat.

Not a lucky choice of night, though, although I got a (very dark) table right away.