Stupid Me

Due to a technical mishap, I accidently deleted a comment by the great ZenDenizen who wrote about my previous post on Scarpetta:

"Glad you liked it, I've been wanting to try it myself. Have you ever read Scott Conant's tweets? He's pretty funny in self deprecating way since he even retweets negative stuff posted about him."

Thanks for the tip Zen! Here's a link to Scott Conant's Twitter for your reading pleasure. 

Eataly

Today I finally made it to Eataly, the Italian food court/supermarket in Madison Square. This place opened recently to much acclaim, and it really is a great addition to the culinary scene in NYC.

Like Italy itself, Eataly is exciting, beautiful, and totally disorganized.

There are multiple entrances. You can enter either on 23rd street, which leads into the main supermarket part of the store, or you can enter on 5th Avenue, which takes you into the gelateria. We went in via 23rd street, and the moment you enter, you encounter boxes of Italian cookies stacked on the side walls. Here you can also pick up a big basket or a small cart for your shopping convenience. When you enter the store proper, you come upon a sumptuous grocery market, with beautiful fruits and vegetables on display. Here you can get the basics, along with exotic mushrooms. Going through this section, you find yourself in a mad scene. Walking around, you find a ham counter. A cheese counter. A pork counter. A meat counter. A bread counter. Then there are rows and rows and rows and rows and rows of pastas, sauces, vinegars, olive oils, preserves, more cheeses, more meats, more everything! The food ranges from the modest and modestly priced to the more extravagant and expensive. There's also a section where you can buy guienue Italian cooking wares along with cookbooks. 

And this is just where you can shop.

Eataly also has multiple restaurants. The one I went to is called La Pizza and Pasta where, shockingly enough, they serve only pizza and pasta. But of course they also sell delicious wine by the glass and they pour it at your table. There are other restaurants, ranging from the modest to the more expensive, and you can check them all out on the Eataly website -- I would exhaust myself if I tried to describe them all.

In fact, exhausting is what best describes Eataly. There is just so much food you can buy, so many places you can eat, so much stuff you can get, that you can't possibly check it all out in one visit. I didn't get to spend much time at the coffee bar or in the bakery, nor did I check out Eataly Vino, the wine store that has its own separate entrance on 23rd street. But this place is really a trip, great experience, the kind of place that makes you grateful to live in NYC. 

If you love Italian food, then you must check out Eataly. Just make sure you wear comfortable shoes and give yourself a lot of time. 

Two postscripts:

1. The supermarkets and restaurants at Eataly blend into each other. You'll be walking through some aisles of food and suddenly find yourself in an area surrounded by tables and chairs and waiters. If you want to sit down, don't! Make sure you find (and it can be a little tricky), the host or hostess who will put you on a list. This is a very popular, crowded place and you'll probably have to wait 20 minutes for a table. Probably best to put your name down, do some browsing, and then come back when your table is ready.

2. Eataly was createad by PBS cooking host Lidia Bastianich whose appearance on WNYC last year with Christopher Walken I blogged about in September. This woman is a culinary genius.

Scarpetta

Recently some friends and I checked out a restaurant on the edge of the Meatpacking district  in Chelsea called Scarpetta. It's a trendy restaurant serving nouvelle Italian cuisine, rather upscale and refined -- a place where the beautiful people congregate.

What else would you expect in this neighborhood? 

Scarpetta surprised me, however, with its utter lack of pretentiousness. There was no music blasting  and, while the place was crowded, it was also spacious and comfortable. Best of all, the service was outstanding and friendly and, most importantly, the food was amazing. 

The restaurant doesn't have a huge menu but what it does serve, it does very well. Also, unlike many hip restaurants that charge top dollar for tiny portions, the entrees here are big and hearty. I ordered the Pappardelle, the pork and pasta dish with saffron. It was very tasty and beautifully prepared. My wife ordered the duck and foie gras ravioli and just raved over it. We also ordered spaghetti with tomato and basel as an appetizer and the sauce and basel were so fresh that it made our mouths tingle. 

Scarpetta also has an excellent wine list, and we ordered a red wine (can't remember the vintage, alas), and the bread they served with the table was easily the best I've ever had at any restaurant ever (and I've eaten at Per Se).

So if you're looking for a classy night in Manhattan with good food, Scarpetta is a great bet. 

Going, Going ... Gone?

Today was D-Day for "Spiderman: Turn off the Dark" director Julie Taymor. The Tony-winning star director has apparently left the show and it's not clear if she walked or was fired. Anyway, this saga of a musical will apparently continue to enthrall Broadway gossip mongers for months to come -- the show is allegedly going on hiatus for a couple of months (maybe even three) as the brains behind this debacle try to pull gold out of garbage. Well, best of luck, and best of luck Julie in whatever your future holds for you.

Another person having a lousy day is State Senator Carl Kruger, a powerful Brooklyn politician who just turned himself into the authorities for apparently being a bribe-taking, influence-peddling scumbag. This has been a long time coming and it couldn't have happened soon enogh. Kruger is a really bad guy who has basically used his office as a private business and he has helped kill more progressive and reform legislation than probably anyone else. This is great news -- hopefully he'll be replaeed by someone better. We shall see.

Hotel Seville - 1970s NYC Commercial

Ask Mike Anything

Well he only has a couple years left in office but Mayor Mike is still doing new things. Now he has a Twitter feed call #AskMike Anything where New Yorkers can send their CEO any questions they like. 

I can't really think of anything I'd like to ask the Mayor besides why he decided to appoint Cathie Black school's chancellor (but something tells me he wouldn't answer that).

The Way Around Town

When someone or something becomes controversial, it's either because they're doing something incredibly good or incredibly bad. Either way, they are shaking up popular consensus, challenging commonly held practices and assumptions, saying to people "no, don't go this way, go that way."

This directional metaphor for controversy fits aptly to Janette Sadik-Khan, our city's transportation commissioner. 

Since her appointment a few years back, she's installed pedestrian plazas in Times Square, Madison Square, and Herald Square, routed bike routes around town, and reduced the number of parking spaces around town. She is probably the only transportation chief in any major city today (or ever) who has publicly said that the car should take a back seat (pun totally intended) to public or alternate transportation options. If Robert Moses was the quintessential 20th century transportation chief, trying to make NYC a car-centric town, Janette Sadik-Khan is 21st century transportation chief, trying to do the opposite.

Her efforts have ruffled quite a few feathers amongst some politicians and car owners in NYC. For them, bike lanes and pedestrian plazas are nonsense. They don't understand why the streets don't exist completely for them. They think they should be able to drive pollution spewing vehicles anywhere and everything in this town. They don't want this city's transportation infrastructure to change.    

But Sadik-Khan does and she's showing the leadership to do it. I think, years from now, people will look back at what she's done and be grateful that our city's transportation policies changed, taking us in a better direction.

Still Here

Apologies for the week's long radio silence, life has a way of throwing several things at you at once that force blogging to take a back seat. Fear not, however, all is well and all is bright, just been very busy with doing boring but important stuff. Now back to blogging!

The King's Visit

Tonight are the Academy Awards and many people expect The King's Speech to win several major awards, including Best Picture. I certainly hope it does. I'm a big Anglophile and this was an excellent film, shedding new light on some otherwise well-known history.

The film is about King George VI who came to the British throne in 1936 when his older brother King Edward VIII abdicated to marry "the woman I love," American divorcee Wallis Simpson. George was shy, awkward, and had a terrible stutter (his attempts to cure being the subject of the film). George never wanted to be king but he did his best. Along with Winston Churchill, FDR, and Stalin, George was one of the leaders who led the Allies through WWII and helped to conquer fascism. He died in 1952 and was the father of the current British monarch, Queen Elizabeth.

After his abdication, however, Edward became something of pariah. He and Wallis traveled the world, living in luxurious exile, and generally becoming the first couple we might call "celebutards." Allegedly they were sympathetic to Hitler and engaged in financial shenanigans and were generally just awful.

They also had a connection to NYC. Every year they would come here and stay at the Waldorf-Astoria, bringing loads and loads of luggage, including their own serving china. Edward was actually staying in NYC in 1947 when then Princess Elizabeth married Prince Phillip. And after they left town, rumor has it that this outlaw royal duo would never pay their hotel bills.

That said, they weren't so truly horrible. Apparently, in 1941, Edward visited a tenement on the Lower East Side. For all of his wretchedness, Edward always cared a great deal about the poor and working class. During his brief reign as King, he actually went into working class neighborhoods in England and talked face to face with commoners, even saying at one point "Something must be done" (like Princess Diana fifty year later, who was one of the first public figures who bravely shook the bare hands of AIDS patients). Edward may have been an SOB, and a creepy guy, but he was not totally without merit. And here in NYC, at least at one time, he showed that to be true.  

Wisconsin Protest in New York City