Market Table Already Bumpin’

Market Table has opened for both lunch and dinner with little fanfare, and what we hear today predicts future success. Chef-owner Joey Campanero tells us that he did two and a half turns at lunch today (roughly 100 customers). Plus, the retail counter is cha-chinging away. The biggest seller, Campanero says, is the burger. No surprise, given that it's made from the same magic meat found in burgers at the Spotted Pig, Stand, Borough Food and Drink, City Hall, and even (though not exactly) the Shake Shack. Expect a tough table: the place is even smaller than the Little Owl, Campanero ’s perpetually packed West Village favorite. Related: Shop Like a Chef (Preferably in His Own Store)

Posted 09/26/07 in Grub Street : Openings

Tags: borough food and drink, city hall, joey campanero, market table, openings, spotted pig, stand

Waiters Serve Papers to City Hall and B.B. King Blues Club

Two more waiters have crumbled up their aprons and decided they’re not going to take it anymore. Maimon Kirschenbaum, the lawyer last seen suing Heartland Brewery for shaving time off punch-card records and failing to cough up overtime (he says ten servers are now onboard with the complaint including a former manager) is now going after both Radiante, which owns City Hall (according to the suit, six-year server Mohammed Uddin was paid straight time instead of overtime), and B.B. King Blues Club & Grill. Kirschenbaum filed the latter suit yesterday; as he has it, server Brandon Salus was singing the blues at B.B. King’s after walkouts were deducted from his paycheck, a violation of Section 193 of the New York Labor Law. In one instance a $240 dine-and-ditch allegedly reduced the server’s weekly pay to $20.

Posted 04/23/07 in Grub Street : NewsFeed

Tags: b.b. king blues club & grill, city hall, henry meer, labor, newsfeed

Novelist Marisha Pessl Motivates Herself With Coffee, Rewards Herself With Cupcakes

As Marisha Pessl has it, she got so carried away describing food in her best-selling novel Special Topics in Calamity Physics that certain passages had to be edited down. It’s no surprise then that beyond the eight or nine cappuccinos she used to drink while writing (she's now down to two or three) and the ’wichcraft cupcakes she rewards herself with afterward, the author and Tribeca resident is a self-confessed “absolute foodie.” Now that she’s between book tours and working on a second novel (the paperback of Special Topics comes out next week), she says she has “a license to feed all the time.” So how does she put it to use?

Posted 04/20/07 in Grub Street : The New York Diet

Tags: 'wichcraft, 71 irving place, bouley, city hall, landmarc, le bilboquet, marisha pessl, pecan, pylos, roxy's, special topics in calamity physics, square diner, the new york diet