Andrew Carmellini Wants to Stir the Melting PotConsidering how successful Andrew Carmellini’s A Voce has been, we were hardly surprised to hear he was looking at new projects. But Carmellini tells us that, although “I’d like to open another [A Voce] in a good urban market,” he has other, more intriguing (to us, anyway) plans in store too. Carmellini wants to create a multi-ethnic American restaurant at some point in the near future. Given that he made his name at Café Boulud cooking from a wide range of traditions, the idea seems a natural for him.
Mediavore
‘Wichcraft Awarded Top NYC Honors; Shake Shack DefendedRegional-food gurus Jane and Michael Stern say that their favorite New York sandwich is … the bacon, egg, and gorgonzola from ‘wichcraft. [NYDN]
One of New York’s top burger experts evaluates Steve Cuozzo’s takedown of Shake Shack in the Post, taking issue with key points in the article. [AHT]
Chef Michael Schulson is said, in an unconfirmed report, to be leaving Buddakan. [Eater]
Bloomberg Meets Ganek and Touts HerLast night found the Guggenheim, hosting a book party for Danielle Ganek’s Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him, an art-world tell-all, appropriately crawling with Upper East Side collector types. “Is Larry [Gagosian] here yet?” was the recurring whisper up and down the spiral gallery — until an even heavier hitter dropped in. At around 7:15 p.m., many burly security guards began to traverse the crowd, and soon several handlers were ushering in none other than Michael Bloomberg. Awkwardly, the mayor was not there for the festivities: He’d come specifically to take in Alyson Shotz’s “The Shape of Space,” the title piece of Guggenheim’s current here’s-a-little-something-while- we’re-renovating exhibit. No matter. The Lulu people saw a good chance, and they took it. A lightning-quick negotiation took place behind the wall-like sculpture, and within a minute, the mayor was holding up Lulu Meets God for the cameras and being snapped mid-chitchat with the author. After another minute of this, the genial if slightly befuddled Bloomberg made a brisk exit, with the muscle clearing the way. The party, having officially bested its own Scheduled to Appear list, pressed on. —Michael Idov
The Best of Times Is Now
• Mayor Bloomberg is seeking to boost his proposed property-tax cut to as much as 8.5 percent, says the Post. The goal is to roll back a bit of 2003’s infamous 18.5 percent hike, something the City Hall promised to do “in better times.” [NYP]
• Ad firm Saatchi & Saatchi got the $16 million account to overhaul the 30-year-old “I Love New York” campaign. (Spitzer says, a bit haughtily, that he won’t appear in the ads.) Let’s hope they do better than Saatchi’s recent Kurt Cobain fiasco. [Crain’s NY]
• Mistaking her for an intruder, a New Haven cop opened fire on his own daughter, who was sneaking into the house after a late date. The girl, 18, has a bullet in her thigh. [NYDN]
• Railway boozers, rejoice! The proposal to curb the oh-so-European practice of selling alcohol on Metro-North is pretty much kaput in the face of a commuter outcry. [NYT]
• That outcry, however? Could have been just drunken babbling. Almost a thousand LIRR and Metro-North passengers got so trashed on the trains last year they needed medical attention; some 287 were ticketed for booze-fueled shenanigans. [Newsday]
party town
Comic Book Guy Searching for Formal Trivia Night• Darna Center quiz night. Gramercy Park Hotel, 2 Lexington Ave., nr. 21st St., 7 p.m. Oscar de la Renta hosts; scheduled guests include Rachel Weisz, Sienna Miller, Petra Nemcova, Minnie Driver, Milla Jovovich, and Harvey Weinstein. The Darna Center is a provider of children’s services in Tangier, and the gimmick of the fund-raiser is that the winners of the twelve-team trivia competition get a weeklong Tangier luxury vacation. Let’s hope some sort of magical madcap trivia-prize switcheroo occurs and a team of scruffy twentysomething regulars at the Baggott Inn’s trivia night spend the week in Tangier while a gaggle of swells in Darna Center fund-raiser eveningwear stare forlornly at their prize bucket of free Rheingolds.
intel
Broadway/Lafayette- Bleecker Combo Just the Start of F-Line ChangesWe picked up the news from 2nd Ave Sagas that the MTA is set to combine the Broadway/Lafayette and Bleecker Street stations, so you can transfer from the B/D/F/V to the 6 going both downtown and — this is the beauty part — uptown. But wait, as the disembodied voice says, there’s more! This is just one part of a whole menu of subway projects for which the MTA is seeking $3.8 billion in federal funding. There’s $37 million for the Broadway/Lafayette-Bleecker work, plus another $12.6 to make the combined stop ADA-compliant. There’s $11 million to replace “historical arch canopies” over Fourth Avenue at the Smith-9th F stop “as per the National Register of Historic Places” — that means fixing the roof spanning the control houses at either end of the stop with original details— plus $23 million to fix lights and MetroCard collection at Smith-9th stop. There’s planned work on the 6 in the Bronx, and on some stations in the Rockaways, as part of the proposal, too, but never mind that. With all this new F work, it’ll be a nice ride to Park Slope. —Alec Appelbaum
Notice of Public Hearing and Description of Projects [MTA, PDF]
Earlier: The Subway Transfer We’ve All Been Waiting For
intel
Central Park’s Imagine Mosaic Is Collapsing
Imagine there’s no Imagine Mosaic (it’s easy if you try): The centerpiece of Central Park’s Strawberry Fields is in danger of collapsing. The first cracks appeared in the 25-year-old memorial five or six years ago, according to M.C. Reiley, the Central Park Conservancy’s supervisor of monuments conservation, and what he called the “last, best chance” to save it came last week. “The problem is that it wasn’t constructed very well,” said Reiley, who is also a sculptor. The mosaic is eleven feet in diameter but sits on a concrete slab only ten feet across. “So, right off the bat there’s been this problem with a half foot of the mosaic all the way around not resting on anything,” Reiley explained.
Lindsay Lohan and a Normative Definition of NewsWe have a vague memory of a professor in an undergrad media-theory course lecturing us one day on what he called the normative definition of news. Best we can recall, he explained that news, definitionally, is information that is true now but was not previously, that has an effect on your life, and that will require you to change in some way in response to it.
On an unrelated note, Lindsay Lohan apparently drinks excessively and uses drugs.
gossipmonger
Blowin’ in the WindBobby Kennedy Jr. says he and his uncle Ted aren’t as opposed to the proposed Cape Cod wind farm as a book says they are. Liza Minnelli and Isle Werther are fighting over a dress. Barneys creative director Simon Doonan is happy to be a “card-carrying fag.” Boxing will go upscale when three Ford models replace the traditional ring girls at the upcoming welterweight championship at MSG. Former Justin Timberlake flame Cameron Diaz and current Justin Timberlake flame Jessica Biel will both be at the MTV Movie Awards, which may be awkward. Adam Carolla noted that Rosie O’Donnell is a fat female lesbian, and thus has “triple coverage as a minority.” President Bush’s chief domestic policy adviser, Karl Zinzmeister, reportedly said he’d never hire another woman because they “just get pregnant and leave.” Dean McDermott broke up with girlfriend Mary Jo Eustace via “Page Six.”
21 questions
Don’t Get Martha Plimpton Started on Duane ReadeName: Martha Plimpton
Age: 36
Job: Actress; Tony nominee for The Coast of Utopia; host of the 826 NYC fund-raising concert, Tiny Smooshy Sunday On Fire, on June 3.
Neighborhood: Upper West Side
Who’s your favorite New Yorker, living or dead, real or fictional?
Quentin Crisp and Holden Caulfield.
What’s the best meal you’ve eaten in New York?
It’s a tie, I think, between anything at Peter Luger and the insanely delish bacon death at Gramercy Tavern.
In one sentence, what do you actually do all day in your job?
I put dead people’s hair on my head and speak loudly in front of hundreds of strangers while pretending they are not there.
In the Magazine
The Food War Between Old and New ContinuesThe attentions of New York’s food staff are divided between modernity and tradition. Gael Greene is vexed with Provence, a reopened French restaurant which was faithfully conventional even in its former incarnation. Rob and Robin, apart from their usual announcements of new places in Openings, extract from Anthos chef Michael Psilakis a comparatively novel recipe for mature dandelion greens. And Adam Platt finds himself caught in the middle of Marco Canora’s half-modern, half-classical menu at Insieme.
Restroom Report
Ono, I Really Have to Go!Now that we’ve brought you the steaming poop on Keith McNally’s loos, we can’t help but wonder — who are the other restroom-auteurs? The titans who dream up a new restaurant and imagine themselves walking into its grand opening on a red carpet of double-ply? There is one such man: Mr. Jeffrey Chodorow. When we praised his Kobe Club restrooms last week, we thought the tiles looked familiar — indeed they’re a holdover from Ono, also designed by “Chodobro” Jeffrey Beers. Shall we visit what may be their finest crossing of creative swords?
it happened this week
On the Town
The arrival of Fleet Week’s giddy sailors on shore leave marked a summery spate of punch-drunk recklessness, with five intoxicated Long Islanders starting a brawl at Space Mountain at Disney World and Jets cornerback Justin Miller hitting a female Barack Obama staffer in the face at a Chelsea nightclub. And it just got odder from there: A coyote bit a kindergartner on the head in the Jersey suburbs. A 60-year-old woman delivered twins, to the displeasure of her adult children. (“It’s my life and it makes me happy,” explained the new mom.)
Chodorow and Tom Valenti Team Up; Rum RenaissanceJeffrey Chodorow is opening a restaurant with Tom Valenti right next to his new restaurant with Zak Pelaccio; also, a new Rickshaw will open in the Village. [Eater]
Related: Chodorow and Pelaccio Planning a ‘Malaysian Coffeehouse’ [Grub Street]
We’re in the middle of a rum renaissance, with “heavy, thick and funky” British varieties and “smooth and sugary” Spanish-Caribbean ones. [NYDN]
Jay-Z’s 40/40 Club defends itself against charges of unfair labor practices: “Everyone makes the minimum wage at the club.” [NYDN]
