IHOP and Applebee’s Approach the AltarThe $2.1 billion acquisition of Applebee’s by IHOP probably didn’t set too many New York foodie hearts aflutter. The two restaurants are largely interchangeable to the eyes of Manhattan feinschmeckers, and even their most loyal customers in Rego Park and elsewhere think of them mostly as feeding stations, or, in the case of Applebee’s, places to pick up used-carpet salesmen. But there’s more to both companies than meets the eye, with two different business models and even two different corporate cultures. Our crack staff analyzes the deal at Daily Intel.
IHOP Bids for Applebee’s: The End of an American Institution? [Daily Intel]
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McCarter to Pogue: ‘Quit Your Day Job!’The inquiring minds over at Daily Intel have been giving lots of love to Times tech columnist David Pogue’s “iPhone: The Musical,” in which the writer and his band of merry iPhone-lovers celebrate the joys of the tech-obsessed world’s gadget of the moment.
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Vulture’s First and Only Post Dedicated to the Paris Hilton SagaPerhaps you heard? Paris is out of jail, and she’s capitalizing on the moment by asserting her saintly desires to do everything short of joining a nunnery. And though she’s not an actress, singer, or possessor of any kind of evident creative talent (despite her camp’s claims to the contrary), you can be excused for having at least a vague interest in the frenetic media goings-on regarding her release.
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Best of the Rest on the Best of New YorkWe’re not Nostradamus, but we called this: Best of New York Eating & Drinking has everybody talking! Daily Intel does us the fine service of cherry-picking some of the most amusing blog spew. Do you disagree with the disagreements? (And does that make you dizzy?) Click and get back to us later.
New Yorkers Know Best [Daily Intel]
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Food Kept From Drew Nieporent; Fellow Diners Fear for LivesYou would think that Drew Nieporent, as one of the most famous and influential of New York restaurateurs (not to mention one of the most recognizable) would be able to get decent service at a good Manhattan restaurant. You can see where we’re headed with this: Yesterday at the Cafe at Country, the jolly mogul was made to wait … and wait … and wait for his meal. “This is my worst nightmare, that this would happen in one of my own restaurants,” Nieporent said. Find out the full story at Daily Intel.
Celebrity Restaurateurs: They Get Slow Service Just Like Us! [Daily Intel]
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Christmas Vacation! Yay!
That’s about all, folks. And we’ve got some sad news for you: Daily Intel is going on vacation. We won’t be posting next week, but we’ll be back bright and early on Tuesday morning, January 2. Thanks for reading these last three months, happy and merry and all of that, and we’ll see you in 2007.
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Welcome to Daily IntelligencerSince January 1973, the Intelligencer section has been New York’s weekly home for news, gossip, short takes, and pithy commentary. Starting now, the Daily Intelligencer is nymag.com’s home for that same cocktail of the serious and the frivolous — but blended much more quickly. Daily Intel will filter the stories of the day through New York’s unique sensibility, all day long, every day of the week. Serious looks at city news will jostle for space with comic riffs on what’s going on around town. Party reports will bump up against Atlantic Yards updates. Think of it as a stream of collective unconsciousness from inside the communal New York brain.
Daily Intel is edited by Chris Rovzar and Jessica Pressler, with regular contributions from New York Magazine’s writers and reporters. Chris most recently was a staff writer at the Daily News, where he also cut his chops reporting for Rush & Molloy’s daily gossip column. Jessica comes to us from Philadelphia, where she was a staff writer for Philadelphia magazine and occasionally wrote for the Styles pages of the New York Times.
You can reach Chris and Jessica at intel@nymag.com.