The City Council passed a watered-down version of Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal to place produce carts in low-income neighborhoods. The new plan cuts the total number down to 1,000 from 1,500 and reduces the number of targeted precincts from 43 to 34. [NYP]
The Post hit two midtown Starbucks yesterday and found that, while Tuesday night’s three-hour training session for baristas may not have instilled the ability to make perfect drinks, they will remake it as many times as you force them to. [NYP]
A City Council member introduced legislation yesterday that would require meat from cloned animals to be labeled as such. [Metro NY]
Clinton Hill: Don’t be fooled by Met Foods window painting claiming the supermarket has the “[l]argest fresh organic products in the area.” You’ll be “hard-pressed to find any (just the usual half-rotten produce they usually carry). It’s clearly a reaction to the threat of all the discerning customers shopping at Green Planet.” [Clinton Hill Blog]
Greenwich Village: The Starbucks on 8th Street between Fifth and University is closing and has posted in its window a bizarre, farewell letter of sorts, which begins, "This thing we have together, it’s bigger than this place." And in a weird way, the epistle is spot-on. [Gothamist]
Harlem: Where can a gal just get a beer and a burger in this gentrifying area? [Uptown Flavor]
Lower East Side: Rayuela is expanding with a Latin takeout spot set to open at the end of March in the former LoSide space. [Eater] Lee Gross’s organic eatery Broadway East opens March 7, and like this week’s ecofriendly thirst quenchers, "filters and carbonates its own water." [Strong Buzz] Freemans will totally let you order artichoke dip before you place your entrée order; they changed their policy two years ago after Bruni’s "Satisfactory" review. [Diner’s Journal/NYT]
While other places open under cover of darkness, the proud owners of De’Vill (coming soon to 68 West 3rd Street in Greenwich Village and having no relationship to Café Deville) are taking a different approach — they’ve affixed a screed covering the entirety of their window that reads like the press release from hell. The place hasn’t even opened yet, but it “has raised the restaurant to unprecedented heights.” Does that mean it’s built on hydraulics? The screed continues with a description of the décor — “a clever display of confidence as there is one screen facing monitor exhibiting a 20-hour live video feed of the kitchen and staff at play.” At play? Shouldn’t they be cooking? Do take a closer look at the sign, because this is just the beginning of the madness.
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Cobble Hill: Whether that house on Kane Street where the old lady lives is infested with rats or squirrels is now a moot point — the city's ordered her to vacate, and trusty NY1 is on the story! [Lost NYC]
Greenwich Village: The Department of Buildings is bitter because the developer of the units that went up over landmark Circle in the Square theater lied and said they'd be used for dorms. They're not, meaning no zoning breaks. Meaning pare down those hideous balconies! [Villager]
Lower Manhattan: Also bitter are Seaport locals, who laughed in the face of moguls last night who offered them community use of the Fulton Market floor where the "Bodies" exhibit is in exchange for development. Looks like they want waaaay more public space than that. [Downtown Express]
Carroll Gardens: Increasingly unpopular architect Robert Scarano is off yet another job, this time at controversial 360 Smith, which now features a more contextual, though still towering, façade. [Brownstoner]
Clinton: Adding to a string of crimps in big plans for the West Side, the redo of neoclassical Farley Post Office into a train station/moved Madison Square Garden is $1 billion short. Egad. [NYS]
Greenwich Village: Should NYU's I.M. Pei–designed Silver Towers be landmarked...or are they just, well, ugly? [Gothamist]
Carroll Gardens: The Clover Club — the Smith Street cocktail spot from the Flatiron Lounge people have a sign up. Getting close! [Off the Presses]
Gramercy: Shockingly, for some cooked-food enthusiasts, "some of Pure’s dishes, and not just obvious things like salad, are downright delicious." [Mouthing Off/Food & Wine]
Greenwich Village: Somebody told somebody that a bartender at a new bar told him that Keith McNally may have put a $1 million bid on Minetta Tavern. [Eater]
Hell’s Kitchen: Video of Dave Martin concocting a special Valentine’s Day gelato to serve at Crave. [Snack]
Tribeca: David Waltuck "first got behind the stove [at Chanterelle] — and set the restaurant on its path to becoming one of the city’s most cherished — before he was 25 years old. He’s now 53." And ready for a Q&A with Frank Bruni. [Diner’s Journal/NYT]
West Village: Grom is totally coming to Bleecker Street, and they’re accepting applications now for a March opening. [Eat for Victory/VV] Was Beatrice Inn raided and shut down last night? [Down by the Hipster]
Bedford-Stuyvesant: Some folks are skeptical that anything will change here, no matter who's elected in November. And they're employing their mailboxes to say so. [Newyorkshitty]
Greenwich Village: After renovations of Washington Square Park found human remains there, folks will protest there tonight, saying the city should merely "repair" the park and not upset buried bones with a full-scale redo. [Metro]
Jackson Heights: This is the home of the largest of 47 rent-stabilized apartment buildings throughout Queens just purchased for $300 million by Vantage Properties. Housing advocates fear the new owner will systematically push out low-rent-paying tenants in the nearly 2,000 units. [The Real Deal]
Chelsea: All the fabulous old Chelsea freaks and bohos partied at Cindy Gallop's wacky loft in the old YMCA building, but this time, sadly, the waiters kept their pants on. [Living with Legends]
Midtown: It's funny/sad that a fortune-teller here duped an entrepreneur out of nearly half a million by telling him he was cursed, but it's just plain funny that the Post said the guy was from "tony Wilson, Wyoming." Bitchy! [NYP]
Red Hook Guess which "degentrifying" hood had the distinct honor of producing confetti for today's Super Bowl–victory parade? Local hearts were "aflutter" with pride…get it? [The Real Deal]
If you’ve ever had the experience of squeezing past the Scylla and Charybdis of Boqueria’s tightly packed models and hams, you’ve probably wished the place were a little bigger. Owner Yann de Rochefort is now in talks to find a space for a bigger downtown Boqueria. And the leading candidate? None other than 10 Downing Street. That is to say, 10 Downing Street south, the southern of two storefronts in the building across from Da Silvano — as opposed to the other 10 Downing, north, the almost-home of Scott Bryan’s 10 Downing and now said to be the future kitchen of “Desperate Chef” Jason Neroni. (To add to the confusion, 10 Downing is also the name as well as the partial address of the latter restaurant.)
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Name: Shepard Smith Job: Host of The Fox Report and Studio B on Fox News. Smith will also anchor a jumbo, two-hour Superbowl/Super Tuesday special, "Fox Super Sunday," on February 3 starting at 10 a.m. on Fox. Age: 44 Neighborhood: Greenwich Village.
Who's your favorite New Yorker, living or dead, real or fictional?
Derek Jeter
What's the best meal you've eaten in New York?
"Mama's" pasta at Gradisca. She comes over from Italy every few months and makes it at a table by the front door.
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Clinton Hill: The pizza place at 37 Washington will soon become a brick-oven pizza spot called Il Porto. [Clinton Hill Blog]
East Village: The roasted shishito peppers at Jimmy’s 43 are so addictive they may drive you to try to “recreate this dish and drink a boatload of beer immediately.” Don't forget, they’re prepared on hot plates. [Eat for Victory/VV]
Flatiron: Shake Shack’s fired up its heat lamps. [Eater] Flavor your coffee the old-fashioned way, with cardamom. At Gramercy Tavern, they're "serving pots of the complex, medium-bodied Yirgacheffe coffee from Ethiopia brewed with cinnamon, cardamom and orange.” [Mouthing Off/Food & Wine]
Greenwich Village: Bellavitae’s new Neapolitan chef Raffaele Ronca is “exceptionally adept at deboning an entire Cornish hen.” [Bottomless Dish/Citysearch]
Little Italy: Luigi DiPalo of DiPalo Dairy can recommend a pizza joint for every palate. [Gothamist]
Park Slope: The new bar and snack spot on Seventh Avenue at 14th Street called Beer Table should be open and serving its "carefully curated selection of smoked lager, coriander-laced wheat beer and various obscure ales" by next Saturday. [NYT]
Greenwich Village: Renovations in Washington Square Park have uncovered human remains, and not for the first time in the park's history: The site used to be a graveyard for the poor. [Gothamist]
Bedford-Stuyvesant: You all know cool little Brownstone Books in Stuy Heights, right? Well, it's going to take over the bookstore at BAM, too. Wowza. [Bed-Stuy Blog]
Carroll Gardens: Some streets here will probably be reclassified as "narrow," rather than "wide," in order to impose new building-height limitations in these quaint parts. [Gowanus Lounge]
Brownsville: A would-be thief shoved seven large salamis under his clothes at Western Beef. But the police found his salami. The police found his salami. [Gothamist]
Bushwick: These 'shwickers aren't reacting very compassionately to a former New York editor's account in this week's issue of getting assaulted there. Except for this one: "Being a lamer doesn't mean he deserved to get his jaw broken." Wow, uh, thanks. [BushwickBK]
Central Village: After a $123 million sale fell through last year, the grand old Emery Roth–designed Devonshire House on East 10th and University has been bought by Mets owner Fred Wilpon for $110 mil. It'll go condo. [NYP]
Upper East Side: Malcolm Gladwell revealed his big feet, gesticulated intensely, said people shouldn't be allowed to say where they went to college, and stole bloggery hearts at the 92nd St. Y the other night. [UES Informer]
Bushwick: Now the hipsters are staging Punk Rock Pillow Fights. Will their crazy, ironic, lo-fi fun ever stop? [Brooklyn Rink via the vaguely anti-Semitic BushwickBK]
East Harlem: A principal at a high school here sent teachers a memo telling them to dumb down their standards for the kids. Uh-huh. [NYDN]
Harlem: Amid its massive, seventeen-acre expansion in the hood's west side, Columbia says it won't tear down the Cotton Club on 125th after all. That's Christian of them. [NYP]
When much of Greenwich Village was landmarked in 1969, the low-rise sprawl of humble Italian-immigrant groceries and tenements southeast of the neighborhood, along Sullivan and Thompson streets and even Seventh Avenue South, didn't make it inside the designated historic safety zone. The area, while not full of great monuments, has its own quiet claims on history. The artist Edward Hopper lived there most of his life, and his paintings like Early Sunday Morning were set there. On December 10, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and the local community board convened more than 100 people inside Our Lady of Pompeii Church to figure out how to get the city to landmark the area to keep its Hopperness intact. GVSHP's Andrew Berman points out that it's filled with gems like Macdougal Street's Provincetown Playhouse, which launched Eugene O'Neill, and a nearby rowhouse where Louisa May Alcott may have worked on Little Women. Parts of the façade are all that remains of Edgar Allan Poe's house on West 3rd, which NYU subsumed into a big new building, raising alarms.
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Greenwich Village: Send off truffle fever with a wine-sodden bang at Babbo’s December 3 Vintage series, which includes a white-truffle tasting menu with wine pairings discussed by Peter Jamros. [Grub Street]
Hell’s Kitchen: Kyotofu is hosting a seven-course dinner-and-dessert sake pairing tonight at 7 p.m. [Grub Street]
Midtown West: The Frederick’s space on West 58th Street will be transformed into Jour et Nuit, a French-American bistro offering, you guessed it, brasserie classics like croque monsieurs and moules frites. [Restaurant Girl]
Soho: Fiamma is a little too liberal with its "Napkins of Shame," which according to Bruni are a "bit of patchwork that makes the table look clean again" to the embarrassment of the messy diner. The critic was subjected to one himself while on a date. [Diner’s Journal/NYT] The Vosges bacon-chocolate bar is accused of not reaching its potential and tasting "more like the barnyard than the pig and more like the rubber tree than the cocoa pod." [Chop Talk/Epicurious]
West Village: Jody Williams is previewing her new enoteca and salumeria Gottino at Greenwich Avenue near Perry Street. [Eater] The chef’s main stage, Morandi, is also serving a Thanksgiving dinner of rosemary roasted turkey with fennel and bruschetta stuffing. Those looking for turkey alternatives can arrive early for regular breakfast. [Grub Street]
Bushwick: This blogger hates on gritty Bed-Stuy, claiming that it's nothing compared to its slicker, 'shwick-er neighbor. That's harsh, but maybe he's right to suggest that pretty Stuy Heights secede from the rest of the hood. [BushwickBK]
Chelsea: Even before 100 Eleventh Avenue developers could obscure Knox Martin's landmark mural next door, they've covered his signature with their ad. It's a proto-dis! [Chelsea Blog]
Coney Island: An ice-skating rink at the base of the Wonder Wheel? That's bigger than Wollman? That's a summertime sailing pond? Yes, yes and yes! [NY1 via Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn]
To everything, turn, turn, turn. And so we turn to Lupa! First, a recap: As we reported last month, owner Jason Denton's mighty sword tapped the shoulders of Lupa chef Steve Connaughton, who will head Denton's as-yet unnamed new venture in Gramercy Park. But Lupa's loyal (er, cultlike) customers can rest easy in the knowledge that though the maestro is leaving in December, he'll be replaced by a damn safe bet: Cruz Goler. A ten-year Batali veteran, Goler was the right-hand man of Lupa’s original chef, Mark Ladner, and followed the latter to Del Posto, where Goler was his “go-to guy” in the kitchen. They like to keep it in the family, you see.
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On guard: On Wednesday a 50 percent larger Yolato (the first one under a partnership with Lenny’s Sandwiches) opens at 145 Park Avenue between 41st and 42nd with free fro-yo gelato for all. You might want to make note of that. And the invasion will continue! By the end of the year, freestanding stores will also come to the Empire State Building (which will serve as the flagship, opening in mid-December) and 180 Lafayette in Soho, plus there are plans for a large store in the Lenny’s at 9th Street and Sixth Avenue and nine other “express” stores in other Lenny’s locations. That's THIRTEEN Yolatos for you; hope it's enough.
Meanwhile, on the Bleecker Street front, Red Mango still has not opened, giving the new Pinkberry a solid two-month head start. Ritual suicide may be in order.
Related:The New Cold War: Frozen Yogurt Invades New York
Brooklyn Heights: Rumors are burbling that the hood's symphonically hyped "Subway Cyrano" saga — where a guy reconnected with his subway crush after searching for her via an online vid — is a Lonelygirl-type hoax. Wouldn't that be sad? [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
East Village: Sure, two low-paid young'uns can share a $3,000 Stuy Town one-bedroom. If they bring along their $1,000 pressurized wall. [Hunt Grunt]
Flatbush: Several cats have been abandoned on a rooftop! And they're scared and hungry! [Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn]
