The Tribeca Grand: Now With More ButtOkay, this is an ad for the Tribeca Grand that a Mark over at Copyranter clipped out of City magazine. Our questions include the following:
1) Where is, exactly, the Tribeca Grand in this picture?
2) Are we to infer, from the sheet this woman is wielding, that your massage therapists at the Grand will be naked?
3) And seductively Asian?
4) Who in Tribeca is driving a wood-paneled Buick station wagon, like the one on the lower right?
5) And is she barefoot on cobblestones downtown? Ew!
TriBeCa Grand Hotel apparently offers Naked Turndown Service. [Copyranter]
NewsFeed
Herb Wilson Takes Charge at the Soho and Tribeca GrandThere isn’t much Herb Wilson, the newly appointed executive chef at both the Tribeca Grand and the Soho Grand, hasn’t seen over the years. He’s cooked at good restaurants and mediocre restaurants, been praised (as the chef of Jack’s Fifth, for example), been obscure (a five-year run at Wall Street watering hole Bull Run), toiled in small kitchens, and overseen platoons. But he’s not well known outside the business. Gael Greene once called him, admiringly, a “skilled journeyman.” Now he’s come into the biggest job of his career, a happy ending if ever there was one, and it’s hard not to feel happy for the guy.
Classically trained in France by the legendary Troisgros brothers and a protégé of the late Patrick Clark (and like him one of the few African-Americans chefs in town), Wilson makes up in experience what he lacks in star power. He accomplished the very difficult feat of getting two stars at three different restaurants, from three different Times reviewers at Le Refuge, Bambou, and most recently Jack’s Fifth. And he’s one of the few working New York chefs to have been steadily employed here for over twenty years. Which, as far as we’re concerned, is reason enough to like him. Wilson’s first full menus at both hotels won’t appear until spring, he tells us. But having just started at his new post, he feels prepared to take over the restaurants, banquets, and room-service programs too. Why not? “It’s all cooking,” Wilson says confidently. “It’s what I do. I’ve been doing this a long time.”
NewsFeed
Waverly Inn Chef John DeLucie to Publish Tell-AllFrom toque to bard.Photo: Patrick McMullan
We’ve always thought that what happens at the Waverly Inn stays at the Waverly Inn, but that may change, given this recent deal announcement on Publishers Marketplace:
Chef at New York’s The Waverly Inn John DeLucie’s THE HUNGER, a la Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, [sold] to Dan Halpern and Emily Takoudes at Ecco, for publication in Spring 2009, by Rebecca Oliver and Richard Abate at Endeavor (NA).
gossipmonger
Britney, Lindsay, Paris, You’re Fired!Donald Trump is trying to get Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton to appear on his upcoming Celebrity Apprentice. Justin Timberlake hung out with a brunette at the Tribeca Grand. (Others say he hung out with six girls.) NBC co-chairman Ben Silverman is catching flack for not returning agents’ phone calls and for passing out fake NBC tattoos at a company retreat, but he doesn’t care about either. New York Giants co-owner Jonathan Tisch put up his Fifth Avenue bachelor pad for sale and will be renting a $75,000-a-month condo at Trump Park Avenue. Authorities are cracking down on the St. Tropez party scene and have recently broken up a cocaine and prostitution ring.
Restroom Report
Gearing Up for the Film Festival at Tribeca Grand’s Church Lounge
Whether you’re going to the Tribeca Grand for its brunch (as of last week, the place screens movies for kids so you can get them out of your hair while gulping Bellinis), for top-notch D.J.’s like Riton and Trevor Jackson, or for the bevy of Tribeca Film Festival after-parties that’ll be there next week, you’ll want to know about the restrooms. The spacious facilities under the Church Lounge may not have LCD screens like those inside the hotel’s rooms, but as our investigation reveals, they’re still some of the swankiest in the city.
party town
Exhaustion Sets In at ‘Gotham’ Gala• Gotham Magazine Gala. Capitale, 130 Broadway, nr. Grand St., 7 p.m. Truly an overflowing cornucopia of party fruits and sponsorship vegetables, this event is billed as Gotham’s “Seventh Annual Gala” and a retirement party for Tiki Barber; it’s sponsored by Cadillac, the luxury Swiss watchmaker Audemars Piguet, and a London hotel called the Rushmore; entertainment will be provided by D.J. Cassidy, the “Chez-Zam Entertainment Group,” and the “Fifty-Person Rhythm & Rhyme Marching Band.” Scheduled to be exhausted by all of the above are Spike Lee, Ice T, Jon Bon Jovi, Nina Sky, and Elisabeth Hasselbeck.
