Details Bubble Up About New York Wine & Food FestivalNot everyone is behind the New York version of the South Beach Wine & Food Festival, occurring October 9–12 (you’ll recall local restaurateurs had mixed reactions), but Eater brings news of events that may get more people behind it.
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De Niro to Open Nobu Hotel; Start Stockpiling Food TodayRobert De Niro will put an outpost of the Japanese restaurant in his financial-district hotel, ‘Law and Order: SVU’ featured a locavore villain this week, and consumers are starting to stockpile food again.
Amy Ruth’s Taking Her Sweet Time in Brooklyn; Adour? OkayDowntown Brooklyn: So much for a Valentine’s Day debut: Amy Ruth’s at the Fulton Mall isn’t even open yet. [Lost City]
Hamptons: Restaurant Week begins March 20. Bargain meals at close to 70 participating restaurants seems like a good excuse to take advantage of any lodging bargains before warm weather sets in. [Restaurant Girl]
Meatpacking District: Florent plans to give up the ghost on a high note, on Gay Pride Day at the end of June. [NYP]
Midtown East: Citysearch calls Ducasse’s food at Adour “comme ci, comme ça.” [Bottomless Dish/Citysearch]
West Village: The Beatrice team might expand to L.A. [Down by the Hipster]
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Le Cirque Gets on the Wine-Bar BandwagonAs the fashion for haute cuisine falls away, the more casual wine bar has become a kind of economic savior for the city’s classic high-end chefs — one reason, as we noted in our Fall Preview year, the likes of Daniel Boulud and Alain Ducasse have embraced the genre wholeheartedly. (It’s easier to lure customers into wine bars, and wine is a much higher-profit item than food.) Now Le Cirque has gotten into the act, opening its new wine bar tonight. Says the restaurant’s legendary owner, Sirio Maccioni: “Our new wine lounge is a more casual side of Le Cirque, with chaise longues and where no jackets are required. We wanted to offer something, in our lounge, without all the rigueur of the dining room.” The centerpiece of the wine bar is an immense wine tower, with, according to Maccioni, “20,000 bottles of wine and the right menu to go with it.” Somehow it just doesn’t seem right to go to Le Cirque without a jacket, though — no matter how many bottles of wine they have.
Le Cirque wine-bar menu
Related: Grape Nuts [NYM]
The Annotated Dish
Adour’s Elegant Fish-and-Shellfish Double-deckerAdour, Alain Ducasse’s much-discussed “wine bar,” has opened, and as our profile last month suggested, it’s not so much a bar as a more casual version of Alain Ducasse at the Essex House, the chef’s buttoned-up former venture. Today, we break down one of Adour’s debut dishes, striped bass and shellfish in a vin jaune d’Arbois sauce — a variation on a Ducasse classic created by his New York chef, Tony Esnault. As always, mouse over the different elements to hear them described in the chef’s own words.
Trimmings
Your Handbag Gets Seated at AdourWhen Alain Ducasse opened at the Essex House in 2000, not only was it an important culinary moment for the city, it was a great day for handbags. In his quest to civilize an unruly New York dining public, the detail-obsessed restaurateur had equipped each table with a red-velvet-upholstered footstool upon which women could give their precious clutches a proper stage, rather than just dump them on the floor like an old Duane Reade shopping bag.
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S.J.P. and M.B. Have a Spat on the C/EMatthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker got into a fight on the platform of the downtown C/E train at 23rd Street. Alpha Media head Kent Brownridge married Hearst publicity head Alexandra Carlin at the Gordon Ramsay restaurant. Artie Lange tried unsuccessfully to get four Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders to disrobe on the Howard Stern show. A lot of foodies showed up at the preview of Alain Ducasse’s wine-themed restaurant, Adour, in the St. Regis. Bruce Springsteen waited a half hour for a lunch table at the Turning Point in Long Branch. Cindy Adams says Heath Ledger once tried to avoid her by saying, “You people from the press are not nice to me,” but that he smiled while saying it. Liz Smith approves of the fact that Jenna Bush is getting married in Crawford, Texas, and not the White House.
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A New Food Emporium at South Street Seaport?; Join a CSA TodayConsultant Clark Wolf is in a rush to open artisanal-food stalls across from the old Fulton Fish Market by Memorial Day, but apparently this has nothing to do with the proposed New Amsterdam Public market. [Insatiable Critic]
Related: Batali Shows a Little Leg to Sex Up New Amsterdam Public
A lawsuit between a Queens Chinese restaurant and CW11, regarding Kaity Tong’s reporting on a mouse allegedly found in the food, is close to being thrown out since the lawyers can’t prove any malice on the newscaster’s part. [NYP]
Grant Achatz, star chef of Chicago’s Alinea, may have beat his tongue cancer, but his sense of taste may not return for a year or two. [WSJ]
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Keith McNally Sued; Huckabee Serves Clam Chowder in New HampshireAccording to a new class-action suit being brought against Keith McNally, servers at Pastis and Balthazar were forced to foot the bill for customers who walked out on their checks, in addition to being denied minimum wage. [NYP]
Frank Bruni, like many other critics, believes a restaurant’s chicken dishes speak volumes about its overall quality. [Diner’s Journal/NYT]
E-mails sent by Starbucks Corp. managers reveal their efforts to prevent unionizing among their employees, although labor experts say the activity is not illegal. [WSJ]