• FOODS OF NY: Heart & Soul of Greenwich Village TOUR REVIEW
  • THROWBACK THURSDAY: A TASTE OF JUSTICE AT THE BEARD HOUSE: The Beard House kitchen has played host to a panoply of culinary titans over the years, but on very rare occasions a guest upstairs will rival the star power cooking below. This Throwback Thursday, we’re looking back on one such evening, this past July 15, when Sonia Sotomayor, associate justice of the United States Supreme Court (and longtime JBF member) joined us in the dining room, only a few short weeks after the groundbreaking ruling which legalized gay marriage across the country.
+NYC NEWS+
  • And NYC’s Best Mobile Food Vendor Is…Iffy weather did nothing to deter the crowds at Saturday’s Vendy Awards, the annual celebration of the city’s street vendors, food trucks and market purveyors. Lines snaked their way through Colonel’s Row on Governors Island, creating a maze of bodies eager to sample the city’s best mobile food vendors this year.
  • Jean-Georges Vongerichten Has Designs on South Street Seaport: The chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten is planning an ambitious new food market to anchor the culinary offerings at the South Street Seaport starting in 2017.  The Howard Hughes Corporation is scheduled to announce on Wednesday that it is teaming with Mr. Vongerichten and his partner, Phil Suarez, to plan and execute the 40,000-square-foot market in the Tin Building at the seaport, pending approval from the city.
  • 16 Fresh New Brunch Spots to Try in New York: There’s no shortage of enduring brunch spots in New York City (Buvette, Maialino, Russ & Daughters Café — the list goes on), but it’s still worth changing it up every once in a while. Luckily, a handful of great restaurants have begun brunch service (just in time to fight those autumn hangovers), and they’ve unleashed plenty of great new dishes, too — things that go above and beyond your usual eggs Benedict or lox platter.
+INDUSTRY NEWS+
  • René Redzepi Plans to Close Noma, Reopen It as an Urban Farm: Mr. Redzepi envisioned something else as he climbed a staircase up to a tar-papered roof and gazed out at a lake on the edge of the property. In what qualifies as a wildly risky roll of the dice, he plans to close Noma after a final service on New Year’s Eve in 2016. He hopes to reopen for business in 2017 with a new menu and a new mission.
    • How Noma Became the Most Influential Restaurant in the World: The news of Noma’s total overhaul seems sudden, but it also shouldn’t come as such a surprise, as Redzepi has previously said he had a “gut feeling” that he’d keep the restaurant open for exactly a decade.  But how, exactly, did Noma and Redzepi turn their small Danish restaurant into an international icon? Here’s a close look at the restaurant’s history.
  • Tom Colicchio Eliminates Tipping During Craft’s Lunch Service; Dinner Could Follow:  Tom Colicchio, the New Jersey native who co-founded Gramercy Tavern with Danny Meyer before skyrocketing to fame as head judge of Bravo TV’s Top Chef, has become the latest culinary figure to take on one of America’s most deeply ingrained dining customs: tipping. When Colicchio’s flagship Craft debuts its lunch service today, patrons will see a note at the bottom of the menu stating that “prices are inclusive of service.”
  • The Year Is 2040: Welcome to Your Favorite New Restaurant. The disruption of fast-food culture in America is imminent. If current trends are any indication, fast-casual dining may eventually replace traditional quick-service eateries, which struggle to win favor with more health-conscious and persnickety generations. It’s karma for what quick-service chains did to the American diner.  Experts predict that fast-casual restaurants — the middle-ground between traditional fast-food and table-service restaurants when it comes to price level, style, service, and food quality — will only become more commonplace in the near future.
+NEIGHBORHOOD NEWS+
  • The 12 Best Cooking & Tasting Classes In NYC:  The educators at Murray’s Cheese are serious professionals—they include sommeliers at the city’s best restaurants, and Certified Cheese Professionals (disclosure: during the process of researching this article, I applied to be a wine instructor at Murray’s and got hired!). The Murray’s Wine and Cheese 101 class ($70) should be a primer for anyone who wants to understand how to be good taster, period.
  • Iconic Cafe Edison to be replaced by Friedman’s comfort food: Cafe Edison, the famous Theater District haunt that closed in December, will get a second act, the Daily News has learned.  Friedman’s Lunch, a rustic comfort food restaurant well-known for its salmon platters, lox, pastrami hash and gluten-free fare, will replace the Cafe Edison, the longtime theater district staple where stagehands and Broadway stars chowed down on borscht and blintzes.
  • Mission Chinese Just Reinvented the Tiki Cocktail (Hint: It Changes Colors): The liqueur itself is clear, but what kind of tropical tiki drink is so boring as to be colorless?  That was the question motivating Sam Anderson, the bartending genius whose Phil Khallins—a cocktail version of the traditional Thai Tom Kha soup—put Mission Chinese Food’s beverage program on the map as one of New York’s most innovative.