Surprising news from the West Village, as Little Branch, Sasha Petraske’s popular subterranean cocktail den, was shut down by the Department of Health yesterday. According to the sticker that is currently slapped on the door, the bar is guilty of operating without a permit, but considering that Little Branch received an A during a recent visit by the Health Inspector and the liquor license is up to date, it's not clear exactly what permit the bar is missing.
We await comment from the bar and/or the Dept. of Health to see what the problems were.
· Little Branch Coverage [~ENY~]
· Nightlife Coverage [~ENY~]
Freelance writer Jason Diamond will never escape his haunting past working as a barista in some of New York's best coffee joints as long as he keeps running into his old regulars: "I realize that no matter where I go in life, how much money I make, or how much fun I have making it, I will always be a barista to somebody." [Opinionator]]]>
Grub Street compiles a list of the 101 best and newest desserts in the country, a must-read for any sweet-toothed restaurant lover out there. Included in the New York section are the ice cream sundae at Kutsher's, the beer and bread porridge at Acme, the grapefruit curd with matcha and pistachio at Isa, the butterscotch pot de creme at North End Grill, and the ice cream cake at Parm. [GS] ]]>
1) Stuy Town: pcvstBee 
Brooklyn's Community Board 1's public safety committee turned down Eric Demby's request to serve locally made beer, wine, and booze at his outdoor summer-long food market Smorgasburg. Demby plans to construct a penned off bar in the middle of the waterfront market, and as long as he gets enough signatures from the community, chances are the full CB1 board will overrule the committee and give him a pass. [BP]]]>
BLACK TUESDAY — On Valentine's Day, The Cannibal will be hosting a Black Hearts Party, where they're going to be showing movies like My Bloody Valentine, So I Married an Axe Murderer, Lost in Translation, and War of the Roses. Food specials that night will include: black kale salad, beef heart tartare, and bitter chocolate tart. Resto, which is right next door, will be serving their regular menu plus a number of dishes for two. [EaterWire]
The owners of The Village Pourhouse are turning their Restaurant Row location into an outpost of one of their other concepts, Little Town. The new project will open on March 8 with 25 beers on tap, 75 more brews in bottles, and a menu of American comfort foods, including a Rochester-style garbage plate. [EaterWire]
A list of the top grossing nightclubs in the country was released today, and Lavo New York was the only local club to crack the top ten, with an approximate gross income of $25 -$35 million in 2011. The rest of the top ten was mostly filled with Las Vegas mega clubs, and Pacha and 1OAK were the only other New York clubs to crack the top 50, although the old Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden in Astoria finished in 99th place with estimated income of $5-$10 million. [Nightclub.com]]]>
New York Fashion Week is not just the time when fashion designers unveil their new clothing lines to the industry and public, it's also usually when new nightclubs plan to unhook their velvet ropes for the first time. What better way to reveal your shiny new club than to pack it with fashion VIP's and celebrities for fancy events, using the cachet from NYFW to help wow the customers who you want in your place whenever they want a night on the town. Over the last few years, Le Bain, Kenmare, Lavo, the Electric Room, Don Hill's, and even Mister H used strong Fashion Week showings to help get themselves on the map, even though 50% of those places either closed or are going through significant programming changes.
Lost City takes a look at the sad state of the Coney Island building that housed Paul's Daughter up until last fall. The name of the burger stand has been scrubbed so that you can now see layers of signage from the other business that inhabited that space over 50 years ago. [Lost City]]]>
Voting in Eater's fourth annual Hottest Chefs Competition continues today, with the sixth heat of the first round. Today Hong Thaimee of the just opened East Village Thai restaurant Ngam faces off against Ciano's Shea Gallante, pastry chef Julie Elkind of the BLT restaurants, and Blue Smoke BPC's Jeff Held.
Last week we mentioned that Michelin-starred Spanish chef Dani Garcia was opening a restaurant this fall on Park Avenue South. And today Flo Fab adds that Yann de Rochefort, the owner of mini Spanish chain Boqueria, is his business partner, which makes a lot of sense. [DJ]]]>
With the help of the Eater 38 and the Eater Heat Map, it's a breeze to find out where to eat right now, whether it's a hot newcomer or an old neighborhood standby. Now it's just as easy to find out where to get a good, stiff drink in this town.
Justin Smillie, the Executive Chef at the store/eatery il Buco Alimentiari & Vineria, shares his love for yakitori favorite Yakitori Totto.
A former chef and a manager of Morrell Caterers, one the largest catering companies on Long Island, are accusing the owner of violating Jewish law by allowing kosher and non-kosher meals to be prepared in the same kitchen. They say that when the company began catering non-Jewish events, the chefs were ordered to cook shrimp, lobster, and pork in the same kitchen and using the same utensils as the kosher food. The owner denies the allegations. [AP]
Researcher Yale Fox recently gave a talk at TEDx on the business of nightclubs, explaining that "although they sell alcohol, the real commodity that a nightclub sells is actually sex and social status". There are probably a few nightclub owners that would disagree with that hypothesis. Fox's presentation did win the TED award for "Most Sparkly Belt," so do take a watch. [TEDx via EN]]]>
Fales Library at NYU has finished cataloging the huge collection of cookbooks from the offices of Gourmet magazine, and it turns out it's almost twice as big as everyone though, with a grand total of 6,317 books. (The numbers were boosted thanks to "boxes and boxes of smaller pamphlets.") Heavily represented in the collection: Mediterranean, Cajun, and Asian cookbooks. [HuffPo via Eater National]]]>
UPPER EAST SIDE — The Post reports that the owners of The Parlor Steakhouse will open a new "casual fine dining American restaurant" in the fabled Elaine's space this fall. [NYP]
"So the idea is that up here is the gambling parlor that doubles as a warehouse in terms of being a front, and downstairs there's an opium den and a brothel. And that's very much true to form in Macao, because even today gambling and prostitution are legal there, so it's always been considered lawless. There was an opium factory there up until the '30s and stuff like that — it's a pretty wild place. They would do this game called fan-fan, where they have that catwalk, and they would lower the baskets down and people would bet down there. It's very kind of Deer Hunter. 
"This came out of a prison right near Yankees Stadium, actually. It's over a hundred years old. You would have those pillars, and then in between the pillars every 50 feet you'd have a spike. Those weighed like 1,500 pounds a piece. I got that out of a salvage company, and they were just kind of laying in the dirt and we brought them in and had them cut up.
"These here came out of an Asian amusement park that was built in the 1940s down in Florida. They're all teak and there's no nails — it's all dovetailed. These would go for like $1,000 a panel if you had these made today. I got them for like $25 each. There were seven buildings that had these panels, and I know a guy that was staying nearby in a motel, and he heard they were bulldozing it. It was very much an American Pickers kind of thing. He went over to the construction guy, because they were going to bulldoze it anyway, and he probably said to the guy, 'Let me give you $1,000. Give me a day, and I'll pull out what I can.' So, he pulled out 750 of these, and I got 100. When you go downstairs, you'll see that they're very much built into the design of this place. 
"These are opera posters, these are about 200 years old, but in China that aren't really even considered antiques, so you're allowed to take them out of the country. These particular operas were basically the head of the household, the wife, teaching the concubine how to behave in the home and how to service the man. And the operas are very much about that. 
"This ceiling is from 1890. When I bought this, it was lying on a lawn at Brimfield, and I managed to eyeball it pretty much within 300 feet. And I brought if for like $1,500. So in China now you have all these people with money and stuff, but you have millions of these chairs and millions of these things. But unlike design here, the only difference between a Japanese and Chinese home in many ways is that they're laid out the same, but yours will be made out of gold, and someone else's will be made out of wood. But now that people have money, I don't have to go to China. People come over with containers of this stuff, and it's the real deal. 
"So, here's kind of the feeling we're going for. That's a real opium den. There's a guy that would serve you, a guy that would keep your stuff lit, a guy that would work security, because when you get that fucked up, you don't want someone ripping you off. 
"That's a wrought-iron picket fence behind the bar, almost like the Adams Family house. Upstairs is a fence from a prison, but this is like a miniature version. It mimics the pattern in the mirror." 
The Robs share some unexpected news from East Village kaiseki restaurant Kajitsu, a favorite among chefs (like Dave Chang), Michelin inspectors, vegetarians, and Japanese food-lovers. They report that Masato Nishihara, the chef who has presided over the restaurant's success over the last three years, is moving on in April to cede the kitchen to Ryota Ueshima, "the second in what the owner intends to be a rotating progression of young Japanese cooks."
Long gone are the days that vegetarians struggle to find suitable options while dining out. In fact, more of the general dining world has been seeking out vegetable-centric meals in the past year and more and more chefs are making vegetables a priority on their menus, perhaps as penance for those years of pork belly proliferation. 
Voting begins today for Time Out New York's annual Reader Choice Awards. Categories include best new restaurant, best out of town import, best beer bar, best new neighborhood joint, best new bakery, and more. [TONY]]]>
Last night in the basement of St. Anthony of Padua Church, Community Board 2's SLA Liquor Licensing Committee meeting spanned a whopping seven hours. The board heard from quite a few notable restaurants but was hard pressed to grant many of the proposals. 
Here's a curious pair teaming up for Valentine's Day: hipster high-end chocolatiers Mast Brothers and beloved cheese mecca Murray's Cheese. For Black Tuesday, they've come up with a cheese called Love at Mast. To make it, they layered and rolled a young triple creme in shavings of Mast's La Red de Guaconejo. It is on sale here and this weekend at the New Amsterdam Market. [EaterWire]]]>
The Post reports that a new branch of langoustine-loving chain Red Lobster will open in Harlem later this year. The 300 seat restaurant will occupy a two story space on 125th Street right next door to the Apollo Theater. This will be Red Lobster's second Manhattan location. [NYP]]]>
Go to Mayahuel for tequila and mezcal, Pulqueria for pulques, Cocteleria for rum punch, and now go to Lowcountry for all things bourbon. More than enough restaurants and bars in Brooklyn and Manhattan offer a well-stocked bourbon shelf (see Char No. 4 for one), but here they even slip the brown stuff into their versions of Sazeracs, Dark & Stormies, Margaritas, Martinis and Negronis. [DJ]]]>
Steve Cuozzo offers a game plan for eating at nice New York restaurants on the cheap (or on the less than exorbitantly expensive). He suggests going for the robata section at Kibo, sticking to appetizers and sides at Boulud Sud, eating pasta and soup at La Promenade des Anglais, and going for the ($26!) cheeseburger at Jean-Georges' The Mark. [NYP]]]>
Last month, news spread that Food & Wine was adding a new facet to their annual hunt for the best up and coming talent in the restaurant industry: a people's choice award for the best new pastry chef. Like the original Best New Chefs program, this addition will feature a group of editor-chosen chefs from across the country (between five and 10) and one pastry chef chosen by readers. To be nominated, a chef has to have been in charge of a kitchen for five years or less.
WEST VILLAGE — Dos Toros announced on Twitter today that they're kicking off delivery service at their West Village location. [Twitter]
Pete Wells awards one star to Zach Kutsher and Jeffery Chodorow's new Jewish restaurant, Kutsher's: "when the kitchen isn’t trying too hard, Kutsher’s turns all the jokes about Jewish cooking upside down. Which is to say: The food here’s not bad. And such big portions! " [NYT]]]>
In his latest column, Steve Cuozzo ponders the fate of Tavern on the Green. Although a lot of big name restaurateurs checked out the space last week, some insiders think that the new iteration of TOTG will be much less lucrative than the old one (the city is shrinking the space), and whoever moves in will still have to deal with the Hotel & Motel Trades Council union. Proposals for the new restaurant are due on March 30. [NYP, Previously]]]>
Observer owner and real estate scion Jared Kushner is set to launch Scene, a monthly magazine dedicated to covering events, nightlife and the social scene in New York. The title is helmed by Peter Davis and other recent defects from Avenue, and the first issue will include an in depth analysis of Le Baron. Preview: it's popular! The first issue hits the streets on March 1st. [WWD]]]>