Here's looking at you, dinner.
Thanksgiving is upon us again, meaning turkey, sweet potatoes, and even turducken get their annual moments of glory before fading into obscurity for the rest of the year. To help you sort through the slew of media coverage, we've compiled the best Turkey Day links, from our own site, the blogosphere, and beyond. Happy gobbling, and see you Monday!
“You stand for 12 hours a day, lifting heavy things, and when you go home you smell like pig intestines and bacon and blood.” —Sara Bigelow, the PR girl turned butcher at the Meat Hook. [L Magazine]
The Times has the exact location of the Meatball Shop’s Williamsburg outpost, and it’s a sweet one: It’ll open in the spring at 170 Bedford Avenue near North 7th Street. And this is promising: A real-estate listing mentions that “the exceptionally large yard can serve as an excellent dining area for a restaurant or café.” [NYT]
Photo: Melissa Hom
If you happen to find yourself among the masses of Black Friday shoppers in Soho in desperate need of a spot of tea and sustenance, you might like to know that the new Harney & Sons is launching its tea lounge menu today. There are scones, yes, but also lapsang gravlax on rice crackers, tea ice cream, and “tea cheese.”
Harney & Sons Menu [PDF]
“I feel so very sad.” —Marcus Samuelsson on Naomichi Yasuda’s move to Japan. His replacement will be Mitsuru Tamura, who has been training for seven years. [NYT]
According to the Queens Courier, the jilted workers of Jackson Heights eatery Plaza Garibaldi joined Christine Quinn on the steps of City Hall to support the Wage Theft Prevention Act, a measure that would award underpaid workers $10,000 if they’re unfairly discharged, and would up the amount of money they’re owed by 15 percent if their employer doesn’t pay them the wages they’re owed within 90 days. [Queens Courier]
Momofuku Milk Bar recently opened a commissary at 382 Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg where you can pick up preordered cookie batches as well as whole cakes and pies; meanwhile, back at the East Village mother ship, Midtown Lunch bites into a Thanksgiving croissant stuffed with turkey, cranberry sauce, and gravy — no surprise coming from the makers of stuffing soft-serve! [Midtown Lunch]
Photo: iStockphoto, Alexander Tamargo/Getty Images, Will Ragozzino/PatrickMcMullan.com
Over on his Twitter, Michael Symon is dispensing Thanksgiving advice (he’s the author of a forthcoming meat cookbook, after all), but one particular nugget of wisdom (“don’t brine your turkey!!”) hasn’t jibed well with Mario Batali, who’s known to cook his bird (plus sweet potatoes with mini-marshmallows on top!) in the outdoor pizza oven at his Michigan home. Here’s the Kitchen Stadium–worthy trash talk.
In spite of chef Jonathan Benno’s “success in the kitchen,” Sam Sifton writes, Lincoln is “a restaurant that lacks a center — a restaurant in which it is possible to eat well without really having a good time.” [NYT]
Related: Platt Finds Lincoln Lacking; Totes for All
Gael Greene thinks “it’s too early for a final judgment on so ambitious a dream” as Lincoln. “Perhaps Benno’s cerebral modern vision of Italian food will find its audience,” she says. “To me, right now it seems too sedate.” She finds satisfaction at Mia Dona, where the meatballs are "soft and sensuous." [Insatiable Critic]
Osteria Morini is "a restaurant dedicated to fat," writes Ryan Sutton. "Firm garganelli, soft gnocchi and porky tortellini drown in an overdose of cream." [Bloomberg]
Related: Platt Digs In At Osteria Morini; All About Edible Deliveries
• The New York City Council has proposed plans to foster more "low-income locavores." Cue the next trend piece about hipsters on food stamps. [Gotham Gazette]
• Tallow carvings will decorate military dining halls across the country this Thanksgiving, and other news from the glossy white underbelly of the tallow-sculpture world. [WSJ]
• Turkeys as we know them are actually a kind of breast-heavy Frankenbird that can't even reproduce naturally. Says one frank turkey scientist, "[They] can't mount." [USAT]
Remember the photos we told you about from April Bloomfield's pig-butchering demo? Well, here's one of them, from Toby McFarlan Pond's master class, "Light and Composition for Recently Cut Meat." Don’t say Grub Street never cultured you!
In a world of pourable cream cheese, it’s no surprise Heinz, that baseline standard for ketchup, continues to reinvent itself: The latest stunt is this truck, which will be passing out samples of the new Heinz "dip & squeeze" package in the meatpacking tomorrow, at Penn Station on Thursday, and at Union Square on Friday (follow @DipAndSqueeze on Twitter for exact locations). Handouts include a "side" of fries.
Sam Sifton drops his review of Jonathan Benno’s Lincoln and, unlike Platt, who gave it one out of five stars and wrote, with some reservation, that “Lincoln may become a culinary destination one day,” Sifton gives it two out of four, cheering that “the food is certainly fancy enough to qualify as destination fare,” though he has complaints about the service, the space, and, of course, that $24 scallop. [NYT]
The space as Butcher Bay.
Back in July, we reported that Nick Morgenstern had taken the space that briefly housed Seymour Burton and Butcher Bay, and planned to open Goat Town there in the fall. Now Diner’s Journal hears the opening date is December 1. Morgenstern has sold his share of General Greene (which raises the question: Is it still New Brooklyn Cuisine if it’s being done in the East Village?) and is partnering with Joel Hough, a former Cookshop chef de cuisine, on a menu that’s “fairly straightforward American, with a raw bar, and dishes like Vermont veal meatballs, seared Block Island swordfish, and braised Flying Pigs Farm pork shoulder.” Here’s hoping they can finally make the space work.
General Greene’s Morgenstern to Open Goat Town in the East Village [Diner’s Journal/NYT]
It's 4 p.m., and that means it's time to play Two for Eight. We just asked ten restaurants the best time they can squeeze a couple in for dinner; you need only make your chosen reservation. (As always, we make the calls but don't guarantee the results.)
Today: Modern American.
Why hello, tourists! Looking for somewhere fun to go but don’t want to walk to the bad part of 42nd Street, where Leisure Time and Lucky Strike are? Well now there’s a bowling alley just steps from your hotel! Just wrap yourself up in that pashmina scarf and walk on over — because at 4 p.m. today, Bowlmor Lanes opens its 50-lane, 90,000-square-foot complex in the former New York Times Building. There you’ll find several areas themed after New York City neighborhoods (Times Square, Chinatown, Central Park, etc.) so you’ll never have to leave good ol’ Times Square to see the great things this city has to offer. You won’t even have to go to a museum because there’s an Andy Warhol room, too!
Since Mile End opened last January, the diminutive deli has seduced New York with its superlative smoked meat and Montreal-flavored moxie. But man cannot live on deli sandwiches alone — or so believes owner Noah Bernamoff. Next week, he launches a brand-new dinner menu, the handiwork of chef Aaron Israel, whose last gig was sous-chef at Torrisi Italian Specialties. Inspired by what Rich Torrisi and Mario Carbone have done for Italian-American cuisine, Israel intends to do the same for American-Jewish: breathe new life into traditional dishes with elevated technique and a fresh approach. Israel has been running new dishes like veal-tongue polonaise, chopped liver with a house-baked pletzel, and schmaltzed radish salad as specials over the last couple of weeks, and will make his new menu official after the holiday weekend. Of course, the signature smoked meat isn’t going anywhere: “I’d have people lined up with torches and pitchforks,” says Bernamoff, who considers the Mile End kitchen “fully inspired by the Ashkenazi immigrant experience of the Lower East Side in the early twentieth century.”
Mile End Dinner Menu [PDF]
Last time we checked in with Gordon Ramsay at the London, they were losing $4 million a year and being sued by a dairy farm. Now TMZ reports that the restaurant’s trash collectors are suing for $24,766.50 in unpaid debt. Of course, Gordo is no longer involved in the management of the restaurant, but if he wants to clear his name, he might want to invite those trashmen over to Christmas with the Beckhams.
Is this weirder than the vegan-cookie crook? A pair of thieves followed the owners of Staten Island’s Brothers Pizzeria home and robbed a bag from them at gunpoint. But instead of the the day’s proceeds, it contained pizza dough. Talk about a half-baked plan, har har. [NYP]
More Openings & Reviews: See the Grub Map