If fighting world hunger requires me to eat lamb burgers with foie gras and blueberry jam and bacon-wrapped scallops, then you know what? I’m willing to go that extra mile. There’s people out there that need me.
Kent Rathbun, Mark Haugen, Stephane Motir, Tim Love, and Bobby Flay (top); three ladies just there for the food (bottom)
As I stood in the back room holding an extra glass of red wine while my cohort snapped a photo in the kitchen, Taste of the NFL founder Wayne Kostroski noticed my momentary double-fisting and said, “I like your style.” Stupid me, I thought he was referring to my sport jacket (on sale at Macy’s, thank you), but I realized it was my humanitarian efforts. He’s the James Beard Foundation’s 2010 Humanitarian of the Year winner, so he must know what he’s talking about.
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Tagged as:
Bobby Flay,
Drew Nieporent,
James Beard Foundation,
NFL,
Tim Love,
Wayne Kostroski
Right up there with my record mile time sits an equally important record in my mind: the number of Buffalo wings consumed in one sitting. That would be 75. I still harbor some degree of bitterness from the closer inspection of my high school friend’s wing remains, as he excused himself to vomit in the T.G.I. Friday’s bathroom. Some of his 100 “eaten” wings still had meat on them, dammit. Not only did I not vomit, but I ate every last piece of meat and skin, thank you. But he paid his price and, well, I had the opportunity to eat several empty Coca-Cola pitchers’ full of Buffalo wings.
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Buffalo wings,
chicken,
hot sauce,
spicy food
Perhaps it should have been obvious that a dinner mostly flown in and prepared by visiting Icelandic chefs would necessarily end with a dessert consisting of an erupting volcano. The freeze-dried skyr and crowberries weren’t so obvious.
Nice place you got here, Mr. Savalas. Big Kelly's Heroes fan.
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Tagged as:
goose,
Gunnar Karl Gislason,
Iceland,
James Beard Foundation
Four hours of craft beer on a Sunday afternoon, two live bands, a cask tasting hosted by Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster Garrett Oliver, beer cocktails, and endless food from Chef Daniel Humm. All that booze, and nobody even got topless. Had they done so, I could have definitely declared the 3rd Annual NY Craft Beer Week’s closing party the beer event to end all beer events.
The common man's four-star joint.
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Everybody wants to love Eataly. Some of my favorite restaurants are co-owned (and even used to be operated) by Mario Batali. The idea of Eataly, if not the goofy name, is amazing. Food-group-centric restaurants amidst Italian-centric shopping sounds great. A Dogfish Head Italian-themed beer garden, soon to come, is too good to be true. The problem is, regardless of how great the idea is, when I was sitting at the bar at Il Pesce, eating what in general amounted to an excellent dinner, I felt like I was at a food court inside a Bed, Bath & Beyond.
The Il Pesce kitchen: about 10 of Eataly's 50,000 square feet.
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David Pasternack,
Eataly,
Il Pesce,
Mario Batali
Bio after bio of chef Eric Ripert tells of an elusive “Bon Appetit Dish of the Year”. The ingredients include lobster, tarragon (no surprises so far), and… champagne. It sounded like my kind of dish: something with a veneer of sophistication, but (if I’m lucky) sufficiently dummy-proof. Of course, it should also taste good, but this was an Eric Ripert dish, so no worries there. The only question was how many hours or days was I going to be standing in the kitchen. And whether I could track down the recipe.
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Tagged as:
champagne,
drunken spaghetti,
Eric Ripert,
lobster