Eataly!

Eataly's new location at 200 Fifth Ave (near 23rd st.)

Despite all the fantastic publicity it's been receiving since February, I just realized I didn't dedicate a post yet to Eataly, the "50,000 square-foot Slow Food–inspired Italian-food temple" that's aiming to be New York City's premier culinary mecca.  The mammoth grocery store/restaurant/center of enlightenment will be opening its doors to the public in mere days, on August 31st.  And it's going to be a mad-house.

And while this may sound so only-in-New-York, Eataly in fact, originated in Italy.

The Original, Photo from Eataly.it

The original Eataly- which will have been the largest artisanal Italian food and wine marketplace in the world post 8/31, opened just two years ago in Turin (or Torino), Italy and has since launched locations in Milan, Bologna, and Tokyo, among others.  The unstoppable founder and creator Oscar Farinetti teamed up with Mario Batali, Joe Bastianich, and Lidia Matticchio Bastianich of B&B Hospitality Group to open the NYC location in the Flatiron district - which will be nearly twice the size of the original.

B&B, Image from  Babble.com

So what exactly is Eataly? In a nutshell, "an extravaganza that will include a premier retail center for Italian delicacies and wine, a culinary educational center, and a diverse slate of boutique eateries." The philosophy is a democratizing one: Farinetti’s aim (according to his press release) is to make high-quality Italian foods available to everyone, at fair prices and in an environment where people can shop, taste and learn. Slow Food, defender of such things as "food biodiversity" and "taste education," is the strategic consultant.

There is an exhaustive amount of information out there on what undoubtedly will be an exhausting (though exciting!) place to visit; so I've sifted through various articles and blog posts to offer you some highlights:

- There will be seven "restaurants," 14 food stations, and a full "piazza" with a raw bar, fresh-cut prosciutto, and marble-topped tables. (Gothamist)

Integrated dining areas

- The only named restaurant (and the only dining area that will take reservations), is Manzo, a full-scale white-tablecloth Italian steakhouse with 80 (or 60?) seats. Michael Toscano, formerly of Babbo, is the chef. (Times) Mario says it will contain a beef bar, "akin to a sushi bar, that will have five or six different daily-changing preparations of raw Piedmontese beef" (only 5 or 6? pff)

Bread in Eataly.

- While the packaged goods are mostly imported from Italy (and most are at import prices), the meat and produce is all local. Vegetables come straight from rooftop farm Brooklyn Grange in Queens. (Gothamist) 

Hm, I'm not so sure this is a fair price

- Beer will be brewed right on the 300-seat rooftop microbrewery, which will be run by Dogfish Head. (Gothamist) The aim is to pair artisanal rustic, homemade beers with the artisanal, rustic cooking of Chef Mario Batali. (Dogfish Head)

- A wine shop has an entrance on 23rd Street, and access to a counter for takeout pizza will be on 24th Street. (Times)

- Next to the espresso bar is a wall of five iPads, each programmed to display news from Italian newspaper La Stampa. (Gothamist)

- Artist Jennifer Rubell (niece of Studio 54 owner Steve Rubell) is the designated "vegetable butcher" - she will clean and cut any produce you purchase, free of charge. (Post) Scraps will be gathered in a separate plastic baggie to be weighed at the front and of course, composted. (NYMag)

- Alex Pilas, who ran private events at Del Posto, is the executive chef of the entire operation. (Times)

- Eataly will contain a small school headed by dean Lidia Bastianich.  There will be seminars with artisans, chefs, and winemakers that culminate in special dinners, as well as those that focus on nutrition, sociology, and the chemistry of food. (Post)

Mmmm! Pizza will be made by guys from Naples called Rossopomodoro, similar to Keste style.

- Eataly will have an in-house travel agency to organize trips to visit Italian food and wine producers. (Post)

- About 1,000 individuals applied for managerial and salaried (as opposed to hourly wage) positions,  including many career changers and individuals from finance and other fields who have been laid off or just wanted a different job. (WSJ)

- Eataly NY is a $20 million project. (WSJ)

And finally, click here for an amazingly confusing layout from the NY Post.

I'm very excited (and a bit scared) to see what this place is all about, and whether it lives up to its founding principles.  Lucky for me, it's only a few blocks from work. I know where I'll be spending my lunch breaks!

All photos from Gothamist unless otherwise noted.

BREAKING NEWS: DR. CLAW IS SHUT DOWN

This is a sad day for New York.

Great lunch container

The Kitchn posted this super smart, super cute lunch container from the MoMa Store the other day and I want it!

From MoMa Store

From the product description:

This cleverly designed lunch box has a lockable clear lid with integrated dipping well, a sauce pot for salad dressing or condiments, a removable food compartment, and a fork.

A sauce pot for salad dressing? My prayers have finally been answered.  I can't tell you how many times I've had an olive oil/vinegar leak into my lunch bag...and that is not a great smell.

Yes, $22 might seem a little steep, but that's two Manhattan lunches, so really this is a great investment.  Plus people will be really impressed because it's from MoMa. (Or they'll just make fun of you because you're a huge dork like me)

The Pop-up Restaurant

After my Dr. Claw experience, covert food operations are bound to hold special intrigue, so this podcast caught my ear this morning.  It's about a renowned French chef, Ludo Lefebvre, who's created a whirlwind of excitement for Los Angeles foodies with his "guerilla style restaurant" called LudoBites - a temporary establishment that pops up in unassuming locations around LA, serving up high-end fare.

Basically, the restaurant opens in the evenings of a bakery or luncheon, and communicates its changing locations through its website.  It's currently in its fifth iteration, "LudoBites5.0," indicating its 5th location at a place called Gram & Papa's - a favorite LA lunch spot.

Not surprisingly, reservations are nearly impossible to snag. How impossible? Lefebvre's wife remarked to NPR that, "Most restaurants don't announce reservations and have 3,000 people come on at once. I mean, it's really like releasing a concert." Whoa!

And it seems as though this atypical arrangement is mutually beneficial.  NPR explains that, without the overhead costs of a regular restaurant, Lefebvre is able to offer fine cuisine at a much cheaper price; and it goes without saying that such a venture is much less risky for the chef than opening a full-fledged restaurant.  Plus it affords him the freedom to change the menu, location, aura, etc. any time he wants.

Like the underground lobster roll and grilled cheese operations in NYC, the pop-up restaurant has an ephemeral quality that creates a special dining experience: One Ludobites patron told NPR, "It's a great move to make people think that you'll never be able to do this again.  It's a once-in-a-lifetime experience."

Moreover, Lefebvre's website cites an article from LA Weekly saying “you can’t find it in Directory Assistance, and you can’t have dinner there tomorrow night. It has no address. So in a sense, Ludo Bites, the restaurant of Ludovic Lefebvre, doesn’t really exist.”  Amazing.  Listen to the podcast or read the full article from NPR here.

vanilla cupcakes

Yesterday was my good friend Danielle's birthday, so baking was obviously in store.  Normally I default to brownies for friend's birthdays, but this time I wanted to try something different, so I opted for cupcakes.

When it comes to baking, I think the end product is almost entirely reliant upon picking out a good recipe, because the rest is just about following instructions. But choosing a good recipe can be a difficult task.  In this case, I initially set out to recreate Magnolia's cupcakes (we had them a couple weeks ago at work and they were so good I continued to eat the stale ones that were leftover last week).  Surprisingly (or not), Magnolia has three cookbooks sharing the bakery owner's famous recipes, and the second one, More from Magnolia contains the recipe for vanilla cupcakes. But it calls for an alarming amount of sugar and butter; and after reading a lot of the negative reviews on Food Network ("SO OVERATED!!!!!!!"; "EXTREMELY sweet"; "spongy and dried out quickly") I started second-guessing it.

So I turned to JoyofBaking.com, one of my go-to sites for cakes, quick breads, and bars.  It's not the most sophisticated website, and the ads are pretty annoying, but they have consistently good, very manageable recipes and a nice little introduction explaining the history and summary of each offering.

Like many of its recipes, JoyofBaking's vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting requires few ingredients and the steps are simple and straightforward.  (In fact, this recipe is quite similar to the Magnolia recipe, but with less butter and sugar.)

I used a mini muffin pan for the bite-size variety (...and because that's the only size pan I have).  The recipe yielded almost exactly 24 mini cupcakes.

Pre-oven

The cupcakes browned at the edges after about 18 minutes.  (Please excuse the imperfect ones in this batch.)

Baking complete

The cake had a nice flavor and a decent texture: not too dry, not too spongy.  The frosting, on the other hand, turned out to be too sugary, though it had a nice, whipped consistency.  (From all of the cupcake reviews and "best of" lists, I gather it's really difficult to nail down a good vanilla frosting.)

Vanilla buttercream frosting

Though I hope to one day master the art of piping icing, I like the homemade look on cupcakes.  So I stuck to my tried-and-true method of massaging it around into dips and waves with a butter knife.  My mom instilled in me a suspicion towards food coloring, so I left these au natural and decided to accessorize instead.  I love making and buying things for Danielle because she's the girliest person I know, and doing such allows me to unleash my inner girly side.  So I went crazy with the pink sugar sprinkles and rainbow snowflakes (which, mind you, do contain food coloring...but it feels less deliberate this way).

Girlified

Probably not the best vanilla cupcake recipe out there, but it's a good, traditional, homemade one (and anyway they photograph nicely). Click here for the full recipe.  And please, if you have a great vanilla cupcake recipe, please share!