New York Food Blog

​ Pratt Grad Student Ali Pulver is a woman after our own heart--she's dedicated her thesis to solving the problem of where to comfortably eat your street food. How about a portable hydrantable? She's also designed mini-trays with strong magnets that attach to any street sign or scaffolding. Check out Ali's work at her site, Pop Up Lunch.

[Via Midtown Lunch]

Friday afternoon has arrived. And so has the weekly round-up of the best posts of the last five days.

You really can earn a PhD in bar culture.

Our list of the 10 Best Cheeses.

This weekend's Brooklyn Beefsteak would make Joseph Mitchell and Tammany Hall proud.

Battle of the Dishes pitted industrial steak against its grass-fed, locally raised counterpart.

Our Man Sietsema visited the much-hyped Bill's Bar & Burger and ate....a so-so burger.

Fork in the Road went on the road down South and found boiled peanuts, fried chicken, biscuits, and swine.

This week in food blogs...

Eat Me Daily reviewed the Momofuku cookbook and found the hype justified.

Midtown Lunch noticed that Schnitzel & Things, perhaps amped up by the TIWYF challenge, wrapped a bratwurst in pork schnitzel.

The Atlantic Food Channel noted that Europe put a stop to crazy health claims on food packages before it started.

Grub Street posed the question, just how profitable is a Crown Fried Chicken?

Eater discovers that a Wolfgang Steakhouse will open in the space to be vacated by Vong.

Serious Eats asked, whatever happened to caffeine-free Diet Coke?

The Feed found out what pisses off Mark "The Minimalist" Bittman: people who don't have time to cook, but do have time to watch other people cook on TV.

Dovetail, pre-renovation.

​Just as Mario Batali has shrunk Del Posto in his quest for the NYT stamp of approval, Dovetail has added 20 seats to its dining room and 500 bottles to its wine list. According to a rep, John Fraser's Upper West Side New American restaurant will also boast a new sommelier, Babbo/the French Laundry's Amanda Reade Sturgeon, as well as a new cheese cart, cocktail menu, and roster of small plates for the expanded bar.

.Mitch/flickr

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If you're a bartender or bar owner on the Lower East Side, you might have run into Dr. Richard Ocejo at some point or another, either bellied up to the bar by himself or skulking around some community board meeting, furiously scribbling down what is being said. The 28-year-old sociology professor at CUNY's John Jay College earned his PhD this past summer after years of hanging out in bars. Unlike most grad students, he wasn't just out trying to avoid working on his thesis. He was studying said bars, their patrons, and how they reflect urban change in the neighborhood. His findings have been published in academic journals and presented at various sociology conferences. Fork in the Road was curious as to how one comes to study bar culture and get awarded a degree for it.

​Food-related magazine woes have not been limited to the Conde Nast building. The wonderfully named Garden & Gun, the Charleston publication that covers, among other topics, the food of the New South, is having trouble, too: a letter from the president and publisher details the decision to skip the magazine's October/November issue to "shore up business for 2010 and beyond." The letter promises a full six-issue run next year, replete with articles about scuppernongs, deviled crab, and herring shacks.

[via Eat Me Daily]

Not a burrito: Dos Toro's steak taco

​ Dos Toros, a new Cal-Mex taqueria just off Union Square, is owned by Leo and Oliver Kremer, two brothers from Berkeley who wanted to bring Mission-style burritos to New York. Oddly enough, Leo is also the bassist for Third Eye Blind. Neither brother has any restaurant experience, but both were sufficiently moved by New York's lack of Cal-Mex to do something about it.

When Californians move to New York, they tend to say things like, "There's no good Mexican in New York!" Which, of course, isn't true. Head to Corona or Sunset Park and you'll see. It is true that New York, and lower Manhattan in particular, doesn't offer the plethora of great, regional Mexican on nearly every corner, like you find in Los Angeles. In New York, you have to know where to look. But sometimes what Californians actually mean when they say there's no good Mexican in New York, is that there's no good Cal-Mex, and that might be true.

David Conn in a former, musical life.

​When Hecho en Dumbo announced it would be leaving the Dumbo General Store for the Bowery, the store's owners weren't entirely sure who would take over the kitchen. But according to DGS's website, they found a replacement last month when David Conn, a Nashville chef who formerly owned Edisto, began turning out a Southern-inflected, comfort food-heavy brunch and lunch menu. Conn will start serving dinner this month.

Incidentally, Conn's arrival brings the city's number of bassoonists turned culinary professionals to two: like the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck's Doug Quint, Conn built a career as a reed player before turning his attentions to more edible pursuits.

Marshall Efron, of The Great American Dream Machine fame and author of such children's books as Bible Stories You Can't Forget: No Matter How Hard You Try, takes on the Food Network with a recipe so vile no cooking show host could stomach it. It begs the question: just how mmm-delicious are all those dishes prepared under the hot TV lights?

[via The Atlantic Food Channel]

Elvie's Turo-Turo may have shut its doors, but another Filipino restaurant will officially open to the public next Tuesday: according to its website, Purple Yam will be up and running on November 10, following months of drooling anticipation.

[Via Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn]