Gawker

It's bikini season! And Agyness Deyn, this month's UK Vogue covergirl who is pretty much America's real-life next top model even though she is British, is celebrating by eating just like a normal person. Well, a normal British person, but still. In the past week, she has consumed cheese and ham dumplings, beans on toast, sushi, pizza, a Cobb salad, pancakes with scrambled eggs, vegan strawberry-cheesecake ice cream, and a roast dinner that included "Yorkshire pudding, roast beef, vegetables, stuffing, gravy, and roast potatoes." So maybe you have that muffintop because there isn't enough beef dripping in your diet? more »

Server Lynnea Scalora is feeling alienated from her labor: "When you're a server, you're someone's slave," she tells Grub Street. Why does she feel this way? Probably because she works at Enid's, which as any Greenpoint/Wburg resident can tell you is the innermost circle of brunch hell. The restaurant epitomizes everything that's wrong with the brunch ritual: insanely long waits, ostentatiously hip crowds reeking of booze from the night before, lots of sceneiness and and little emphasis on, you know, food-eating. Scalora has an interesting take on what makes Enid's patrons so intolerable, and maybe also some insight into why the wait is so long. more »

David Cross, the scamp of a comedian who's frequently spotted out and about in his East Village neighborhood, just made it a lot easier to stalk him! Not that you would. But in case you're curious about where to find him, or maybe just about where to eat eggs on the weekend, here's some advice: "While people wait for upwards of an hour and a half to eat at Clinton St. Bakery—which is great by the way—I choose to say, "Fuck that" and head to Lil' Frankie's for an immediate plate of eggs Parmesan or eggs pomodoro." This advice might work slightly less well if you're not a celebrity, or in this case David Cross, but whatever! Also in this interview, David cops to enjoying red wine with every meal, which might explain his equating pork fat with "angel's ejaculate." more »

Over at Grub Street today, two highly esteemed foodies/ cultural commentators dished about which dishy Top Chef finalist's dishes they had found most compelling. The conversation ran to the innovations of Marcel's foamspiration, Ferran Adria, and whether either finalist could actually run a restaurant (for the record: no. They think Sam could, though: "He's forceful but noncommittal, in a passive-aggressive way.") But it was when talking about villainous caricature Marcel that the discourse took a turn for the, ah, rigorously intellectual:

Sternbergh: Marcel had a Lex Luthor-esque regard for his own intellect.
Sternbergh: Which, like Lex Luthor, was not entirely unearned.
Ozersky: Either Lex Luthor or Mr. Mxyzptlk.

We thought Marcel was more like when Wolverine was brainwashed into becoming an agent for HYDRA, but we're no experts.

Ilan Won, Yes, But What Does It Mean? [Grub St]

Lately, we'd found ourselves wondering whether broke-down songbird Britney Spears likes to drink alcohol. Luckily, Grub Street's reliably awesome Ask A Server column has finally answered that burning question, via their interview with Dirty Delta, a waitress at famed E. Vil drag queen restaurant Lucky Cheng's.

She brought all her dancers here, took her shoes off, looked like white trash -- which I love her for. We have orgy bowls here that come on fire -- it's a drink meant for five people. She drank three of them by herself, and she would not share with anybody. The dancers were at the bar. They say, "Don't get Britney one more drink." I go, "Baby I cannot cut Britney off unless she's passed out on the floor." And they go, "She wants tequila shots! Make a fake tequila shot. We have rehearsal at 9 a.m. in Jersey for a 60,000-seat arena." The next day she made it to the concert, but she busted her leg. And who's fault was it? Dirty Delta's, baby! Three orgy bowls and one tequila shot -- the other five were fake, but ... It's your own fault, boo!

Oh, come on! Who among us hasn't checked off the "a drag queen had to serve me fake tequila shots" box on the "Do I have a problem?" questionnaire?

Dirty Delta of Lucky Cheng's Serves Orgy Bowls to Britney Spears [Grub Street]

Grub Street goes deep today, probing the eating habits of Joanna Angel (of Burning Angel fame). Joanna's eating seems pretty Williamsburg-centric, which makes sense: that's where her office is. She tries to keep it healthy -- "I ate a bagel from the Bagelsmith -- I get egg whites and cheese on an everything bagel. I'm trying to stay in shape, considering my job and all," -- but like all of us, she's prone to late-night fast food bingeing:

After midnight I ordered pierogis and a hummus platter from Anytime.

Really? ANYTIME? We think that the 24-hour last resort's greasebombs are the grossest shit we've ever put in our mouth, but we guess Joanna would probably beg to differ.

Porn Impresario Joanna Angel's Guilty Pleasure is an Egg And Cheese Sandwich [Grub Street]

We like the oddball food trend piece as much as the next person, but the latest Japanese-imported supposed fad tests the limits of our (and, ostensibly, Grub Street's Daniel Maurer's) endurance. The foodstuff in question? "Cod milt, also known as shirako, also known as kiku, also known as -- okay, no getting around it -- cod sperm." How is the cod milt harvested, and how is it prepared/served? The piece provides no answers, opting to focus instead on listing a litany of other phallic foodstuffs, like bull penis. By way of conclusion, Maurer asserts that " izakayas (and cod sperm) are having their moment." We don't know -- since we haven't yet read about 'milt' elsewhere, this kind of reeks of a constructed fad to us. Long story short: we're not swallowing it. more »

Grub Street notes an e-mail making the rounds from a desperate young self-promoter in the world of fine dining:

"hey everybody, I need your help!!!!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE vote for me for rising star chef [in the James Beard Foundation Awards]! I will trully be indebted to you all. And if you really wanted to, fwd to all your friends and have them do the same thing. Accually please fwd this, it will help. Danny Meyer does it all the time."

The coy SOBs have edited any identifying material out of the letter, but surely it shouldn't be too hard to find? We'd love a copy, and we promise to name names. Also, we are kind of in love with the "Danny Meyer does it" excuse; we're particularly interested in knowing what joint this fellow cooks at and if they serve shit with their shitakes.

Chef's Desperate Plea: Nominate Me for an Award! [Grub Street]

Hawaiian Tropics Zone waitress Tina Marino will probably get made fun of about this Grub Street post for, among other things, being a ditz and openly admitting that she bears a striking resemblance to Tara Reid. Personally, we appreciate Tara's -- sorry, Tina's! -- honesty:

Do men ever speak out of turn?
The most common issue is men asking myself and other waitresses if their boobs are real, which puts you in an uncomfortable situation. Mine are, but a lot of the other girls' aren't!
How about women?
There was this table of women from out of town. I was like, "You guys really remind me of my mom and my family." This woman was like, "Oh, she should be real proud." I was like, "Excuse me?"
When you serve a couple, do the girlfriends get jealous?
We're always really attentive to the female. They tell us a million times, "Serve the females first. Make eye contact with her first."

We're hoping that Tina's straight talking doesn't get her fired or backstabbed by her fake-titted co-workers before we get a chance to avail ourselves of her tableside concierge services! She sounds like our kind of gal. more »

Insults at Mario Batali's celeb roast at Capitale last night ranged from lame: "What are you trying to be, the Chris Farley of the Food Network?" -- to slightly less lame: "You look like Kiefer Sutherland after he was stung by bees." But one zinger actually made us LOL -- and it's courtesy of mild-mannered Queer Eye (remember those guys?) Ted Allen, of all people:

"He drinks beer, feeds all day, is constantly getting massages from transvestite hookers -- basically, Mario is a Kobe human ... Don't expect to see him in the kitchen at Babbo though. Mario hasn't actually cooked since 1979 -- unless you count freebasing."

Ohhh, snap! Snapdiddlydap!

Mario Batali Is A Kobe Human [Grub Street]
Earlier: Mario Batali: Not Molto?

"The whole idea behind the bar-restaurant is bringing things back to NYC, like American and New York things." That's Paul Sevigny (who probably resents that he needs to be formally identified as Chlo 's brother first, member of A.R.E. Weapons second), discussing his new, so topsecretshhhh! bar-restaurant with Grub Street's resident Gawker Hottie, Daniel Maurer. The old Beatrice Inn was a crappy Italian restaurant, beloved of old-school (okay, maybe just 'old') West Villagers for its quietness and unpretentiousness -- the very attributes, of course, that Sevigny's revamp is stripping away. To wit: a party for Courtney Love has already been thrown there. The menu includes old-school favorites and cutesy nods to Newyorkania like a vanilla vodka egg cream. Long story short? Suggest it, not La Esquina or Freeman's, to friends who you're desperately trying to convince that you're cooler than you actually are. more »

New York mag's Grub Street had an item yesterday on a taping of Iron Chef America, which ended with, in their own, albeit with tongue somewhat in cheek, "earth shattering revelation".

We mention all this because the curiousity that vanished when we saw the show go down was quickly replaced in our mind by a question that we'd like to pose to the entire New York chef corps: If that much good food can be invented and cooked in an hour, why do restaurants that have six months to prepare a menu so seldom come up with more than two or three interesting dishes?

Well, here's the thing - these dishes aren't "invented" within the hour time limit - chefs receive a list of five ingredients from which the "secret" ingredient used in the competition would be picked. And as much demand as there is for salmon ice cream, the dishes are going to get freakin' expensive with some of the ingredients they use. more »