Amy Louise Eubanks and Emilie Bousquet Are the BLT Fish Tag TeamEach week, we highlight one (or in this case, two) of the city’s great — but obscure — young chefs.
Name: Amy Louise Eubanks and Emilie Bousquet
Age: Both 32
Restaurant: BLT Fish / BLT Fish Shack
Background: BLT Fish and BLT Fish Shack are twin restaurants under one roof and have separate chefs de cuisine. Eubanks cooked at Cello, Laurent Tourondel’s first big New York restaurant, and then with Andrew Carmellini at Café Boulud before returning to open BLT Steak and then BLT Fish. Bousquet worked on the line at Alain Ducasse at the Essex House, Spice Market, and Olives NY, and was the executive chef at Café des Artistes.
Neighborhood Watch
Sexy East Villager Open for New Year’s; Bar Blanc Opening Not ImminentEast Village: One of Gael Greene’s sexy-restaurant-picks, Strip House, made this list of New Year’s Eve dining options. [Restaurant Girl] Sakaya and its daily tastings are now just a day away. [Down by the Hipster]
Fort Greene: The new trattoria Caffe e’ Vino’s menu is so standard that it’s not doing a good jobs of tempting potential diners. [Eat for Victory/VV]
Union Square: The area “centered on Broadway south of Madison Square” was called Ladies Mile in the 1800s because of its concentration of retails shops. Nowadays, restaurants like Tocqueville, BLT Fish, and Bar Stuzzichini have made the locale a culinary destination. [NYT]
West Village: Bar Blanc is supposed to open on Saturday, but these pics of the unfinished space might tell a different story. [Eater]
Neighborhood Watch
BLT Fish Is Just a Little Tacky; Corn Strippers Now in SoHoAstoria: Tonight is trivia night at Dillinger’s on 30th Avenue, which means $5 pitchers. [Joey in Astoria]
Brooklyn Heights: Uncommon Grounds is closed for renovations, and it looks like the coffee shop’s application to set up outdoor seating will get approved. [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
Coney Island: Since Thor Equities can’t start developing any time soon, the company has handed out leases to eight vendors to keep the fryers operating until next fall. [Lost City]
East Village: Some pork hater tagged the entrance of Vanessa Dumpling with the word “LARD.” [East Village Idiot]
Red Hook: LeNell’s is hosting a bourbon festival on the 23rd with a tasting, discounts, and even alky ice-cream made on the spot. [LeNell’s]
SoHo: Wondering how to get those kernels off the cob? Sur La Table sells a Corn Stripper that actually works. [Serious Eats]
Tribeca: Ceci-Cela may still be cranking out croissants on Chambers Street, but there’s a “Store for Lease” sign in its window. [Grub Street]
Union Square: Bruni extols the virtues of BLT Fish, but warns would-be diners that the upstairs and downstairs spaces differ greatly, and the Laurent-Tourondel cookbook listing on the menu is tacky. [Diner’s Journal]
The New York Diet
Tony Nominee Justin Bond Has Cucumber Cocktails With Tilda Swinton
Performance artist Justin Bond is perhaps best known for playing half of Kiki and Herb — their show, Kiki and Herb: Alive on Broadway, is up for a Tony on Sunday. What will he be prowling for during the after-party? “I’m a connoisseur of crab cakes,” says the Maryland native. “I haven’t really found one that’s completely satisfying.” He’s also a lover of oysters, prosecco, and dropping the names of his dining companions Rufus, Maggie, and Tilda — or so we discovered when we asked him about his recent meals.
The Other Critics
Déjà Vu: Toqueville, Tasting Room, Frederick’s, and PeriyaliBruni visits the bigger-but-not-better new locations of the Tasting Room and Tocqueville, taunting them with the same number of stars (one and two, respectively) Grimes gave their old locations. [NYT]
Meehan turns his nose up at BLT Burger, agreeing with Augieland’s earlier assessment that the Kobe sandwich isn’t worth the extra $50 — and pointing out that you can get a better burger at BLT Fish. [NYT]
Moira Hodgson eyes the beautiful people (well, beautiful bankers) at Frederick’s Downtown and finds the food (including the “dish of the moment,” scallops with cauliflower and white raisins) makes up for the pounding techno. [NYO]
Openings
BLT Empire Storms Burgerland
When Laurent Tourondel opened BLT Steak — the flagship of his burgeoning BLT empire — food snobs took one look at the glorified meat-and-potatoes menu and winced. What’s a fine French chef doing serving stacks of onion rings and hunks of unadulterated USDA Prime? Giving the people what they want, bien sur. And Tourondel, who made his name at the French seafood specialist Cello, has built a booming industry doing just that, with variations on a crowd-pleasing theme at BLT Fish, BLT Prime, and as of yesterday’s surreptitious opening, BLT Burger.
