LES Crackdown; Yogurt Wars Expand UWS FrontChelsea: Patricia Yeo is out at Sapa. [Eater]
Lower East Side: Turns out La Esquina’s basement is illegal! [NYP]
Midtown West: Get your Charlie Murphy fix at El Centro; it’s his favorite Mexican restaurant. [Gridskipper]
Soho: Former 66 chef Josh Eden has taken over the kitchen at Goblin Market. [Strong Buzz]
Upper West Side: Yogurt Wars update: Pinkberry takes over Excel Fine Art’s space on Columbus Avenue. [Eat for Victory/VV]
West Village: Something’s fishy about the seafood sister restaurant to the Spotted Pig: Diners at the original heard staff chatting about the location opening soon as the 10 Spot. [Down by the Hipster]
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.
NewsFeed
Mr. Chow, Dojo, and Other Biggies So Flunked Their Health Inspections
Taking an active interest as we do in hygiene, we keep an eye on the New York Health Department’s restaurant-inspection site. Usually, it’s outer-borough taco joints and the like that flunk their tests. We were surprised today, however, to find a few big names cited for everything from suspect shellfish to — something worse than supect — rats.
The Other Critics
Love Gets No Love From Bruni; Strong Falls in Love With Self at Cafe ClunyBruni shares Platt’s horror over Lonesome Dove’s “hairy and scary” welcome mat and agrees the “mistakes don’t end at the front door.” For one, the quail quesadillas and rabbit empanadas taste like, well, chicken. Still, it’s not all bluster: “Mr. Love seems dedicated to getting first-rate cuts of meat, and if the rub-happy kitchen goes overboard in seasoning them, especially with salt and pepper, it certainly knows how to cook many of them.” [NYT]
Forget the two-hour rule at Ramsay at the London: Paul Adams fumes over getting bum-rushed at Goblin Market: “When a place goes to such lengths to make it clear that they don’t want customers, I for one am glad to oblige.” [NYS]
At David Burke’s Hawaiian Tropic Zone, the dishes taste “like they came from a war zone, not a tropic zone.” But then again “at a human zoo like this, the quality of the food just doesn’t matter.” [TONY]
Openings
Hollywood Desserts and Soho GoblinsThis week in the magazine, Rob and Robin track two openings: the wildly successful Hollywood frozen-yogurt chain Pinkberry, and Goblin Market, a new Soho eatery named after lascivious young men in a poem by Christina Rossetti. Pinkberry, they report, is “the talk of the L.A. food blogs.” We tracked down a few of those blogs.
