Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

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September 14, 2010 By cheryl

Eataly (Il Pesce): A Mixed Bag Of Fish


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Eataly can be a hard place for the hungry.

For starters, chaos rules the moment you set foot in the door of this cavernous Whole Foods-meets-tony-food-court Italian emporium in New York City that opened at the end of summer. Believe me, you’ll need all the strength you can muster to bulldoze your way past the bodies before you can get at any food.

And while you’re pressed up, body against body, there are the displays of cheeses, desserts, milk and coffee you’ll be breezing past. You’ll want to stop, of course — but the mosh pit all around owns you. All you can do is cast longing glances, hoping for some private time with that fetching taleggio later in the evening perhaps, as the crowd carries you helplessly along.

Our destination on this particularly mobbed Saturday evening is Il Pesce, the fish restaurant within this 50,000 square foot-place that partner Mario Batali has famously billed as a “temple,” where “food is more sacred than commerce.”

Amid the sections where you can buy pasta, bread, cookbooks or stand around tall tables in a “tasting piazza” and nibble on cured meats, there are a few eateries devoted to specific categories — vegetables, pasta, fish, meat. Our dining companion for the evening, the insatiable Gael Greene, has already eaten her way through a few of those places. “I was curious to try the fish restaurant …” she says.

So, Il Pesce it is …

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Filed Under: Fish, Italian, New York, Restaurants Tagged With: Anchovies, Bread, Cheese, Cherry tomatoes, Corn, Crostini, David Pasternak, Desserts, Eataly, Esca, Fingerling potatoes, Fish, Fish soup, Fritto Misto, Gael Greene, Grilled salmon, Hawaiian sea salt, Il Pesce, Italian, Joe Bastianich, Lidia Bastianich, Littleneck clams, Mackerel, Mario Batali, Meat, Milk, New York, Pasta, Pompano, Restaurant, Sardines, Sea beans, Sockeye Salmon, Summer squash, Taleggio

November 30, 2009 By cheryl

East Side Social Club: Not Quite Monkey Bar Lite


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“Let’s meet here,” I had said, noting an Eater.com post that called the new East Side Social Club “a sleek sexy spot for the Monkey Bar rejects.”

My “been everywhere” friend Bob’s immediate response? “I never get rejected at the Monkey Bar.”

Good point.

Even so, East Side Social Club held some intrigue. Opened by Billy Gilroy (owner of Macao and Employees Only), with celebrity photographer Patrick McMullen as an investor and Devon Gilroy, who’s clocked time at Chanterelle and A Voce, helming the kitchen, the restaurant had generated plenty of buzz well before its doors officially opened last week.

The menu was designed to be Italian, with some modern American dishes with a locavore bent tossed in. And the cocktails, given Papa Gilroy’s other establishments, promised to be interesting.

We had no big complaints about either, really — the price and the ambience, however, were another matter altogether.

If you’re expecting anything like the fashionable, genteel comfort of modern supper clubs like Graydon Carter’s Monkey Bar, you’re going to be a little disappointed.

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Filed Under: Boites, Cocktails, Italian, New York, Restaurants Tagged With: A Voce, Acorn Squash, Beets, Berkshire pork chop, Billy Gilroy, Blood and Sand, Brown butter, Chanterelle, Chanterelle mushrooms. Farro, Cherry Liqueur, Chestnuts, Citrus vinaigrette, Cocktail, Devon Gilroy, East Side Social Club, Employees Only, Gnocchi, Macao, Monkey Bar, Orange Juice, Patrick McMullen, Pistachios, Richard Belzer, Ricotta, Sage, Scotch, Sheep's Milk, Taleggio, Vermouth, Whiskey

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