"The first rule of Vendor Fight Club is you don't talk about Vendor Fight Club." Freddy the "King of Falafel" in Queens. [Photograph: Erin Zimmer] What's it like becoming a street vendor? "You get fat and develop arthritis," said Freddy Zeidaies, aka "the King of Falafel," who's built a little kingdom of street meat-loving fans in Queens for almost a decade. Last night, he sat in the audience as a panel of five people (who care and know a lot about street food) debated the future of sidewalk cuisine at the Astor Center in Manhattan. Does it have to be from a cart or truck? Any old contraption? Is the recent boom a direct outcome of a nosediving economy?...
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[Hot Doug's Chicago dog. Photographs: Robyn Lee] [UPDATE: The Hot Doug's event is sold out. Sorry!] Listen up, serious eaters! For one night only, Doug "Hot Doug" Sohn is taking his show on the road and bringing it to Astor Center in New York City. To score some of Chicago's finest hot dogs, you would usually have to hop a plane to O'Hare, drive out to Avondale, and wait in a two-hour line at the legendary Hot Doug's (that's what Robyn and I did a couple of weeks ago, but man was it worth it). But for one evanescent eve, you can book a table for two right here in Manhattan with Doug himself. The chef, owner, and resident...
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"It's impossible to glean by looking and tasting whether a dish was created by a man or a woman." Photographs by Belathée Photography On Monday night I was one of two sacrificial guys (Alinea's Grant Achatz was the other) on a panel discussion titled Gender Confusion: Unraveling the Myths of Gender in the Restaurant Kitchen. We delved into the following fascinating, potentially freighted, and cosmic question: Do women working in restaurant kitchens have discernibly different cooking styles than their male counterparts? And, can supposedly sensitive palates tell the difference? Food & Wine editor-in-chief Dana Cowin and thoughtful writer–food philosopher Gwen Hyman, co-author of Urban Italian (written with her chef husband Andrew Carmellini), were the women Achatz and I got to...
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