Entries tagged with 'Frank Bruni'
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Critic-Turned-Cook Meets Critic-Turned-Author Frank Bruni

[Photograph: Rachel Strawn] Frank Bruni and I have at least two things in common: We’ve both hung up our professional feedbags and we’re both over the moon about the lardo lollipops at Salumi in Seattle. I got to meet the author of Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater when he was in the city on a West Coast leg of his book tour. We had lunch at the renowned salumeria started by Armandino Batali and now run by his daughter, Gina Batali, and her husband, Brian D’Amato. But before he sat down at the head of the table for 10, my friend and former Seattle Post-Intelligencer colleague Rebekah Denn and I double-teamed the former New York...

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Ed Levine's Serious Diet, Week 81: A Frank Chat with Frank Bruni on Being 'Born Round'

"I was objectively chubby by age four, fat by age six, and was on the Atkins diet for the first time at age eight." —Frank Bruni Photographs by Robyn Lee For all of the serious eaters who overdosed on the hype surrounding Julie & Julia (hey, the back of my head was in the movie, so if I'm guilty as charged there's a good reason for that), I'm giving you a heads-up that the hoopla accompanying the publication of Born Round, now former New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni's memoir, is going to make Julie & Julia seem like it was an under-the-radar phenomenon. The book is in stores today, so let the Bruni media madness begin (it actually...

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Video: Frank Bruni Reviews the Choco Taco

One major plus about Frank Bruni stepping down from his New York Times Dining critic position is he has more time to mull over pressing issues like the merits of a Choco Taco. (And we can even see his face while he does so!) When Bruni appeared on Nightline this week, he moseyed over to an ice cream truck to review everyone's favorite rhyming dessert taco. How many stars did the Brunmeister give it? The video, after the jump....

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May I Pour You Some Wine? A Server's Take on Wine Service

I work at a wine bar. I pour a lot of wine. It goes with the job. When Christopher Hitchens posted his rant last week on Slate, I couldn't help but feel personally attacked.

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Frank Bruni Goes Ko-razy

New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni is frustrated at the reservation process at Momofuku Ko, the impossible-to-get-into pork-injected haute-cuisine spin-off of David Chang's Momofuku empire in New York. The place has 12 seats and employs a web-based reservation system that requires you to log in at 10 a.m. for seats a week out. It's egalitarian in theory, and I admire Chang and company for subjecting everyone—VIPs and schlubs alike—to the same miserable experience of signing on and viewing a series of little red Xs indicating you're hosed. Supposedly, the place does not play favorites. Still, as level as the playing field is, there've been complaints about logging on, seeing a green checkmark, clicking on it, but then being told...

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Sunday Reading

Brett Anderson of the New Orleans Times-Picayune recently wrote a terrific series chronicling the post-Katrina reopening of legendary New Orleans neighborhood restaurant Mandina's. The New York Times' Frank Bruni interviews New York chef-restaurateur Jimmy Bradley (the Red Cat and the Harrison). My favorite part of the Q and A: Frank Bruni: Is there a rule of conduct or etiquette in your kitchen that you enforce above all others?Jimmy Bradley: I use this quote from George Washington Carver: “How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant with the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.”...

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A $34.95 Fried Calamari Appetizer?

Frank Bruni goose-eggs Harry Cipriani, "a bizarre mix of indulgence and deprivation."...

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Please Enjoy This Link

Enjoy this article by Frank Bruni as he vents on the overuse of the word enjoy. Enjoy!...

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What's the Weirdest Thing You've Ever Seen in a Fancy Restaurant?

I read Frank Bruni's hilarious piece on the weird things people do in fancy-pants restaurants, and, ever since, I've been trying to compile my own list of the way-out-of-the-ordinary or downright aberrant behavior I have witnessed at white-tablecloth spots. I am coming up empty. I have missed out. I've never seen anyone having sex or stripping or offering gratis caviar to tables. And damn it, I feel deprived. I think it would be fun to witness some shenanigans at Daniel or Per Se or the French Laundry or Alinea or Le Bec Fin. I long to watch three attractive women strip down to their panties and take a dip in the pool at the Four Seasons. In fact, that floor...

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Are Restaurants Too Noisy?

When the headline and the lede in Frank Bruni's restaurant review in the New York Times are both about noise, maybe, just maybe, we've reached the point of no return when it comes to restaurant noise levels. Consider the following line from Bruni's review: "Talking with tablemates at Mercat can be like watching an in-flight movie when you haven't purchased the earphones." Here's my question: Is that state of affairs either necessary or desirable? When you talk to chefs and restaurateurs about this issue, some will say the noise level in their restaurants is the result of faulty design, that they didn't know the noise level was going to be a problem until they opened their doors and discovered...

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