Posted by Michael Nagrant, February 22, 2008 at 8:15 AM
With Quartino, Osteria via Stato, and now A Mano all slinging cured meats, Chicago’s downtown lunch arena is sporting more sausage than the Chicago Bears locker room after a big game. A Mano, the newest of the triumvirate, is helmed by Bin 36 veteran chef John Caputo and offers a wide selection of salumi, including the handiwork of Seattle’s sausage king, Armandino Batali. In addition to the charcuterie, A Mano features all manner of Italian-focused goodies from wood-fired pizzas to zingy crudo.
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Posted by Brian Halweil, February 15, 2008 at 10:15 AM
Brian Halweil of Edible Communities and editor of Edible East End checks in with great meal ideas in East Hampton, New York.
You know it’s February when Nick & Toni’s on North Main Street in East Hampton is serving $5 pizzas. But that’s not all. This forerunner of haute barnyard on the East End, with its big veggie garden in the back and its stable of celebrity clients in the front that challenges even the most connected to get a table in summer, has rolled out a number of customer-generating innovations this slow season.
A friend recently returned from pizza night with his two sons covered in dust and proudly toting one slice of each of their pizzas that they had saved for mom to sample. The kids, not always excited by food and cooking, were energized. My friend was also energized, having been allowed to throw back a beer with his own age-appropriate playmates while the chef entertained his kids in the kitchen. Could Nick & Toni’s be breaking new ground in gastro-child care?
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Posted by Ed Levine, December 27, 2007 at 6:06 PM
Warning: This post is filled with food punditry.
Everybody fancies himself a food pundit these days. And why not? We all like to eat, and we all like to think and talk about food. And there's plenty to talk about. Food is all over the news everywhere you look. The only thing we need is a cable network that would put us on the air to do all of the above. So until that day comes, you and I can do our food punditing and prognosticating right here, starting now.
Trends I'm in Favor Of
Small (Plates) Really Are Beautiful
Small plates mean we get to more carefully calibrate how much and what we eat. This is most assuredly a good thing. Plus, if we are hungry, we get to try a lot more dishes with small plates. Another really good thing. Note to chefs and restaurateurs: Just don't rip us off with your small plate pricing. A plate of pimientos de padron flash-fried and lightly coated in sea salt shouldn't cost $18.
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Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 9, 2007 at 4:46 PM
Alison Cook of the Houston Chronicle visits new area hot spot Dolce Vita Pizzeria Enoteca and gives it serious props:
Houston now lays claim to some of the best handmade pizzas served in America. I do not exaggerate. I would put these babies up against the well-regarded likes of Chris Bianco's pies at Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix, say, or even the painstakingly purist specimens at Una Pizza Napoletana in New York's East Village. Quite frankly, thanks to their spectacular wood-fired crusts, they best even the griddled specimens served at überchef Mario Batali's Otto Enoteca Pizzeria, the downtown Manhattan pizza bar that was Wiles' inspiration.
We'll have to get some of Serious Eats staff out there to try it STAT—head honcho Ed Levine is, after all, the guy who "ate a thousand pieces of pizza all over the United States and Italy researching [his] book, Pizza: A Slice of Heaven" and our managing editor Adam Kuban runs Slice, America's favorite pizza weblog!
* At the time Ed "believed that Chris Bianco was making the world's best pizza at his eponymous pizzeria in Phoenix", but in January he declared the greatest pizza in the world is in Los Angeles (maybe), made by Nancy Silverton at Mozza.
Posted by Adam Kuban, January 31, 2007 at 5:06 PM
The L.A. Times does Los Angeles's recently opened Pizzeria Mozza, the joint venture from legendary L.A. baker Nancy Silverton, superstarchef Mario Batali, and restaurateur Joe Bastianich:
There's something so sensual about Silverton's relationship to food and her aesthetic that's entirely her own — direct, focused, uncompromised. She doesn't primp or fuss over her food. It's not art-directed or scripted. But it is entirely original and recognizably hers. And even if you're an Italian purist who's scandalized that she doesn't make pizza exactly like they do in Naples or someone who finds her food too simple and wonders what all the fuss is about, it's precisely this: Her food is vibrant and alive.
That Margherita is a beautiful melding of fresh milky mozzarella delivered almost daily from Mozzarella Fresca in Northern California, with a light tomato sauce and the fresh, fragrant basil leaves on a crust that's both tender and crackling crisp on the bottom, blistered and smoky from the wood-burning oven. A pizza of funghi misti means mixed mushrooms on a soft carpet of tangled cheeses — Fontina and Taleggio, with a sprinkling of thyme leaves.
Hot spot? Mozza is on fire [Los Angeles Times; Grr: registration required]
Posted by Ed Levine, July 10, 2006 at 3:28 PM
Lots of new pizza places opening all across America by chefs and pizzaiolos serious about ingredients and crust and fire and all the things that go into great pizza.
My friend Tom Douglas is opening Serious Pie in Seattle sometime late this summer. In many ways Tom is the founding father of the Seattle food scene. His restaurants include the Dahlia Lounge, the Palace Kitchen, Lola, and Etta's.
Tom is one of the country's great chefs. He's also a longtime eating buddy of mine. The man can flat out eat. Full disclosure: I co-wrote one of Tom's cookbooks, Tom's Big Dinners. Tom has loved pizza for a long time, and he has often talked about opening a pizzeria. I guess now is the time.
Posted by Ed Levine, March 24, 2006 at 12:44 PM
Today was not a good food day. I went to visit Roadfood pioneers and great writers Jane and Michael Stern at their house in Connecticut. I brought them a box of schnecken (pecan sticky buns) and a black and white cookie from Greenberg's, a classic New York Jewish bakery that is simply not very good anymore except for the schnecken and the black and white cookies. We had a blast hanging out and swapping writer war stories.
When I left, Michael told me I had to go to their latest discovery, Wave Hill, a bakery that made great rustic bread. Michael said it was on the way to my final lunch destination, the new Fairfield location of the seminal New Haven pizzeria Pepe's. It was all downhill from there. First, Wave Hill was closed by the time I got there. The sign on the door said they close at noon, and I got there by 12:10 or so. I was going crazy when I got there because I could see a few loaves of bread that could have been mine if I could just get in the door. I could also smell the bread, which smelled absolutely amazing. I also called the number on the door, and, yup, I got a recording.
Then I made it to the Fairfield Pepe's by 1 p.m. or so, and there was a big line out front and it was moving very slowly (maybe not at all). I tried to open the front door to the place and it wouldn't open. It turns out it only opens from the inside because they don't want people waiting inside. Talk about a warm welcome! I managed to slip in the door when someone was leaving and I asked the man at the counter how long it would take to get a pizza to go.
He said with a completely straight face, "My next to-go opening is at 2:40 p.m."
You see the kind of preferential treatment I get because I wrote a book about pizza. I've got such clout in the pizza community that I can't even get a pizza to go for an hour and forty minutes when I arrive unannounced at Pepe's in Fairfield, CT.
