vip in the city, page 16

Steve Abrams caused a flurry of excitement (and a bit of dread) when word first leaked out in September that he would be opening a second outpost of the (in)famous Magnolia Bakery on the Upper West Side, the neighborhood where he and his family have been longtime residents. (In November, Steve’s brother Danny opened an Upper West Side outpost of his successful downtown spot, The Mermaid Inn.)

The new Magnolia Bakery space at 200 Columbus Avenue, which housed Japanese restaurant Lenge for two decades, is at least twice the size of the West Village original and will include a private party room. Steve contracted architect Mark Zeff (who designed his brother’s Red Cat and Mermaid Inn restaurants) for the gut renovation.

The bakery, already widely known for its pastel swirl-topped cupcakes, became explosively, unbearably popular after a 2000 appearance on Sex and the City. Magnolia launched a crop of copycats around town, incited vicious cupcake wars, and inspired Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell to rap poetic about their “bomb frostings.” On fair weather days, the lines wrapped along West 11th Street have been known to stretch over an hour long; I’d observe again that New Yorkers are nuts, but I don’t know how many of the people waiting on line for those — let’s be honest, aside from that vanilla “buttercream” icing: pretty average — cupcakes are actual New Yorkers.

Abrams plans for the new location to get back to its original roots of a neighborhood bakery, opening at 7AM and offering breakfast goods in addition to the bakery’s flagship items. Due to demand, cupcakes have taken over almost the entire bulk of production downtown. (In 2003, Magnolia’s then-owner Alyssa Torrey claimed that it took in over $40,000 a week from cupcakes alone. How else to afford the $400,000-per-year lease at the uptown location?) Also, sugar addicts can rejoice that the strict dozen cupcake limit will be lifted for the Upper West Side.

Although the official launch was not to take place until Monday, January 21, Magnolia Bakery UWS was doing brisk business this Saturday afternoon as word of the stealth, early opening quickly spread.

At McNally Robinson bookstore in NoLIta for a reading and discussion of Romanian–born writer Gregor von Rezzori‘s recently reissued novel, Memoirs of an Anti-Semite — five connected stories, taking place over several decades, exploring the European aristocrat protagonist’s relationship with and ambivalent attitudes toward Jews.

Von Rezorri’s seminal work was first published in 1969 when he was 65 years old; the English version of the German original was released in the United States in 1981. Before becoming known as a novelist and memoirist, von Rezorri, himself born an Austro-Hungarian aristocrat, was a soldier in the Romanian army and later went on to find stints throughout Europe as a radio broadcaster, writer, filmmaker and artist.

Erica Jong, who had been scheduled to give the introductions tonight, was called away by the birth of her daughter’s twins. The host of the evening was Edwin Frank, editor of the NY Review of Books Classics series, whose mission is to reintroduce great books, like von Rezzori’s, that have fallen out of print or out of sight in recent years.

Authors Zadie Smith and Gary Shteyngart read excerpts from the novel and took questions from the packed audience.

Soviet émigré and Stuy alum Shteyngart’s debut novel, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, earned him wide praise and numerous awards – including the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. His follow-up 2006 novel, Absurdistan, garnered near-unanimous positive reviews, prompting Walter Kirn to declare on the cover of The New York Times Book Review, “Like a victorious wrestler, this novel is so immodestly vigorous, so burstingly sure of its barbaric excellence, that simply by breathing, sweating and standing upright it exalts itself.”

But it seemed that what drew crowds to the independent bookstore on Prince tonight was Smith. In 2006, the English novelist was listed among the Time 100 – the magazine’s annual wrap-up of the “100 men and women whose power, talent or moral example is transforming our world.” Smith completed her debut novel, White Teeth, during her final year at Cambridge, and was dubbed by The Guardian as “the first publishing sensation of the millennium.” White Teeth went on to win the Whitbread First Novel Award in 2000, among many other honors. Her third novel, On Beauty, was published in September 2005 and was shortlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize. The book won the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction.

I arrived shortly after the author introductions, and this was the closest I could manage to the stage, and green sweater-clad Smith. Well, it’s a reading, not a sighting.

At Juilliard’s Peter Jay Sharp Theater for “A Modern Person’s Guide to Hooking Up and Breaking Up,” a vocal concert, presented as part of the 20th Anniversary season of the New York Festival of Song.

Steven Blier, NYFOS’s artistic director, and Michael Barrett, associate artistic director, in collaboration with the students of The Juilliard School’s Vocal Arts Department, and artists from the Juilliard Opera Center, put together this evening of song, which culminates the third annual installment of NYFOS@Juillard.

For this year’s program, Blier and Barrett decided upon a theme that their cast of singers knew about firsthand: “mating, dating, betrayal, sexual urges of many stripes, and true love,” somewhat lighter fare than last year’s theme: “Songs of Peace and War.” The song selections were culled from sources ranging from musical theater, to German cabaret, to pop and rock.

The performance opened with a reading of “may i feel said he” by e e cummings. The ensemble (tenor Paul Appleby, baritone Paul LaRosa, mezzo-soprano Rebecca Jo Loeb, soprano Meredith Lustig, tenor Alex Mansoori, baritone David McFerrin, mezzo Renée L. Tatum, bass Marc Webster and soprano Jennifer Zetlan) alternated delivering lines on a darkened stage, which served as an apt introduction to the sometimes quite literal battle between the sexes. (“let’s go said he / not too far said she / what’s too far said he / where you are said she”)

The night’s sung selections were divided into themed segments: Drawing the Lines, Desire, Mars. vs. Venus, Variations and Working it Out, and ranged from the innocently flirty (Frank Loesser’s “Standing on the Corner” from The Most Happy Fella) to the somewhat less so (Kurt Weill’s “Ballad of Sexual Slavery” from Die Dreigroschenoper and songwriter-satirist Tom Lehrer’s “The Masochism Tango.”) There was a highbrow piece with the poetry of W.B. Yeats set to music by Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Moravec, a not-so-cryptic — and hilarious — ode to self love (A Chorus Line lyricist Ed Kleban’s “Do It Yourself“) and a rousing rendition of The Boss’s “Ain’t Got You” by ensemble member Appleby who, before marketing himself as a Rossini and Mozart tenor, sang lead in a Springsteen cover band. One of the quirkiest and most recent selections of the night was the 2006 piece “Neurotic and Lonely,” from the eight-song cycle Craigslistlieder, in which McFerrin sang words lifted directly from a Craigslist personal ad, set to music by none other than Brooklyn composer and performer Gabriel Kahane — MP‘s talented young cousin, whom I met over one of our dinners at Public. “Must enjoy video games, must own a video game system: my parents refuse to buy one for me!!!! NO UGG BOOTS, NO LONG ISLAND!”

The program was punctuated with interstitial quotations by a variety of “love experts,” ranging from Lord Byron to Miss Piggy, Oscar Wilde to St. Augustine (“Lord, make me chaste — but not yet.“)

For the finale, the entire group joined in a song and dance production of The Beatles’ “I’m Happy Just To Dance With You” with a saucy encore by Lehrer whose tune “I Got It From Agnes” ended things on a humorous note with the joys and pitfalls of spreading the … er, love.

This morning I received an invitation to attend a Chinese New Year feast in about three weeks. New dishes, new friends… how could I say no?

Our group will be gathering at Amazing 66 – the warmly received venture by the chef of the former Danny Ng Restaurant (now ABC Chinese Restaurant). Chowhounds have been raving about this place since it opened a little over a year ago, but I’ve yet to make my way there. SL’s email put the restaurant back on my radar, so when it came time to pick a place for lunch, there we were.

The full dinner menu features some impressive items, which — dare I hope? — may be on the slate next month: an outrageous sounding pumpkin stuffed with short ribs, a house special crispy chicken stuffed with sticky rice… Midday, though, is a more scaled down affair.

The large dining room was packed this afternoon – always a good sign — so we were seated at a large communal table, which we shared with two other couples. Amidst the din of the lunch hour, we considered our options. Amazing 66’s single-sheet two-sided lunch menu is available Monday through Saturday from 11:00AM until 3:30PM; 70 items under headings of beef, chicken, pork, seafood, and bean curd & vegetable, served with white rice and choice of hot & sour or egg drop soup. For $4.95! The reverse side of the menu lists dozens of soups, congees, fried noodle and fried rice dishes.

Deciding from among the extensive list was not easy. Something about the chill of winter puts me in mind of my ongoing quest for the perfect roast chicken. Amazing 66 offers a Chinese version with preserved vegetable. Simple and comforting, I thought. What was placed before me minutes later far exceeded my expectations.

Wildly delicious!  Thin, crispy skin with juicy, tender meat, heaped with sweet and tangy shreds of vegetable… With the juices poured over a steaming bowl of white rice – just about as perfect a roast chicken as I’ve ever had, at any price.

If this is just a preview of the good eats to come, I wonder: how long will it take me to eat my way down Amazing 66’s lunch menu?

Two Christmases ago, I received a gift certificate to the Institute of Culinary Education in Chelsea, but it was not until this week that I finally was able to make use of it. Although I’d decided almost immediately on the particular class I wanted to take from among the 1700 Recreational Division offerings, the small class sizes made finding an open evening session that fit into my schedule a bit of a challenge. But at last, here I was.

As I waited for the session to begin, I checked out the Institute’s glass case exhibit of antique kitchen implements. The cookbooks and coffee mill I recognized, but a few of the other items…?

Description of Knife Skills I:

Knowing how to use knives skillfully is critical for cooks, yet many people have never mastered proper technique. Similarly, good knives form the foundation of a well-equipped kitchen, yet even some accomplished home cooks don’t know how to select and care for them. In Knife Skills 1, you’ll use Wüsthof-Trident knives to slice, dice, and chop in the safest and most efficient manner. You’ll also learn the proper way to sharpen your knives.

Living on my own, I do a fair amount of cooking at home — which is perhaps not evident from this blog — so naturally, I’m no stranger to using knives in the kitchen. At least I was probably in a better position than one of my fellow students — dragged to tonight’s class by his girlfriend — who when quizzed about his home kitchen knife collection, sheepishly admitted, “I have a butter knife.” Up until now, I’d managed to get the necessary jobs done without causing any serious injury to myself or to others, but I’d always had the nagging suspicion that there were ways I could improve my technique.

Tonight’s class was led by chef-instructor Norman Weinstein, who has been teaching essential techniques for more than two decades. In addition to the four knife skills classes at ICE (from “Basics” to “Decorative Garnishes”), Weinstein leads two Chinese cooking classes (Sichuan and Cantonese). His book on Mastering Knife Skills is due out in March 2008.

Our group of 12 was made up of 6 men and 6 women tonight, which the instructor observed “almost never happens.” (It seems that these classes are overwhelmingly populated by females, so for any eligible bachelors who may be reading this, infer from that what you will.) After donning our white ICE aprons and name tags, we were set up at individual workstations laid out with a gleaming selection of Classic Wüsthof knives: chef’s knives, a utility knife and a paring knife.

The three hours we spent watching and learning to use the knives were an epiphany. According to Weinstein, the biggest mistakes people tend to make when using knives are using the wrong type of knife for the task, and handling the knife incorrectly. (Apparently, I’ve been guilty of both.) And where previously I’ve been hesitant to invest in any knife larger than 8 inches — small girl hands! — the 10 inch chef’s knife was a revelation. Weinstein put us through the paces halving a bagel, slicing up celery and carrots, then dicing potatoes and onions, mincing shallots and garlic, chopping herbs, and finally peeling. (Check out the tomato skin rose garnish — fancy!) Different techniques all, requiring different motions with the blade, which were not immediately obvious without specific instruction. But what an improvement!

Also covered: knife sharpening (which is best left to the professionals) and blade honing with a misnomered “sharpening steel.” Check out Alton Brown’s “Good Eats” segment on sharpening vs. honing, which covers a lot of the same points.

Chefs can be rabidly devoted to their knives — this Times piece by the brothers Lee also happens to includes a photo of my instructor — and depending on whom you ask, it’s not necessary to invest in a pricey set of kitchen knives. But boy, are they nice to have around.

After a while, I could really appreciate the heft, balance and weight of the Wüsthof knives, and the easy rhythms of steady cutting action that, when mastered, became almost meditative. The biggest challenge was unlearning old (bad) habits, so admittedly, it was slow going at first, but after a while, the techniques began to gel. So while I still don’t know how to wield a knife like Hung, winner of Top Chef Season 3, I feel I’m on my way, slowly, surely, to getting all the pieces the same size. And isn’t that really the most important thing?

On the way out, lured by the warm, delicious smells, I peeked in on the baking class still in progress across the hall. The one downside to the knife skills class: no treats to take home afterwards… unless you count the errant flecks of shallot I found in my hair later that night.

Remember how when we were growing up the green M&M’s were associated with special naughty powers? How do such random associations get started? Apparently, in this case, no one really knows. In my young mind, I always had traced the origins to the 1980s M&M’s “home run” commercial — “With the green ones, I take the ball dowwwntown!” – but it seems that such urban legends have been circulating around the country since the Disco era. In the mid-90s, Mars introduced the print and television “Is it true what they say about green ones?”-advertising campaign, unabashedly exploiting the candy’s sexy reputation, and in 1997 officially introduced Ms. Green, the first and only female M&M’s character.

In case you were wondering, there is absolutely no merit to the claim that the green ones have aphrodisiacal properties.

This Valentine’s Day, “the brand celebrates the myths, rumors and innuendo surrounding green M&M’S Chocolate Candies” by introducing these special limited edition “All Green” packets — sure to catch the eye amidst the sea of red and pink offerings.  The suggestively smiling mascot with her saucy “Sweetie… It’s all true” seems a tad risqué for a candy campaign, no?

Warning on package: “Consumption of The Green Ones may result in elevated Romance Levels. If you experience this effect, contact your Significant Other immediately. No official agency has verified these statements… but what do they know about romance anyway?”

As you can see, I picked up a bag anyway. I’ll take my chances.

J had tickets to Carnegie Hall tonight, so we decided to meet for a quick dinner nearby before the concert. But where? We were about to fall back on our usual pre-Carnegie Hall standby — the Burger Joint inside Le Parker Meridien hotel — until we recalled that another burger joint had opened in the neighborhood recently.

The extraordinarily well-loved, family-owned Virginia-based chain of Five Guys Famous Burgers and Fries arrived in New York City last year — the East Coast’s answer to In-N-Out — opening branches in College Point and Brooklyn Heights. In early November, the first Manhattan outlet opened on 55th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues; the company plans to open 29(!) more in the borough over the next eight years. (That’s a lot, but nowhere near Starbucks’ level of ubiquity. But I digress…) By their second day of business, midtown lunch crowds had pushed waits for burgers and fries to an hour and half. Oh, what New Yorkers will endure for a good burger! Or good pizza!

At just past 7PM on a Monday, though, it is a decidedly less chaotic scene.

J had visited the Queens location before — they have a MySpace page! — but this was my first time sampling the famous burgers. Each one is made to order, and Five Guys provides all the shelled peanuts you can eat to tide you over while you’re waiting for your order number to be called.

The corporate policy is to cook all beef patties to well done — eek! — in spite of which the burgers do retain a surprising level of juiciness. Usual toppings include lettuce, tomato, pickles, fried onions, sautéed mushrooms, ketchup, mustard and mayo; other less standard fixins include relish, jalapeño peppers, and green peppers, and all are included in the price. I ordered what’s listed on the menu as the “little hamburger,” which didn’t seem so “little” to me; roughly the same size as the ones at nearby Burger Joint, and at $2.00 less, a much better value. (The standard Five Guys burger comes with two 3.3 ounce patties, stacked one atop the other.) Five Guys fries are hand-cut, skin-on affairs. $4.50 for a large order (plain or cajun) seemed disproportionately expensive — a quarter more than my burger was, even — but are very generously proportioned; we essentially received double what we expected: inside our grease-stained brown paper bag was a tall styrofoam cup brimming full of fries, with roughly the same amount thrown in loose over our foil-wrapped burgers. Easily more fries than we could finish in a single sitting — and I love fries. Nice touch: bottles of malt vinegar on the tables. Goofy touch: announcing the provenance of the potatoes on a whiteboard by the registers. (“Today’s potatoes are from Ririe, Idaho.”)

Peter Meehan of The New York Times had good things to say about those fries in his assessment of the Brooklyn branch (“Generously portioned… with an honest potato flavor”), but was less impressed with the burgers themselves, declaring them “not particularly salty or griddle-charred or beefy.” New York magazine was more effusive in its praise, recently naming Five Guys among the city’s best burgers; theirs was just one more article mounted along a long wall lined with glowing write-ups.

Non-press folks love them, too.

We had narrowed down our choices for sushi dinner tonight to a handful of places that were new to both of us. Ushi Wakamaru on Houston Street seemed promising, but after reading that the place was newly reopened after renovations that coincided with being closed down by the Department of Health in September, well… we reconsidered. (Though in retrospect, perhaps we should have reasoned: when is a restaurant more meticulously clean than after getting shuttered?)

Inase on the Upper East Side does not open on Sundays, nor does midtown’s Sushi Yasuda, which left us with Shimizu in Hell’s Kitchen. Except not quite, as we discovered upon our arrival on 51st Street: that restaurant is closed on Sundays as well.

Clearly, we were not meant to dine on sushi tonight. Down the block at the House of Brews we reassessed our options, and briefly caught part of what would be the Giants’ victory over the Dallas Cowboys, 21-17, that would send the team to the frozen tundra of Green Bay for next Sunday’s NFC title game. (Thanks, “Jessica”!)

We ended up at Uncle Nick’s Greek Cuisine a block away, on Ninth Avenue.

I’ve read gripes that “Astoria is better,” but all in all, Uncle Nick’s is a solid choice for simple Greek fare, a casual and more reasonably priced alternative to the other mid-to-upscale Greek restaurants in the neighborhood (Estiatorio Milos, Molyvos).

My favorite part of the meal — aside from the company, of course — was the “Four Combo Dip” platter: scoops of tzatziki (yogurt, cucumber and garlic dip), scordalia (potato and garlic dip), melitzanosalata (eggplant dip) and tarama (a fluffy, tangy fish roe dip), served with wedges of warm, grilled pita. I’d come back just for this.

Cretan Keftedakia (fried Cretan spiced meatballs):

Pastitsio (oven-baked macaroni, spiced chopped sirloin, and whipped potatoes, layered with Béchamel sauce) — like a Greek lasagna, or Shepherd’s pie.

And one of tonight’s specials: the Shrimp Santorini (large, white shrimp, smothered with fresh tomatoes garlic and feta). After seeing the waiter bring out my dish, a man at the adjacent table ordered the same.

Back at home after dinner, we took advantage of my free month of HBO, catching the umpteenth cable broadcast of The Devil Wears Prada, a film which until that night I’d not seen in its entirety. Fabulous outfits, and all around great fun.

This Saturday launched the first of five weekends of 7 construction, during which the line will not be running east past Woodside, Queens. In addition, weekend Manhattan-bound service will be skipping 52nd, 46th, 40th, and 33rd Streets through February 11, and all weekday trains will run local until February 29, 2008. The service announcements explaining all these changes were almost comically lengthy.

Despite the inevitable confusion, getting out to Main Street this morning wasn’t terrible: the free LIRR service from Penn Station ended up actually shaving time off my commute to Queens. My short and sweet stop in Sunnyside, however, entailed a bit more effort; the three-quarter mile walk west from the railroad station at 61st Street, though, did bring me past a few sights I never see when I’m riding the 7 rails overhead.

Like this brightly-colored mural beneath the otherwise rather forbidding subway tracks, commissioned by Woodside on the Move, a non-profit community development organization, founded in 1978.

Later that evening, we gathered at The Oak Cellar on the Upper West Side for TB’s birthday soirée. The cozy bricked wine cellar, with its masonry arches and cobblestone floors, is tucked away randomly beneath the gloriously fratty Jake’s Dilemma on Amsterdam. (Beer pong!) Also random: in a room teeming with lawyers, meeting a bartender-cum-writer-cum-lawyer, working the party door.

Then it was on to iBop Karaoke for the third birthday party of the past 24 hours. Judging by the number of empty bottles littering the party room table, we had hit MC’s bash at its peak — or perhaps just past — but there was still plenty of fun to be had. Already in the song queue: The Beatles, George Michael and Chamillionaire, and as required of all karaoke gatherings, some old school Michael Jackson. HYB was disappointed that his favorite Prince tune “Cream” was not among the selections, so we settled instead for the falsetto-heavy “Kiss” — classic, though in retrospect, not the easiest in the catalog to belt out.

MC who, past experience has shown, knows how to rock out with the best of them, led us all in a screaming a capella encore of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin‘,” accompanied by music leaking through from the room next door. And as a follow-up: Stone Temple Pilots’ “Plush,” about which she aptly noted: if you don’t know this song, you’d better ask yourself what you were doing in the 1990s. 15(!) years later, the lyrics are still as perplexing as ever.

Where ya going to tomorrow?
Where ya going with that mask I found?
And I feel, and I feel
When the dogs begin to smell her
Will she smell alone?

There’s nothing more than this.

At the cool LITM in Jersey City tonight for MLF’s birthday celebration. This Newark Avenue hot spot was named for an album by Philadelphia funk rock band MFSB, and has been a fixture of downtown’s “Restaurant Row” since it was opened by the JC-native sibling team of Jerome and Jelynne Jardiniano in October 2003.

For the occasion, LW had reserved the back space of this bar-lounge-gallery, on whose walls she had mounted an exhibition of about 20 of her beautiful photographs, all featuring the woman of honor.

Over the course of the evening, we each were given the opportunity to title the piece of our choice. Originators of the best titles, as judged by the artist, may see a new photo in their future. Fingers crossed!

Always good times celebrating with MLF, and reconnecting with old friends.

In addition to the occasional private party, LITM features Sunday night film screenings, live music performances, and rotating art exhibitions. (On display tonight: paintings by local self-taught artist Ken Bastard.) And perhaps most importantly, to accompany all those potent potables: good tunes.

Just wait ‘til tomorrow
I guess that’s what they all say
Just before they fall apart

— New Order, Regret