Tag Archives: restaurants

SPLC-certified hate kingpin Porno Pete LaBarbera has decided to fire back at the “silly” boycott of Chick-Fil-A by launching his own boycott of Chili’s. From the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow site: LaBarbera, founder of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, argues that Chick-fil-A is a fine Christian company and suggests that a boycott of the company is absurd. But he points …

Eater reports that IHOP has inked a deal to open 24 restaurants in the NYC area, including a flagship outlet in Times Square. Currently the only IHOP in NYC is in Harlem. Among the other glamorous restaurants in glittering fabulous Times Square: Applebee’s, Olive Garden, Sbarro, Chili’s, TGI Friday’s, and Red Lobster. And don’t forget Pop Tarts, the cafe.

NYC’s restaurants are now required to post their letter grade in sanitation from the Health Department. The Wall Street Journal notes the creative manner in which one midtown joint complied. What if they’d gotten a “C”?

The fried cheese melt. Not as gross looking as the Double Down or the Donut Burger.

It has a secret/mysterious underground dining room.

Tonight my able homo-guide to Montreal treated me to dinner in Old Montreal at Garde Manger, a highly-regarded place recently made more famous because of a reality show starring its owner, which is now running on the Food Network in Canada. I recommend the halibut. And the scallops. And the bartender. Definitely the bartender.

Not very cost-effective, but whatevs. (Via – Andrew Sullivan)

The real life Soup Nazi of Seinfeld fame is reopening his original store in Hell’s Kitchen today, six years after the last of his several Manhattan locations closed. All the famously stringent rules will be enforced: Have your money ready, step to the left, no unnecessary talking. I used to patronize the location at 42nd and Fifth, where a tiny …

Seven NYC restaurants have signed onto a delivery service that will find you anywhere in Central Park via an iPhone GPS app. A new iPhone application for food delivery to the Manhattan oasis debuted Saturday, with Sheep Meadow sunbathers free to order a slice and Great Lawn Frisbee tossers liberated to call for chow mein. The app comes with a …

David Sigal’s documentary Florent: Queen Of The Meat Market, premieres next Thursday, June 24th, at the NYC Food Film Festival. Get tickets here. Openly gay and openly HIV+ Florent Morellet’s namesake Meatpacking District restaurant was long the post-clubbing meeting place for a spectacular hodge-podge of NYC’s nightlife denizens, celebrities, and activists. The restaurant was forced out of business last year …

More and more NYC restaurants are doing away with taking reservations, citing the costs of hiring reservationists and the membership fees paid to online table booking services. The easy button for many restaurateurs is OpenTable.com, which allows diners to make reservations 24/7 online. “The average restaurant spends $1,500 to $2,000 a month on OpenTable,” said Mr. Brown, of Ed’s Chowder …

Travel site Concierge lists their ten most over-hyped tourist experiences in NYC. 1. Hansom cab ride through Central Park.2. Dining at Tavern On The Green.3. Eating anywhere in Times Square.4. Comedy shows in Times Square.5. Shopping at Century 21.6. Nightclubbing in the Meatpacking District.7. A pedi-cab ride through mid-town.8. Eating from a hot dog cart.9. Visiting the Empire State Building.10. …

Chelsea’s iconic Empire Diner will close next month. “After more than thirty years of serving Chelsea residents, actors, police commissioners, athletes, gangsters, such luminaries as Madonna, Barbra Streisand, Steven Spielberg, and anyone carrying a New York City Guide Book, the Empire Diner has lost its lease and is closing its doors May 15th, 2010.” I had breakfast at the Empire …

A bill sponsored by New York Assemblyman Felix Ortiz (D-Brooklyn) would prohibit “the use of salt by restaurants in the preparation of food by restaurants.” The penalty for salting food would be $1000, but as the linked story wryly notes, the bill doesn’t stipulate if that’s $1000 per pinch or per grain. Read the complete dumbass legislation here.

Manhattan’s decade of fascination with the “upscale” cupcake emporium has been well-documented. And years after Sex And The City went off the air, the lines at the pointedly downscale Magnolia Cupcakes mysteriously remain. Therefore, it seems, we were long overdue for a gay take on the phenomenon. Enter the Butch Bakery. Butch Bakery was born when David Arrick felt it …

Central Park’s Tavern On The Green, the nation’s highest grossing and arguably most famous restaurant, will close tomorrow after 75 years in business. The former sheepfold at the edge of Central Park, now ringed by twinkling lights and fake topiary animals, is preparing for New Year’s Eve, when it will serve its last meal. Just three years ago, it was …

With so many of NYC’s unemployed spending their idle time in coffeehouses, hovering for hours over their laptops, shop owners are beginning to put their foot down. Amid the economic downturn, there are fewer places in New York to plug in computers. As idle workers fill coffee-shop tables — nursing a single cup, if that, and surfing the Web for …