Food: March 2009 Archives

Over at Fork in the Road, journeyman Robert Sietsema has done a bang up job surveying the city’s burgeoning landscape of tip jars, which are no longer only found at cafes with counter service. They’re everywhere, Sietsema reports— from the coffee shop receptacle that implores “Karma is a boomerang,” to the mamma-said “Take a penny, leave a dollar.” It would seem that the current Thunderdome-style match-up of recession vs. New Yorkers has resulted in a new economy of tip jars that simultaneously allow business owners to broadcast their quirks as well as their woes, such as the “Tip $, because $4 a gallon is killing us!” price-of-milk themed message Sietsema found at a bakery. And Frank Bruni of Times puts in his two cents, imploring everyone to tip at restaurants, no matter how bad the service was: “It’s not some bold stand against fat-cat restaurant operators lining their pockets,” he writes, not to tip.

The Upper East Side eatery Park Avenue Winter is getting some screen time on an upcoming episode of Gossip Girl, and to celebrate they're offering free meals to any female dressed like a schoolgirl. Yes, this just got sort of creepy. Anyway, if you're into that sort of thing, pull up your knee highs, tuck in your button down and zip up that plaid skirt, because from March 16th to 20th "girls of any age in a school uniform will be treated to dinner." And to the ladies over 21, you'll get two rounds compliments of whoever it is who has this schoolgirl fetish. Why can't Chuck Bass doppelgangers be invited too? [Eater via NBC]

Trend alert! Aging hippies are now pairing up classic rock with their favorite vintage. On March 17th at Becco restaurant, Joe Bastianich is hosting an "unprecedented evening of wining, dining, and grooving with the music of Led Zeppelin." He'll be joined by author Mike Edison (also former publisher of High Times!) and David Lynch (not that one). For $175 you'll be served up a 6-course dinner (one for each Zepp album), tunes, and a whole lotta wine. What pairing possibilities could occur as we wine on down the road? Last year Sammy Hagar poured his tequila at La Esquina. How about a Creedence Bottled Water Revival night, or a Steely Dan Kid Champagne tasting?

Someone’s wind-chill related prayers have been answered, and now it has come to pass: through the end of March, hand over one dollar to the Jamba Juice folks, and in return they’ll hand you some hot, steel-cut oatmeal that comes with brown sugar and choice of fruit on top. The cheap breakfast is just one of the many current promotional deals riding the coattails of the economic stimulus nomenclature. In exchange for oatmeal, Jamba Juice requires you to conspire with tree-killers to get their oatmeal deal by printing out a coupon. In the meantime, in an effort just to get customers through the front door, earlier today Starbucks delivered on its promise to introduce a new “value meal” consisting of coffee and an egg sandwich, with oatmeal or coffee cake, all for a low-priced $3.95.

A new Gourmet article by Barry Estabrook explains how migrant farm workers in Florida often end up in positions of involuntary servitude, essentially over the production of crappy wintertime tomatoes destined for supermarket bins or as garnish for some jumbo/burger/gordita concoction plucked off a dollar menu. That includes most restaurants in New York City—fast food or otherwise—that buy tomatoes; more information can be found here. Estabrook writes about one worker in particular who was locked up and beaten by a handler, but it’s no isolated case: "Law-enforcement officials have freed more than 1,000 men and women in seven different cases" since 1997, and it’s not just the tomato growing industry. The piece has so far provoked a predictable cavalcade of xenophobic comments, such as, "I wish I could feel sorry for them, but when you go to a foreign country illegally, can't speak, read nor write the common language, then you're asking, no, BEGGING to be taken advantage of like this man was."