There was a smorgasbord of inter-borough hamburger love last night at the chandelier-bedazzled Astoria World Manor in Queens for the inaugural Burger Battle of the Boroughs. Representing good taste in general at event sponsor Pat LaFrieda Meats's table, Seymour Burton chef de cuisine (and non-competitor) Josh Shuffman cooked the restaurant’s signature burger for spectators while the event was judged. At the judges’ table, author Arthur Schwartz seemed to have a beef (sorry) with Grub Street......

Despite Meatopia IV's downright pagan theme, Slaughter of the Innocents, which involved spit roasted kid goat and suckling pig as well as the consumption of copious amounts of other young animal flesh, the good lord chose to spare the soul of Mr. Cutlets, aka Josh Ozersky, and the band of meat-crazed revelers that came out Tuesday night to Water Taxi Beach to celebrate Josh's 40th birthday. Meatopia has grown to be something of the......

When meat maven Josh Ozersky, aka Mr. Cutlets, talks bacon, many a New York City carnivore listens. And Gothamist is no exception. Despite Monday's dreary weather, we trudged over to East Village gastropub Jimmy's No.43, for what our favorite meathead was billing as a night of bacon, beer and pickles, a combination sure to brighten any rainy day. Some 25 pounds of cured pork belly were cooked up that night in the subterranean space. Five......

Gothamist is just recovering from the food coma that followed Wednesday night's preopening party at Borough Food & Drink. By the time we got there the room was jammed with all manner of food bloggers, writers and restaurant industry insiders all gleefully sampling items from the menu of the new Chodorow-Pelaccio venture. It's good to know that our time trolling the mean streets of Queens and Brooklyn hasn't been spent in vain. As soon as......

- As part of his "gearing up for Morandi" mode, Bruni takes a return trip to Balthazar and was not a happy camper. - The NY Sun brings us the fantastic news that the Mercadito team are expanding their empire. Callecito, which will focus on Mexcian street food, will be across the street from their Avenue B branch and is slated to open in June. - Grub Street's Josh Ozersky (a.k.a. Mr. Cutlets) recently taunted......

- Augieland has a food pornrific post on the late night scene at Momofuku Ssäm Bar. Please note the disclaimer in the second paragraph – it was his birthday and he had been well served. - As expected, Eater is all over the Ye Waverly Inn rebirth, surely more to come. - Chinese food and wine? Mr. Asimov thinks some investigation or re-visitation of the topic is in order. If it, as it does for......

- Old business first, somehow this got missed last week. Mrs. Leuzzi over on Snack wonders about bathrooms at the SS now that it is Shacktoberfest. She recommends fast food establishments on the block and even provides a map. We always thought it was rude that they did not offer even hand sanitizer to customers in light of the missing facilities. This week, we hit the mailbox….not ours but others for seriously good entertainment. -......

- - NY Mag launches a revamped food section, including Grub Street, a food blog that promises hourly posts, authored by Josh Ozersky, a.k.a. Mr. Cutlets. - Does true love have no bounds? Jeff Varasano, a software engineer, has completed "a multi-year project to reverse-engineer the pizza recipe" from Patsy's pizza. [via BoingBoing] In case you can't get to the link, Slice has done us the favor of mirroring the recipe. - Restaurant PR mavens......

Last night was the Gothamist-A Hamburger Today QBQ BBQ at Water Taxi Beach that, despite the weather, was a great success. There was a great turnout with people sampling four different burgers and some also eating an elk burger. In fact, Gothamist is still recovering from our meat induced coma! The first interpretive burger on the menu was the Motz Burger, followed by the Guber Burger, the Green Chile Cheeseburger and finally the Butter......

- We have not perused it in full, but we are sure this site on the concept of eating local will consume a bit of our time this week. - Our friend Julia from Grip-n-Grin is hosting a chocolate tasting at Kanvas this Thursday to benefit the Special Olympics. For more information, please see the site. - Mr. Cutlets (aka Josh Ozersky) drops his list of top burgers – both locally and from national chains.......