Spotlighted Pig, Broken Pilot, Nora Discount, Rungis, and more...
Family Meal - Wednesday, October 17, 2018
Hello Wednesday,
Programming note: A special, frazzled, mid-week Family Meal today, on account of I’m on “vacation” with two small children and no childcare. They are very charming.
Also a bit lopsided toward the East Coast today. Please stick with me till next time, everyone else!
Let’s get to it…
Awards (Nominations) Season – “The call for entry period is now open” for the 2019 James Beard Awards. Key nomination deadlines: 12/1 - Leadership Awards; 12/7 - Book Awards; 12/31 - Restaurant and Chef Awards; 1/2/19 - Broadcast and Journalism Awards; and 1/25/19 - Design Awards entries.
Reminder: “The James Beard Foundation will waive the entry fee this year for our Book, Broadcast, and Design awards during the first two weeks of the open call, from October 15 to 29, 2018. Also, first-time entrants in the James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards will be free throughout the entry period.”
Direct link to the entry page here.
The Pruniverse – Headline from Maggie Bullock in NYMag’s The Cut: “Gabrielle Hamilton and Ashley Merriman Dreamed of Writing the Second Chapter in the #MeToo Story. Instead, they got scorched.” Leaving aside the generous use of passive voice in that second sentence, this follow-up on Hamilton and Merriman’s non-deal debacle with Ken Friedman at The Spotted Pig highlights a number of half-truths and omissions (with financial transparency among the worst), but the New Yorker’s Helen Rosner pinpoints a key one here: “One thing that I think is getting obscured in a lot of metoo-ish conversations is how much everyone is ~personal friends~ with everyone else… we look at things like Hamilton / Merriman's baffling decision to partner with Friedman, their baffling response to the outrage it created, and like whyyyyyyyy to all of that—but also, it's not baffling. They are close friends! They've been friends forever!”
This obviously goes for the media side of things too. When Sam Sifton, Hamilton’s editor at NYT Food – and a friend – calls to ask the first questions about the story, Merriman initially thinks it’s a “social call”. (He didn’t get a byline on that story, so guess it kind of was…?)
P.S. – In its accounting of the fallout for Hamilton, the article says, “the foreword she wrote to another chef’s book was yanked before publication.” A source tells me that foreword was intended for the Estela cookbook – the same Estela where Thomas Carter was recently accused of “creating a culture of fear” himself, and the same Estela where one Ken Friedman held his bachelor party.
And lastly from The Spotted Pig beat this week, here’s Julia Moskin and Kim Severson in the NYT yesterday: “In a penthouse suite at the sleek James hotel in NoMad, April Bloomfield, 44, recently sat for hours going over what happened, flanked by her wife and her publicist. She said she now understands that her past silence contributed to the sexual and emotional harassment of people she should have protected. ‘I failed a lot of people,’ she said. ‘That’s on my shoulders.’”
Moving on…
Or not… The Suits – “A company behind the Ace Hotel in New York filed a suit last week claiming restaurateur Ken Friedman cooked the books at Michelin-starred the Breslin and John Dory Oyster Bar, restaurants that he ran with chef April Bloomfield. They are seeking at least $5 million in damages, plus other potential damages and legal fees — claiming that Friedman misrepresented profits. Bloomfield is not named in the complaint.” Serena Dai has the details in Eater NY.
The Broken Basket – In Brooklyn, Carla Vianna reports, “Restaurant and food product incubator Pilotworks abruptly halted operations this weekend — cutting 175 local food vendors from their products and leaving them without a kitchen ahead of a busy holiday season. The company, which has high-profile investors like the founders of Sweetgreen and Blue Hill co-owner David Barber, shuttered its Brooklyn-based kitchen space on Saturday. Members were barred from accessing their ingredients, inventory, resources, and equipment as of 5 p.m. that day, according to a news release sent by a coalition of businesses that operated from the space.” Not only that, some vendors are apparently owed thousands of dollars from their participation in Pilotworks’s distribution program.
The Media – The Washington Post is looking for a “Business of Food Reporter… to cover food and its powerful role in shaping business, policy and the lives of consumers.” Details here.
Real Estate – In D.C., “the Dupont Circle building that for nearly 40 years housed Restaurant Nora, the United States’ first certified organic restaurant, has been sold. Prolific D.C. restaurateur Ashok Bajaj, whose Knightsbridge Restaurant Group owns of Rasika, Bindaas, Oval Room and others, has bought the building… for just more than $4 million.” That’s a tad less than the $7M Nora Pouillan was asking when she first announced she was closing Nora… Details via Rebecca Cooper in the WBJ.
For Design Fans – Those booths look awfully tight, but I love the crazy mess of lines in that back room at Tim Ma’s American Son at the new Eaton Hotel in the District.
And last but not least – Check out NYT writer Liz Alderman’s fantastic, photo heavy profile on a French institution, “one of Europe’s best-kept secrets: Rungis, the world’s largest wholesale food market. Spread over 573 acres, with 13,000 employees, 19 restaurants, banks, a post office and even its own police force, Rungis is a city within a city, and a global gateway to the Continent and beyond for millions of tons of fresh gastronomic fare. Revered in culinary circles, Rungis is barely known to most visitors to the French capital. But many have heard of its fabled predecessor, Les Halles, the sprawling, cacophonous, rat-infested food market that fed Paris for over 800 years, and was immortalized in Émile Zola’s novel ‘The Belly of Paris.’”
And that’s it for today. Friday is a travel day, so there’ll be no Family Meal till Tuesday, when we will be back on our regularly scheduled program. Phew.
I’ll see you here Tuesday for next Family Meal.
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