Maialino

Photo: courtesy of the restaurant

Danny Meyer certainly knows how to pick ‘em. Chefs that is. The restaurants within his Union Square Hospitality Group have produced a good share of mega-stars: Michael Romano, Tom Colicchio, Marco Canora, Daniel Humm and Floyd Cardoz to name a few. Meet Meyer’s new rising star, Nick Anderer, who makes his debut as an executive chef at New York's Maialino within the Gramercy Park Hotel. Plucked from the kitchen of Gramercy Tavern, Anderer comes with a pedigree, having worked for Colicchio, Michael Anthony, Mario Batali and Larry Forgione. The Buzz chatted with the chef the morning after his first night of service.

Zagat Buzz: So we heard that Anna Wintour, Ruth Reichl, Dana Cowin and Alain Ducasse were all in the house on opening night? How did that go?

Nick Anderer: Yes, it’s true, they were all there. It went very well. It was all good to have that vibe in the house.

ZB: How do you know when a restaurant is ready to go when you’re opening it?

Michael Mina

Photo: Hernan F. Rodriguez

With an award-winning cookbook, accolades including a James Beard Foundation Best Chef award and 17 restaurants across the country, chef Michael Mina is a household name in the industry. During the the Savor Borgata event in Atlantic City, where Mina was cooking for 700 people, the Buzz sat down with the chef to find out, among other things, what he considers to be his biggest gamble of his career.

Zagat Buzz: Welcome to the East Coast! What are you preparing for tonight’s event?

Michael Mina: I’ll be making a Nantucket bay scallop ceviche with horseradish panna cotta and tomato gelee, and a butter-poached lobster with sweet-potato crepe and coconut curry broth.

Ricardo Cardona, chef to the Yankees

Last night the Yankees clinched the World Series for the first time in nine years. Some chalk it up to good coaching, a brand-new stadium or a roster of players dedicated to teamwork. But something else happened within the past year that might have fueled the victorious season: a new chef at the stadium. Chef Ricardo Cardona stepped in to cook for the Bronx Bombers at home games. Born in Puerto Rico and raised in Manhattan, Cardona has emerged as one of the city’s eminent Latino chefs with his restaurants Sazon, Sofrito, Hudson River Café and Mamajuana Cafe. What is he feeding these champs? We caught Cardona between games to talk about the team’s favorite eats.

Zagat Buzz: Were you always a Yankee fan?

Ricardo Cardona: I became a Yankee fan while cooking for them, because I really didn’t care much about baseball before that. Once I started cooking for them, I became friends with them. I became a Yankee fan, and now I feel I am part of the family.

ZB: How did you become the chef for the New York Yankees?

Seamus Mullen

Photo: courtesy Food Network

With two consecutive victories under his belt on The Next Iron Chef, Boqueria’s Seamus Mullen is certainly a sharp contender for the title. So far, versatility has been his secret weapon: the Vermont native may specialize in regional Spanish cuisine, but he has shown that he can cross cultures as easily as cutting through an onion. The Buzz caught up with Mullen to chat about competition and the state of Spanish cuisine in NYC.

Zagat Buzz: Why do you want to be The Next Iron Chef?

Seamus Mullen: It’s a huge honor, one of the biggest cooking accolades that you can accomplish, as well as an opportunity to compete against the best chefs in the country. And it’s fun! Competing in Kitchen Stadium is really fun but also challenging. It’s a different dimension of cooking from what we do in the restaurant. It takes me back to when I was in high school – I was very athletic and played soccer and hockey. I forgot how great that exhilarating feeling of competition is.

ZB: Is there anything from kitchen stadium that you would like to bring to your own kitchen?

Gyenari

Photo: courtesy of the restaurant

There are two menus available at Culver City Korean Gyenari, one titled "Old World," the other "New World." And yet, there's a good deal of overlap between the two, both of which were created by Next Food Network Star finalist Debbie Lee (who's finished up her tenure as consulting chef at the restaurant). Her "Seoulful Suppers" include both classic galbee (beef short rib) and galbee pot pie with ginger soy gravy. We chatted with Lee to learn about her unique perspective on Korean cuisine, which comes from, well, not having eaten it as a child.

Merrill Shindler: You have a Western twang to your speech. Is that a Southwestern Korean accent?

Debbie Lee: I grew up in the American Southwest, in Arizona. I didn't grow up eating Korean food. I grew up with the cooking of the South. When my parents came here from Korea, they settled in the Deep South. So what my mother cooked was soul food – fried chicken, grits and gravy, black-eyed peas. I come from a Korean family that didn't eat Korean food.

MS: How did you discover your culinary heritage?

Former New York Times restaurant critic William Grimes is the author of a new book, Appetite City, a history of the city’s restaurants and culinary habits. He spoke to the Buzz about everything from turtle soup to street carts to time travel.

Zagat Buzz: What was the impetus for the book?

William Grimes: The head of the New York Public Library, Paul LeClerc, called me up when I was the restaurant critic for the Times and asked if I’d be interested in putting together a show of vintage menus in an exhibition space at the library. I already knew about the collection because I had written about it before, and after I delved into it further came the idea to construct a continuous narrative about dining out in New York.

ZB: What were your primary sources?

WG: I would estimate that about 75% of the information in the book is something that people will be reading for the first time. It was buried in newspapers and magazines that were written by long-ago journalists who would retire and reminisce about their glory days when they ate at Delmonico’s. They were my best sources. God bless those journalists.

ZB: You write that steak, oysters and turtle soup were the foundations of a fine 19th-century meal, and they still are – with the exception of turtle soup. What happened to turtle soup?

WG: The turtles got scarcer and prohibitively expensive, so soon there was a lot of mock turtle soup around. Eventually it disappeared altogether, like the oyster restaurant. The dedicated oyster stand or oyster restaurant was once an enormous part of the NY dining scene, but it doesn’t really exist anymore – except at Grand Central’s Oyster Bar, the last hurrah.

Photo: courtesy of Candlewick Press

As the longtime co-owner of the famous Four Seasons, Alex von Bidder has seen his fair share of good, and bad, behavior at the dining table. So who better to write a book for children about how to behave in a restaurant? Von Bidder teamed up with his friend Leslie McGurk, author and illustrator of the Tucker books, on Wiggens Learns His Manners at the Four Seasons Restaurant, which tracks the adventures of an adorable chocolate Labrador when he visits the landmark restaurant. The Buzz caught up with the duo to discuss the book, as well as to hear von Bidder’s thoughts on his restaurant’s new chef, Fabio Trabocchi.

Zagat Buzz: What inspired this collaboration?

Alex von Bidder: Leslie and I met in a creative class that she teaches at Rancho La Puerta, our favorite spa, and we just clicked. She showed me her children’s books about Tucker, and I told her about my manners classes for adults. Later on she said, “Why don’t we do a children’s book on manners?”

ZB: Leslie, did you get a chance to sit in on any of Alex’s manners classes?

Leslie McGurk: No, but I saw him many times in New York and at the spa in Mexico, and I liked how he treated people. You could tell that this is a man who has exquisite manners. I could just see that he lives it, and that is a rare thing to find in this world.

AvB: I want to give my mother credit for that. She says, “No matter what your education is, no matter where you come from, if you can learn to blend in in a good way you can learn to function anywhere from a hunt in Africa to the White House.”

ZB: What were some of the rudest experiences you have witnessed at the Four Seasons?

Coda

Photo: courtesy of the restaurant

North Carolina's Charlie Redd put in plenty of time in area kitchens (Lumière, Central Kitchen, Hamersley’s Bistro, Radius, Harvest) before being handed the main post at Boston's Coda. The new father took some time recently to chew the fat with the Buzz.

Zagat Buzz: Coda straddles the unofficial border between the South End and the Back Bay. How would you describe the restaurant's clientele?

Charlie Redd: Coda has a neighborhood-restaurant feel, and draws from both [neighborhoods]. We face the South End, but Back Bay diners do come across Boylston as well. These neighborhoods are eclectic, diverse and full of small apartments with small kitchens. So we see a lot of local diners.

ZB: As a native Southerner, it figures that you are one of the few chefs in the area who feature a "meat-and-three" plate on your daily menu. What draws you to that concept?.

Jacques Torres

Photo: Hernan F. Rodriguez

The second annual New York City Wine & Food festival hit town this weekend and Zagat Buzz was there. Festivities began Thursday at Chelsea Market's "After Dark" party, when the former Nabisco Factory closed for an evening of nibbles and drinks. Two of Food Network's powerhouse personalities, Sandra Lee and Guy Fieri, hosted the event, and decorations included pumpkins carved with their likenesses. Chefs enjoying the party included Tyler Florence, Top Chef's Leah Cohen and Anne Burrell.

A rendering of the Empire Lounge

Nothing in New York is more iconic than the Empire State Building, and one can only imagine the massive renovations it's currently undergoing should only add to its legendary status. The lobby’s ceiling now glows with silver and gold leaf, etched glass has been uncovered and the marble floors are lustrous. What better time to open Empire Room, a sophisticated lounge in a space formerly dominated by fast-food joints and a brewery? And who more fitting to do it than Mark Grossich, whose company, Hospitality Holdings, has opened such chic watering holes as The Campbell Apartment in Grand Central Terminal, The World Bar in Trump Tower, The Carnegie Club in CitySpire Center, and Bookmarks in the Library Hotel? The Buzz chatted with Grossich while he was overseeing construction of the 3,500 sq.-ft. lounge, due to open before the end of the year.

Zagat Buzz: This space is totally gutted. What was here before? A pizza place? A doughnut shop?

Mark Grossich: It was a post office, but it’s true that there are no high-end restaurants here. The area is changing and the building is being repositioned. The owners are putting half a billion dollars into the restoration and attracting more high-profile tenants. I feel that we got in at just the right time.

ZB: Will the theme of the Empire Room be in keeping with the building?