Monday, April 29, 2013

PASTRAMI On RYE "NEW YORK'S OWN SANDWICH







PASTRAMI
On RYE
KATZ'S DELI
New York's Own Sandwich
LOWER EAST SIDE, NEW YORK

SINATRA'S FAVORITE RESTAURANT





PATSY'S ITALIAN RESTAURANT
West 56th STREET, NEW YORK, NY
SINCE 1933


Everyone knows patsy's was Frank's Favorite. Everyone in the know or who knew Frank. Patsy's on West 56th Street was a long time favorite of Sinatra, who started eating at Patsy's ever since his Star Began To Rise back in the 1940's .. The Dorsey Brothers, Tommy and Jimmy brought Frank there for his first of thousands. Frank was going to Patsy's ever since his New York Hoboken days, when he moved to Hasbrouk Heights New Jersey just a few blocks from famed Jersey Mob Boss Willie Moretti, who was Sinatra's real-life Don to the fictitious Don Vito Corleone and Johnnie Fontaine (Sinatra) in Mario Puzzo and Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather.
Frank's favorites at Patsy's were; Clams Posilipo, Veal Milanese (extra Crispy), and Meatballs (Veal Meatballs). Patsy's has become a sort of shrine to the great one, Francis Albert Sinatra and should be on the bucket list of anyone who calls themselves a major fan of the man, "Sinatra."









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FRANK SINATRA


OLD SCHOOL ITALIAN RED SAUCE JOINTS

Past & Present



CELEBRATING The 100 YEAR ANNIVERSARY of HIS BIRTH in 2015

Frank Sinatra Born 1915 in Hoboken, New Jersey

Frank Spent a Lot of Time in New York




PATSY'S

Sinatra's Favorite Italian Restaurant

STILL HERE !  West 56th Street, New York, NY


ROCCO'S

THOMPSON STREET GREENWICH VILLAGE

GONE

Now It's CARBONE


Inside the former Rocco's

Now The Most Expensive Red Sauce Joint Around


It's CARBONE







JOHN'S of 12th STREET

Since 1908

STILL HERE !!!






GINO'S

Above and Below

GONE !!!





A Waiter and the Famous Zebra Wallpaper at GINO'S

No Longer With Us




Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner Dine at Patsy's







Rafetto's Past Shop, Greenwich Village New York

SINCE 1906
STILL GOING STRONG




 CAFFE REGGIO  

SINCE 1927

STILL GOING STRONG on MACDOUGAL STREET

GREENWICH VILLAGE NEW YORK






FERDINANDO'S SICILIAN SPECIALTIES

SINCE 1904

STILL With US on Union Street, Carroll gardens, Brooklyn, New York

"The Only Place left to get a good Vasteddi (Beef Spleen Sandwich) in NY





JOHN'S PIZZERIA

Bleecker Street greenwich Village, NEW YORK

SINCE 1927

STILL with US !!!!







Ferdinando's Brooklyn

Get The VASTEDDI SANDWICH






PIEMONTE RAVIOLI

SINCE 1920

Grand Street LITTLE IATALY,  NY NY

STILL with US !!!








Read About Italian-American New York
in Daniel Bellino's Best Selling SUNDAY SAUCE
Recipes and Stories of Italian-American New York
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SOPHIA

"JUST BECAUSE"













   

NEW YORK'S TOP BURGER?






New York's Top Burger? I big question and one that will get a number of answers and some heated debate. Is it The Black Label Burger at Minetta Tavern? No way, and oh by-the-way, when it comes to Minetta and their Burgers, they have two the famed Black Label Burger and The Minetta Burger. Guess what? The Minetta Burger is much better.
New York's Best Burger, is it The Bistro Burger at The Corner Bistro which was voted new York's top Burger more than 30 and I would say is The babe Ruth of New York Burgers. Corner Bistro was thee Burger bar of Choice for a long time, way before the current Burger Craze which I think you can say satarted 5 or 7 years ago back around 2006  ... The Corner Bistro has been famous for it's burger since the 1970's ... The have a good burger, it's not great but good, but at just $6,50 and with $2.50 mugs of McSorley's Ale to go with it, the Corner Bistro, though no longer New York's Top Burger, it is though, New York's Top Burger & Beer Deal in the city.
New York's Best Burger, is it The Burger Joint? Nope, not even close. 
Well, I could go on even further  but I'll Spill The Beans here and now. New York's top Burger is at JG Melon. Or is it The Shake Shack. I don't know. Well, I do in a way. They're both # 1 in My Book. The Burger at JG Melon is awesome. It's tasty and quite possibly New York's Best, but then again I sometimes feel, it's Shake Shack. They're both excellent Burgers, that have  the true great burger taste. Both made from top quality meat and both cooked on Flat-Top Grills which is of utter importance in making a great burger. You can't make the Best Burger if you use a slotted grill or broiler to cook the burger. The Burgers must cook in their own fat on a Flat-Top Grill in order to reach the optimum tastiest burger taste possible. The burger needs to be completely browned and slightly crispy on every bit of surface on both sides of the burger. This browning  that caramelizes the beef and brings out all the tasty wonderful flavors can only be achieved in a Flat-Top Grill or pan. Those who use  a broiler or slotted grill will never acheive perfect bigger perfection no matter how hard they try, and the way that both the Shake Shack and JG Melon do. Shack Burger and JG Melon Burger are New York's Top and Best Burger, both tied for the Best.





BAR at JG MELON







BURGER 
SHAKE SHACK



Sunday, April 28, 2013

NEW YORK ITALIAN RED-SAUCE RESTAURANTS "Past & Present"




GINO'S
NOW DEFUNCT







INSIDE GINO'S DINING ROOM
With IT'S
FAMOUS ZEBRA WALLPAPER
GINO'S 
WAS On Lexington Avenue
Across From Bloomingdale's
Now SADLY DISEASED 
I MISS IT SO






Second Avenue Near East 11th Street
Still There
Not as Good As It used To Be
But It's Still There and It's Over 100 Years Old
And Definitely OLD SCHOOL RED SAUCE ITALIAN







JOHN'S
SINCE 1908
And STILL GOING STRONG
Above and Below













ROCCO'S
In BETTER DAYS
NOW DECEASED
CARBONE IS THERE NOW







THE FAMOUS
ROCCO
NEON SIGN




The FAMED ROCCO SIGN
SUPERIMPOSED With CARBONE






CARBONE
In THE FORMER ROCCO SPACE
HOPING To BECOME 
A CLASSIC OLD SCHOOL
ITALIAN RED SAUCE JOINT
BUT THE PRICES ARE PROHIBITIVE
"VERY EXPENSIVE"
AND NOT IN-LINE
WITH WHAT AN OLD SCHOOL
ITALIAN RED SAUCE RESTAURANT
IS And SHOULD BE
THAT IS
A WELCOMING CASUAL RESTAURANT
THAT HAS A WARM ATMOSPHERE 
AND TASTY ITALIAN and ITALIAN-AMERICAN FOOD
At FAIR MODERATE PRICES
THE FOOD IS QUITE GOOD
AS IS THE AMBIANCE
AS FOR THE PRICES???
YOU'VE PROBABLY HEARD
QUITE FAR FROM MODERATE
VERY EXPENSIVE !!!

IS CARBONE CLASIC RED SAUCE?
The PRICES AREN'T
THAT'S BEEN ESTABLISHED
IF IT WILL BE A CLASSIC
TIME WILL TELL !!!





La TAVOLA IS NEW YORK ITALIAN RED SAUCE 
AND ALL








BAR at GINO'S



GAY TALESE on GINO'S,  THE NEW YORKER, May 31, 2010



BASTA !  
by Gay Talese


An Italian restaurant called Gino, which opened in 1945 on Lexington Avenue near Sixty-first Street, has been known primarily for its moderate prices, its tomato-red wallpaper printed with three hundred and fourteen leaping zebras, and its determinedly uncreative chefs, whose regular customers are so amiably resigned to the kitchen’s limited and unchanging cuisine that it has never been necessary for these customers to consult the menu.
All the items on the menu appear on a single plastic-covered page and were handwritten in ink sixty-five years ago by the restaurant’s founder, Gino Circiello, a dapper and debonair trendsetter in 1945 who thereafter ignored all trends. Even a year after his death at eighty-nine, in 2001, when the restaurant was described in the Zagat Survey as “frozen in the 40’s,” the regulars liked to boast that, at Gino’s, nothing was new: within the zebra-covered walls of this place everything remained the same, including the fact that a stripe was missing from the rumps of half the zebras—a mistake made by the original designer which Mr. Gino, a superstitious Italian of Neapolitan origin, chose not to correct, because to do so, he feared, might bring him bad luck.
So the restaurant’s décor as arranged at mid-twentieth century extended into the twenty-first: the same twenty-seven wooden tables and seventy-four chairs, the same small kitchen (ventilation provided by a half-opened skylight). And, week after week, the same daily specials: on Mondays it was osso buco, on Tuesdays it was nothing special, on Wednesdays it was lamb shank, on Thursdays it was veal Genovese, on Fridays it was fish soup, on Saturdays it was the same as Wednesdays (lamb shank), and on Sundays it was lasagna.
Gino’s most faithful customers, creatures of habit, feasted on consistency and the devoted attention of a single waiter, who (as one of nine waiters sharing the afternoon and evening shifts) oversaw each of his assigned tables for the duration of the meal. In the interest of controlling the overhead, Mr. Gino regarded busboys as an unnecessary expense, and he felt similarly about floral decorations. While the cost of the fresh flowers at La Grenouille is three thousand dollars a week, the plastic flowers at Gino’s—tucked into a half-dozen pearlescent plaster cornucopias that hang from the walls between the zebras—cost six hundred dollars a year.
The responsibility for purchasing these artificial flowers fell to one of the restaurant’s two current owners, a Neapolitan of sixty-nine named Michele Miele, who is also the chef. He buys the flowers at a Wal-Mart near his home in Sullivan County, and he washes them in the restaurant’s kitchen three times a year. Right now, the cornucopias are filled with spring flowers—plastic daisies, daffodils, tulips, lilies—and during the holidays he replaces them with chrysanthemums.
But there will be no chrysanthemums at Gino’s this Christmas and no more lamb-shank specials on Saturdays. Mr. Miele and his seventy-year-old partner, a fellow-Neapolitan named Salvatore Doria—who came to Gino’s as a waiter in 1974, after a decade at Barbetta, on West Forty-sixth Street—revealed last week that, owing to an eight-thousand-dollar-per-month increase that would drive the rent to more than thirty thousand dollars, plus the health-care costs sought by its employees’ union, the restaurant will close after Saturday night’s dinner on May 29th.
The tenant who said he will replace Gino’s at 780 Lexington is a Beverly Hills bakery entrepreneur named Charles Nelson, who, with his wife, Candace, owns and operates Sprinkles Cupcakes shops not only in California but also in Texas and Arizona. Gino’s will vacate the premises in mid-June; Doria says that he plans to retire, and Miele says that he would like to open another restaurant nearby if he can find a backer—a big if in this economy, he concedes, given that he has already failed to attract new partners to confront the rising costs of operating Gino’s.
Meanwhile, Miele has abandoned his chores in the kitchen to his subordinates and has taken to sitting in the dining room exchanging greetings and condolences with regular customers, who, having got the word, are now coming in almost every day in anticipation of the time when there will not be a menu for them to ignore. In the crowd recently were the architect I. M. Pei and his wife, Eileen, who have been eating at Gino’s for sixty years. “Oh, I’m so sorry this is ending,” Miele said. “But we tried to listen to Mr. Gino, who told us, ‘Take care of the customer, don’t change anything, and Gino will never die.’ ” Doria added, “Yes, we used to say, ‘The world changes, but nothing changes at Gino.’ ” 








BEST MEATBALLS IN TOWN "NEW YORK TOWN"






The big question? Where to get the Best Meatballs in town, the town of New York City? I can easily answer that, and "It's Not The Meatball Shop" which no self-respecting Italian would be caught dead in. Not more than once anyway. Once to check it out. It's OK, but it's a rip-off and if you're looking for any kind of Italian feel, as the Big Boys would say "Fugg-etta-bout It!!!" The Meatball Shop is for non-Italians, those not fortunate to have a mother, Nonna, and Aunts that make Meatballs that would blows those of The Meatball Shop right out of the water. My Nonna, Aunt Fran, Aunt Helen, "the Best Meatballs you could ever wish to Imagine." But poor you if you're not Italian and you have to go to such a poor substitute as The Meatball Shop. If you really want great meatballs, The Best In New York as-a-matter-of-fact, go to where the late Great Frank Sinatra went, and head over to West 56th Street to Patsy's ... It was Frank Sinatra's all-time favorite. He ate there many times over the years. Patsy's is wonderful, with; great ambiance, real Italian American Food, The Best Meatballs in Town, and the spirit of one Francis Albert Sinatra, "Frank."






READ ABOUT 
ITALIAN-AMERICAN NEW YORK
FRANK SINATRA
adn HIS
FAVORITE FOOD
In 
Daniel Bellin-Zwicke's
"La TAVOLA"
Available on Amazon





"Yes PATSY'S Was My
All-Time FAVORITE Restaurant.
And if You Want to Make The Kind of Italian Food
That I Liked, Check Out La TAVOLA by One of My
Greatest Fans Daniel Bellino-Zwicke. Basta!"


Red-Sauce Joints of NEW YORK

Red-Sauce Joints

Saturday, April 27, 2013

CHILI CHEESE FRIES BURRITO STONER FOOD





CHILI CHEESE BURRITO 

CARBONE ROUND-UP






Carbone , 2013 New York's Hottest New Restaurant. Without Question? Here is a little round-up of Carbone  so-far as of April 27, 2013, reviews, articles, snipits, Bits & Bites on The Hottest Restaurant in Town, The Town of Manhattan, New York, it's "Carbone."

HISTORY: Cooks/Chefs Rich Torrisi and Mario Carbone are both Graduates of The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park .. They both enhanced their culinary training with stints abroad, Torrisi in France and Carbone in Tuscany, Italy .. Both worked under top chefs in highly respected New York restaurants; Torrisi at; Aquavit,Cafe Boulud, and A Voce, Carbone at Babbo, Lupa, and with Daniel Boulud and Wylie Dufressne. Both met at The Culinary Institute and kept in touch and new each other from both being in the business in New York.
In 2009 Rich Torrisi and Mario Carbone joined forces to open their own place, Torrisi Italian Specialties. Torrisi Specialties had a great concept, operating as an Italian Deli by day, selling soup, mostly Snadwiches like their famed Roast Turkey, Chicken Parm, and Meatball Parm, as well as a few Antipasto, and Pasta Dishes. At night the place operated as a restaurant serving a Set-Menu 5 Course Dinner for $55.00 ...  The place was small and nicely outfitted with Italian American and Italian Food Products lining the walls serving as decor; Olive Oil, Canned Tomatoes, and Pasta. The place served great food, and was a instant and huge success. The critics, people, and bloggers loved them. A couple years later they opened Parm next door which is open for lucnh and dinner serving Italian Red Sauce style food, of: Chicken Parm Sandwich or Plate, Chicken Frances Plate or Sandwich,, Meatball Parms, Ziti and such. Parm has been a huge success from day one.
Move ahead to 2012 ... Rich Torrisi and Mario Carbone, along with business partner Jeff Zalaznick acquire the space that was formerly the long-time Old-School Italian Red Sauce Joint, the much loved Rocco's ... The put together a plan for their latest ventured, fashioned after 1950's Dowtown New York Italian Red Sauce Joints. The restaurant will be named Carbone after Chef/Partner Mario Carbone.
Carbone opens to much fanfare both good and bad in March of 2013 .. Some love the place, some not, but mostly people love it. Some people, maybe old-school Italians or lovers of old-school Italian Red Sauce Restaurants are inrage that The so-called Torrisi Boys have taken over the beloved Rocco's and as they think pushed the people of Rocco's out with a
 unruly back handed deal. And the people who don't like Carbone and the people behind it' Torrisi, Carbone, and Zalaznick are hyper enraged when they see that the Carbone Team has kept the famed old Rocco's Sign and superimposed the name Carbone in neon over the old Rocco's sign. Much name calling and anger is vented on all the Foodie Comment Boards on Eater, Grub Street, Chow Hound and such ...








GAEL GREENE

"GAEL GREENE GOES To WRONG CARBONE" !!!

Gael Greene's Famed TWITTER TWEET March 29, 2013, After Going to The WRONG CARBONE, Carbone Ristorante on West 38th Street 
in Hell's Kitchen instead of "Hot" New CARBONE in 
GREENWICH VILLAGE ...

Spent 20 minutes at wrong Carbone last.Finally grumpy owner there gave me address of THE Essential new Carbone, Missed seeing Tony Bennett.

Excerpt of Gael Greene's Review After She Finally Makes it to The Right Carbone on Thompson Street in Greenwich Village, New York ...

"Some prices will seem scarily inflated: like $45 for hot or cold antipasto (dare I assume it will serve two?), $38 for an appetizer of scampi alla scampi, the $140 Mixed Grill Cacciatore for two. Our bill Friday night was $112 per person with tip. Not outrageous, considering the floorshow. And Carbone is fun.  Half of what I tasted was very good. But keep in mind this is really just an early first impression."






Waiter Mixes CAESAR SALAD

TABLE SIDE at CARBONE




NIGHT of The NONNAS: 

TWO ITALIAN GRANDMOTHERS REVIEW CARBONE

On Grub Street



Fran sits back in her chair and sighs. "The cheese was the best thing."
All told, the bill is $480 after tax and tip — a high price even by 2013 standards. But how well did Carbone do in re-creating the feeling of mid-century fine dining in Manhattan? "I absolutely love the atmosphere," Annebeth enthuses. "But I can't say it’s reflective of any particular time I can remember."



*********************************************************************************






TIME OUT NEW YORK


The Feed: FIRST LOOK at CARBONE



"As at their Nolita hot spots, the pair will breathe new life—with primo ingredients and Cafe-Boulud trained technique—into nonna standards, culled from old-school genre masters like RAO'S and the menu archives at the New York Public Library. The food-historical toques will dispatch chicken scarpariello (cotechino sausage, morel mushrooms and piquillo peppers), ragù-slicked tortellini and lobster Fra Diavolo. The retro-inspired decor in the time-honored Rocco’s space recalls 1950s New York: Servers bustle around the blue-and-white tiled floor (inspired by similar flooring seen in The Godfather) in vintage-style tuxes designed by Zac Posen. Sepia-toned art curated by cine-kid Vito Schnabel "



"CARBONE"  Garners 5 STARS 
From TIME OUT NEW YORK




"Whether you know a guy who knows a guy or simply scored your seat on OpenTable, you’ll feel like an insider as you pass under the antique neon sign hanging above the door, left over from Rocco, the 90-year-old joint this new hot spot replaced. Those swarming waiters ply every table with complimentary extras, swooping in with a hollowed cheese, big as a drum, stuffed with sharp chianti-soaked Parmesan nuggets, with smoky whispers of Broadbent ham carved from a haunch on a dining room pedestal."
Screenshot 2020-04-07 at 10.46.48 PM

Carbone

by Daniel Bellino Zwicke

Copyright 2020  Daniel Bellino Zwicke 

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/
Copyright 2018 Daniel Bellino Zwicke

ROCCO'S


GREENWICH VILLAGE 

NEW YORK



Screenshot 2020-04-07 at 10.51.50 PM


The Old Rocco's

Greenwich Village New York
Photo Daniel Bellino Zwicke 2005



Screenshot 2020-04-07 at 10.52.13 PM


Carbone




5e1d6-1mangiaaa


MEMORIES of ITALIAN FOOD

ITALY NEW YORK & NJ

STORIES with RECIPES












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