Runaway Dinosaur

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Archive for the 'Friday Food' Category


Friday Food-Beermenus.com Interview: Eric & Will, the brothers behind Beermenus

Posted by jroxx on May 9, 2008

For today’s Friday Food, we got together with Will & Eric, the brothers behind the great new website beermenus.com. If you have not heard the story behind how their site got started, here’s it is in their own words:

Brothers Will and Eric were drinking beers and debating their favorites before heading out for the night. Eric backed Arrogant Bastard and Will was pushing Dogfish Head 90 Minute. They searched for a bar serving their favorite beers on google. They came up empty handed, but their disappointment faded when they saw their destiny. As avid beer lovers who started homebrewing at ages 4 and 7, they had to create a website where people could browse and search beer menus. (courtesy beermenus.com)

Jroxx: Somehow we got the brothers to make time in their busy schedules to share a little more information about their site, their future plans, favorite beers and of course favorite music.

RD: You guys started beermenus.com because you realized that there wasn’t a centralized searchable index for finding beer by bars in NYC. Were you surprised to find that out?

Beermenus: We were pretty surprised, but we quickly realized that collecting all the data and keeping it up to date would be a big challenge. We figured there had to be a way to do it and got started.

RD: You currently feature only bars in Manhattan, what are your plans for adding the other boroughs?

Beermenus: We’re currently adding bars in Brooklyn and other boroughs will follow. We’ve received a lot of emails from people all over the country, and a few international, encouraging us to bring BeerMenus to

their city. We’re looking to launch in another city soon.

RD: You launched last week with over 1200 beers, close to 200 menus and almost 25 beer events. How long did it take you to get the site up and running from when you decided to start building it?

Beermenus: It took about six months.

RD: I know that we were amongst the many blogs to write about your launch last Thursday. Are you blown away by the quantity of write-ups and amount of overwhelmingly positive press you have received?

Beermenus: Blown away is a huge understatement. The press has been incredible and the emails we’ve received from people who love the site provide amazing motivation to keep growing and improving. We knew
people like beer, but we had no idea how many people share our passion for finding great beer.

RD: It says on the website that you are planning on having a launch party at a bar to meet the members, how many people do you expect to show?


Beermenus: At this point we really don’t know. We’re going to announce the event soon and we’ll see how many people RSVP. It should be a lot of fun.

RD: You also launched a blog and a Facebook group the same day the website launched. How is the traffic going on both of those?

Beermenus: It’s going really well. We have over 110 fans on Facebook and we’re excited about all the comments we’re getting on the blog.

RD: Name your top 5 favorite beers and at least 1 beer you love that you have not yet found in the city.

Beermenus: Will: I love trying new beers every time. I homebrew a mean 9% IPA called Liquid Explosion.

Eric: I’m a big fan of Arrogant Bastard, Rogue Dead Guy, and Tripel Karmeliet. But I also always look to try something new. A lot of people have been searching for Fat Tire and we haven’t found a bar that serves it yet.

RD: Are you thinking about adding beer happy hour info to the site?


Beermenus: We’re thinking about it, but our focus is on beer flavor and helping people learn about all the unique beers out there.

RD: What kind of feedback have you received from bar owners regarding the site?


Beermenus: Most bar owners get it right away and are very enthusiastic. Many are going above and beyond to spread the word.

RD: Since we are a music blog….Who are your favorite bands or artists? Best beer bar for finding great music? Seen any great shows recently?

Beermenus: Will: Cool Calm Pete, Atmosphere, the Pietasters, and the TravelingWilburys. I recently saw Mr. Scruff at Studio B.

Eric: I’ll add Brother Ali, Sage Francis, Michael Franti, and NOFX. I went to a great Atmosphere show a couple days ago.

Thanks Will & Eric for making the time to do this interview with us. I look forward to attending some of the events on your site, trying new beers and watching your concept grow and expand. You have tapped into a vital area for many of us music fans and we raise our glasses in thanks!

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Friday Food-A Sad day in Ice Cream Land…Irvine Robbins has passed away

Posted by jroxx on May 8, 2008

Photo Courtesy: Tony Korody/Sygma

By DENNIS HEVESI
New York Times Business
Published: May 7, 2008

Irvine Robbins, who with his brother-in-law, Burton Baskin, started the Baskin-Robbins chain of ice cream stores — together concocting quirky flavor combinations with names like Daiquiri Ice, Pink Bubblegum and Here Comes the Fudge — died on Monday near his home in Rancho Mirage, Calif. He was 90.

He died of natural causes, his daughter Marsha Veit said.

The company name could have been Robbins-Baskin. Although it was Mr. Robbins who opened the first store, at the intersection of Adams and Palmer Streets in Glendale, Calif., on Dec. 7, 1945, and it was three years more before he and Mr. Baskin became partners, they took a carefully familial approach to deciding who would come first in the name of what eventually became a vast international enterprise. They flipped a coin.

“They worked closely on everything,” Ms. Veit said. “They would come up with ideas for flavors based on what was happening at the time, like Cocoa a Go-Go, when go-go dancers were popular. They would sit in the kitchen tasting, making sure the best ingredients were used.”

The company’s famous “31 flavors” (essentially one for each day of the month, but actually 34 when chocolate, vanilla and strawberry were included) have varied, numbering more than 1,000 over the years, according to its Web site. They include Nuts to You, Baseball Nut, Rocky Road, Candi-date, Cafe Olé, Huckleberry Finn, chocolate cheesecake, pineapple coconut and Mr. Robbins’s personal favorite, Jamoca almond fudge.

One day in 1964, Ms. Veit said, he received a phone call from a reporter for The New York Post, asking what flavor Baskin-Robbins was planning to introduce to celebrate the Beatles’ arrival for their appearance on Ed Sullivan’s television show. Caught unaware, he came up with Beatlenut, and then scrambled to find an unnamed flavor with nuts in it to match. Two days later, it was in all the company’s stores. By then, there were about 650 Baskin-Robbins stores nationwide.

In a 1976 interview in The New York Times, in which he said he ate three or four scoops a day, Mr. Robbins said that Americans had become adventurous in their ice cream choices. “They’re not embarrassed to ask for some of these wild flavors,” he said. “I think we’ve had a little bit to do with making it more acceptable.”

At the time, Mr. Robbins was still chairman of Baskin-Robbins, although the company had been sold to United Fruit in 1967, the year Mr. Baskin died. When Mr. Robbins retired in 1978, the chain had more than 1,600 stores in the United States, Canada, Japan and Belgium. Baskin-Robbins, along with Dunkin’ Donuts, is now part of Dunkin’ Brands, with 5,800 stores in 34 countries.

“We were in the franchising business before the word was popular,” Mr. Robbins said.

Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on Dec. 6, 1917, Mr. Robbins was the son of Aaron and Goldie Chmelnitsky Robbins, immigrants from Poland and Russia, respectively. When Mr. Robbins was a child, the family moved to Tacoma, Wash., where his father became a partner in a dairy.

As a teenager, Mr. Robbins worked at the retail store connected to the dairy where, among other products, ice cream was sold at a nickel a cone — “a pretty big one, too,” he said. He soon realized that he could double or triple sales with playful labeling: “Super Banana Treat” replaced a sign that said “three scoops of ice cream, a slice of banana, two kinds of toppings.”

“I got the idea that the way to sell ice cream was not through a grocery store but through a specialty store,” he said.

After Mr. Robbins graduated from the University of Washington in 1939 and served in the Army in World War II, he was able to test that idea. He cashed in an insurance policy his father had given him as a bar mitzvah present and used the $6,000 to open his first store.

By 1953, the partners sold the eight stores they owned to the managers and began making far more money producing ice cream at a plant in Burbank, Calif. An advertising agency designed the Baskin-Robbins logo, the chocolate-and-cherry-dotted signs and the “31 flavors” concept.

Mr. Robbins married Irma Gevurtz in 1942. Besides his wife and his daughter Marsha, of Mount Kisco, N.Y., he is survived by another daughter, Erin Robbins of Grass Valley, Calif.; a son John, of Soquel, Calif.; two sisters, Shirley Familian, who was Mr. Baskin’s wife, and Elka Weiner, both of Los Angeles; five grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

Ice cream never melted from Mr. Robbins’s mind. When the family lived in Encino, Calif., the house had a soda fountain inside and a swimming pool outside shaped like an ice cream cone. After the company was sold in 1967, Mr. and Mrs. Robbins rented an apartment in Balboa at Newport Beach, to be near the boat they had bought and christened The 32d Flavor.

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Friday Food-Savory Cities

Posted by jroxx on May 1, 2008

Passionate About Restaurants

For this week’s Friday Food, I give you the website Savory Cities. I could tell you about them but I think the description of the site by their founders is the best.

Savory Cities was founded in 2006 in New York City by Chris McBride and Jennifer Usdan McBride and is currently in beta in the following cities: New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle.

Text below courtesy about us section of Savory Cities Website.

Our Story

Like many people we’ve spoken with over the years, we found ourselves disappointed that popular restaurant guides were more “like a phone book” than a “trusted source” of information or that user reviews seemed too frequently to be written by the chef’s mother or a recently fired line cook. We knew there had to be a better way. So in April of 2006 we launched our first site, Savory New York, with the idea that a combination of in-depth restaurant information, hand-aggregated critical reviews, recommendations from top chefs and documentary-style video profiles of notable restaurants would go a long way toward helping people make better decisions about where to dine out.

Since then, we’ve launched guides for San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles and will soon add Seattle. We also recognized that providing easy to use tools, like member ratings and reviews and the Savory Queue for tracking “wish list” restaurants would help frequent diners better share their experiences with others and keep track of the restaurants they want to visit. These new web site features, along with our editorial videos and helpful articles and guides written by noted food and local experts make Savory Cities unique among available restaurant guides. Sign up for a free account and start taking advantage of Savory today.

Savory Cities in the News

We’ve been mentioned in a wide variety of news outlets, including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, The New York Post, Fox 5’s Good Day New York, New York Newsday, Crain’s and TV Week. We’ve also been featured on a number of blogs, such as National Geographic’s Inside Traveler, ruhlman.com, LoHud’s Small Bites, Lifehacker, Gridskipper, Gothamist and Eater.

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Friday Food-BeerMenus.com

Posted by jroxx on April 24, 2008

Yesterday, Thursday April 24th a new website launched here in New York City called BeerMenus. It was started by 2 brothers, Will & Eric Stephens who realized that when they went to search what beers their favorite bars were carrying, there was no such directory for New York City. So what did they do? They started their own website which on day one features 172 Beer Menus, 1210 Beers and 17 upcoming NYC beer events. In addition to all of that there is a Beer Menus fan on Facebook and a blog as well.

Great idea guys, way to run with it, this is definitely one of the coolest and more useful foodie websites to come out in a while.

Check it out and expand your beer horizons…..

Posted in Foodie, Friday Food | 1 Comment »

Friday Food-Food Network is casting for a new show, Do you have what it takes?

Posted by jroxx on April 17, 2008

from our friends at Hot Sauce Blog

FOOD NETWORK IS LOOKING FOR AMAZING STORIES FOR A GROUNDBREAKING NEW SERIES!!! Do you or someone you know have an amazing food related story to tell? Do you know someone who has gone from being homeless to the owner of their own restaurant, makes pop art out of pineapples, or eats nothing but peanuts? Do you know someone who is battling food fears or phobias? Has food helped to cure an illness, changed the course of your life, or helped to inspire you in some dramatic way? We are looking for all types of stories even those that are odd or humorous to feature on and upcoming series for the Food Network.

Casting is underway, so Email a brief description of your story with your contact information and picture of yourself ASAP to michaelraptis@alroker.com or call 646.723.9848 to be considered for the show.

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Friday Food - Get Thee to the Grilled Cheese Invitational!

Posted by jroxx on April 10, 2008

(Thanks to Yumsugar, one of the coolest food sites out there!)

Do you make a mean grilled cheese sandwich? Think you’ve got what it takes to win the Annual National Grilled Cheese Invitational? Well then you better hurry: Registration ends this Sunday, April 13.

The annual melted cheese event is being held this year in Los Angeles on April 19. There will be up to 100 competitors vying for title of the big cheese. If you’re not a sandwich maker, then show up and instantly become part of the judging panel. The sandwiches are handed out to the audience, who then vote for their faves. The categories are: Missionary (white bread, orange cheese, and butter), Spoons (any bread, butter, cheese), Kama Sutra (any bread, butter, cheese, and other ingredients), and Honey Pot (same as Kama Sutra, but sweet).

Event founder and organizer Tim Walker said:

The 1st 6th Annual Grilled Cheese Invitational will be mankind’s greatest achievement since the invention of fire! This year we will have more cheese than ever before. More competitors, more sammiches, more everything!

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Friday Food - Eat Me! Why Crif Dogs is way cooler than Totally Baked

Posted by jroxx on April 4, 2008

This week a new restaurant opened in Chelsea with a catchy name and a concept based on a basic food product. The name of that restaurant is Totally Baked. We all get the stoner pun, we know all of the jokes “Let’s get Totally Baked for lunch” (haha). Only time will tell if TB lasts, we will see…

However, there are other places in New York City that have been around longer that also take a basic food product and match it with a catchy phrase. One of those places, an East Village favorite for the 7 years it has been open (That is a long time in New York City restaurant years) is Crif Dogs.

From it’s Eat Me motto to the sit down table game of Miss Pac Man, the hip music blasting from the speakers and the catchy phrases found throughout the menu board, Crif Dogs has become an integral part of the East Village food scene.

Last Friday, the Wall Street Journal said the best Hot Dog in New York City was The Shake Shack in Madison Square Park. With all due respect to Danny Meyer, the people who voted on that need to travel 15 blocks further downtown and 4 avenues east to find what is truly the best Hot Dog in New York City.

Basically, there a two types of dogs that Crifs serves, The New Yorker (all beef dog, cooked on the grill) & The Crif Dog (handmade, naturally smoked dog, deep fried). There are both the usual and unique variety of toppings available for you to choose from. Even David Chang, owner of the growing Momofuku group of restaurants has a dog named after him (bacon wrapped, topped with kimchee). This place is the definition of what comfort food is and should be. Along with the multitude of custom dogs and available toppings, Crif Dogs serves items that bring you back to your childhood; Homemade milkshakes, Root beer floats, Stewart’s root beer & red birch beer on tap!, RC Cola, corn dogs, house made chili and tater tots (yes tater tots).

The counter staff is fun, friendly and very knowledgeable about the entire menu and you can tell that the guys in the kitchen take a lot of pride in what they do by the presentation of all of the dogs that leave the kitchen.

I only wish that there were more Crif Dogs around the city so I would not have to travel from the Upper East Side to the Lower East Side, but I always wind up making the trip when I am jonesing for a Crif Dogs fix.

My favorite dog? The Spicy Redneck (a house dog, bacon wrapped, with chili, cole slaw & jalapeños).

Crif Dogs 113 St. Marks Place (near avenue A) 212.614.2728

Here is the house dogs section of their menu

(psst….there is also a secret bar next door but Please Don’t Tell)

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Friday Food - Illy & Coca Cola partner for chilled espresso drinks

Posted by jroxx on March 28, 2008

illy.jpg

Italian coffee giant Illy has joined up with Coca-Cola create new coffee drinks in cans. The two companies are set to roll out three chilled espresso-based drinks - Caffe’, Cappuccino and Latte Macchiato - across Europe this year and in other parts of the world in 2009.

The new illy/Coca-Cola coffee drink is be based on the Illy Freddo, which Illy describes as follows:

“illy freddo is the way to enjoy espresso even in summertime. The same blend is used and the coffee is always prepared on the spot: so the typical illy espresso aromas of honey, caramel and toasted bread are savored in an iced version…”

via eternallycool.net

The only problem with this is that Manhattan Special has been in business making these products since 1895

photo_pure_espresso.gif
As the original and award-winning Pure Espresso Coffee Soda, we have satisfied loyal consumers with our family’s secret recipe for over 100 years.

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