vip in the city

Pinch & S’MAC

At Pinch & S’MAC on Columbus – a punny collaboration between the now-closed Pizza by the Inch and the East Village Sarita’s Macaroni & Cheese, the mac n’ cheese emporium which last year earned the Oprah stamp of approval on “Gayle’s New York Minute.”

Just as it had at its former Park Avenue South location, Pinch offers thin pies in four-inch widths, sold by length in four-inch increments, with choice of toppings. Personally I couldn’t say how their product stacks up against the offerings in a city full of superlative pizza, though they did seem to have a following. (Incidentally, Arthur Avenue’s Zero Otto Nove, which we visited a couple of weeks ago, was just named best in the Bronx by New York magazine.) The joining of these two cheese and carb forces is a coup, though, and last month’s opening of the Pinch & S’MAC joint venture, minutes’ walk from the Amsterdam Avenue frat bar scene, was met with considerable anticipation.

S’MAC offers variations on the cheesy pasta classic: from the “All American” (American and Cheddar – add seasoned ground beef to make it a “Cheeseburger” or sauced chicken pieces for the “Buffalo Chicken”) to more complicated, gourmet versions like the “Parisienne” (Brie, Figs, Roasted Shiitake Mushrooms and Fresh Rosemary) and the “Masala” (Cheddar and American cheeses, Tomatoes, Ginger, Onions, Cilantro, Cumin & Indian Spices.) Alternatively, you can pick any combination of offered toppings to customize your own dish. The elbow macaroni is served in cast-iron skillets of varying sizes — Nosh, Major Munch, Mongo and Partay! – with decent crust on top, but overall a bit soupy for my tastes. Breadcrumb topping optional.

The “Napoletana” (Fresh Mozzarella, Roasted Tomatoes, Roasted Garlic and Fresh Basil) — better in theory, perhaps, than in execution:

And the classic “All American”:

To me, mac n’ cheese is one of those comfort dishes that doesn’t require a lot of tinkering, so I would be partial to S’MAC’s American and Cheddar-based versions. In 2006, The Times’s Julia Moskin went in search of the ultimate home cook’s recipe, eventually foregoing the temptation towards fancier cheeses (Swiss Gruyère, Parmigiano-Reggiano, Italian fontina and Welsh Caerphilly) in favor of two straightforward cheddar-based recipes, divided into creamy and crusty preferences.

More wordplay across the street at West Side Wine. (No milkshake reference? I guess it’s over already.) The 80th Annual Academy Awards broadcast later that night, and would become the first since 1964 that all four main acting awards were won by non-Americans. That year, “Sexy Rexy” Harrison took home the Best Actor Oscar for his career-defining role as “Henry Higgins” in George Cukor’s screen adaptation of My Fair Lady. (The classic Lerner and Loewe musical is playing this week at MoMA as part of Sir Harrison’s “Centenary Tribute.”)

French star Marion Cotillard on her Oscar win: “I’m totally overwhelmed with joy and sparkles and fireworks and everything which goes like bom-bom-bom.”

What a charming sentiment!

Tags: Academy Awards, mac n' cheese, pizza, UWS

John Oliver @ Symphony Space

After a light dinner at the not-so-divey Dive Bar on W. 96th Street — hey, I wasn’t about to cross the picket lines at Saigon Grill — we headed over to Peter Norton Symphony Space for the taping of John Oliver‘s upcoming Comedy Central special (scheduled to air on April 20).

We both knew the drill and made sure to arrive early, queuing up for our spots in the cold outside the theatre. And it was a biting, bitter cold, too: the type that chills to the bone, and against which no amount of Starbucks skim chai latte could insulate us. By the time were given the go ahead to file inside, I was in serious need of some warming laughter.

Oliver rose to the occasion brilliantly, delivering the kind of sharp, smirking political commentary — offered in dry British tones, “with more authority than you’re used to hearing” — that makes him such a popular correspondent on The Daily Show. He proved a remarkably good sport, too: about fifteen minutes in, the AV crew lost power to the video screen on stage, requiring Oliver to backtrack and run through a rather lengthy segment of his act several times — with the exact same jokes and “spontaneous” inflection. No doubt a nightmarish scenario for any comedian, but Oliver’s chucklingly rueful gamesmanship earned him an enthusiastic round of applause at the end.

Giving full credit (or blame) to the “10-year old Indonesian boy” to whom he had outsourced his joke-writing, Oliver covered topics ranging from colonialism, how Americans view the rest of the world, the school track incident that led him to pursue a career in comedy over sports, his teary-eyed Pavlovian response to all images backed by cheesy 80s power ballads (looking at you, Divine Miss M) and, with fellow comedian Andy Zaltzman, offered a brilliantly loopy argument on how the erosion of civil freedoms is a valid homeland security strategy, as it eliminates the very thing which the terrorists find most hateful about our country, thereby making us less appealing a target.

Also, some trenchant observations about American culture, as epitomized by the existence of a market for the inflatable floating grill — a barbecuing device used for cooking inside a swimming pool. Oliver cited the ludicrousness of such an invention as definitive proof that in terms of the sheer force of consumerism, America has no peer. Take that, China!

The roots of conspicuous consumption may be traced to post-World War II-era prosperity. We — as Americans, and particularly as New Yorkers — live in a culture driven by “stuff,” where so much of our lives revolves around the acquisition of material things as markers of a certain type of success. I found this recent New York magazine piece particularly resonant: “The Upside of the Downside — Why the Recession May Restore the City We Moved Here For.”

Despite being aware of “how loaded we are, comparatively speaking, and not just loaded in that abstract compared-with-the-developing-world way… loaded compared with most of the people in this city,” I too feel the “psychic effect of living in a place that is so in thrall to money, so dominated by the monoculture of luxury that even if you’re not on the front lines, working for a hedge fund or whatever, the values encroach on your life.”

I don’t know. Maybe that MacBook Air commercial is just getting to me.

Tags: comedy, John Oliver, Symphony Space, UWS

Grandaisy Bakery

Grandaisy Bakery was known as Sullivan Street Bakery until sometime in 2006 when the original partners parted ways. Despite the separation, the two bakeries seemed to maintain almost identical models: Jim Lahey took the brand (and the wholesale business) to the location on far West 47th Street; Monica Von Thun Calderón stayed on in SoHo, keeping head baker Cristobal Julio Guarchaj and head pastry chef Peggy Jacobs. In the process, Calderón rechristened the Sullivan Street place “Grandaisy Bakery” after her grandmother. Food writer Ed Levine explains the history better; he’s partial to their olive roll — one of his “favorite rolls in New York.”

Excitement spread when word of a second Upper West Side location opening first circulated in September, and then again earlier this week, as the bakery’s Italian-imported pizza ovens fired up for the first time.

This afternoon, Grandaisy had four varieties of pizza – identical to the ones available at Sullivan Street Bakery: their pomodoro (tomato sauce, olive oil and sea salt), cavolfiore (cauliflower, Gruyère cheese, bread crumbs, olive oil and black pepper), patate (potato, onion, olive oil, rosemary and black pepper) and funghi (cremini mushrooms, onions, olive oil, sea salt and thyme). Not offered today: the zucchini and the pizza bianca, hand-formed slices of flatbread, dressed simply with extra virgin olive oil, coarse sea salt and rosemary.

It’s not typical New York City pizza: with the exception of the bianca (which is plain), these are small rectangles of thin, crispy flatbread, covered in high quality toppings, and served at room temperature… or given the exposure of the trays to today’s chilly outside air, just a little cooler. Nonetheless, New York magazine named their pomodoro among the “Best Square Pizza” in 2006; the Voice has lauded their potato pizza. The unconventional pizza also was named the third best in New York by Time Out – the best in Manhattan, but lagging behind Brooklyn’s Di Fara Pizza and Staten Island’s Denino’s Pizzeria & Tavern.

My funghi slice was good. Slightly soft in the center, with a dense, layer of earthy, salty mushrooms — but at $3.25 a slice, a small extravagance.

Related: this week, Serious Eats posted an informative rundown of the regional variations of pizza in the United States.

Tags: Grandaisy Bakery, pizza, UWS