Daniel MaurerA Southern-grub joint on East Fourth Street will finally begin pouring whiskey on Monday – an accomplishment its owner said was “no small feat.”
The Cardinal has been serving beer and wine since it opened last August – something owner Curtis Brown perceives as a handicap. When customers find out the restaurant doesn’t serve hard stuff, they often go elsewhere. “For brunch people just say, ‘Oh, you don’t have booze? Oh sorry, we really wanted a Bloody Mary,’” he said.
Now the restaurant will begin serving “a nice Bloody Mary,” in addition to specialty cocktails that will likely contain infused and small-batch liquors as well as ingredients made in-house (the onions will be hand-pickled and the Marsciano cherries will also be made on-site).
The road to a liquor license was a rocky one, due to the community board’s resolution against supporting license applications on side streets, said Mr. Brown. Read more…
Rachel CitronGood morning, East Village.
Big Think talks to Richard Price about his novel “Lush Life,” which was inspired by a shooting on the Lower East Side. Describing changes in the neighborhood, he says, “It had a neighborhood identity. That identity has gotten lost, that sense of community has gotten lost. But also what’s gotten lost is about a million junkies. Now, do you want to replace junkies with yuppies? Maybe the truth lies in the middle.”
DNA Info attends an open house for a penthouse on Third Avenue that, with its solarium and “three-bridge view,” is going for a little over $4.5 million.
Playbill touts two new productions at the New York Theatre Workshop: Paula Vogel’s “A Civil War Christmas” looks at the war through the eyes of President Lincoln, Union and Confederate soldiers, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Walt Whitman; and “Sontag: Reborn” is “a tender look at the prolific essayist before she was a world-renowned author and activist.” Read more…
Kim Davis was good and thorough during his recent tour of East Village biscuit destinations, but something occurred to us: he overlooked 7-Eleven’s $1 biscuit! We asked our trusted chowhound to swallow his pride and give it a nibble. Here’s how it stacked up against the others.
Lauren Carol SmithNinety years ago, the New York columnist O.O. McIntyre was complaining that the Bowery wasn’t what it used to be. He detected “the faint rustle of silk.” What he couldn’t have anticipated was the faint rustle of hungry bargain-hunters unwrapping hot, steamy dollar biscuits, sold at the front counter of a spanking new 7-Eleven.
A review? Well, the biscuit tasted biscuity, thanks no doubt to the “natural butter flavor” listed along with dozens of other ingredients on the wrapper. It was more soggy than dry, its texture contrasting sharply with the springiness of the pale pork patty. “Spices,” the wrapper duly noted, and in fact I found pepper flakes in the sausage, responsible for the warm after-burn in the throat. Read more…
Courtesy of Curtis Brown Curtis Brown, the former frontman of rock band Bad Wizard who became chef at Bubby’s, has left his gig at the Tribeca comfort-food standby and will open his own place at 234 East Fourth Street. Named after the bird of his home state of North Carolina (Mr. Brown was born in Asheville in 1972 and moved to New York City in 1996), The Cardinal is expected to open around Aug. 14, and will offer a “90 percent Southern” menu consisting of Memphis-style ribs, North Carolina-style pulled pork, and Texas-style brisket, as well as non-barbecue items such as lard biscuits, fried chicken, and fried pork chops with red-eye gravy. Among the restaurant’s investors is Dov Charney, the notorious founder of American Apparel.
Mr. Brown’s front-of-house partner in the restaurant is Leanne Hebert-Nguyen, who worked at the clothing company for two years (before that, she was a manager at restaurants in Montreal). “He’s a friend of hers and we were looking for investors and he got involved,” said Mr. Brown of Mr. Charney’s “hands-off” role. “He’ll be here opening night— that kind of situation. And he gives us any support he can, helping us find stuff like light fixtures for the restaurant.”
Read more…
