Hillary Eaton

Originally appeared on Food & Wine

Eat / July 9, 2018

Daniel Humm Reinvents Eleven Madison Park with New L.A. Pop-Up

While Eleven Madison Park has long been considered one of the pinnacles of fine dining (and the best restaurant in the world), this new pop-up might actually offer Daniel Humm’s most unique food experience yet.

Restaurant 1683 is a three-night-long, invite-only pop-up coming to L.A. on May 21. In partnership with the luxury appliance brand Gaggenau, 1683 takes its name from the year that Gaggenau was founded, featuring a menu that spans the brand’s three centuries of existence.

Originally launched in New York in 2016 as an interactive dining experience complete with tableside cooking, models dressed in Black Forest folk clothes performing live interpretations of a cuckoo clock’s automata and even blacksmiths forging nails, this award winning pop-up transports diners to the mountainous southwest region of Germany. 

Originally appeared on Food & Wine

Eat / May 2, 2018

Bestia’s Ori Menashe Opens Long-Awaited Middle Eastern Concept

If there’s one thing you should know going into the highly anticipated new Arts District restaurant, Bavel, it’s that you won’t be eating Israeli food. Nor will you be eating Turkish, Moroccan, or Georgian food, strictly speaking. Instead, you’ll be eating Ori Menashe and Genevieve Gergis’ food.

The second restaurant from the husband-and-wife team behind L.A.’s perpetually buzzing Bestia, Bavel is the loosely defined as Middle Eastern concept named for the Hebrew word for “Babel.” The Judeao-Christian tale referencing a unified Middle East torn apart through the confusion of language, Bavel is a cuisine unified by the heritages and experiences of its two creators.

Influenced equally by Menashe’s Moroccan, Turkish, Georgian, and Israeli roots as it is by Gergis’ memories of her father’s Egyptian food and her mother’s Ukrainian pierogis, Bavel is the sort of chef-reflective cuisine that leaves a singular definition lacking. 

Originally appeared on Food & Wine

Eat / April 11, 2018

Nas Opens Sweet Chick in the Queens Neighborhood Where He Grew Up

On the eve of the April 9 opening of a Sweet Chick in his hometown, Long Island City, Nas recounts the origins of the dish his and partner John Seymour’s restaurant is famous for: chicken and waffles. “If Billie Holiday or Duke Ellington sang all night in Harlem, the whole city would drive into upper Manhattan and party ‘til the wee hours of the night and eventually, they’d get hungry,” he tells Food and Wine.

“Do they want breakfast; do they want dinner? It’s five, six in the morning and they’ve been partying all night, they think: let’s have both.’ The kitchen’s been going all night and they’ve been partying all night and somebody mixed their chicken with a waffle, and there you have it. That’s the whole thing.”

The hip hop-saturated chicken and waffle restaurants in New York and Los Angeles started by Seymour (the new location is the fifth) is the rapper and entrepreneur’s first foray into the food world. And while it may seem like his love of good fried chicken got the rapper to finally dip his toes into the restaurant world (he does have an entire track dedicated to the stuff), it was just as much about the restaurant’s musical soul.

“The first time I walked into Sweet Chick, they were playing original samples from some of the greatest hip hop songs ever made,” he says. “Samples that were just as hot as the rap record that they were later turned into. The vibe was just … it was for today’s guys.”

Originally appeared on Food & Wine

Make / April 11, 2018

The Hottest New Caviar Service Is … Vegan

When the day calls for you to treat yourself, there’s really no better way than to indulge in caviar service. From those delicate, mother-of-pearl spoons to the perfectly bronzed blinis and the shiny little beads of onyx-colored sturgeon eggs looking up at you (just beggin’ for that ‘gram), it’s an experience known to evoke a happy dance in even the staunchest of reserved restaurant-goers.

While the ornate experience itself is classic, the latest in caviar isn’t about tapping into your inner-tsar, instead it’s all about saying by to the Old World and embracing your inner plant-based-loving Angeleno and going … completely vegan.

Originally appeared on Food & Wine

Travel / April 11, 2018

Five-Story Rubik’s Cube Will House the World’s Most Immersive Wine-Tasting Experience

Driving through the rolling hills of South Australia’s McLaren Vale wine region, surrounded by vines planted by 19th-century European settlers and cellar doors of Australia’s oldest wineries, the last thing you’d expect to find is a multi-dimensional, five-story-tall Rubik’s cube. But at d’Arenberg winery, that’s exactly what you’ll find. The architectural marvel of bold shards of mirror and glass and metal is home to one of the world’s most immersive, anticipated wine-tasting experiences, and it is set to finally open this November.

Dubbed the d’Arenberg cube, this $14 million AUD project dreamed up by d’Arenberg’s lovably eccentric, fourth-generation winemaker, Chester Osborn, will be equal parts cellar door, art gallery, immersive tasting room and fine-dining destination. Each of the elements have the explicit intent of shattering your senses and heightening them to the optimal sensory place for wine tasting.

Originally appeared on Food & Wine

Make / April 11, 2018

Here’s How Michelin Stars Actually Affect the Restaurant Business

The Michelin guide has long been the defacto authority on the world’s best dining. But as gourmet culture reaches peak mainstream popularity and old culinary hierarchies remain in flux, how does gaining, losing and (gasp) renouncing a star actually affect a restaurant’s business?

Historically, receiving a single Michelin star has led to an increase in customers for restaurants. Take chef John Fraser, whose New York restaurant Nix joined the Michelin star rankings this year (and whose website features “Proud new owner of a Michelin star” as a central banner). He said that receiving a Michelin star “has drastically increased business at both Nix and Dovetail.” An added bonus? “With the stars, I do feel now we are able to retain a higher level of staff than before.”

Originally appeared on Food & Wine

Make / April 11, 2018

7 Rock Stars’ Hangover-Curing Breakfasts

There’s a stereotype about musicians that they know how to party. And while we’re reluctant to generalize, we suspected that rock stars might have some insight into one of Saturday morning’s oldest questions: What should I eat to cure this raging hangover? So to get some professional, definitely scientific insight, we asked some of our favourite musicians about what sort of greasy breakfast bomb they crave to dull the pain and what restaurant does it best.

Originally appeared on Why Attica’s Somm Jane Lopes Is Mixing Wine and Decanting Champagne

Make / April 11, 2018

Why Attica’s Somm Jane Lopes Is Mixing Wine and Decanting Champagne

We’ve all been there —the waiter accidentally pours someone else’s Pinot Noir into your Barolo, ruining your perfectly good glass of wine. You smile and tell them it’s okay while silently seething, reminding yourself that we all make mistakes. And while it’s something that just happens sometimes, it’s not something you’d expect to happen at Melbourne’s Attica, one of the best restaurants in the world. That is, unless it’s being done on purpose.

Jane Lopes, Attica’s new sommelier, is used to guests freaking out when she tries to pour a Chikuma Nishiki “Kizan Sanban” sake into a half-full glass of 2011 Crawford River “Noble Dry” Riesling. “We’ve had people cover their glasses, try to move their glasses out of the way, yell, ‘What are you doing?!’,” she said of her mixed-in-the-glass wine pairing for the restaurant’s abalone with seaweed butter and black garlic cream course.