Paul Smalera

Today my New York Press review of Meskel, a cute Ethiopian spot in the East Village, ran. If injera's your thing, if you (doro)wat some good eats, have a read. Thanks!

The New York Times has been the latest to join the blast email hip–city-guide masses, with their entry Urbanite. If anyone could possibly be unfamiliar with the concept, these guides are little email compediums of the best press release flack of the day, having to do with either New York City, restaurants, shopping, drinking, clubbing, whatever. But the point is, if you subscribe to one, the information is supposed to be useful, delivered in a "my cool friend who lives downtown" sort of voice and, most of all, accurate.

This morning, I was surprised to see Urbanite say that Kampuchea Noodle Bar, the "Momofuku killer" that Grub Street, Gawker, strongbuzz and others have been covering, was set to open Wednesday, today. That's because I called a week ago and they said they would be open Thursday, tomorrow.

Errands took me by Kampuchea tonight anyway, and there was just a little sign apologizing for the confusion, and promising they would in fact be open tomorrow, but not, dear Urbanite, tonight.

The moral of the story is, everyone knows the New York Times wants to replicate Daily Candy's success and be worth a cool $20 million. Uncorrected errata do not help thy cause or stock price.

(By the fucking way, how did email lists get to be worth $20 million beans? I mean, people, it's an e-mail list. I know the big guns are involved in this round of dot-com 2.0, but still, some of the numbers are out of hand. I'm not gonna say there's going to be a correction, but this sucka's goin' down.)

But, New York Times, if you found out, during the day, as you almost certainly did, that Kampuchea would not be open tonight. The correct thing to do would be to inform your subscribers that you erred. The incorrect thing would definitely be to let your readers walk over there only to find shuttered grates and a small note apologizing for your mistakes.

The other day I was whisking my own tarragon, mustard seed, lime, mango viniagrette, and as I reached for the aged champagne vinegar, I thought, "what the fuck am I doing?" It turns out David Kamp has my answer. What I, nay, what we, all of us as a country are doing, is classing it up. But why? What's wrong with Wonder Bread and Hellman's? Those are 2 of the 5 ingredients in an kick-ass BLT, the food of the gods and my choice at diners nationwide. David recently asked visitors to his blog what they thought of the title of his book. I was delighted to weigh in, and he was delighted to highlight my delightedness to weigh in. How delightful. 

Want to know what witty title prompted my witty rejoinder? Click on the link above, or buy his excellent book here. PS, David also authored The Rock Snob's Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Rockological Knowledge which, as a formerly aspiring Rock Snob, I love. I say formerly aspiring not because I achieved Rock Snob Nirvana (get it?) but because I just gave the hell up. I was sick of being outgunned by the emaciated nerds who run every record shop in the universe. Now I just bow down, offer alms and humor them while I plunder their superious knowledge to aid me in my shopping.

According to the court documents, Borhane B Cherif is the president of a company, Carthage Palace, that declared bankruptcy in 2004.

According to the New York State Liquor Authority, Cherif is the current license holder at Carthage Palace, a business operating at 46 Avenue B in Manhattan.

These facts, however, do not check out with the reality on the ground. 

Upon visiting 46 Avenue B, one finds no Carthage Palace. Instead, one finds Carne Vale, a restaurant and nightclub that is known to be owned and operated by two brothers, Markus and Sameh Jacob (or Yacob). Eater has covered this restaurant, its sister restaurant Le Souk, and the misadventures of their clientele. I wrote my piece on the businesses after witnessing the fly by night opening of Carne Vale, which seemed impossible given the bar crackdown taking place in Alphabet City.

According to the State Liquor Authority's website, the license for 46 Avenue B is still in possession of Carthage Palace and Cherif. There is no "trade name" on the license, which is used in cases where a company's legal name differs from the name used to promote the business. Yet August 3rd, 2006, Carthage Palace applied for a license renewal, which was granted, extending the license term until 2010. Strangely, public records indicate the license is not effective until October 1, 2006, and there is no other active license listed on the website. Previously, according to a saved copy of the web page, Carthage Palace's license was set to expire on Sept. 30 2006. How did a business with the wrong name on the license, whose licensee is no longer associated with the premesis, get a license renewal?

According to New York State law and Manhattan Community Board 3, a "license transfer hearing" is required before a liquor license may change hands among businesses, or be used to operate by anyone other than the original licensee. According to publicly available records, no such transfer hearing has ever taken place.

When asked by a local resident to comment on the ownership and licenseing of Carne Vale, Markus Jacob responded, "we are Carthage Palace." However, according to the bankruptcy documents provided to me by a loyal friend of Eater, Carthage Palace ceased to exist. Legally, I'm not sure what would happen to its license, but without proper transfer, it's extremely likely that Carne Vale is operating on a license that belongs to a non-existent company, in the name of a person who does not own or operate the business.

 I'm not a liquor license expert, nor am I trying to indicte Carne Vale. I like bars. I like nightlife. Maybe not Carne Vale or Le Souk's scene, but hey, if they follow the laws, keep the stereo below 120dB, and keep their patrons from being menaces to the 'hood, I respect their right to do business. It's when they don't do those things that this kind of scrutiny is needed.

When a bar sets up shop in New York City, it's expected they've met the legal requirements for operating. If there's a complaint against the business, who gets it, the phantom Borhane B Cherif? An underage drinking lawsuit or DUI? Etc. There's a reason the right names have to be on the license, isn't there? And a reason one business can't just go bankrupt and have a different company swoop in and take over that license without any sort of notification to the community or the state.

So, to answer these questions, I'm going to turn to a few sources, and hopefully they'll comment here or I will post their comments on the situation. I'm going to email, for comments:

• Susan Stetzer, CB3 manager, to find out what if any notification she's had about Carne Vale and their license applications/renewals/transfers.
• The New York State Liquor Authority Public/Press Relations address, for comments on the legality of Carne Vale's operation and why their license says Carthage Palace
•  Hopefully, Markus Yacob, to clarify what he means when he says "we are Carthage Palace."

Lastly, I'm going to try to find Borhane B Cherif, where or who ever he may be. Borhane? Borhane? Anyone?

Definitely more to come on this one.

So, we've gotten fat. As you probably noticed at the grocery store, on the airplane and in the stands at your son's Little League game, we're not alone. If you're an adult in the United States, 65% of the population including yours truly, are brothers-in-donuts. I for one never have to worry about being stranded on the highway, thanks to my spare tire. On my 6'3" frame, I'm easily carrying an extra twenty pounds of fat. The neighbors can attest to the sucking sounds that emanate from me every time I try to put on an old pair of jeans. What's a guy to do?

This is a rejected article. It's a piece I researched, developed and pitched with every hope of placing it in print as a freelance writer. If you read it you can probably guess the markets it was written for. I'm proud of this story and hope publishing it here will get it in front of people that are interested in it. Enjoy, and feel free to comment. Perhaps I'll add a postscript to the comments later on.

Enter the diet. It's an American concept, a guilty atonement for the indulgent excesses of meals, snacks and noshes past. It is penance for cheesecakes, nachos, and anything that emerges from a deep-fat fryer. We announce that we are going on one to our spouses, our coworkers, and our waiters. It's commonly estimated by journals that at any given time, one-quarter of the adult population is on a diet. If that's accurate, diets must hardly ever work. A plump 91% of us have tried to lose weight at least once in our lives.

Needless to say, if we had kept if off, 65% of us wouldn't still have a weight problem. So how is it that the diet experts can't seem to help us lose weight, and more importantly, keep it off? Most diets involve eating according to some arcane plan, plenty ofself-denial, and strategic cut backs on carbs, sugar, fats, or all of the above, depending on what particular diet guru's Kool-aid you're drinking. Besides the psychological effects, the logistics of staying on track tend to derail your social life and your daily routines in favor of a tightly regimented eating schedule. In the heat of a diet, it's a thin line of shoestring potatoes that keeps us from flipping out when our server is confused by our order of a hamburger, no bun, no fries. Thus, the dichotomy of dieting: we adhere to strict and unintuitive rules in an attempt to lose weight, only to eventually find ourselves back where we started. But, what if it wasn't that hard to get skinny, albeit the diet was even weirder than a typical weird diet? Would you try it, like I am right now? Seth Roberts, author of "The Shangri-La Diet", was trying to solve his own weight problem when he hit upon something even more American than the diet: the quick fix.

As something of a blogoholic, it's hard to pinpoint exactly where I found Roberts' Shangri-La diet. I do know that skipping across the blogosphere one day last month, I stumbled into a network of sites dedicated to it, which felt something like falling down a rabbit hole into Wonderland. Blogger after blogger extolled the simplicity and sense of the diet plan, emphasizing that it wasn't so much a diet as a reprogramming of the mind. After finally finding and reading the instructions, I was sure something was missing. The basic rule of the diet, if you can really call it a diet, is simple. In fact, here it is. Drink, twice a day, in the middle of a two-hour window of noteating, a few tablespoons of flavorless oil, or a solution of sugar water.

Then, according to the bloggers, watch as the pastry case at Starbucks releases its death grip on you, as the dessert menu goes unread, as you barely finish half your lunch, as you have no desire to raid the vending machine for a mid-afternoon snack. Roberts claims that you will feel full after having eaten less food, which means you will cut your caloric intake without even thinking about it. Rather than having to deny yourself the fries on your plate, you just won't be interested in eating them, unless you want to feel bloated and sick afterwards. I can't help but think of it as gastric bypasssurgery for the mind.

It's pretty safe to say that if Roberts was my friend, Berkeley professor, Ph.D. or not, had he told me about this theory of his, I would've listened, nodded politely while eating my chocolate cake, and remembered to check his medicine cabinet for unusual drug combinations the next time I came over for a visit. But before allowing skepticism to set in, before understanding how his diet scientifically worked, I came across dozens of bloggers who are trying it and losing weight. Roberts shrewdly links to pretty much every blogger he can find doing the diet, and provides a forum wherehe encourages others to tweak his plan to fit their needs. Instead of being a diet guru, Roberts is a diet tour guide, allowing his tourists ample time to wander the grounds of Shangri-La and customizehis theory to fit their individual tastes and goals.

The substance of Roberts' discovery of his diet, and the focus of much of his book, is his research background, his penchant for self-experimentation, and an accidental realization that drinking soda in Paris left him feeling completely full and unable to eat. Roberts determined that his lack of hunger was due to his body lowering its set point, that is, the weight it wants to be, in response to the foreign (to him) taste of sodas in the City of Light. Using what he knows about the intersection of psychology, physiology, and hunger, he developed the diet plan, lost over 30 pounds, and has kept it off for five years. Even if Roberts is a walking laboratory, the research studies he cites in the book are peer reviewed, with control groups and blinds, e.g. careful experiments with verifiable results. His eureka moment was to connect theories of phsychology, weight loss, appetite and taste in such a way that his diet seems less a wild-eyed hunch and more an elegant solution to a thorny and complex problem.I decided it was time to try it, just as soon as I could overcome my physical aversion.

Thinking about it– thinking about having less appetite, picking at my food, and drinking oil bothered me to no end. I had a queasy reaction to the concept. I mean, drinking oil. After discussing the diet with my girlfriend and several friends, they had similar reactions. On some instinctual level, they all thought it would work. But in practice, not one of them was willing to go at abottle of Wesson Oil armed with just a tablespoon and a chaser glass of water.

Re-reading Roberts' book and website, I realized, in a way, aversion was the last barrier my mind was putting up to losing this protective fat. Roberts argues that our primitive brains make us horde and overeat tasty food when it's in abundance, to give us a shot at staying alive in leaner times. The problem is that in modern times food always tastes good, and there are no leaner times during which to burn off fat stores. Our bodies haven't caught up to the fact that sitting in an office chair is the new hunting caribou. It seemed my inner caveman was appealing to my sense of reason one last time,before I dosed it back into the stone age with extra light olive oil (ELOO, as Roberts riffs on Rachael Ray's EVOO).

What made me finally decide to push the button and move the canola oil from the back of the kitchen cabinet to the front was Roberts' accurate assessment of his main critic, UCLA Medical School professor John Ford. In responding to the criticism on his blog, Roberts makes an argument I can believe. Most of us are already taking in at least a few tablespoons of oil and sugar every day. If eating those calories separately will lower our set points, reduce the amount of food we eat, and, Roberts claims, make us hunger a more balanced diet (less junk food), there is probably no medical risk to those few hundred calories of sugar or fat. Slamming the door shut, he goes onto say, "For a long time, medical school researchers have contributed no useful ideas to our understanding of how the average person can lose weight." In fact, the more complicated and esoteric diets have become, the more Americans, myself included seem to be gaining weight without being able to lose it.

The diet is a non-diet, and I admit, it appeals to my intellect. It's a mental trick that fools our bodies into shedding pounds of fat that were once a security blanket for sustaining life, but are now more like heavy winter jackets in, well, Shangri-La. Ten days in, my hunger is reduced and my tendency to snack is gone. Drinking the oil (I haven't yet tried the sugar water) is actually as easy as tilting my head and shooting it back. I felt the effects within 8 hours, as I bought a takeout sandwich walking home on the first day, and forgot about it for an hour after I arrived. When hunger hits, I eat, but so far, much less than before. I should probably start bringing my own Tupperware when dining out.It's far too early for me to have accurate results (Roberts lost his weight over the course of about 100 days), but so far, I like how I feel.

As a "serious eater", to quote Calvin Trillin's "Tummy Trilogy," the idea of eating less bothered me, but it now seems that I was eating way too much. By turning the diet from a puritanical exercise into what feels like a video game cheat code, Roberts seems to have hit upon the underlying Ur diet that explains why other diets work at first. All that remains to be seen is whether instead ofWeight Watchers cards, we all start carrying around portable ELOO shooters.

Well, it’s nice to see I’m not too off base in my story pitches. Apparently, I’m thinking of publishable story ideas, it’s just that no one’s listening to me yet. After pitching the serious issues facing Avenue B to a local paper that features a certain ex-mayor as film critic, I received no response. But today, in Eater, the news breaks. Carne Vale, a popular Brazilian style churrascerria owned by the Jacob brothers, who also run Le Souk across the street, appears to be operating on an invalid or illegal liquor license.

In Eater: EaterWire: Avenue B Hellmouth Edition, my research on the restaurant/nightclub is confirmed, but a few other very tantalizing facts are left out of the story.

First, as Eater noted in an earlier coverage, The E.U.’s liquor license (a gastropub trying to open not 100 feet away) was repeatedly shot down by local activists. Well, Carthage Palace’s license application was also denied by Community Board 3. I am new to the E.Vil. (post 2005 Avenue B fire, which destroyed much of this block), but I could find no real records of a “Carthage Palace” restaurant ever even existing. No reviews, no mentions in local press, nothing.

Except for one.

Carthage Palace declared bankruptcy shortly after being granted their liquor license. Three creditors were listed. Two creditors were owed about $3,000 each: a check cashing outfit and a restaurant supply company. The third was James Atamanuk, owner of their building, 46 Avenue B, who was listed as a creditor for $1 million.

(PS- The building has faced repeated building code violations. From illegal conversion of a first floor apartment into kitchen storage, to fire escapes that let out into an enclosed wooden (!!) deck, to oh yes, the crown jewel, no Certificate of Occupancy, making the whole premesis basically illegal.)

After being vacant for over a year, Carne Vale was quietly born, operating under Carthage Palace’s license. Even though CB3 denied Carthage Palace, it was a pro forma denial, due to non-appearance. If they had known at the time, that Le Souk’s owners were behind Carthage Palace/Carne Vale, they might have chosen Carne Vale, rather than The E.U. to make their stand. Why?

CB3 has repeatedly tried to go after Le Souk, due to massive numbers of noise complaints (116 at last count), repeated offenses of serving liquor to minors, and repeated 311 and 911 calls for the general mayhem that happens outside every weekend night. (Double parked limos, drinking in public, fistfights, etc.) Maybe CB3 would’ve protested “Carthage Palace” a bit more strenuously, had they known it was actually being fronted by Le Souk.

Now the connection is obvious. Staff and managers regularly run back and forth across Avenue B between the two bars. Both adopt the grating style of keeping their hostess’ podiums on the sidewalk in warm weather, creating an obstruction. Both break out the velvet ropes around 10pm, and frustrate young males who didn’t know that both require a one girl:two guy ratio for admittance. Most recently, as Le Souk’s licenses have been marked “inactive”, parties and DJ nights are being transferred directly across the street to Carne Vale, negating the effect of the closure.

I guess the questions here are simple. Is the Carthage Palace license legal? What’s up with the bankruptcy that claimed Atamanuk was due $1 million (note Carthage Palace assets are listed as around $150k– so that’s the most Atamanuk could’ve received from the deal, theoretically.) Does anyone remember a Carthage Palace restaurant ever actually existing? What’s going to happen with Le Souk? It will be interesting to see what happens to the Jacob brothers’ Avenue B mini empire, if anything.

I have not read Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, but when I heard about Julie Powell's concept for the book, I thought it was a great idea, and sure, was a bit jealous I hadn't thought of it first. Powell cooks a year's worth of recipes from a classic Julia Child cookbook. As a gourmand, I love that. Get in there with the guts and braising and veal stock, and make kitchen magic, the old fashioned way. 

Old New York City is gone forever. That much is certain. Eight, ten years ago, I was a pimply-faced explorer from across the Hudson, venturing to the island of Manhattan to conduct field research on the fairer gender, to find joints in Little Italy that would serve minors, and, consequently, to annoy the hell out of New Yorkers between about 4pm Friday afternoon to 3am Sunday morning. My goal, shared by thousands of others in the outlying suburbs who invaded on the weekends, was to have fun at all costs.

After doing college and my early 20’s in DC, I finally made it onto Manhattan island this year with a place of my own, not far from some of the bars and diners I haunted as a teenager. I live on Avenue B, in Alphabet city, which apparently was annexed into the East Village by the real estate agents. Not to sound all suburban and hoi polloi, but I never thought I’d live in Alphabet city. When I pictured my life in Manhattan, I pictured high rises, spacious apartments, and stacks of money, which, like the Easter Bunny, have yet to show themselves, despite my efforts.

I’m not complaining, though I am still getting used to a different scale of living, having rented out an entire house in the prime Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington DC less than a year ago. Adams Morgan was an interesting neighborhood. Full of frat boys and suburbanites on the weekends, there was, towards my last months there, a palpable sense of danger in the air, now quantified by DC’s recently announced crime emergency. Yet on the weekdays, there was a real neighborhood that existed, young and old, rich and poor, that shared in the richness of the neighborhood– the fancy sushi places, and the taco truck, all the same.
Much like I used to do (underaged) in New York, the out of towners and kiddies who come in for the  Adams Morgan nightlife act like they are characters in a video game, earning points for picking up (or being obnoxious to) girls, acting “hard” towards guys, and in general, making a nuisance of themselves for people that actually live there. On Avenue B, it’s the same story. Full of “bridge & tunnelers” (a term that was also in use down in DC, despite the lack of tunnels), there is a total disregard for the fabric of the neighborhoods they take over on the weekends.

That’s fine– I’ve been there, I know that where I chose to live, not 50 yards from where a notorious open air drug market existed less than a decade ago, is an area in transition, an area that has been taken advantage of by entreperneurs who have an inside track on liquor licenses. They want to sell expensive drinks to out of towners and be anonymous or closed Sunday through Wednesday. But now that alphabet city/ east village IS safe, now that there is money in the area, there are some pretty stupid decisions being made by the residents here. Namely, two restaurants of high pedigree, the E.U., and Bouley, have been denied Community Board approval for liquor licenses.

In both cases, the opposition was rooted in the feeling that there are too many active liquor licenses in the area. In both cases (the restaurants are in different districts), the Community Boards are right in that assessment. In both cases, they ignored that the restaurants are purveyors of high quality food, not ten dollar Natty Lites. (Well, maybe ten dollar Amstel Lites, but not by the bucket, at least.) It is bewildering to walk by, in my neighborhood, at least a dozen places I will never poke my head into, and another dozen I regret ever poking my head into, only to have two sure fire hits be denied the licensing they need to make their ventures feasible. (Everyone knows liquor and wine pays the bills at restaurants.)

It’s nice to know local residents are finally awake. Many of them complain that the two restaurants are beyond the price range of the residents here. It’s true, the East Village is economically diverse and home to many people below the poverty line. I can’t afford to eat at Bouley every night, and I rely on the bodegas and local joints for cheap yet amazingly good food, but damn straight I like a good meal, and when it’s a special occaision, I pony up the cash to go someplace world class, which is one of the true perks of living in New York City.

The argument that the restaurants are too expensive is reductive and insulting to residents here–can they afford the ten dollar drinks being slung at all the craphole places that already have liquor licenses? This neighborhood now certainly has a rap as being unfriendly to investment. There is enormous potential to replace problem bars with decent places to eat, drink, and live. Street level life. No, not a dozen Bouleys and EUs, but the types of small cafes and bars that will glom onto the success of an EU or Bouley, to open nearby and soak up some of the prestige. Right now, by denying two good establishments the chance to do business here, the neighborhood activists are basically saying they’d rather have frat boys throwing up on the sidewalks and getting into fistfights (I’ve seen both) then decent places to eat and socialize.

When I was a teenager coming into the city on NJT, on PATH, in my car, I never thought the city would be what it is now, nor was I able to really understand the vast resource just 15 miles from my suburban doorstep. The East Village, alphabet city, is a pre-teen, a decade removed from the dysfunctional New York that the rest of the city bounced back from in the early 90’s. It’s residents and local politicians are getting the chance to make some important decisions about what the future will look like. As a new resident, with no intention of leaving, I hope we get it right.

« Previous Page