Copyright 2008 The New York Sun Wed, 10 Sep 2008 01:15:43 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Robert Simonson :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/authors/Robert+Simonson istoll@nysun.com (Ira Stoll) webmaster@nysun.com en-us ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/looking-at-new-yorks-liquid-past/85495/ Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST With new cocktail dens such as White Star and Apotheke opening every other week, modern cocktail history is being made on the streets of New York City, even as I write this sentence. But whatever delectable potions today's mixologists come up with, they have much to live up to. There are few cities that compete with Gotham when it comes to cocktail history. The revived cocktail culture of the 21st century has brought along with it a mini-boom of bibulous historians, turning once obscure... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/the-best-gin-for-a-summer-elixir/82847/ Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Before the mojito, before the caipirinha, the gin and tonic reigned supreme as a hot-weather drink, quenching summertime thirsts at taverns and backyard parties the world over. Born of practicality — the quinine in the tonic once helped combat malaria in the British Empire, while the gin made it easier for authorities to throw the bitter elixir down people's throats — it survived simply as a delectable liquid marriage. Although more complicated drinks might be the tipples of choice for today's... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/from-mexico-to-india-the-wine-way/82424/ Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Leo Barrera, the wine director at Tabla, Danny Meyer's temple to Indian cuisine, was born into the hospitality business. His family owned hotels first in Acapulco, Mexico, where he was born, and then in Cancun. Growing up, he was a south-of-the-border version of Eloise. "Until my teenage years, I resided in hotels," he said. He was not, however, born into a world where wine held great sway. "We don't really drink wines," he said of his native Mexico. "We have a small wine industry in Baja. But... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/a-local-push-for-iberian-juice/79212/ Wed, 4 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST 'The Italians do it," Ron Miller of Solera, the Spanish restaurant on East 53rd Street, said. "The French do it. Why not us?" Do what? Use their wine list as an expression of national pride and culinary purity, that's what. At Babbo, you'll be looking in vain for a wine not produced on the Italian boot. The list at Balthazar has a thick Gallic accent. Such oenophilic exclusivity is common in Manhattan eateries that focus on French or Italian cuisine. For some of the city's Spanish restaurants... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/arts/new-yorks-james-beard-design-nominees/75487/ Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST When the James Beard Foundation Awards are announced in early June, New York is guaranteed to be a winner — at least in the Outstanding Restaurant Design category, where, for the second straight year, the nominees are all Manhattan-based establishments. Adour, chef Alain Ducasse's new restaurant at the St. Regis, the Japanese restaurant Morimoto in the meatpacking district, and the Italian eatery Centovini in SoHo all got the nod from the James Beard Foundation, whose annual awards recognize... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/union-square-cafs-mad-scientist/75159/ Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST In the wine cellar of restaurateur Danny Meyer's perennially popular Union Square Café, there are a few large mason jars of neon-yellow liquid. The contents are not radioactive: The jars contain housemade limoncello , created from a family recipe provided by the restaurant's youthful, experiment-loving wine director, Stephen Mancini. The lemon-based Italian liqueur, mixed with grappa and citrus juices, is used to make the Forza Totti — one offering from the new cocktail program Mr. Mancini has... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/brooklyns-artisanal-cocktails/74396/ Wed, 9 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST Brooklyn residents no longer have to trek to Manhattan and knock on specific unmarked doors below 14th Street to get a perfectly made Sazerac. The cocktail revolution, which has reintroduced a generation to the historical and artisanal joys of tippling, has crossed the bridge in recent months. One of the most anticipated new watering holes, Cobble Hill's Clover Club — from the creators of Manhattan's Flatiron Lounge — won't be open for a couple months. But here are three others that are stocked... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/sommelier-as-explorer/73679/ Wed, 26 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST There's no chance of forgetting you're in a wine bar at Bar Boulud. Yes, chef Daniel Boulud's newest creation does serve food, including a notable array of French charcuterie. But Thomas Schlesser's design for the Upper West Side restaurant evokes a vineyard at every turn. Wine glasses hang upside-down at tables to the side and rear, ready to be grasped by thirsty patrons. The booths along the right are made from the same oak traditionally used for wine barrels and are equipped with... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/arts/reviving-the-tin-ceiling/73389/ Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST Until recently, walking into a bar or restaurant in New York City with a decorative tin ceiling above meant entering one of the metropolis's timeworn gathering places, such as the Old Town Bar & Restaurant on East 18th Street or the White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street. These days, tin ceilings are being installed in new and renovated businesses and residences throughout the city. "Today, when they build a new building, they make it look like it's a 100 years old," the third-generation owner of... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/perkiest-sommelier-in-town/71932/ Wed, 27 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST The new wine director at the Modern, Belinda Chang, presides over what may be the most global dining room in New York City. Situated in that tourist haven known as the Museum of Modern Art, the Danny Meyer restaurant attracts not only the blue-chip businessmen and publishing executives from Midtown, but also the hordes of art-loving European and Asian travelers who are taking full advantage of the low dollar. "I have those whole days in the dining room where I don't hear any English," Ms. Chang... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/supply-demand/69995/ Wed, 23 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST There is no question as to the provenance of any of the wines to be found on the list at the Four Seasons restaurant. At the top of every page, in italics, is a proclamation that reads, for example, "Julian Niccolini's Selection of American Wines." Mr. Niccolini is co-owner of what may be Manhattan's most awe-invoking restaurant (architecturally, culinarily, and monetarily); the wine list there has been an intimate concern of his since he developed his palate at the elbow of his late mentor... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/eating-pizza-sipping-sassicaia/68583/ Wed, 26 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST The owner and managing director of the Flatiron district restaurant La Pizza Fresca, Bradley Bonnewell, was staring across the room at a dark-haired man in an expensive-looking suit. The diner, seated at a table near the bar, was lustily enjoying his meal. Mr. Bonnewell had never met him and didn't know his name, but he recognized the face — and for good reason. "The guy comes in at least twice a week," he said. "He spends maybe $100 on food and $1,000 on wine." If you possess the wherewithal... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/houses-of-spirits/67950/ Wed, 12 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST In the final pages of Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol," Ebenezer Scrooge, newly embracing goodwill toward men, raises the salary of his long-suffering clerk Bob Cratchit and declares: "… we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop!" Smoking bishop was a punch, of course. This convivial category of alcoholic beverage — typically composed of water, sugar, lemon, spice, and wine or spirits — was, for nearly 200 years, as popular in America as it... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/ambassador-of-israeli-wines/67518/ Wed, 5 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST Read the wine list at any high-end restaurant in Manhattan and you'll get a good idea of the wine director's likes and dislikes, and perhaps a hint of what kind of food is being conjured in the kitchen. The wine list at Capsouto Frères, the breezily elegant TriBeCa restaurant, however, could be interpreted as a compact biography of its creator, Jacques Capsouto, who, along with his brothers Albert and Samuel, in 1980 installed the restaurant in a remote, former spice warehouse at the corner of... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/arts/upbeat-and-onstage-despite-the-strike/67189/ Thu, 29 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST It seems only appropriate that, during Broadway's worst strike in decades, when two-thirds of the theaters are dark, actor Michael Cerveris should find a way to keep working. On December 2, Mr. Cerveris will open as Posthumus in "Cymbeline" at Lincoln Center Theater's Vivian Beaumont Theater — one of only eight Broadway productions unaffected by the stagehands strike. Since winning a Tony Award for his empathetic John Wilkes Booth in the 2004 Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's "Assassins,"... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/white-house-says-theres-still-time-for-21/66793/ Wed, 21 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST American presidents have little in common aside from the address 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., an oddly shaped office, and a tendency to inspire midterm election losses. But, since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, they've shared at least one other experience: They've all visited the "21"Club, the jacket-required restaurant and former speakeasy on West 52nd Street. John Kennedy dined at "21" the day before he was inaugurated. Richard M. Nixon frequented table 14 so often the management affixed a gold plaque... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/top-wines-rock-bottom-prices/64726/ Wed, 17 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST Not every bottle in the three cluttered cellars of Tommaso's Restaurant, the improbably epicurean Bensonhurst haven of fine wine, is on the wine list. Owner and chef Tommaso Verdillo has received far too many gift bottles over the years to make a complete tally possible. Many of the presents have come from the winemakers themselves — offerings made during one of Mr. Verdillo's numerous tours of Italy and elsewhere. Other estimable oenophiles have also been generous."Want to know who gave me... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/daves-list/62937/ Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST The wine director at Tribeca Grill, David Gordon, sips what he sells. The restaurant's list purports to have more Châteauneuf-du-Pape — roughly 300 bottles — than not only any restaurant in New York City, but any restaurant in the world, including those in the southern Rhône Valley, from whence the wine hails. (Mr. Gordon admits that this boast is anecdotal — not scientific.) When asked what he drinks at home, however, Mr. Gordon does not reply "riesling," as many sommeliers who manage... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/new-light-for-a-venerable-shop/62444/ Wed, 12 Sep 2007 00:00:00 EST The chairman of Sherry-Lehmann, Michael Aaron, looked through the long, curving window of his new second-floor office onto a stately expanse of Park Avenue. "I know the inside of every single store here — every corner on Park Avenue I looked at," Mr. Aaron, the proprietor of what is arguably the swankiest and most famous wine shop in New York, said. But it was the northeast nook at 59th Street that would become the new home of Mr. Aaron's family business, started in 1934 by his father, Jack, a... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/starting-from-scratch/60593/ Wed, 15 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST The wine cellar at the New Orleans restaurant Antoine's, a 167-year-old, family-run establishment located on St. Louis Street in the French Quarter, is a spacious, 165-foot long corridor that ends at a small window looking out on Royal Street. Frequently, surprised strollers peering through the pane of glass will catch a sommelier pulling a bottle from one of the many bins. But anyone who happened to glance in during the days following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 would have unknowingly witnessed... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/breaking-the-wine-glass-ceiling/58592/ Wed, 18 Jul 2007 00:00:00 EST Jennifer Malone-Seixas stood out among her classmates when she took the American Sommelier Association's six-month "Viticultural/Vinification" course. It wasn't because she was one of just a few women in the class, or that she was the only non-industry person in the room. What really set her apart was that she took the program while pregnant. According to Ms. Malone-Seixas, who has a talent for wry understatement, the director of the course didn't notice her condition until she handed in her... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/staying-on-his-toes/56938/ Wed, 20 Jun 2007 00:00:00 EST On a recent evening at Eleven Madison Park, Danny Meyer's French restaurant in the flatiron district, wine director John Ragan was trying in vain to please a table of Frenchmen. "We talked a bit and we weren't getting too far as to the wine," Mr. Ragan, 33, recalled. "They wanted to drink only California things because they'd never been to America before, but they definitely wanted to keep the wines in a Burgundian style. Finally, the guy stopped me and said, 'Do you know the Coche-Dury wines?'... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/streetwise-sipping/54579/ Wed, 16 May 2007 00:00:00 EST In a restaurant community where sommeliers seem to come and go with the seasonal entrée, Chanterelle's Roger Dagorn amounts to a lifer. He has been faithful to David and Karen Waltuck's evergreen TriBeCa outpost of French cooking since joining in 1993. "I tell my students that it's good to stay one year and then move on," Mr. Dagorn, who teaches one day a week at CUNY's New York Technical College, said. "My problem is I don't follow my own advice." Mr. Waltuck called Mr. Dagorn 17 years ago... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/danes-cook/54125/ Wed, 9 May 2007 00:00:00 EST On May 20, the 56th annual Norwegian Day Parade will march down Bay Ridge's Fifth Avenue to commemorate the 1814 signing of Norway's constitution. But an observer of the strip's mix of Irish bars, Italian restaurants, and Muslim-owned businesses, might wonder why Brooklyn's Norwegians chose this neighborhood in which to celebrate. Reidun Thompson can explain. When she moved to Bay Ridge from southern Norway in 1962, the neighborhood was known as Little Norway, home to more than 50,000... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/arts/lending-lyrics-to-a-sorority-sister/53271/ Thu, 26 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EST Through the years, musical theater has produced tightknit composing teams, with John Kander and Fred Ebb arguably leading the pack. But it's a good wager that few of them were so tight that they went in on a washer-dryer together. That's what Laurence O'Keefe and Nell Benjamin, the composer-lyricists of the new Broadway musical "Legally Blonde," recently did. Mr. O'Keefe and Ms. Benjamin are not only married to their work but to each other. "Legally Blonde" — based on the 2001 comedy starring... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/in-praise-of-zierfandler/52690/ Wed, 18 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EST "Zierfandler—I'm a crazy guy on that," Aldo Sohm, the friendly sommelier as Wallsé, Kurt Gutenbrunner's cozy Austrian restaurant in Greenwich Village, said. Well, fine. It's good to have enthusiasms. But what is a Zierfandler anyway? "It's a wine with an aromatic profile completely against the mainstream," Mr. Sohm explained, pouring out a sampling of light-gold liquid. "You don't find this kind of pink-grapefruity flavor, this pure spice-driven taste. And it's very clean. People love it."... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/wine-wonderland-three-feet-taller/50902/ Wed, 21 Mar 2007 00:00:00 EST Babbo, the celebrated Italian restaurant off Washington Square, has a big reputation and a bigger celebrity chef in Mario Batali. So why shouldn't it have a sizable wine cellar to match? Well, because Babbo is located in the old Coach House space on Waverly Place, a cubbyhole of an address that once had a basement so shallow you had to stoop over as you entered. But that all changed when the contractors excavating the cellar of the building next door offered to do the same for Babbo; the... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/arts/running-the-utopia-marathon/49292/ Mon, 26 Feb 2007 00:00:00 EST Cast off! 10:45 AM, Saturday, October 24 After playing in repertory since October, Tom Stoppard's massively successful trilogy "The Coast of Utopia," about real-life revolutionary thinkers and thinking revolutionaries in mid-19th-century Russia, was about to launch its first marathon run: all three parts, "Voyage," "Shipwreck," and "Salvage," in one day. For die-hard fans, this was a must-see. But even for the biggest theater buffs, eight-and-a-half hours — plus breaks for lunch and dinner, of... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/keeping-it-kosher/49008/ Wed, 21 Feb 2007 00:00:00 EST On the face of it, the wine cellar run by sommelier Rick Bruner doesn't look measurably different than those at other Manhattan restaurants. It's a bit smaller, perhaps, less grand. Still, it's a sterile room full of bottles like many others. But this collection is different, for every chilled vessel on display once felt the brief kiss of red-hot flame. Mr. Bruner, you see, works at Prime Grill, about as high a high-end kosher restaurant as you're likely to find in New York City. Every vintage... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/arts/shades-of-gray/48920/ Tue, 20 Feb 2007 00:00:00 EST The table is familiar. It's a simple, functional "Spalding Gray" table, the kind the famed monologist sat behind when he delivered his staged status reports on his neurotic and wildly improbable life. But the young, curly-haired man sitting behind it in the rehearsal hall is not Gray. It's Ain Gordon, the downtown artist better known as a playwright. And he's not alone, as Gray always was in solo works from "Sex and Death to Age 14" to his last work, "Life Interrupted." Surrounding Mr. Gordon... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/taste-for-local-history/48179/ Wed, 7 Feb 2007 00:00:00 EST Sitting at one of the small wooden tables in his new brick-oven pizzeria in Carroll Gardens, Mark Iacono looked out the window at the block of Henry Street between Carroll Street and First Place. Drawing on what seemed to be a photographic memory, he recalled how it looked when he was a kid growing up in the once Italian-American-dominated neighborhood of Brooklyn. "There was a pizzeria on the corner. Next to it was a baccalà store. Then there was a butcher; right next door, there was a... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/around-the-world-in-one-cellar/46871/ Wed, 17 Jan 2007 00:00:00 EST The post of sommelier at Le Bernardin, the French restaurant some call New York's finest, is a dream job for a wine professional. As if to illustrate this point, Philippe Buttin endured an epic journey worthy of the film "Planes, Trains & Automobiles" in order to land the assignment. Last year, Le Bernardin searched for nearly six months for someone to replace Michel Couvreux, who had been the restaurant's sommelier for 10 years. Late in the process, the restaurant, acting on a recommendation... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/restaurant-thats-all-in-the-family/45497/ Wed, 20 Dec 2006 00:00:00 EST "This is all Barolo on the left. This is Barolo. This is Barolo. This is all Barolo. This is Barolo, too. This is Barolo, until here. Then these are Super Tuscans." That's Enrico Farello, wine director at Barbetta, giving a tour of the cellar at the 100-year-old Italian restaurant where dining has never stopped being gracious. Here, Piedmontese cuisine is worshipfully served and eaten under a chandelier that once belonged to the Savoys. Barbetta knows Barolo. In fact, owner Laura Maioglio says... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/le-time-capsule/44331/ Wed, 29 Nov 2006 00:00:00 EST On a recent evening at a tiny, 50-seat French bistro on East 60th Street a few paces from Bloomingdale's, business was slow, bordering on glacial. A quartet of old friends, evidently longtime habitués, were nursing a bottle of white Burgundy. They were in no hurry to inspect the menu. A couple of elderly ladies in enormous hats, seated nearby, were taking the dinner hour at an equally leisurely pace. Two inquiries from the restaurant's single waiter — a subtly imperious, silver-haired man in a... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/better-half/43976/ Wed, 22 Nov 2006 00:00:00 EST If you ever wanted to know how Gulliver felt waking up in Lilliput, take a walk into the wine cellar at Per Se, Thomas Keller's Michelin miracle on the fourth floor of Columbus Circle's Time Warner building. Lined up like soldiers along the right-hand side of the cellar's entryway are the cutest little bottles you ever did see. Italian producer Gaja's barbaresco has been cut down to 375ml size. The syrah in the Domain de Vieux Telegraph Chateauneuf-du-Pape has gone petit. Every major restaurant... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/arts/two-trilogies-one-busy-director/43780/ Mon, 20 Nov 2006 00:00:00 EST Director Jack O'Brien currently has a new Broadway production. He also is in rehearsal with another Broadway venture. This is not surprising; Mr. O'Brien is one of the busiest theatre directors in America. What is unusual is that the show in performance and the one in rehearsal are the same play. Well, sort of. Mr. O'Brien is in the midst of a six-month commitment to the American premiere of "The Coast of Utopia," Tom Stoppard's heady three-part examination of 19th-century Russian thinkers. The... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/arts/passerelle-for-the-met-stage/42894/ Fri, 3 Nov 2006 00:00:00 EST If the word "puppet" dominated postperformance debates following the Metropolitan Opera's season opener "Madame Butterfly" — which featured director Anthony Minghella's striking use of a Bunraku puppet to represent Butterfly's son — then talk surrounding the Met's new production of Rossini's "Il Barbiere di Siviglia," which opens November 10, is bound to center on another "p" word: passerelle. A passerelle is a sort of catwalk, and this mounting of the Rossini work — the second new offering of... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/underground-fiction/41783/ Wed, 18 Oct 2006 00:00:00 EST Roberto Paris, the sommelier at the Bond Street Italian restaurant Il Buco, has a poetic way of looking at things. He looks at the term "wine business" as an oxymoron, and he prefers not to call his patrons anything so coarse as "customers." Anyone might develop such an aesthetic sensibility if exposed daily to the atmospheric cellar in the 19th-century brick building Il Buco has called home since 1994.It is this cavity that scholars believe inspired Edgar Allen Poe to write his chilling 1846... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/style/historic-hat-shop-looks-forward-to-a-new-home/41702/ Tue, 17 Oct 2006 00:00:00 EST Most sartorially savvy New Yorkers can tell you where to find at least one of the few hat stores left in the city. There's J.J. Hat Center on Fifth Avenue just below the Empire State Building, Arnold Hatters on Eighth Avenue near Macy's, and Bencraft Hatters's two locations, in Boro Park and Williamsburg. But only a true headgear maven knows where Worth & Worth, the Tiffany of local haberdasheries, has been hiding itself these past few years. After nearly 80 years in business, Worth &amp... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/arts/chutzpah-to-spare/41387/ Thu, 12 Oct 2006 00:00:00 EST The publication of "Stardust Lost" (Knopf, 352 pages, $26.95), Stefan Kanfer's new history of the Yiddish theater in New York City, is well-timed. The recent deaths of two former Yiddish stage stars, Luba Kadison and Lillian Lux, not to mention their onetime hangout, the Second Avenue Deli, reminded the public of that bygone world. So did a recent dustup over how best to rescue the decaying artifacts inside the old Hebrew Actors Union on East 7th Street. What was needed was a volume that set... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/arts/labutes-american-man-on-his-own/40273/ Mon, 25 Sep 2006 00:00:00 EST The theater scene has always been a volatile, varying one, but in recent seasons theatergoers could count on at least three things. One: There would be a new play by Neil LaBute.Two: It would be staged either at MCC Theatre (where "Fat Pig," "Some Girl(s)" and "The Mercy Seat" had their premieres) or the Public Theatre ("This Is How It Goes"). And three: The play would feature at least one Hollywood star — Jeremy Piven headlined "Fat Pig"; Eric McCormick starred in "Some Girl(s"); and Ben... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/under-the-underground-oyster-bar/40035/ Wed, 20 Sep 2006 00:00:00 EST If some larcenous oenophile concocted a plan to sneak into the wine cellar of Grand Central Terminal's Oyster Bar and make off with a $700 bottle of 1981 Krug, he would certainly fail. This is not because only three people have keys to the cellar, one of them manager and beverage director Michael Garvey; or because the cellar rooms boast prehistoric-looking thick metal doors. No, it's a matter of geography. The wine holdings are ferreted away in a unlikely collection of chilly cubby holes and... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/arts/gelb-gives-the-met-a-makeover/39837/ Mon, 18 Sep 2006 00:00:00 EST The Metropolitan Opera lobby was a hive of activity recently, as an administrative assistant navigated the circuitous path from the stage door to the still halfway-furnished office of the new general manager, Peter Gelb. Workers were polishing the lowered chandeliers, and miles of blood-red carpeting and upholstery were getting a cleaning. No doubt, the Met gets a good scrubbing every September. But there's a difference this time around: The opera's September 25 gala opening will not just kick... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/where-absinthe-was-king/38783/ Wed, 30 Aug 2006 00:00:00 EST At the fourth annual "Tales of the Cocktail" convention in New Orleans, authors, mixologists, students, and journalists gathered in the French Quarter to talk about cocktails, learn about cocktails, mix cocktails — and, oh yes, to drink cocktails. New Orleans last month (when the conference took place) was not the city it was in July 2005. Last year's edition of "Tales of the Cocktail" ended August 20, little more than a week before Hurricane Katrina made landfall and changed the annual event's... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/french-collection/37975/ Wed, 16 Aug 2006 00:00:00 EST The bright, bulbous, red and yellow graffiti spattered over the cement wall is hard to make out. The word seems to start with an "H," then an "E," and an "R." Could it really be ... "Hermitage"? Yes, someone has sprayed the name of the great wine appellation from the northern Rhone Valley across the cinder blocks. That's not all. That blazing orange scrawl: Petrus. And the long, blue tattoo half obscured by a stack of boxes: Gewurztraminer. It's not the usual subject of graffiti. Then again... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/arts/fringe-free-for-all-cleans-up-its-act/37839/ Mon, 14 Aug 2006 00:00:00 EST When Broadway mounts a jukebox musical, it raids the catalogs of ABBA or the Beach Boys. When the New York International Fringe Festival attempts the same, it turns to Oingo Boingo. Because "Only a Lad" knit the song list on that jangly New Wave band, it is one of the lucky among the 200-plus Fringe titles to have garnered a modicum of pre-opening buzz. Vocalist-composer Danny Elfman leads the band and the talk surrounding the show centered on the fact that Mr. Elfman, now a well-established... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/arts/costume-designer-takes-center-stage/37784/ Fri, 11 Aug 2006 00:00:00 EST From time to time, certain designers seem to dominate Broadway, and without a doubt the queen costumer of the past few years has been Catherine Zuber. During the 2005-06 season, her handwork — for man and beast, past and present, heaven and earth — enjoyed the spotlight on six separate Broadway stages. She dressed beasts in the Lincoln Center Theater's revival of Edward Albee's "Seascape," a four-character drama populated by two humans and two large lizards. Ms. Zuber's green, elastic outfits... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/arts/old-world-way-of-doing-things/36729/ Wed, 26 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST Nobody ever had to tell me, as a child, of the special provenance surrounding the Steinway piano company, the subject of James Barron's exhaustive and sometimes-exhausting new book, "Piano." When my mother — a Wisconsin music and piano teacher — decided to buy a grand, Steinway was her brand of choice. It occupied a prime corner of our neverused-except-for-company living room and was unspeakably impressive in its shiny, black-lacquered dignity. That the New York City maker was the last word in... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/arts/looking-for-a-live-act/35698/ Mon, 10 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST Afratricide. A fake corpse. A violent demise at sea. Two lovers joined in death in a murder-suicide. A priest tied up and stuffed in a bag. That's entertainment to director Garry Hynes, whose marathon production of "DruidSynge" offers eight and a half hours of J.M. Synge dramaturgy. Starting today, the acclaimed production, which has played Ireland, Edinburgh, Scotland, and Minneapolis, will play seven times at the Lincoln Center Festival. A full, working day of theatergoing is a lot to ask of... ROBERT SIMONSON http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/21-club-cellar-holds-wine-for-clients-unlikely/35406/ Wed, 5 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST Message to Chelsea Clinton: Come get your magnum of 1971 Cristal. It's in the wine cellar at the "21" Club, and has been since your parents bought it in the late '90s for use on your 21st birthday - a landmark that passed more than five years ago. Ms. Clinton's champagne is just one of 2,000 bottles that make up the famous "private stock" of the 77-year-old restaurant - bottles that were bought by the watering hole's well-heeled regulars and stored away for future swilling. It sits near reds...