the weekend buzz

“Sweet, Dessert Studio, Swiss Cheese and Wine, Ports and Poetry!”

The Strong (weekend) Buzz! Sweet, Dessert Studio, Swiss Cheese and Wine, Ports and Poetry!

Friday: Sweet! A Dessert Benefit for SOS and Food Bank
Tomorrow is Friday (insert cheer)! As a reward for all your hard work this week (or for hardly working, as the case may be), the lovely people at the Food Network and Ferrero Rocher have assembled an all-start cast of chefs to make you dessert this Friday at SWEET, a treats festival and kick-off event for the Food Network New York City Wine & Food Festival coming in the Fall of 2008 and benefiting Share Our Strength and The Food Bank of New York City. Talk about a happy ending (to a week, that is.)

Special guest Lorraine Bracco, Tony’s Soprano’s on-air shrink (and perhaps yours if you ask nicely) will join Food Network celebrities Rachael Ray, Giada De Laurentiis, Michael Chiarello and Cat Cora with some of the nation's A-list pastry chefs like Le Bernardin’s Michael Laiskonis, Craft’s Karen DeMasco, and Jean Georges’ Johnny Iuzzini. On the menu is everything from classic Junior's cheesecake to wilder fare like chocolate fondant with avocado anglaise and tomato with olive and balsamic sorbet. Southern Wine & Spirits will pony up the wine, champagne, and spirits to pair with the all the cakes and confections.

SWEET begins at 9:00 pm and will be held at The Waterfront located at 269 11th Avenue (between 27th and 28th Streets). Tickets can be purchased at www.nycwineandfoodfestival.com and are $200 each, exclusive of tax and service charges ($150 will be tax deductible).
—Colu Henry

Saturday: Opening Day at Dessert Studio at Chocolat Michel Cluizel, ABC Carpet & Home at 888 Broadway and 19th Street, 212.477.7335.

After a night of confections at Sweet, why not keep the sugar rush going on Saturday at Will Goldfarb’s (Room 4 Dessert, Picnick) new confection shop—Dessert Studio at Chocolat Michel Cluizel, located in the lobby of in ABC Carpet & Home. His chocoholic’s menu uses Cluizel’s artisan chocolates as a launch pad, offering desserts like Indonesian Vanilla Ice Cream with 85% Chocolate Bits and Caviar, White Chocolate Gelato with Ligurian Olive Oil and Smoked Salt (pictured), and Warm Chocolate Bubbles with Espresso Jello and Fresh Milk Foam ($9 each).

 

If you’re into a tasting menu of sorts, you can sit down or the complete five-course dessert experience ($29). Because apparently no one should eat dessert sober, there’s a chocolate-inspired cocktail list (Chocolate Russian anyone?) to pair with each dessert as well. If chocolate vodka martinis don’t do it for you, there’s Terzi coffee from Bologna; while I haven’t sampled it yet, apparently this is quite a cup a joe.

Aside from Will’s mad scientist chocolate creations, there will be more “down-to-earth” snacks in the form of chocolate cookies and brownies from Seth Greenberg (of William Greenberg Jr. Desserts). Dessert Studio is open Monday through Wednesday from 10:00 am to 8:00 pm, Thursday through Saturday from 10:00 am to midnight and Sunday from 11:00 am to 6:30 pm. After 8:00 pm on Thursdays and Fridays and 6:30 pm on Saturdays, enter Dessert Studio through Lucy Restaurant on 18th Street or Pipa on 19th Street, both between Broadway and Park Avenue South.

Sunday: Two Choices—Cheese and Wine or Poets and Ports!

Cheese and Wine at Trestle on Tenth, 242 Tenth Avenue, NYC, Phone (212) 645-5659, www.TrestleonTenth.com

On Sunday (and all weekend for that matter), chef Ralf Kuettel of Trestle on Tenth is bringing a bit of his Swiss homeland to Gotham with a tasting of four cheeses (like Mascarplin, Le Soubois, Tete de Moins) and four wines from producers throughout various regions in Switzerland. It’s a perfect afternoon snack after a stroll through some nearby galleries, or a nice way to ease into a little restaurant crawl—to The Red Cat, Cookshop, Tia Pol and/or El Quinto Pino afterwards? The cost per person for the tasting is $24 a person.

Poets & Port at Chanterelle, 2 Harrison Street (at Hudson), 212-966-6960.

This Sunday, when the weather’s cold and wintry out, you can warm up (and celebrate Chanterelle's 28th year) with an afternoon of Poetry and Ports. You’ll have the chance to try six ports, snack on small plates from David Waltuck's seasonal menu—roulade of prosciutto and fois gras with figs; roasted beet salad in endive with goat cheese dressing; bacon wrapped oysters with remoulade sauce—and listen to readings from some of the city's most buzzed about up-and-coming writers like Katy Lederer, author of the Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers (named one of the best books of 2003by Esquire magazine) and April Biggs, artistic director of Biggs and Company. Poets and Port is from 4:00-6:00 pm and costs $55 per person, including tax and gratuity.
—Colu Henry

And that’s your Strong (weekend) Buzz for this week! Until Monday, READ IT AND EAT!

Posted: November 15, 2007

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