You’ve got your hipster bars (Griffin, Beauty Bar), your mixology mecca (Downtown Cocktail Room), and even an old school standby (Sidebar), but none of them have a hotel that matches their uber-cocktail-coolness….until today when the El Cortez Cabana Suites starts taking guests in 64 of the neatest rooms this side of the Viceroy or Mondrian in Los Angeles — or anything you’ll find in Palm Springs.
Continue reading “El Cortez Cabana Suites – Urban Cool Invades Downtown”
ELV doesn’t mean to start him no scandal, and he counts as his friends and respected colleagues both the executives and officers of the James Beard Foundation, but many of the James Beard Award winners of last night gave him and his staff pause for reflection — not the least of which is Momofuku Ko (a restaurant that no one has dined at) winning Best New Restaurant in the entire nation for 2009. For if ever there was an example of food writers and voters voting for a place based only on hype, this is it.
Continue reading “The James Beard Awards – A Tempest In A Teapot Or Something That Needs Fixing?”
Last night at its annual awards banquet, the James Beard Foundation announced it was dispensing with all future categories and henceforth, would be condensing its awards to a single, three foot, rotund statuette of its founding father, and would collectively award it each and every year to every New York City restaurateur, chef, writer, broadcaster and editor in the New York food media — so that they could all, continually, bask in its brilliance and career-enhancing powers.
Continue reading “New York Wins Every Single James Beard Award!”