only in ny #3: snack shop

  

snack: snickers cupcake
drink: manhattan special espresso coffee soda

in the BOCOCA (boerum hill, cobble hill, carroll gardens) area of brooklyn, smith st gets all the hype. they've got the requisite hip neighborhood quota of restaurants, bars, shops & boutiques. they've got a comic book store, a cheese shop & a brooklyn industries and american apparel. all told it equals H-I-P. in my time in brooklyn, i've spent a lot of time on smith st. i've had many a drink in its hip bars & food in its hip restaurants. there was a time when i used to go to faan at least once a month. in some forgotten restaurant on smith, i had dinner one night with this dude who was a friend of a friend, only to realize after that it was likely a date. i even got dumped in one of the handful of interchangeable sushi joints. good times on smith st.

...but in my book, smith st is so 2004. in 2010, court st is the way to go. it's filled with restaurants & shops, but it's never got the same sort of attention that smith st has. still, the more i've lived in brooklyn & the more i age & the more i become a hermit, the more i find myself on court st. that's mainly because while smith is home to lots of places to go out to eat & drink, court st is home to american beer distribution (where i often buy beer to drink in the comfort of my home) & cobblestone foods (where i often buy cheese to eat in the comfort of my home). if lines & cramped spaces didn't freak me out, i'm sure i'd frequent the fairly new trader joes on court. there's a movie theater on court st, but i read somewhere that it's MAD SCARY. scary or not, smith st doesn't even have a movie theater. so yeah, court st's more my style these days.

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nosh nook #181 - monday, november 23, 2009

cupcake complaints aired to weymouth school committee member (link)
11.23.09 - weymouth news - by ed baker

since launching the nosh nook back in march, i've written about a ton of cases where folks are in a tizzy about their kids' nutrition, especially at school. i've featured so many stories about crusading moms & initiatives & legislation that sometimes i feel like the "won't somebody please think of the children" angle is the only story being told in the world of food. i'm not saying that it's not important that kids eat healthy, but it's starting to get old. i can only come across so many "five hip, healthy, after school snacks for teens" articles before i snap & start taking hostages. are there really moms out there who still haven't figured out that carrot sticks are better than doritos? if there are, do we really need to force it down their throats through legislation & initiatives & news story after news story? don't we have better things to discuss?

i'm not the only one who feels this way. according to the weymouth news, there's been a bit of a hubbub in weymouth recently about a wellness policy approved by the school committee. the policy, which "establishes nutrition and physical fitness objectives for students in all grades," urges teachers to limit the amount of times that kids bring cupcakes to school for their birthdays. eventually, parents complained about the cupcake-hating policy to school committee member karen berry. she found that interesting because as the weymouth news notes, she "rarely receives calls from parents about how budget cuts will impact their child’s education, but she gets plenty of calls concerning a misunderstanding about policy on birthday cupcakes in the classroom." you hear that, weymouthians? where are your priorities?

the policy was put in place back at the beginning of 2007, which was fairly early in the recent healthy kid craziness, so parents should be used to it by now. as it is, cupcakes aren't even banned by the policy. all the policy does is "suggest that teachers limit the number of birthday parties they hold in their class each month and encourage healthy food consumption by students." although she was part of the committee that initially put the wellness policy in place, karen berry wishes that "people would be as attentive to the budget challenges rather than an eight-year-old who would be crying because he or she could not bring a cupcake to a birthday party at school." that's some shoddy english right there, but you get what she's trying to say. they put the policy in place. now it's time to move on to something more important. let's stop wasting so much time on cupcakes.

nosh nook #143 - wednesday, september 30, 2009

hostess offers 'monsters vs. aliens' treats (link)
09.29.09 - brandweek - by elaine wong

you really can't beat solid movie tie-ins. without them, i wouldn't have been able to drink out of a sweet empire strikes back glass every day for most of my childhood. sure there are a lot of lame tie-ins & promotions out there, but for every crappy little disney toy there are more than enough awesome muppet movie glasses. i suppose my examples of cool movie tie-ins are a bit dated & glass-focused, but i'm hoping that you get the point regardless. if done right, movie tie-ins can lead to some promotions that kids will be thinking about twenty-five years down the road. i'm not sure this is one of them though...

as brandweek's elaine wong reports, hostess & dreamworks have teamed up to promote yesterday's release of the monsters vs aliens dvd & blu-ray. they launched an "instant-win match game" on the hostess website yesterday where you go to the website, enter a ton of personal information & play a game of memory. if you win & get randomly picked (you won't), you win ONE MILLION DOLLARS! you can buy a TON of snack cakes with that kind of scratch. as if a miniscule chance at a million dollars wasn't enough, "hostess is also selling two limited-edition monsters vs. aliens snack cakes. one, called monster cakes, are chocolate hostess cupcakes topped with blue icing and blue sprinkles. b.o.b. cakes, made with blue hostess sno balls, are made to resemble the movie’s gelatinous blue blob." it's perfect timing. with the halloween pumpktoberfest season upon us, monsters are en vogue. anyway, that sno ball one's genius. you can't go wrong with a sno ball or a blob.

david leavitt, the vp of snack marketing at interstate brands (hostess), is excited about the promotion & loves puns as much as he loves giving away a million dollars. wong refers to a statement leavitt issued, where he said "with hostess' 'monsters vs. aliens'-themed snack cakes and the chance to win $1 million sweepstakes, we know this will be a 'monstrous' promotion." well put, david. so yeah. million dollars. snack cakes. i guess there's a movie in there somewhere too. you should probably buy it now that it's available for home consumption...or maybe you can wait until you win A MILLION DOLLARS and buy 50,000 copies of the dvd. fyi, if you prefer, you can get it in a package with b.o.b.'s big break in monster 3D. that means 50,000 free copies of that too! it sounds like a gripping film. b.o.b.'s apparently the blob. i bet he gets into all sorts of animated mischief.

nosh nook #132 - tuesday, september 15, 2009

hostess cupcakes celebrate 90 years as america's favorite cupcake (link)
09.14.09 - reuters

let's get one thing straight: hostess cupcakes rule. from their distinctive, slightly-unnatural cream filling to that swirl on the top, they're basically the pinnacle of mass-produced cupcakes. that's a scientific fact. they're so special that i've come up with a perfected method for eating them. i start with one solid bite that takes out about of third of the cupcake, giving me a good taste of the cake, cream & icing while still leaving me with a good amount of cream filling. from there, i chew off everything on both sides of the swirly icing, leaving me with the maximum amount of swirliness & cream filling for that last bite. it's become such an ingrained habit that i can't eat them any other way. so yeah, i like them quite a bit.

in case you forgot to mark your calendar, yesterday, hostess issued a press release reminding us that it's time to celebrate the cupcake's 90th birthday. in its lifetime, the hostess cupcake has both become "the best selling snack cake in history" & the one that's accumulated the most fun facts! did you know that the identity of the hostess cupcake's inventor is a mystery? they don't even know who invented it. what u.s. city consumes the most hostess cupcakes? memphis, followed by st. louis, cincy, vegas & louisville. on a completely unrelated note, memphis, vegas & louisville are #11, #4 & #10 on men's fitness' 2009 list of the fattest cities. did you know they have a mascot named "captain cupcake?" it's true. dude has a periscope & epaulets & everything. i remember the commercials from my childhood. at one point, he & twinkie were the jordan & pippen of hostess.

hostess cupcakes may be 90 years old, but they're totally tech savvy, with a twitter account & a facebook page. my grandfather turns 90 in less than a month & although he rules, as far as i know, he doesn't have either of those. of course, he's not run by a billion dollar corporation either. with hostess, i actually follow their twitter account & although it's fairly boring, if you want to be as cool as me, you should probably do the same. now if they could just manage to bring their web page into the 21st century, then they'd be totally hip.

nosh nook #107 - tuesday, august 11, 2009

nyc cupcakes: bakeries, cafes, a hotel and a truck (link)
08.10.09 - san jose mercury news - by beth harpaz

gotta be honest, folks. i'm still sick of the cupcake craze. maybe it's because i've never seen sarah jessica parker bite into a cupcake from magnolia bakery nor have i been to said establishment. it's not that i hate cupcakes, i'm just sick of hearing about them. remember that episode of happy days where the fonz strapped on a pair of water skis & leapt through the air over a shark to prove a point? that's what cupcakes have become here in nyc.

beth harpaz of the san jose mercury news breaks down the nyc cupcake craze for us right in her opening sentence--"this city is crazy for cupcakes. there are cupcake classes and cupcake tours, lines down the block at cupcake bakeries, a cupcake tea at a five-star hotel, and a cupcake truck with 6,000 followers on twitter." according to melanie underwood, who teaches cupcake classes at the institute of culinary education, "you'd think it would reach its peak but it hasn't—people are still into cupcakes, and i don't see it slowing down." awesome...looking forward to cupcakes really taking off.

harpaz also gives a rundown of the places stoking the nyc cupcake craze flames. magnolia's the most well known culprit, but there's also cupcake cafe, which has been around for over twenty years. there are vegan cupcakes (babycakes nyc), a cupcake truck (cupcakestop), cupcakes made with miso & tofu (kyotofu) & a hoighty-toighty $25 cupcake tea (the ritz-carlton). basically, if you're into cupcakes, there are no shortage of options, but really, i think it's about time that we moved on from the cupcake & started a new, exciting dessert craze. my vote is for spotted dick. if i don't see spotted dick on the lips of food bloggers by this time next year, i'll feel seriously let down.