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Hospitality Under Siege: Gordo's Cantina and Pizzette

Hospitality Under Siege: Gordo's Cantina and Pizzette

We’ve come quite a distance from the virally virginal days of early March when we were still adjusting to certain grim realities I need not elaborate upon. Since then, the public’s psychological pendulum has swung, in some quarters at least, from caution and prudence to the reckless impulsiveness of ill-informed hoople-heads (e.g., the heavily armed, wannabe militia men who cowed the Michigan State Legislature last month). But most people aren’t reacting to the crisis in a ma

Bushwick's Source For BBQ Brisket Pho Reopens For Delivery and Pickup

Bushwick's Source For BBQ Brisket Pho Reopens For Delivery and Pickup

Johnny Huynh, Bushwick native and owner of Lucy's Kitchen These are, to put it lightly, keenly anxious times for the restaurant and bar business in New York. There are the hourly and/or tipped employees, the suppliers and the proprietors whose livelihoods are threatened; and then there are those who, in the weeks, months or even years leading up to Governor Cuomo’s coronavirus-related bar/restaurant closure announcement, had been in the midst of unveiling new contributions to

Money is Power : Support Black Businesses

Money is Power : Support Black Businesses

Let’s assume, for a moment, that blatant, vicious police brutality perpetrated against black people has only recently compelled you to put a shoulder to the stalled, sputtering Greyhound bus that is America on the seemingly interminable, blood-smeared highway to the achievement of truer racial and social justice. While there are several ways to get the leaden beast to budge, one in particular allows for march-sore feet to pause in their labor, if only for a moment - while pu

Sweet Chili, Acclaimed for Creative Southeast Asian Food, To Reopen For Pickup & Delivery

Sweet Chili, Acclaimed for Creative Southeast Asian Food, To Reopen For Pickup & Delivery

Chef Lisa Fernandes with Tom Colicchio on the set of Top Chef. Here’s a (long-winded) Jeopardy question for all you Bushwegians: “A queer Toronto-born-and-raised chef living in Bushwick with multiple seasons of Top Chef under her belt whose 5-year-old Southeast Asian-centric food truck Sweet Chili morphed into a brick-and-mortar (likewise Bushwick-based) last November and then closed following the Cuomo’s decision to shutter restaurants against the COVID19 pandemic.” The answ

Hospitality Under Siege, Episode 1: Moto Distillery & Kato Sake Works

Hospitality Under Siege, Episode 1: Moto Distillery & Kato Sake Works

L to R: Marie Estrada of Moto Distillery and Shinobu Kato, owner of Kato Sake Works For those of us born into circumstances commonly, if chauvinistically, described as “First World”, the notion of security - of being cushioned like a lot of pampered, powdered Marie Antoinettes from a pitiless, fickle and treacherous universe - is very often seen as something like a birthright. Undergirding that notion is the assumption that everything, even here in one of the industrialized d

Pizzette Serves Tradition and $1 Oysters in East Williamsburg

Pizzette Serves Tradition and $1 Oysters in East Williamsburg

Steve Sciacca, longtime Bushwick restauranteur (Mominette, Bushwick Bakery), takes his last name from the coastal Sicilian town from whence came his ancestors. (“Just like Vito Corleone!” you exclaim, before being sharply admonished in the most scandalized of tones for saying something so insultingly reductive.) But his newest venture, Pizzette in East Williamsburg, borrows from Sciacca’s Sicilian heritage something far more profound than a mere name; an entire philosophy of

Bushwick Distilleries: A Guide

Bushwick Distilleries: A Guide

Compared to beer and wine-making, distillation is a violent process. Where the former substances gently bubble away under fermentation’s yeasty ministrations, distillates like whiskey, gin, rum, and tequila, result from the hellish boiling of already-fermented liquids and the subsequent condensation of highly concentrated vapors. According to Colin Spoelman, founding owner of Kings County Distillery, Staten Island was the home to America’s first distillery, a nameless entity

Your Guide to $1 Oyster Happy Hours

Your Guide to $1 Oyster Happy Hours

For centuries in New York the slippery, opalescent oyster dominated the shores, their bone white shell fragments crunching underfoot. They were so ubiquitous as to be almost an afterthought, a cheap one at that, costing nothing at all before the arrival of the Dutch. That was then. Now, a plump, innocent-looking little Kumamoto from Puget Sound will easily rob you of $3.50 in even a mid-range New York restaurant. This rampant inflation...click here for the full article. #oyst

Bushwick: A Latin American Buffet

Bushwick: A Latin American Buffet

[Editor's note: The following six paragraphs were from the writer's original edit of this Bushwick Daily article - which were not included, sadly, in the final version. Enjoy!] First of all, the superficial nature of this, a cursory survey of a group of Bushwick restaurants that constitute a kind of Latin American “buffet,” cannot be overemphasized. It is the smooth rock skipping over the glassy surface of Lake Titicaca, the long, curved knife yielding a razor thin curl of or

Local Activist to Create Music Label For Incarcerated Artists

Local Activist to Create Music Label For Incarcerated Artists

For Brooklyn activist Fury Young, Michelle Alexander’s book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” proved to be an important catalyst in the creation of Die Jim Crow, a non-profit dedicated to giving currently or formerly incarcerated musicians avenues to creative self-realization. The book concerns...click here to read the full article. #diejimcrow #furyyoung #mattfink #fattmink #organgrindcom #organgrind #hiphop #prisonart #prisonhiphop #prison

An Intro to Jazz & Classical For Plebians

An Intro to Jazz & Classical For Plebians

Somewhere along the road of our musical acculturation, we were set upon by various forces, both sinister and benign. They told us what to like and what to shun, lest we lose standing in whatever playground social circle we occupied. Various sub-genres of hip-hop, r&b, and rock were safe, while country music meant permanent exile. Meanwhile, jazz and classical were so far down the musical food chain that there wasn't even a need to be warned away from them by your supposed be

Gianluca Vacchi Creates a Masterpiece of Cringeworthy Narcissism

Gianluca Vacchi Creates a Masterpiece of Cringeworthy Narcissism

Italian pop is huge in Italy, but only occasionally reaches the shores of America, gaining a foothold for a time, only to lose it. Even the country's biggest stars are only slightly more than obscure among the majority of Americans, except for icons like Andrea Bocelli, whose oeuvre straddles...click here to read the rest of the article. #GianlucaVacchi #italianmusic #italianpop #italianpopmusic #popdust #popdust #mattfink #fattmink #organgrind #organgrindcom

Blick Bassy: Musician, Cultural Attache

Blick Bassy: Musician, Cultural Attache

Blick Bassy's new album, named for the year a key figure in Cameroon's struggle to cast off the colonial yoke was murdered, reminds us that freedom, political stability, and material security remain elusive for many African countries. While many of these countries are technically free from Western control, they continue to suffer from the effects of colonialism. All this and more is expressed in 1958, produced by Feist and Manu Chao collaborator, Renaud LeTang. From a mid-tow

New York Cinema & Popular Music: A Holy Union

New York Cinema & Popular Music: A Holy Union

While it isn't the first art form to bind itself to music, cinema has arguably achieved the closest symbiosis therein. Because while musical scores for, say, Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker" or Wagner's "Ring Cycle" are routinely listened to independent of dramatization, very few subway playlist includes selections from "Jurassic Park 2." The exception is the movie soundtrack consisting, mainly, of songs which exist entirely on their own. But such is...click here to read the re

Latin America's 36th Best Restaurant is the beauty to Guadalajara's beast

Latin America's 36th Best Restaurant is the beauty to Guadalajara's beast

Escamoles, or ant eggs, on a puree of cauliflower and parsnip, course four at Alcalde Without a doubt the jewel piercing the otherwise linty outie bellybutton of Mayor Alfaro’s recently-christened “gastronomic corridor” (being a collection of restaurants dotting Avenida Mexico between the perpetually congested Lopez Mateo and Golfo de Cortes roundabouts), Restaurante Alcalde is also a headliner on the city’s capacious culinary scene as a whole - perhaps its chief attraction,

Book Review: John A. Chakeres' First Flight

Book Review: John A. Chakeres' First Flight

Courtesy of © Daylight Community Arts Foundation I’ve often thought that, of all the things which can be glimpsed by our eyeballs across the world’s crowded panorama, that which compels the greatest attention are the multifarious objects of the modern world that weren’t created with “art” in mind. Not to say that a Dyson vacuum cleaner, for instance, isn’t designed deliberately with an eye towards some sort of rigorously thought-out design criteria, only that its function ten

Is Timothy Swischuk making America's most interesting sandwiches?

Is Timothy Swischuk making America's most interesting sandwiches?

Disclaimer: This food review is blatantly partisan: the writer is acquainted with the owner/chef of the restaurant under discussion, and is a close friend of one of his chief providers of organic produce. That being said, the reviewer is NOT receiving any sort of kick back for his troubles…thus far, at least. Driving east on highway 50 towards South Lake Tahoe, the dry, pine-speckled hills of El Dorado County rear up from the hot wastes of the Sacramento River Valley. These

Book Review: Recovered Memory

Book Review: Recovered Memory

Courtesy of © Daylight Records To be birthed and reared in one of the world’s great cities is both a boon and a misfortune. A boon because - well, that’s fairly apparent. The misfortune lies in never seeing your home metropolis with the wide eyes of a suburban or country yokel sucked into its orbit, either for the first time or on a repeat visit. There is one obvious palliative, though, that remains for those suckled at the teat of the world’s great cities who wish to exper

A Year On, Ai Wei Wei's Human Flow Is More Relevant Than Ever

Last week, on a gusty afternoon of spotless blue skies, the global refugee crisis arrived on the Upper East Side, roosting beneath the looming shadow of the Queensboro Bridge. However, its coming was heralded not by the wails of children or the echo of white supremacist gun fire - nor the mendacious fear-mongering of a presidential usurper - but by the soft tinkle of glass and restrained clatter of silver cutlery against ceramic dinnerware. Hundreds of battle-scarred donor

Sex, Death and Butterflies in Michoacan

Sex, Death and Butterflies in Michoacan

The migration of the North American monarch butterfly between Mexico and Canada is a journey of life, death and rebirth, a testament to the tenacity and ingenuity with which one generation ensures that life continues after it has alighted on its last leaf, sprig, twig, or patch of soil, the desperate flutter of wings slowing down until it lies still and dead in the sunlight, its brilliant raiment of orange-red gradually fading to the sepia tone of an old photograph. Life and

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