This summer, Eater and addictive recipe site food52 are teaming up to hold our first-ever high-stakes New York City restaurant competition. It shall be known as The Bib.
A bit of background, you say? Certainly. Each fall, food52's Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, along with secret mastermind Charlotte Druckman, host a cookbook competition called The Piglet, using guest judges and bracketed heats to choose the book of the year. (Here's the Piglet fun from last year.) Now, it's the NYC restaurant industry's turn.
Through a highly scientific process involving spreadsheets, tallies, and an overtaxed whiteboard, The Bib Nomination Committee narrowed down a list of au courant restaurants—old enough to have settled in but young enough to be new—to a strong group of 16 competitors. We then asked 15 New York notables—actors, writers, comedians, musicians, a restaurant critic—to try two restaurants each and choose one to advance in the competition. They have done so, and as such, the results of The Bib are ready to be unleashed on the world.
Here's how this will work. Every day over the course of the next three weeks, starting Wednesday, July 27, two restaurants will go head-to-head and one of the judges listed below will decide which advances. When all's said and done, the final winner, plus a People's Choice Award, will be announced at a grand soiree on August 15.
So, tune in, remember to vote, and get ready for a fun party come August.
The following is the complete list of competitor restaurants and judges for The Bib:
The Restaurants:
ABC Kitchen
Fatty Cue
Kin Shop
Lincoln
Locanda Verde
M.Wells
Ma Peche
Maialino
Marea
Minetta Tavern
Rubirosa
Red Rooster
Prime Meats
Takashi
Torrisi Italian Specialties
Van Daag
The Judges:
Michael Angelakos
Andy Borowitz
Brian Chase
Dennis Crowley
Paul Feig
Adam Gopnik
Gael Greene
Zoe Kazan
Eugene Mirman
Deborah Needleman
Regina Schrambling
Choire Sicha
Peter Som
Ricky Van Veen
Reggie Watts
· Food 52 [Official Site]