clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Trump’s Son Heckled Outside Quality Italian, Ludlow Coffee Supply Axes the Barber, and More Intel

New, 1 comment

East Village Burritos & Bar morphs into an Indian restaurant, plus more news and gossip from around NYC

If you buy something from an Eater link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics policy.

[The dining room at Virginia’s in the East Village]
[Daniel Krieger]

While leaving Quality Italian in Midtown on Thursday night, Eric Trump and his wife Lana were heckled by passersby who shouted things like, "Eric — fuck your father," and "Love trumps hate." Eric did not engage with them.

— As noted last week, Corfu Grill in Forest Hills received a slew of one-star reviews on Yelp after its owner, Georgios Aspiotis, posted a bunch of pro-Trump message on social media, including an election day selfie with a ballot and a note: "From tomorrow we grab them by there pussy" [sic]. Aspiotis later told Gothamist that the update was "a joke between me and my friends." After users of a neighborhood Facebook group started talking about boycotting the restaurant, Aspiotis published an apology, which was later removed by the admins. At the end of last week, Aspiotis said: "I’m not even following politics....People are upset because [Donald Trump] is the president of the country and they are angry with everyone around them." Yelp is now monitoring Corfu Grill’s page, but it’s still full of angry one-star reviews from the last four days.

Ludlow Coffee Supply, the hybrid cafe/barbershop from the owner of Sweet Chick, no longer has any barber stools. Now it’s just a cafe, but proprietor John Seymour is applying for a beer and wine license.

The space on the corner of First Avenue and East Sixth Street that housed East Village Burritos & Bar recently reopened as a completely new restaurant called Spicewala Bar Indian Cuisine. Over the last two years, this cursed corner was also home to Figaro Cafe Bistro Bar & Grill and Banjara.

Before he was a chef, The Nomad’s James Kent was a graffiti artist who tagged subway trains and painted 50 foot murals. Kent went to LaGuardia High School, the inspiration for Fame. The chef tells Kate Krader: "It takes years to get really good at graffiti, it’s like cooking." He recently picked up his spray cans again to do a mural for the office of a restaurant tech company called Salido.

Freddy Loeser, the 73-year-old proprietor of Loeser’s Delicatessen in the Riverdale section of The Bronx, says that he’s not worried about closing any time soon. "It won't be an issue...because we take care of it like family," Loeser tells DNAinfo. The key to his restaurant’s success: "We make everything....It's always fresh, and we treat people right."

Andy Ricker has a candid chat with Eater LA about the state of his bi-coastal Pok Pok empire: "This year I’ve closed three restaurants. They’re all noodle concepts, in three different markets: Phat Thai here, Phat Thai in New York, and Sen Yai in Portland. And we closed them all for the same reason: they were a nightmare to manage, because in order to execute the noodles to the quality that I want, you have to hire cooks who are the same skill level as the ones I hire at Pok Pok. Guys who have that skill level aren’t interested in making pad thai and pad see ew over and over again, they’re just not."

— Unlike its sibling shops, the location of Organic Avenue on the corner of Ninth Street and Third Ave is not coming back to life. Instead, this storefront will soon house a place called Vivi Bubble Tea.

Ludlow Street is getting a gourmet French fry stand called 375 Degrees. The frites will come with topping options like carne asada and pastrami & sauerkraut

— And finally, here’s a look at the mighty tortilla machine inside Tortilleria Chinantla in East Williamsburg: