••• Congrats to Houseman on its two-star rave from the New York Times! “However they do it, this is a roast chicken that you want to settle down with and take apart piece by piece. Most of the food at Houseman is like that. You don’t taste it in politely appreciative nibbles. You throw yourself at it until there’s nothing left. No menu layout can convey this quality, but when you find a restaurant that has it, you come back.”
••• From a New York Times article about Anthony Bourdain’s food hall on Pier 57 (at W. 15th St.): “A public park is planned for the roof of the pier, which will also be home to the Tribeca Film Festival for two to three weeks each year.” The festival is usually two weeks, so that “two-to-three weeks” either includes set-up and break-down time or the festival is planning on expanding. Also, this must mean the lawsuit got ironed out.
••• JR, the artist who created the ballerina mural on Sixth Ave., has made a short film, Ellis, about Ellis Island and starring Robert De Niro. (JR had pasted archival images of immigrants in the hospital complex.) The trailer:
FYI, you can still go out to Ellis Island and see the JR work there in the abandoned hospital complex. You can only see it as part of a hard hat tour, because the hospital is truly abandoned with no plans for restoration, but it is very worthwhile. The art is beautiful and affecting, plus seeing the abandoned spaces really takes your imagination back in time.
FYI, you can still go out to Ellis Island and see the JR work there in the abandoned hospital complex. You can only see it as part of a hard hat tour, because the hospital is truly abandoned with no plans for restoration, but it is very worthwhile. The art is beautiful and affecting, plus seeing the abandoned spaces really takes your imagination back in time.