Tribeca foodies
“Whatever happened to that guy,” Tracy Nieporent joked about celebrity chef David Bouley, at a Taste of Tribeca preview cocktail party event last Friday night. Nieporent likes to point out that his brother Drew hired Bouley to be Montrachet’s first chef, but leaves out the part about Bouley forging his own successful path in the neighborhhod.
The Nieporents did alright without Bouley anyway, building the Tribeca-based empire, the Myriad Restaurant Group. Tracy and Bouley were two of the night’s honorees because they are among a small handful of neighborhood restaureteurs fortunate enough to stay in business for Taste’s 20 years, and civic-minded enough to help out the event, which benefits the nabe’s elementary schools.
Although the party was at Bouley Botanical, Bouley was out of town. The other restaurants honored were Bubby’s Tribeca, Duane Park Patisserie, Gigino Trattoria, The Odeon and Walker’s, in addition to Drew’s Tribeca Grill, which he opened with Robert de Niro. and Bouley’s Bouley.
The mostly Downtown chic crowd (we’re counting everyone except us) sampled some tasty hors d’oeuvres from Bouley’s Botanical.
We’ll give best dressed award to Buxton Midyette, whose white cotton tuxedo-looking jacket drew many eyes and compliments.
Midyette, a parent leader at Tribeca’s P.S. 150, told us it was the one-year anniversary of when the Dept. of Ed. revealed its scheme to kick the school out of the neighborhood. Midyette and other parents organized to successfully block the plan, and as a result they formed a new Downtown advocacy group, Build Schools Now, which is trying to, well, get more schools built Downtown.
Score 1 for Big Government
Yes Shakespeare, brevity is indeed the soul of wit (notwithstanding our lengthening of the phrase), which is one of the reasons we were impressed when we recently noticed the 3-word Twitter description for the National Park Service’s @NatlParkService.
“America’s Best Idea,” may be the best handle description around for a government agency, and certainly indicates the service is more than a worthy steward for Downtown treasures like Lady Liberty and Federal Hall.
