GOOD TIMING

Timesheets. Everyone's least favorite thing to do at the end of the week, and the bane of every HR person's Monday morning. Really though, who wants to fill out their timesheet at the end of a long week when Friday Happy Hour is calling? Aha, says JWT's Agência CASA in Brazil. How's about we place this refrigerator full of beer on automatic lock-down until everybody in the agency fills them out? The result? Timesheets done. Beer in hand. Problem solved.

WHO'S FOR BRIDGE?

Totally not booze or food related, but I'd like to invite all you wonderful folk to this:

My dear friends at Mythic Bridge have been hard at work building multiple large film-based interactive art installations that are designed to give a fun, behind-the-scenes look at some movie magic. This means that each and every guest of this event will leave with their very own 'movie moment' that they can share with friends.
 
Today from 5-8pm, it will be open to the public for free. This time is dedicated to kids aged 13-21 to come and experience what Mythic Bridge does first hand. While tonight it's time for the adults to come out and play. Tickets are $100 which includes open bar, delicious hors d'oeuvres, special screenings and access to all of the interactive installations.

I'm going to be helping out with catering, so I guess it does relate to food afterall! Why not start your weekend off with something worthy and fun? Hope to see you there. And if you can't come along but want to support Mythic Bridge, you can make a donation here.

SEX. AND PIZZA. AND SEX.

Does anybody remember that British movie, Dancin Thru the Dark? It provided me with maybe the most brilliant sex and pizza quote ever: 

Guy: Wanna come back to my place?
Girl: What for?
Guy: A fuck and a pizza.
Girl: [pause] Is it a wholemeal pizza?"

Yesterday, I thought of it again when I went to the opening of Ashley Macknica's exhibition Pizza is my Lover at L'Asso EV. Well, what could New Yorkers possibly love more than pizza? Sex, of course.

Pizza posed in S&M gear and fishnets? Pizza in all of its cheese-melting, grease dripping glory posing at the beach? Mouth watering? Well, get thee to L'Asso EV to experience the sexy pies in real life, then take home the calendar so you can have your own personal pizza peep show every night of the week.

THIS IS DA BOMB

I know, I know, I haven't updated this blog for about a million years. Me and this blog...we're in an 'it's complicated' kind of relationship. Me and this chocolate Calorie Bomb by German design student Raphael Volkmer however? It's love at first site.

The hand-grenade design was apparently inspired by the fact that the average European household consumes over 2.2lbs of chocolate every Easter. Explosive? Pah. I probably consume that much chocolate on a Sunday evening in front of MadMen.

BLOODY HALLOWEEN, BLOODY MARY

You can keep your black vodkas and steaming elixirs; this Halloween I'm paying tribute to my costume (a Pan Am girl) with everyone's favorite in-flight cocktail - the Bloody Mary. I take mine without horseradish but extra Tabasco.

Ingredients

- 1 1/2 oz vodka

- 1 (46 fluid ounce) bottle tomato juice

- 1 1/2 lemons, juiced

- Worcestershire sauce (as much as you damn well please)

- Black Pepper

- Tabasco sauce

- Celery stick

Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Pour in the vodka, (my latest favorite is Kanon Organic Vodka), tomato juice lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce. Shake slightly then pour into a highball. Season with black pepper and the Tabasco to taste. Serve with the celery stick.

Now please fasten your seatbelts as we're expecting a turbulent ride...

MMMMORSO

I've been known to get a nose bleed if I go anywhere after Chelsea and before Harlem on my eating adventures. Yes, I'll go to 108th street for the perfect Mexican sandwich and I'll happily make a bajillion subway transfers to get me some Greek food in Astoria. But generally I'll completely ignore Midtown, well because it's Midtown.

Not so recently however, as I've found myself dining Midtown East twice in a matter of weeks. One I won't go into, (Fillet mignon at a strip club. Don't ask.) but the other, is well worth shouting about from the rooftops.

Morso is the newest restaurant and bar from Pino Luongo; the chef who brought authentic Tuscan cuisine to NYC back in the 80's. Pino, Anthony Bourdain's mentor, hasn't opened a new restaurant in nine years. So all eyes are on this new venture, and I have to say, it makes for quite a vibrant sight.

Retro graphics inspired by old school European posters adorn the walls of this airy restaurant where the food is inspired by little bites of inspiration from all over Italy and the Mediterranean. It's these 'little bites' that gave the restaurant its name (Morso means bite in Italian) and the menu; with the majority of dishes available in morso (smaller servings meant to be ordered in multiples to share) and tutto (full size entrees).

Having been involved on the creative concepts side of things, I was invited to the friends and family opening; where we ate, drank, and well, drank some more. The food was delicious, and the wine list was super extensive offering so many great Italian varities and vintages. And of course, it was fun to be a part of the trying and testing process. We sampled lots of everything (what better way to please me?) with standouts being the Carciofi (a crispy artichoke salad with pickled fennel, olives, arugula and a citrus dressing) and pan roasted tuna with orzo, tomatoes, fennel, artichokes and a sun-dried tomato pesto. On a return visit a few weeks later we couldn't resist the intoxicating smell of just-in white truffles from Alba.

With daily specials like roasted suckling pig (roll on Wednesday), and Barolo braised short ribs with buttermilk mashed potatoes (Sunday dinner anyone?), it seems that Pino, despite his somewhat bad boy reputation for dissing the new Italian culinary heroes in town, is rather wisely letting the food do the talking. And to quote, errr, myself, "Silence is golden when the mouth is full."

Morso, 420 E.59th St, btwn 1st Ave & Sutton Place.

THE BACON ALPHABET

Ah, bacon. The stuff of dream breakfast sandwiches, infused bourbons and marmalade (head to Paulie Gee's for that last one.) Yes, you are a delicious, versatile foodstuff and it's about time that you have a suitably schmokin' font made in your honor. Behold, The Bacon Alphabet, by Brooklyn based photographer, Henry Hargreaves. Now, bacon or cake? That's a tough, but tasty decision to have on one's plate, or text document.

TASTEMAKERS

When it comes to drinking, how much choice do we really need...or want? I'm not really the best person to answer that, because I never know when my last drink is my last drink. But when the question came up between booze legends Dre Masso (pictured) and The Breakfast Group’s Eric Yu; the debate turned into a whole new bar concept, where there'll only be one brand of each spirit. But rest assured, there's no brand sponsorship or marketeers heavy-weighting their brand to the bar front this time.

Instead a panel of the UK's leading drinks experts gathered to decide on this 'best-of-the-best' drinks policy, with shortlisted liquors put through their paces to decide which ONE spirit from each major category can be crowned ‘the best’.

Dre explains: ‘We aim to cut through the brand-speak and get back to what bars should be founded, and judged, upon - the best drinks, served by the best in the business." So you won’t be asked to pick from hundreds of similar sounding rums, feel pressured to order a suitably expensive vodka or get your head around fancy filtration or distillation terms.’

The world's finest spirits with no interupptions? I'm in.

L.T.D at The Social, London - Now until Dec 31st.

TWEET PIE

I'm not a very patient person. I get annoyed waiting for things and I generally want to skip ahead on everything so that I can get to the end result quicker. I do this a lot with recipes and have, more than once, been left with a half cooked dish or a ruined pudding - because I just can't bloody wait. Oh...I was supposed to cook that lamb for an hour and a half, then turn it over and cook it again for about a fortnight while it takes it slow sweet time? Aha, uh-huh. NO.

Clever then, that I can now cook from the world's shortest recipe book - each recipe being 140 characters, or as short as a Tweet. Conceived by Belling, all 'twecipes' in Tweet Pie (sound a bit like Jonathan Ross here) have been tried and tested, and all proceeds from the slae of the book go to FoodCycle - a charity which combines young volunteers, surplus food (all that perfectly decent food thrown away from supermarkets and the like) and free kitchen space to create positive change in local communities and combat food poverty in the UK.

I'm not sure if the end results will be quite as rewarding as a slow cooked lamb, but at least I'm likely to read the whole recipe.

Tweet Pie - $10 - Buy it!

A HOT CUP OF COCO (CHANEL)

NYFW is in full swing and NYC is certainly starting to show signs of the fall season approaching too. My umbrella comes with me everywhere, I tackle daily, if not hourly wardrobe dilemas (oh ballet flats, I love you, but you really don't hold your own in the rain) and all I want to do is sit in a cosy bar drinking something that makes me warm and woozy.

Behold then, this wonderful concoction. Fashion's version of a Irish Coffee; meet the Cocoa XO No.5 by Patrón tequila. Black really is the new, well, black, in this deliciously dark ode to the fashion goddess herself - Coco Chanel. Be careful of that red lipstick on the mug!

Cocoa XO No. 5 

Ingredients:

40ml Patrón XO Café

Strong brewed coffee

Freshly whipped cream

Cocoa powder

Method:

In a heated coffee mug add Patrón XO Cafe, fill to within 2cm with coffee, top with freshly whipped cream. Dust with cocoa powder.