Intel 8/31: Canal Street Gets A Food Hall, A New Gray’s Papaya & Trading Guns For Pizza

August 31, 2016

A Giant Food Hall Is Opening on Canal Street

Flickr / sopasnor /CC BY

Following the launch of spaces like Urbanspace Vanderbilt, Gotham West Market, Le District, Hudson Eats, and of course, the forthcoming Anthony Bourdain project, Manhattan’s Chinatown is the latest neighborhood to get its own giant food hall. Slated for a November opening, the Canal Street Market (on Canal between Broadway and Lafayette) will house various retail and food vendors, including, hopefully, some that are actually Chinese.

Gray’s Papaya Returns to Eighth Avenue

Flickr / David Joyce / CC BY

Don’t call it a comeback, but after five years with only one location remaining (on West 72nd Street), beloved cheap eats staple Gray’s Papaya is opening a second storefront. The new location will be on Eighth Avenue between West 39th and 40th Streets, not far from the Gray’s that shuttered in 2011. Thankfully, this new Gray’s has plans to stick around for quite awhile, as evidenced by its impressive 20-year lease. Long live Gray’s.

The Bitter Future of Coffee

Climate change, AKA global warming, is not only turning the pleasure of raw oysters into a potentially lethal act — it’s also killing off coffee. According to a new report by the Climate Institute, up to half of the total global farmland that is currently suitable for growing coffee is poised to be become unusable over the next few decades, wreaking havoc not only on the coffee industry — and your precious Frappuccinos — but on more than 120 million of the world’s poorest people, for whom coffee production is the only viable source of income.

What can you do? If you really love coffee, only buy brands that “provide a fair return to farmers and their communities while helping to build their capacity to adapt to climate change,” says John Connor, the chief executive of the Climate Institute.

Let Pizza Lead the Way

Pixabay

A forward-thinking pizza shop owner in Indianapolis, Indiana, is tired of the violent crime that’s plagued his neighborhood, so he’s decided to do something about it. Donald Dancy, the owner of D&C pizza, has introduced a standing offer of an extra-large pizza in exchange for a gun off the street, no questions asked. “I can see kids, 14 through 18, coming in here and buying a pizza and their guns fall out,” Dancy told Fox 59. If local police are on board with the plan, Dancy has pledged to keep the guns in a safe location until they can be picked up by the proper authorities. Is it possible to build a pizza that’s worth an actual gun? Try me. 

What Makes Mr. Chow So Popular? It’s Not the Food

A New York Times profile of Mr. Chow, the bi-coastal celebrity hotspot from larger-than-life restaurateur (and ex-husband of legendary Vogue director Grace Coddington) Michael Chow, shows that it’s not really the food (zero stars from the Times in 2006) that makes the place so special. Rather, it’s the ambiance (“To this day, a champagne cart rolls up alongside your table when you sit down at Mr. Chow. ‘Champagne is luxury,’ [Chow] explained. ‘There’s no luxury without fantasy. And no fantasy without sex’”) and the showmanship (“It’s all about theater,” Chow says). Despite the fact that the food is, by all accounts, rather underwhelming and incredibly expensive, fans of Mr. Chow’s have included everyone from Andy Warhol and Basquiat to the Google-crashing lip kit queen herself, Kylie Jenner.