Todd English
Foodwise, there aren’t too many things NYC doesn’t have. Sounds arrogant, but it’s true. One thing our food-tastic city didn’t really have until now: a glorious food hall like the ones in Tokyo—a gigantic gleaming space outfitted with all manner of shiny stations selling everything from gorgeous cheeses to freshly shucked oysters to made-to-order sushi and grilled meats and noodle bowls and hallucinatory pastries. Unless you count the Cellar at Macy’s, which I don’t. Or the Grand Central Market, which is pretty solid but ultimately too railroady, in both design and location, to be as wondrous as food halls like KaDeWe in Berlin, or Harrod’s in London, or the dozen depachikas (food floors) like Isetan in Tokyo.
Enter the Plaza Food Hall by Todd English, a strange subterranean U-shaped space at the Plaza Hotel that nonetheless comes the closest NYC has to the sort of carnivalesque food fantasyland I’m talking about. It officially opens on Friday, June 4. At the media preview the other night, I had a juicy mini prime rib sandwich at one station, glistening yellowtail sashimi at another, gingery pork dumplings and a sesame-oil-slicked soba noodle salad at another, thin-crust pizza at another. Todd English was roaming around, with that cartoon-like presence he always seems to bring to a room: the oversized tanned head, the permanently smoldering eyes, the goodtoseeya smile, that misfit glamour of outsize celebrity. I’m not entirely clear on his involvement in all the food stations here. Doesn’t matter. Whatever he is or isn’t doing, the food on offer is highly appealing so far.
I’m rarely kicking around near the Plaza Hotel—the economy being what it is, and my self-inflicted freelance status being heavenly but not conducive to a massively bloated bank account, my Bergdorf’s habit is on hold for now, dahling. But that part of Midtown is always hurting for good lunch options, and this will add one. Plus, the Plaza butts right up against the south entrance to Central Park, so I’ll likely be hitting up the Food Hall for last minute lunch-on-the-lawn or Summerstage purposes—if I can get it together to make the St. Vincent and Public Enemy shows, say.
Btw, things not to do: Smuggle cookies in tissue paper in your purse on a sweltering night. I put two chocolate cookies from the media preview dessert table in my bag and sped out to Union Pool in Williamsburg, where my friend Dave Smith and his must-see band Smoota were playing that night. I made it just in time. The cookies? Melted all over my bag. Obviously. At least I didn’t try to smuggle back soba noodles.