A Self – Indulgent Interview With Mike Lee of Studiofeast

by Mike Barish on

Last year, Gadling’s own Grant Martin wrote about Studiofeast, a New York-based underground eating club. Since then, Studiofeast has thrown several more semi-secret culinary events that have occasionally included guest chefs such as Ilan Hall (winner of Top Chef Season 2). This past weekend, Studiofeast joined forces with four other eating clubs to throw the two-night Undergrounds Unite event at a secret location in Manhattan.

Now seemed like the perfect time to revisit Studiofeast and learn more about the seductive world of underground eating. And what better way to do that than with an interview with the creator of Studiofeast, Mike Lee?

(Full disclosure: I am friends with Mike and his Studiofeast partner, Derrick Yuen. I usually help out at Studiofeast events and get drunk for free with great regularity.)

For people who have never heard of an underground eating club, give us the simplest definition you can. The bastard child of your next door neighbor’s dinner party and a restaurant.

Now describe your eating club, Studiofeast, in a haiku.
Two Asians cook food
Thirty one people enter a loft
Mike Barish is here?

How did you end up joining forces with four other underground eating clubs to throw Undergrounds Unite? The girls at Homeslice West approached me about bringing Studiofeast to this event they were planning, Undergrounds Unite. I’m not sure how they first heard of Studiofeast and I didn’t know a lot about Homeslice West at the time, but I think we quickly passed each other’s basic, level 1 foodie litmus tests with a shared love for quality BBQ, Mac & Cheese, and Fried Chicken. From there, I started throwing ideas into the pot about Undergrounds Unite, created the logo and website, etc. But they were the marshmallow of the rice krispie treat the whole time. They did great work pulling everything together, and getting our hands all sticky.

So was it more like the Justice League or Voltron? The other supperclubs cook with a decidedly more western style, while Studiofeast leans heavily on the Asian side. So I guess it was the Justice League granting a work visa for Voltron to come over from Japan. I have 6 more weeks left in the group, unless I marry one of them.

Is the underground food scene in New York as competitive as the restaurant business is? I don’t think so, and I hope it doesn’t get that way. The thing is, we aren’t actually restaurants where we should be fighting tooth and nail for customers. It’s all about fostering something with more of a communal feel. Even though we seem exclusive with passwords and guestlists, it’s only because we: a) operate occasionally, so we’re limited in terms of capacity, and b) we need a little more control over who gets into the door because it’s a clandestine sort of operation (and to filter out douchebags).

In the end, we’re all rooted in making something that’s interesting and connects people. Even though we strive for great food to hit the table, this isn’t about Michelin stars, Zagat ratings, or getting Frank Bruni to love you. It’s about packaging an experience that’s uniquely compelling and honest.

How is Studiofeast different than the other clubs out there? The collection of people that help me run Studiofeast as well as the people that end up at our feasts. That’s the difference. I’ve been very fortunate to have chanced upon some great individuals over the course of this project and it’s those people who put the color in Studiofeast. One of our hosts (who shall remain nameless) recently quipped to a guest that he’d “bring out farm animals” to the table just in case his attention waned between courses. How great is that? What a commitment to excellence. It’s too bad the offer was made after the beef entree was served. Old Bessie was cute (and tasty).

People throw the word “foodie” around a lot when these clubs come up in conversation. And foodie has taken on a bit of a pretentious connotation. I guess my question is, Why are you so pretentious? I am so totally above this question.

Gadling is a travel blog, so let’s talk travel a little bit so that my bosses don’t get too pissed off. What place that you’ve visited has the most interesting food scene? Japan all the way! For me, one of the most notable examples of how interesting Japanese food culture is comes from visiting a department store Depachika in Tokyo, like Isetan or Takashimaya. There are probably a hundred or more food counters in one of those, each just focusing on a narrow category of food. I love that, because they’ve just committed themselves to one thing and doing it really, really well. And since they’re all in one place, you can literally graze for hours and pick up so many new things in one spot. It’s so opposite to what we have in America, where we have the mall food court, and it mostly sucks. If I told you to visit New York and have a serious meal in the basement of Macy’s, you’d laugh your ass off. There’s simply nothing like a Depachika in the States, and there are probably only a few dozen equivalents to it around the world in other countries.

Underground eating clubs are, by definition, not mainstream. How do you find similarly clandestine activities when you’re outside of New York? I’d suggest visiting the Ghetto Gourmet site to see what’s happening underground eating club-wise in your area of interest. They’re a great resource for this sort of thing and have a wide reach across the country. Also, to the extent possible, latch onto someone who’s a local and just follow without asking questions for a while. Even if that person has no idea what he/she is doing in terms of food, you’re bound to gain some kernel of truth about how other people live. This especially applies when traveling internationally. Talk to your Japanese bartender, or the Icelandic girl at the fermented shark counter and you’ll rarely be led astray. And if you do, then it makes for an even better story, doesn’t it?

Let’s play food word association. I’ll name a place and you tell me your thoughts on their food in one word.

Italy: Delicious

Spain: Reallydelicious
Japan: Reallyreallydelicious
Your kitchen: Reallyreallydeliciousinaporkysortofway

If you could take one dish that you’ve eaten from each place you have traveled in order to create your ultimate international menu, what would you pick?
This is by no means a complete list, but from recent travels:
Spain: Jamon Iberico & Manchego Cheese
Morocco: Merguez sausages straight off the grill in the central market
Iceland: Skyr & an Icelandic Hot Dog with remoulade and crunions
Sweden: Fish stew from Salu Hall and the meatballs from Pelikan
Tokyo: Daiwa Sushi and, of course, the Ramen.
Osaka: Okonomiyaki and Takoyaki
Sterling Heights, Michigan: The shrimp fried rice and egg roll from my parents’ restaurant, the Golden Wheel. I’ve been eating this all my life and it keeps me centered.

When you’re not being a pretentious foodie, what foods do you slum it with? My girlfriend makes the best Buffalo Wings with the Blue Cheese baked into skin. It’s only categorically slumming it, because they’re absolutely amazing and I’d pay top dollar for them anywhere. Also of note are Spam, Slim Jims, Cup of Noodles, General Tso’ Chicken, and Gray’s Papaya.

And to close us out, an SAT-style analogy for you. Studiofeast is to food as ________ is to sex. A Caligula-style Roman orgy…with farm animals.

You can sign up for Studiofeast’s mailing list at their website. And you can read more about the first Undergrounds Unite event here.

‘Megacities’ Film Review: An eye-opening tour of the world’s greatest cities

by Jerry Guo on

Think you know New York or Moscow? That you’ve seen all the sights in Mexico City or even took a tour of the slums of Mumbai? Well, you haven’t seen anything until you watch Megacities by Michael Glawogger, one of my favorite documentaries. It’ll take you to places and people in these four megacities that you’ve never seen. Oh, and the cinematography!

“I don’t use beauty filters!” says Austrian filmmaker Michael Glawogger, concerning his 1998 documentary, Megacities. “If the place wouldn’t have beauty in itself, it’s not possible for me to make it look beautiful.” Through a mastery of cinema aesthetics-from color and composition to the mixing of the soundtrack and manipulation of the scene transitions-Glawogger infused the apocalyptic urban wastelands he saw, a world populated by blue-dyed men, knife-wielding hustlers, and sagging prostitutes in the nude, with an aura of the surreal.

This film reject standard documentary conventions, such as the use of voiceovers and a strict narrative arc; yet they ultimately offer, through their flipbook storytelling structure, a coherent narrative of a world in flux, buffeted by unseen forces of globalization.

Glawogger noticeably restages many scenes in Megacities, and while some shots were staged due to logistical reasons (for instance, hiring extras for a scene inside a train carriage since there were too many bystanders in the way), other shots were so fantastical in their intimacy that they require a conscious suspension of disbelief. Two particular scenes, both involving Tony the New York hustler, are particularly salient to the degree that they were staged.

The first involves Tony hustling a young 20-somethings man, whose eyes dart every which way in suspicion-but never in the direction of the camera. The target is led to believe that for $60, he can have an hour “to do anything you want” with a prostitute. The camera follows him up the stairs to the prostitute’s alleged room, where a gruff stranger (a man, no less) answers the door and promptly slams it in his face.

This scene stretches the imagination: why did the target never question the presence of the camera, or acknowledge it? Why didn’t he display any emotions after finding out he had been hustled, or direct his anger to the cameraman, for that matter? The cognitive dissonance resolves itself once the viewer realizes Glawogger hired the target, albeit without telling him the exact context of the gig. “So, to a degree, those people also didn’t know what was going to happen. And it almost looks like what it looked like when I saw him really do it,” explains Glawogger.

The second, more controversial scene, involves Tony once again hustling a man, this time someone slightly older and of Persian descent. The two go up to a room, where both Tony and the target completely undress. As they are about to have sex, Tony pulls out a box-cutter and mugs the man; in the process, he smacks him on the head in intimidation.

This scene pushes the limits of what one would consider a documentary (and one reason you should go watch the film). Granted, such intimacy is logistically impossible to film, as Glawogger elaborates, “If you’re in a small room and somebody robs some other preson or even if there’s a private conversation between a couple, that’s not, in that sense, ‘documentary’ filmmaking-that even though you’re there it will happen anyway.” Thus, the resulting image fulfills the voyeuristic urge of a viewer in a similar, but more corporeal manner than that of a fiction biopic of a New York hustler.

Although we witness Tony hustling his marks, in another sense, we see Glawogger hustling Tony. Here, Glawogger subverts the traditional role of the documentary filmmaker as one who assigns, rather than records, the dynamics of social actors within his gaze. Ironically, the most powerful scene from this story, and possibly the film, is unscripted: the sight of Tony, high on heroin and splayed out on a couch, ranting on about the realities of his life. Although his words are visceral, the very image of this hustler at his most vulnerable, with eyes drooping under the lull of a drug addiction and his bare chest drenched in sweat, says more about the human condition and his alienation in this urban jungle than any of the staged scenes. The section on Tony ends here as he drifts off, mid-speech, into a drug-laced stupor.

Part 2 tomorrow

National Geographic takes you behind the scenes of One Bryant Park

by Scott Carmichael on

Here at Gadling we have a thing for Skyscrapers from around the world. We’ve posted about mega tall structures in Dubai, Mexico City and even shown how bamboo helps make tall buildings in Hong Kong.

It’s time to bring things closer to home, thanks to National Geographic. This Thursday (November 6th) at 9PM ET/PT, you’ll be able to watch the world premiere of their newest show; Man-Made: Ultimate Skyscraper.

Of course, this is not your average skyscraper. National Geographic is giving you a behind the scenes look at One Bryant Park, which is set to become the second tallest building in New York City, and one of the world’s most energy efficient skyscrapers.

This 1200ft skyscraper is due to open later this year, at a total cost of over $1 Billion. Once completed, it will become the new home for Bank of America.

New York City package deal from Carlton Hotel

by Annie Scott on

Want to have a classy winter rendezvous in New York City? Between December 21st, 2008, and March 15th, 2009, The Carlton on Madison Avenue has a droolworthy “Winter in the City” package deal.

“The Carlton on Madison Avenue has a cozy ‘Winter in the City’ package, which combines comfy delights, including a ‘Comfort Foods’ menu featuring dishes such as truffled mac & cheese, poached lobster, and peanut butter hot chocolate, exclusively created for guests opting for the package, and passes to ice-skate at Rockefeller Center.”

The package, which starts at a reasonable NYC price of $385 (pre-taxes and gratuities) per night, includes a 2-night stay at the luxury Madison Avenue Carlton Hotel, a private consultation with a furrier at Saks (I know, right?), a New York City snow globe welcome gift, and all the grand amenities of the Big Apple.

If I didn’t live here, I would beg for this for Christmas. Contact The Carlton for more information and availability!

A New Supersonic Passenger Jet on the Horizon

by Josh Lew on

Five years ago, the famed Concorde supersonic jet made its final flight. Most people thought that when the final French-designed craft set down, it would be the last anyone would hear about supersonic passenger jets for a long time.

But one American company is making big and brash talk about its Concorde-like craft, which could be in the air in 2012 and ready to carry passengers by 2015. The Aerion Supersonic Jet will not be as large or spectacular as the Concorde. But the manufacturer claims that it will be able to travel at mach 1.6, a velocity that will allow it to reach New York from London in 3 hours.

It wasn’t lack of speed that killed the Concorde, though. It was high operating costs. A spokesman for Aerion claims that new technology can keep the cost of flying at supersonic speeds from overwhelming airlines and operators:
“Concorde was a beautiful machine and a product of its time, but technology has moved forward and new designs such as the Aerion jet offer greater efficiency. Concorde was withdrawn due to high operating cost, which Aerion technology has successfully overcome.” The company has already received 50 orders for the plane, which will retail for more than $70 million.

[Via The Daily Mail]