Adding to the festivities was a contest to Instagram the best photo, tagged with @sandboxstudio, for a prize giveaway. Guests were very creative with their submissions.
The Creative Influence.net, produced by Sandbox Studio, showcases video interviews of creative professionals who have made influential contributions in their respective fields. The project is ongoing in seeking out individuals and companies who are creative influencers.
Thanks to everyone for making this event possible, especially to Slideluckers who came out in full force to represent!
[Daddy Long Legs performs at You Can't Drown The Loud Sounds, a benefit for Norton Records.]
Epicenter of the Honky Tonk, former stomping ground of Elvis, The Man in Black, Willie Nelson, and home to Jack White (we stayed two blocks from his estate on Franklin Pike) Nashville is definitely a music town, but its budding culinary scene is nothing to stomp your feet at either. I can’t recall exactly how many “Wagon Wheel” covers I heard in my week stay, but I loved every one of them. Nashville has a sense of nostalgia that is evocative — music runs through this city whether you are at the Honky Tonk’s on Broadway like Roberts, or the three-tiered towering venue Mercy Lounge on Cannery Row. Music is not the only thing that trickles through this city. Nashville and the rest of Tennessee are home to over a dozen breweries, some of which I had the pleasure of visiting, others I settled for getting to know via a pint glass.
Our Mash Headquarters, M.L Rose Craft Beer and Burgers was the perfect spot to sample many of the local brews. My Fat Bottom Brewing Ruby Red had just the right bite to wash down the Brooklyn Burger special, with Brooklyn Brown Ale caramelized onions, crispy bacon and NY State cheddar cheese. Boasting a tap selection heavy on local and domestic breweries, I got intimate with some of my new Tennessee favorites and was eager to go visit Yazoo and Jackalope breweries, as well as Bosco’s Brew Pub where my buddy Drew prepares the daily specials to accompany their award winning beers.
Our week kicked off quickly and remained burger-centric with a Wednesday night collaboration dinner at Burger Up with Chef Philip Shyatt and his team. After four courses, seven beers, and the last bites of crispy cream bread pudding and sips of Brooklyn Black Ops, guests continued to drink and chatter long into the evening. Thanks to our new friend, a wine maker from Sonoma, so inspired by our beers that he brought a variety case of different styles and vintages from his vineyard to share with those lucky enough to linger after the meal, it wasn’t Vin Santo but made for a nice after dinner treat. I would have stayed out and partied with the gang over at 12 South Tap Room but it was time to get some rest for our Slow Supper dinner with Brandon Frohn and his team from Mason’s, the new chef-driven restaurant in the Loews Hotel.
I met Brandon in the maze that is the back of house kitchen for Loews Hotel and got to work making minted gnocchi and my braised lamb ragu. Although we were prepping in a beautiful full-equipped hotel kitchen, we were serving on site at the Peter Nappi Studio located in the old Neuhoff meat packing plant built in 1906, six blocks from downtown Nashville located on a rock bluff overlooking the Cumberland River. This boutique, home to the highest level of Italian boot craftsmanship, was a truly magical space to host our Slow Supper event benefiting Slow Food Nashville. Holly Williams, country artist and lover of all things gnocchi, graced the stage with her husband for three incredible songs, setting a laid back and boisterous tone for the evening. Ghost bottles abounding, we served smoke-wafting boxes of deviled eggs, seared scallops with Sorachi Ace, and a dessert reminiscent of my childhood featuring Flintstone push-pop sorbet made with liquid nitrogen and a sweet potato beignet with an oat and chocolate cremoix. As diners ate their frozen ice-cream shards, we relished in the warmth of the room, and picked out our dream pairs of shoes, but the price tags made it hard to do more than dream.
After working with two young talented chefs I was starting to understand the new Nashville food scene. Chock full of recommendations, I was excited to hit up some of Nashville’s favorite digs, while experiencing some of the newer gems popping up in Germantown and other newly developed neighborhoods. Nashville is undergoing a transformation much like that of Brooklyn, and many young chefs are finding themselves running off the beaten path to spots with rustic sincerity and attention to local sourcing, simple techniques and good homestyle flavors. Nashville seems as comfortable dishing out artisan extruded pastas as they do meat and three plates, and Rolf and Daughters along with City House have the Garganelli to prove it.
But if elegant home-style Italian is not your thing rest assured Monell’s has a seat for you at a big round table with a slew of wide-eyed strangers, awaiting their southern traditional Sunday meal, every day of the week. The shear quantity of plates that began to hit the table was astounding. Our only instruction was to pass to the left, as biscuits, grits, greens, beans, collards, mash, suckatash, corn pudding, brisket, gravy, fried chicken, meatloaf, banana pudding, pickles, chutney, and many more dishes hit the table in a whirlwind of food that would give even thanksgiving at my house a run for its money (and we feed 35 people). After this special family experience at Monell’s it was time to dance off my meal to the sounds of Jonathan Toubin at his NY Night Train Soul Clap & Dance-Off. Any chance I get to hang out with Jonathan is a good night. Besides being one of the kindest and most engaging people I know he knows how to spin a 45 and keep a crowd moving like no other, especially when they are competing for a free trip to NY, courtesy of Brooklyn Brewery.
The music didn’t stop there, Sandy Relief benefit for Norton Records in Brooklyn was a mash up of Brooklyn and Nashville talents Daddy Long Legs, A Bones, The Ettes and Weekend Babes. This line up at Mercy Lounge was killer and we stomped and stomped till the house came down. High Watt, on the top floor of the Mercy complex, which is also the home to a Sunday rock and roll church group (better attended then most concerts I go to) was the locale for Found Footage festival which is always a solid hour or two of laughs, and guest starring the beautifully awkward comedic genius of Kate Berlante.
Top this exciting week off with an impromptu stop at Taqueria San Luis for the biggest tamales ever (basically banana-leaf-wrapped pillows) with two scoops from Jeni’s ice cream in a Black Chocolate Stout float featured at our Togather literary series on Sunday, and I was holding my sides almost as hard as I had at our comedy event the night before. Nashville, I can’t wait to come back, my only regret, being too full for Princes Hot Chicken. Next year, Nashville. Next year!
“NOLA: The Marvelous” By Brooklyn Brewery House Chef Andrew Gerson
With the sounds of 90.7 WWOZ, the nation’s greatest station set on the dial, a perfect back drop to a week in New Orleans, I boogied my way around town soaking in the sun and NOLA’s laid back brassy balance of history, tradition and innovation in food, booze, music and festivities.
New Orleans on any given week is pretty spectacular, but combine Saint Patrick’s Day, Super Sunday with the Mardi Gras Indians, and the Brooklyn Brewery Mash tour and it’s like: listening to Rebirth at the Maple Leaf, eating crawfish etouffee, and shrimp and alligator cheesecake at Jacques-Imo’s, meeting Wendell Pierce, chatting with Poppy Tooker, sipping Brooklyn Dry Irish Stout, slurping Gulf Oysters, sipping NOLA Blonde Ale, more Smokey trumpets and saxes, crawfish Tempura and dancing, a ”Treme” episode on acid in funky-fast-forward. Mash NOLA was marvelous! And that was just a glimpse of day one… [read more below the slideshow]
The Avenue Pub, way down on St Charles St. front and center for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, was the quintessential Mash Headquarters. Patty and her gracious crew of knowledgeable beer aficionados and bourbon and whiskey connoisseurs hosted a week’s worth of happy-hours filled with cask kegs of EIPA, tastings of Elijah Craig and Cuvée Elijah, flowing bottles of Brooklyn Silver Anniversary Lager and cheese pairings from St. James Cheese (think Brooklyn Dry Irish Stout/Gorgonzola Dolce, or Aged Gouda/ Brooklyn Local 2). The upstairs bar at Avenue also provided a beautiful balcony to catch a moment’s rest, bare foot, listening to reggae, basking in the sun, Brooklyn Summer Ale in hand.
For me the beauty of New Orleans is the love and soul behind the music, food and libations. Maurepas restaurant overseen by Executive Chef Michael Doyle, and an old buddy of mine, Sous Chef Grant Waters is a great embodiment of what New Orleans is to me. Our Local, 2 Ways dinner was a true treat as I got to cook with a great friend, and a team of other talented chefs. Maurepas is known around the Bywater and the rest of the city for its cocktail list and deep-rooted New Orleans cuisine, mixing Creole, Cajun and Southern inspirations into unpretentious family style food with a sprinkle of ingenuity and freshness. Like our take on a crawfish boil, mixed with menu staples like the fried oyster cabbage salad. Diners fought over their family style bowl of duck egg and herb gnocchi in a lamb neck ragu, but were relieved to have individual heaping portions of chocolate duck egg ice cream with shortbread cookies paired with Black Chocolate Stout. This decadent spread set in the heart of the Bywater, NOLA’s hippest neighborhood felt like a summer evening in Brooklyn, with more colorful houses, and a splash of that NOLA funk that only crawfish essence and brass bands can muster.
Brass bands where abounding as second liners followed feather and bead clad Big Chiefs, Spy Boys, Wild Men queens and an array of other plumage, all clad in full regalia at A.L. Davis Park for the Mardi Gras Indian Council’s annual Super Sunday celebration. The spirits of the ancestors mixed with the drums and brass of the bands, along with the stomping of feet and the songs of the Big Chiefs.
Gary Granata, of Slow Food NOLA lead us through the crowds as music mixed with the smoke and aromas from the best of NOLA’s street food vendors, some of which I had seen at the First Annual NOLA Vendy Awards, where I was lucky enough to be a judge along with Poppy Tooker (my new best friend), Sarah Rohan, President of the board of the Southern Food Ways Alliance, and Juan Carlos Gonzales, Executive Chef of Sobou.
Helena Tubis, Executive Director of the Vendy Awards pulled it off again, as over 500 happy guests sampled the best street food NOLA had to offer, washing it down with an array of Brooklyn beers to the sounds of a twangy string band. As the votes came in, Foodie Call was the unanimous winner, but after nine tastes I am convinced NOLA street vendors can hang with the best of them. The crowd, Brooklyn cans clasped firmly in hand, sang along to the rendition of “When The Saints Come Marching In” belted over the PA system by Vance of Vaucresson Sausage Co.
Our Saturday really picked up when Tres Barnard, Chef of We’ve Got Soul treated us to Southern soul inspired dishes tucked away at a chefs table in the cozy back-room of Marie’s Bar. The best duck confit I have ever had was served with a cherry glaze over stone ground grits, and Grand Marnier roasted carrots alongside Brooklyn Local 2. Dessert was leg-quiveringly good, local strawberry and bacon cobbler with Black Chocolate Stout caramel sauce. After our feast we sat on the stoop sipping our last drops of Stout, relishing in the warm evening breeze, hanging with our table mates and the crew of We’ve Got Soul, before ending another perfect night in NOLA with a little brass.
Sunday, after my brief “Indian adventure break” from prepping for our Slow Supper Swamp Dinner, I headed to the site to set up for our final meal in what appeared to an abandoned roofless building. Tucked in the central business district, blocks from the French Quarter, this was a perfect match for our first swamp-inspired Dinner Lab-Brooklyn Brewery collaboration meal. The ambiance of this evening was magical as course after course was paired with a large array of Brooklyn Big Bottles, featuring a Wild One Ghost Bottle. The meal was swamptastic, the pairings Paco Robert and I selected where spot on, and the space glistened under string lighting as guests chatted on into the evening long after the band had packed up their instruments.
After the whirlwind of my week in NOLA I have to say my fondest memory was my very first Crawfish “Buurrrlll,” an impromptu Prequel to our Dinner Lab-Brooklyn Brewery Mashup in Paco’s backyard. Between ham hocks, potatoes, corn, crawfish and Cajun seasoning, Brooklyn Summer Ale, Sorachi Ace and EIPA, I didn’t mind the elbows of everyone else at the table rocking to the music and fending off their prized piles of delight. An evening I will never forget in a week I look forward to remembering. It might be cold and snow covered back in Brooklyn, but at least I can stream 90.7 WNOZ FM for a little taste of that NOLA warmth.
“As we celebrate Martin Luther King Day and the President calls us to a National Day of Service (http://mlkday.gov/), I turned to the Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service records to find a photo of Brooklyn volunteers, and remind us of the little things one can do for the benefit of the larger community. The Bureau of Community Service was an organization that led a number of initiatives for people with disabilities, children, and others. In this photo, a group of blind women are read to during their Tuesday group gathering. As the new year begins, we can all pitch in with big and small deeds via http://mlkday.gov/serve/index.php.
For more information about the Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service, now Brooklyn Community Services, go to their website. Follow the MLK Day’s events or tweet about your own activities via @MLKDay.
Interested in seeing more photographs from BHS’s collection? Visit our online image gallery which includes a selection of our images. To search our entire collection of images, visit BHS Othmer Library Wed-Fri 1:00-5:00 p.m.”
“Today gourmet food trucks can be found in every major U.S. city, but the initial concept of the food truck and “mobile kitchens” have been around since the 1860s. It came as a part of the westward migration which helped in defining the U.S. as a pioneering country. The first transportable meals came from the American West and chuck wagons. The invention of the chuck wagon is attributed to the Texas Ranger, Charles Goodnight. He realized that having a mobile kitchen would make it easier when feeding hungry cattlemen. On the East Coast this same concept became known as the lunch wagons, which later on become diners.
The humbler beginnings of these mobile eateries have been elevated to a nationwide sensation, even spurring a TV show. There was also a recent episode on the History Channel which delves into the origins of the food truck in America.
The image above depicts Brooklyn Navy Yard workers buying lunch at the Mobile Canteen lunch truck, most likely a quick lunch option for the workers on a busy schedule while also being a suitable and affordable alternative to bringing their own lunch.”
We are just three weeks away from the debut of the all-new Found Footage Festival show in NYC and Brooklyn. This is going to be the most unsettling show yet! You’ll have two chances to catch the show: on Friday, November 2, at Anthology Film Archives in Manhattan, and Sunday, November 4, at the Brooklyn Brewery in the tasting room. Tickets are for these, and all FFF shows, are available from the FFF Tour page.
Here’s a little taste of just one of the clips you’ll see in the new show. This video about saying no to strangers is hosted by a clown from Oregon named Blueberry, who is far more terrifying than any stranger we can imagine. He also seems to be suggesting the kids are somewhat to blame for their own stranger predicaments.
But at the moment, here we sit, far from home, staring out the window at the view from our shitty hotel room. This one is in Sioux Falls, SD. We paid a little extra for the view of the gravel pit.
That’s right, life on the road is not as glamorous as a Guns & Roses video makes it out to be. Sometimes, it can be downright frightening. For instance, you shouldn’t do much exploring backstage at old theaters. You never know when you’ll come across a filth bucket. The one at the top of this post was in Columbia, MO. It wasn’t the first filth bucket we’ve stumbled upon, and it probably won’t be our last.
We’re looking forward to getting back home to NYC in November for the hometown shows. Back to where the filth is inspiring and shitty hotel rooms cost twice as much.
Thanks, England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, and The Netherlands, for an incredible three weeks of Found Footage Festival shows. We made a lot of new friends and found a lot of new videos, not to mention a lot of really creepy postcards. Even though we never quite figured out your toilets, or why you love toast so much, we enjoyed every minute of your hospitality and comical misunderstandings.
When we arrived in London, we quickly realised (see, no ‘z’) we were the oldest ones in our hostel by at least 17 years. But we made the most of it and set our minds to dreaming about the sunbathing on the pebbly beaches of Brighton a few days later. Above, you can see some of the views from our shitty hotel rooms.
At the Soho Theatre in London, Brooklyn Brewery bought everyone a beer during our first three shows.That was great. And we didn’t look stupid ordering some weird, warm British ale or bitters or whatever it is they called beer there.
The first thing we noticed in the UK was how much like us they looked. If they didn’t open their mouths, we’d almost have sworn were back in Brooklyn. Just try to figure out who are British and who are Brooklyn in this photo? We’re in the picture and we still can hardly tell.
It was our first 4th of July away from America, but we were heartened to find this T-shirt in a Manchester department store. We bought it on the spot…
…and these, because we didn’t want to stick out like tacky Americans while in England. Later that night, the audience was treated to more Brooklyn Brewery beer. And again the next night in Leeds.
On our way to the show in Amsterdam, we stopped in to a used record store and found the Dutch version of “Air Bud.” It’s called “Soccer Dog.” And while in Berlin, we played a game called the Painstation at the Computer Game Museum. It burns you, shocks you or whips you if your Pong ball gets past your paddle. First person to pull their hand away loses. Nick won. His hand lost.
In Leeds, we found a promising video called “Famous Tits & Arses,” however no one we showed it to recognized either the tits nor the arses as being famous. But everyone agreed that this “Doggy Christmas” lighter was the best score of the trip.
Oh, the shows? How were the shows? The shows were good. Did you see the awesome lighter we found with the dog in a Santa outfit on it?
My trip to Brazil proved to be quite a success. The main purpose was to attend one of the biggest craft beer events in Brazil, Beer Day in Curitiba and learn about the growing craft beer market. Beer Day had quite a selection of craft brews from local brewers, home brewers, and international breweries like Brooklyn Brewery. The styles of beer ranged from mild lagers to intense imperial stouts and IPA’s. I was impressed with all of the different styles and variations and what is happening in the beer world in Brazil. There were food trucks selling food from around the globe including kebabs, bratwurst, jambalaya, and the Brazilian version of an empanada “Pastéis”. “Curitibans” I was told, are really into rock music so the local bands at the festival played a lot of indie rock, covered some classic rock, as well as a healthy amount of grunge (they apparently really like Pearl Jam). Beer Day was much like a craft beer festival in Brooklyn and, despite the rain, it was a lot of fun.
While belated to be sure, The Brooklyn Brewery would like to acknowledge our sadness at the passing of Beastie Boy, Brooklyn native and hero to all good Americans, Adam Yauch. MCA’s music exemplified the creativity and blurred boundaries of New York City. He will be missed and remembered always.
Laba diena! Es esmu Vladimirs Dzintra, Latvijas vissvarīgākais foto blogeris un dīdžejs lielas radio parādīt, MaximumFunky bailīgs pie Baltijas jūras vasaras laikā. Lūdzu zvanīt man Vlads.
Es esmu svinēt valsts svētkus Latvijā, un ieradās Amerikas Captiol, Washington, DC. Man bija laba izdevība apmeklēt lielāko regulāru notikumu sestdienas naktī, ka es lasīt par in Washington Post. Tas bija vārds Slideluck Potshow, un es neatceros redzēt tādas lietas Rīgā jebkad agrāk. Zem viena jumta, mēs ēdam miežu un baudīt funny attēlu šovu.
Mums bija vētrains, vējainā naktī, kad es apmeklēju amerikāņu Haunted House Pennsylvania Avenue, netālu kur Premier sēž. Iekšā bija daudz skaistas amerikāņu meitenes, daudz delcious pārtika izgatavoti no rokām un atsvaidzinošu dzērienu no šīs Brooklyn Brewery. Es dzirdēju par šo alus darītavu agrāk, jo mans poļu brālēns, Krzysztof, dzīvo tur blakus. Viņš saka rajons kļūst pilns Giggletossers.
- Twitter
- Facebook
- Instagram
Sign Up for OurNewsletter