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Art Travel / Museum Travel / New York City / MoMA / → All Tags

What's Next Up at MoMA: Controversial Video Art, Of Course

That newfangled Museum of Modern Art is always getting people in a tizzy. First, it featured live naked people and now it's showing a banned exhibit.

A clip of artist David Wojnarowicz's 13-minute video, titled "A Fire in My Belly," was pulled from the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery in November. Much to the chagrin of anti-censorship advocates, the Washington, D.C., museum took down the installation after Catholic League President Bill Donohue described it as anti-Christian "hate speech," Reuters reported. Politicians like House Speaker John Boehner also called for the video's removal.

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Restaurant Week / New York City / Food Travel / Photo Gallery / New York Restaurants / Restaurant Week Report / → All Tags

NYC Restaurant Week Report: The Russian Tea Room

We are happy to report that New York City's semiannual Restaurant Week has begun, and the city is absolutely packing places to take advantage of the three-course $24.07 lunches and $35 dinners.

There's still the rest of this week left to go until Restaurant Week in NYC ends for the season! With this in mind, we booked a last-minute lunch with a friend at The Russian Tea Room in Midtown, where they're serving up Restaurant Week meals for weekday lunch, weekday dinner, Sunday lunch and Sunday dinner. Our $24.07 three-course meal didn't have the largest portions, but for quality and service, it was better than the average lunch that's for sure.

Next up: $24.07 lunch at The Russian Tea Room.

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Restaurant Week / New York City / Museum Restaurants / Food Travel / Photo Gallery / New York Restaurants / Restaurant Week Report / → All Tags

NYC Restaurant Week Report: The Modern

Our saffron tagliatelle entree

We are happy to report that New York City's semiannual Restaurant Week has begun, and the city is absolutely packing places to take advantage of the three-course $24.07 lunches and $35 dinners.

For our first dinner of Restaurant Week, we revisited one of our favorite NYC restaurants: The Modern at The Museum of Modern Art. We've only had lunches here before and that was around the time when the James Beard Foundation named it both Best New Restaurant and Best Restaurant Design, and Wallpaper Magazine called it the Best New Restaurant in the World, and so we were anxious to try their dinner service now that years have passed.

And to help you make your decisions about where to dine next week (because Restaurant Week is actually two weeks, lasting until July 25) or perhaps to sway you into hitting up the Big Apple next Restaurant Week (in winter), we're giving you the low-down on our best meals of the week, and this was totally one of them.

Next up: $35 dinner at The Modern--Bar Room.

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Museum Travel / Art Travel / Naked Travel / New York City Travel / → All Tags

See Performance Artists Get Buck Naked at MoMA Exhibit

Talk about work that leaves the artist feeling exposed. People are flocking to the Museum of Modern Art to see performance artist pioneer Marina Abramović's "The Artist is Present," which is filled with nekkidness. It marks the first large-scale U.S. retrospective of Abramović's work.

The piece that's got people talking is "Imponderabilia," in which two butt-naked performance artists face each other in a narrow passageway and visitors are supposed to squeeze between them to get to another room. It's supposed to force people to confront their discomfort with nudity. And discomfort they felt, indeed. Barbara Walters talked on The View about how awkward it was to walk past two au naturel men, one of whom was so well-endowed that there was little room to get by the guys.

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Wine Travel / Interactive Menus / Technology Travel / Wine Bars / → All Tags

Pick Your Poison Via Touch Screen At Clo Wine Bar In NYC

Lovers of interactive restaurant menus (a geeky group we do admit belonging to) need to know about a wine bar in New York that's got the geek thing going: Clo, on the fourth floor of the Time Warner Center.

Whether you know heaps about wine or only care whether it's red or white on a given night, you will probably have a lot of fun choosing your wine using Clo's "motion-activated" touch screen list. Not only that, you can pay by credit card and then—the ultimate geek touch—the wine is automatically dispensed into your glass, in 2oz or 4oz measures. No waiters required. And they have some special preservation system in place so all those open bottles of wine don't go bad.

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Museum of Arts and Design / Museums / Wine Bars / → All Tags

New York Museum Adds Pop-Up Wine Bar With Central Park Views

Manhattan’s Museum of Arts and Design most likely doesn't make your list of must-stops for an NYC cultural crawl, despite the allure of their spiffy new Columbus Circle digs.

So the contemporary art spot is following in the lead of MoMa, the Guggenheim and other stuffy art institutions that have realized you can’t attract nearly as many patrons with actual art as you can with a nightclub atmosphere and booze. There's just something about drinking in a museum that feels so wrong but so right.

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Summer-Signature-Cocktails-Map / Drinking Travel / New York City / → All Tags

The Very British 'Pimm's Cup' Gets Adapted For Summer In NYC

While the summer is at its peak and you're no doubt tired of chugging bottled water under the sun at tourist sites, we're going to hit some of the world's best watering holes and down their famous summer cocktails. Bottoms up!

Whoever says you have to be at Wimbledon or at some stuffy polo match in order to enjoy a nice Pimm's Cup obviously hasn't swung by any of Gordan Ramsay's restaurants. For those of you who head to the city in the summer instead of the beach, Ramsay's London Bar on West 54th Street in New York City puts a twist to the classic to make it even more fresh, more thirst-quenching.

It's called the Pimm & Proper, and although it's $16 at The London Bar, it's hard to find a good variation on a regular Pimm's Cup outside of England, so drink up. As a typical summer cocktail, the Pimm's is ubiquitous across the Atlantic, but Ramsay knows just what to do get us salivating; make it fruitier:

· Pour 2 oz of Pimm's No. 1 into a tall glass
· Add 1 oz Grey Goose L'Orange
· Add 1 oz Lillet Route (a French aperitif wine)
· Fill glass with 3-4oz of seltzer or ginger beer
· Top with a dash of cranberry juice and a sprig of fresh mint

Related Stories:
· The London Bar NYC [Official Site]
· Summer Cocktails Map [Jaunted]

[Photo: The London Bar]

Twitter / Jetblue / Southwest Airlines / Airline Parties / → All Tags

Guitar Hero Showdown: These Are Your Airlines On Twitter

Last night at an unassuming bar in Midtown Manhattan, we ordered up some mozzarella sticks and raised a beer to the first official Guitar Hero showdown between airline Twitter representatives. It was, as you can imagine, a combination of video games, general nerdiness, and hilarity which made the event a success.

Appropriately enough, the idea for a Guitar Hero match between the two top Twittering airlines of Jetblue and Southwest Airlines gathered strength at the music and media SXSW festival back in March. Both Jetblue's Morgan Johnston and Southwest's Christi Day were there and discovered that they'd both be in Manhattan in May for yet another conference, so why not pep up the festivities?

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Tourists / Technology / Tourism Boards / Tourism Marketing / New York City Travel / → All Tags

New York City Wants Tourists to Touch Their Technology

What is New York City to its tourists but a loud, crass and hectic metropolis centered around areas like Times Square and Fifth Avenue, places that only further the frenetic mood. Seeking to counter this as well as bolster their own resources, the tourist board opened the starkly fresh "Official NYC Information Center" in Midtown this January.

Nestled into a storefront on Seventh Avenue between 53rd and 52nd Streets, the friendly space designed by WXY Architecture is packed to the gills with user-friendly technology. It's pretty much a confused tourist's dream, with touch-screen map tables which can help you to create personalized city itineraries, along with the ability to browse free events and NYC Visit's "Just Ask the Locals" feature.

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Top Chef Travel / Food Travel / Reality Television Travel / Restaurants / Eric Ripert / → All Tags

Chef'Testants are No Match for Eric Ripert

The Top Chef'testants had a particularly tough time with this week's challenge--reproducing a dish from guest judge Eric Ripert's legendary seafood restaurant Le Bernardin. We were a little disappointed with the chefs' output (especially Leah, how did she not go home?!), but the episode certainly did get us salivating to try the real deal--Ripert's classic French dishes like black bass tartare, poached escolar, and pan-roasted monkfish.

So we're wondering--just how hard is it to get into Le Bernardin nowadays? Reservations are notoriously difficult to come by (on the first business day of every month, they become available for the month after that, and their phone lines get busy quickly), but it turns out you can get around that if you're willing to eat super-late. We just did an OpenTable search and found tables for two available tonight at 10pm, and Friday and Saturday at 11. Not so hard after all!

Of course, you still have to be willing to pay for all that fishy goodness. The lunch prix fixe is $68, dinner is $109, while the extravagant chef's tasting menu is $185 a head.

Oh, and bonus news for all you Ripert-heads: Looks like he's enjoying this TV thing. Ripert will get his own show, "Avec Eric," coming to PBS this fall.

· Le Bernardin [Official Site]
· Checking In At Jamie's Place [Jaunted]

Photo: [Bravo]

Recession Restaurants / Recession-Restaurants-Map / New New York Restaurants / Mario Batali / → All Tags

Bon Appetit Supper Club & Café

What’s a foodie to do when times get tough? Jaunted has you covered with our list of high-class restaurants with recession-era pricing.

Up next is Bon Appetit Supper Club & Café. The food magazine is sponsoring this pop-up restaurant, which recently took off for it’s second annual outing in midtown Manhattan. The supper club part consists of by-invitation-only dinners, but for the rest of us, the cafe is serving up lunches from celebrity chefs at pauper prices--but only through October 31.

Stop by this week to sample offerings like Mario Batali’s empanada with chorizo, pancetta, peppers and onions ($8); Charlie Trotter’s grilled beef tenderloin and blue cheese salad ($9); and Cat Cora’s chickpea and roasted red pepper soup ($5.50).

And check out our other frugal foodie ideas on Jaunted’s Recession Restaurants Map.

Related Stories:
· Bon Appetit Supper Club & Café [Official Site]
· Recession Restaurants Map [Jaunted]

[Photo: Bon Appetit Supper Club]

Museums / Art / Design / → All Tags

New Museums Travel: Art and Design in NYC

We love it when the right things end up in the right place, like the excellent, soon-to-open (Sept. 27) new space for the Museum of Arts and Design. You can't miss the building: It's the sleek, tower originally done in 1964 by Edward Durell Stone on Columbus Circle.

With more than double the exhibition space of the current location (including, for the first time ever permanent gallery space), a restaurant on the ninth floor (with sweeping views of the park) and a Tiffany & Co. Foundation Jewelry Gallery on the second floor, it's definitely a step up for the museum.

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