These days Josh Ozersky, my Grub Street colleague at NYMag.com, is gliding through the mean streets of Brooklyn – and extravagant streets as well – in a vintage 1972 Cadillac Coup de Ville, the “ultimate of power and grandeur,” he assures me.  I’m from Detroit so I could have guessed. All of us who know Josh well and have clucked sympathetically through his litany of Love’s Labour’s Lost figured the cream-hued Caddy would be his irresistible cruising machine.  But no, it seems he’s got a “beautiful new girlfriend” and, “I will not be cruising.”  Indeed, he won’t even be cruising for his favorite burger at White Castle on First Avenue because “the axle’s too wide to make the narrow turn into their parking lot.” White Castle, it seems, is the hero of Josh’s learned dissertation, “Hamburger: A History,” coming from Yale University Press to bookstores any minute.  3-14-08

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        Nothing makes Ariane Daguin more livid than PETA’s campaign against foie gras, a product that helps her fancy food company, D’Artagnan, gross $50 million a year. So Daguin is celebrating a triumph in Maryland where foie gras champions convinced legislators to drop legislation seeking to ban it. “Once they realized their bill would affect most chicken farms too, they decided to withdraw it,” she says.  “Not that Maryland is full of restaurants serving foie gras.”

        Just for the record books: Ariane reminds me that it was 32 years ago that we first saw ice cream frozen by liquid nitrogen instantly before our eyes.  A triumvirate of musketeers from Gascony in Southwest France – Andre Daguin, Roger Duffour, Maurice Coscuella – were showing off at a dinner for the Chaine des Rôtissiers.  Daguin whisked the prune and armegnac ice cream hidden by the mysterious clouds of liquid nitrogen hitting the air. Suddenly Coscuella’s apron came undone. He put down the nitrogen tank to scoop his apron off the floor. Daguin emerged from the clouds – staring down at a float of mush. There were a few hissed Merde alors. Then, apron restored, Coscuella re-aimed his weapon. 3-12-08

        If a burly drunk lurches into your table at the Post House and accidentally slaps your face, you might find a $30 credit on your bill.  My friend, a Post House fan who asks to be anonymous, complained to the manager after a heavy set man staggering toward the exit fell against her table and his flyaway arm smacked her guest’s cheek. “I was upset.  I was shaking.” I said, “What are you going to do?” The manager assured her:  “He’ll never come in this place again,”  “Maybe you should buy our dinner,” she suggested.  She asks:  “Thirty dollars?  Does that seem appropriate?"  3-4-08

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Fireworks and a marzipan mouse at Au Crocodile. Photo: Penny Baird

          Postcard from an 11-year-old in Strasbourg: Au Crocodile woos kids with Ratatouille menu, inspired by the technicolor mouse. Philip Baird Deutsch, youngest son of traveling gourmands, is pretty blasé about three-star dining in France. He usually just orders white fish and reads a book. But Crocodile’s Ratatouille menu made him smile. He’s a fan of the film, having seen it several times in both French and English. “I don’t usually have an appetizer but the mouse mousse sitting on little pretzels was okay.”  The fish came with fries and ratatouille.  “The fish was delicious, Dad ate the ratatouille. Mom took a photo of dessert.  It had cotton candy and balls on top with little pink stuff. It tasted really good.”  Philip’s favorite kitchen is Troisgros, where the chef Michel invited him into the kitchen and gave him an autographed toque. “Most of the chefs in France are named Michel,” he reports.  3-4-08