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      Owner and Manager of Grimaldi’s Pizzeria Are Charged With Wage Theft

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      The men bilked seven employees of more than $20,000 in wages, the Manhattan district attorney said. Workers sent desperate text messages.The owner of Grimaldi’s Pizzeria and the manager of its Manhattan branch were arrested on Thursday and charged with stealing more than $20,000 in wages from at least seven employees.Over the course of at least four years, the owner, Anthony Piscina, 63, and the manager, Frank Santora, 71, lied to and exploited pizza makers, salad preppers, busboys and dishwashers, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, said at a news conference.The seven workers are each owed between $500 and $8,000, according to court documents.“What may appear to some as a relatively low dollar amount can have life-changing consequences when someone is making minimum wage,” Mr. Bragg said.Both men pleaded not guilty to one felony charge of scheme to defraud and seven misdemeanor counts of wage theft. Following their arraignment at Manhattan Criminal Court Thursday afternoon, they were released without bail.The original Grimaldi’s is near the Brooklyn Bridge, but the charges concerned employees at the Manhattan branch.Emil Salman for The New York TimesGerard Marrone, a lawyer representing both Mr. Piscina and Mr. Santora, said that the men were “blindsided” by the charges and weren’t fully aware of the accusations against them until several hours after their arrest.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Ashwin Deshmukh Knew How to Win Friends and Hustle People

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      Sometimes, you meet someone in New York who gives you a good feeling and a bad feeling at the same time. Maybe you’re introduced at a bar, through a friend of a friend. This person is charming and full of ideas, ideas that resonate with you. He seems to know everyone you know, and some other people you follow only on social media. You like him, even though you wonder whether he’s for real. He has a story about the city and his place in it, a story in which he may invite you to play a role. This is tempting. You get the sense that he has a momentum unlike other people’s, toward a destination that could be glamorous — or maybe catastrophic.One such person is Ashwin Deshmukh, the 38-year-old managing partner of Superiority Burger, one of the most acclaimed restaurants in New York.Since reopening last April, the high-low vegetarian diner in the East Village has garnered a three-star review from The New York Times, a James Beard Award nomination, and the title, bestowed by GQ magazine, of “Buzziest Restaurant in America.” That it took over the space once occupied by the venerable Odessa Restaurant, saving the neighborhood from yet another Duane Reade or Capital One, has made it only more beloved.But June Kwan, the owner of the East Village Sichuan restaurant Spicy Moon, does not love Superiority Burger — or at least, the people behind the restaurant. In February, she sued them twice. The first suit asserts that since 2021, when Ms. Kwan invested a quarter of a million dollars in Superiority Burger through Mr. Deshmukh, the business has gone dark, refusing to send her proof of her equity, and eventually ignoring her altogether. The second suit alleges that in 2022, Ms. Kwan lent $200,000 to Mr. Deshmukh, and that he hasn’t repaid a penny.Text messages attached to the suits capture the breakdown of Mr. Deshmukh’s relationship with Ms. Kwan, a Taiwanese immigrant who started her business in middle age. Ahead of Ms. Kwan’s initial investment, Mr. Deshmukh wrote to her that “I am so confident in this and our friendship that I am happy to personally guarantee your investment on a five-year basis.”In October 2022, after a month of asking Mr. Deshmukh to repay the loan in increasingly desperate terms, Ms. Kwan wrote: “I have supported you with my full heart, but now you don’t pay me back the money and don’t update what happened to sb when I’m a shareholder. I don’t sleep well because of this.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Cabbage Is Having a Moment

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      How a workhorse vegetable became a darling of the culinary world.In a world in which it’s hard for a vegetable to get a break, cabbage is winning.Cabbage has been a global culinary workhorse for centuries. (China grows the most; Russia eats the most.) It has fed generations of American immigrants. But now, a vegetable that can make your house smell like a 19th-century tenement has become the darling of the culinary crowd.In the words of my mother-in-law: Cabbage, who knew?Like so many American food trends, fancy cabbage dishes first started turning up in restaurants on the coasts a few years ago. But they are fast spreading across the country. One chef has compared this cabbage mania to the hoopla over bacon in the 1990s.In Denver, Sap Sua sprinkles a charred cabbage wedge with anchovy breadcrumbs. Cabbage is bathed in brown-butter hollandaise at Gigi’s Italian Kitchen in Atlanta. At Good Hot Fish in Asheville, N.C., shredded green cabbage stars in a pancake punched up with sorghum hot sauce.For a story in The Times, I spoke with farmers, chefs and food critics and ate cabbage in three cities, seeking to understand how the vegetable earned this moment in the spotlight. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain what I found.Kimchi and CaraflexA cabbage dish at Chi Spacca in Los Angeles. Michelle Groskopf for The New York TimesThe trajectory of a food trend in the United States can sometimes be easy to trace. A French chef introduces the heavily salted butter caramels of Brittany to the elite of the American food world, pastry chefs at expensive restaurants start to play with the idea, and before you know it, you’re ordering a salted caramel cold brew from Dunkin’.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Former Horses Chef Opens Frog Club in New York

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      Liz Johnson has taken over the former Chumley’s space after her messy split with her former co-chef, Will Aghajanian.As would-be diners approached a nondescript door on a placid block in Greenwich Village on Wednesday night, they were stopped short by a tall, lean man wearing a black fur hat and red carnation boutonniere. He pressed stickers over the lenses of their phones. No photography was allowed, he insisted.As they complied and disappeared through the door, the block fell silent again.Inside, silence was scarce. It was the opening night of Frog Club, the first restaurant involving the chef Liz Johnson since the very public implosion of her marriage to Will Aghajanian, with whom she ran the acclaimed Los Angeles restaurant Horses.Occupying the historic space formerly home to Chumley’s, Frog Club has been veiled in secrecy. Only a 12-minute stiltedly lo-fi YouTube video announced its official opening, and a sparse website offered just an email address for requesting reservations. With Ms. Johnson and Mr. Aghajanian in the middle of a contentious divorce, it’s even unclear who owns the restaurant.Aside from a somewhat cryptic YouTube video, Ms. Johnson, pictured here at Mimi in 2016, has been mostly quiet about the opening of Frog Club.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesMr. Aghajanian, 32, told The New York Times, in an Instagram direct message, that the project is “in legal limbo currently,” and that “Frog club is a concept I created and designed.”Asked Wednesday how she felt about the restaurant, Ms. Johnson, 33, surveyed the space and said simply, “It’s all mine.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Who Created Butter Chicken? India’s Great Curry Clash.

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      A court has been asked to solve a bitter dispute between two families who have very different accounts of the origins of a dish beloved around the world.In 1947, two men, both named Kundan, fled Peshawar during the bloody partition that carved Pakistan out of British India. They landed in Delhi and soon became partners in a restaurant called Moti Mahal serving food from the Punjab region.On this much their descendants agree. Where they diverge is on the question of which of the men should go down in culinary history.The two families both say that it was their own Kundan who invented butter chicken — the creamy, heavenly marriage of tandoori chicken and tomato gravy beloved everywhere north Indian food is served. And one of them has gone to court to try to prove it.A picture of Kundan Lal Gujral at Moti Mahal.Before we dig in: Yes, it’s hard to prove that any single person came up with dishes that have become ubiquitous. Also, does it even matter after all these years? Being first doesn’t necessarily mean being best.But in the case of butter chicken, much is riding on the verdict — money, mostly, but also the legacy of the storied restaurant that the two men began building nearly eight decades ago, a span that covers almost all of India’s modern history as an independent nation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Red Velvet Bistro in an Istanbul Villa

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      Plus: jewelry handmade with Roman coins, vintage Estée Lauder fragrances and more recommendations from T Magazine.Wear ThisEstée Lauder Revives a Set of Vintage PerfumesThe Estée Lauder Legacy Collection modernizes five scents that were initially created by the company’s titular founder.Courtesy of the brandDuring the 42 years that Estée Lauder worked at her namesake company, she oversaw the creation of a dozen scents and encouraged women to create fragrance “wardrobes” tailored to every occasion and mood. The brand’s Legacy Collection, which comes out on Feb. 1, revives five of Lauder’s creations with the help of Frédéric Malle (whose perfume brand was acquired by the Estée Lauder Companies in 2015) and the perfumers Anne Flipo, Carlos Benaïm and Bruno Jovanovic, all of whom have worked with Malle on previous fragrances. During an interview inside Lauder’s well-preserved office near Central Park, Malle explained how he retooled the scents using more modern fragrance-making techniques. He noted that, in Lauder’s day, perfumers combined base scents that were “like premixed mini-perfumes” to create a final fragrance. “They contained things that weren’t necessary and created background noise,” Malle said. To update the formulas, any nonessential ingredients in those bases were stripped away — “it’s like cleaning up,” he said. The new collection has notes that range from fresh and herbaceous to musky and sweet. Azurée, initially released in 1969, evokes dry Mediterranean shores with herby notes like basil and tarragon as well as jasmine, spicy cardamom, bergamot, and cumin, which Malle amplified in his edition. For White Linen, a classic floral bouquet of rose and jasmine, Malle used pure labdanum, an ambery resin from the rockrose plant, which wasn’t available when the scent debuted in 1978. Knowing, a seductive scent from 1988, “contained a little bit of the Muzak of the ’80s,” Malle said. The modernized version is a fruity chypre with raspberries, black currant, rose and patchouli. The overall goal of the collection, Malle said, “is to revive this work and show how good Mrs. Lauder was.” The Legacy Collection is available from Feb. 1, $280, esteelauder.com.Eat HereIn Istanbul, a Red Velvet Bistro From the Owners of ArkestraLeft: this month, the owners of the Istanbul restaurant Arkestra opened Ritmo, an intimate bistro serving a menu of small plates and cocktails. Right: a dish of gochujang-flavored steak tartare served with a dollop of anchovy mayonnaise and a rice cracker.Ali Yavuz AtaWhen Debora Ipekel, a former music business executive, and her husband, Cenk Debensason, a classically trained chef, first came up with the concept for a new restaurant venture in their hometown, Istanbul, they wanted to create an experience that would encompass both their worlds. “Hospitality extends beyond serving great food — it’s about creating an atmosphere that reflects our identity,” says Ipekel. Arkestra, named after the Sun Ra Arkestra, the avant-garde jazz group formed in the 1950s, opened in September 2022. Inside a sprawling villa in the neighborhood of Etiler, a wood-paneled dining room on the ground floor serves Debensason’s varied menu of dishes like tuna sashimi with sushi rice ice cream and a seasonal mushroom risotto. On the next level is a bar called Listening Room which features lounge seating, low cocktail tables and an extensive library of vinyl records. Drawing on her career in music, Ipekel curates late-night sets alongside guests such as the Chicago disco legend Sadar Bahar and the Turkish DJ Barış K. “We want the music to be eclectic, timeless, and soulful — similar to the food we serve,” she says. This month, the villa housing Arkestra welcomed the couple’s new bistro, Ritmo. Tucked away behind velvet curtains with mirrored ceilings and Rococo furnishings, the space has a decadent, playful feel that’s complemented by the selection of snacks such as oysters with champagne sabayon and churros with spicy chocolate sauce. arkestra.com.tr.See ThisEmily Weiner’s Symbolic Paintings, on View in Nashville and Mexico CityLeft: Emily Weiner’s “Spiral (Alizarin)” (2023). Right: Weiner’s “Ad Infinitum” (2023).Courtesy of the artist and Red Arrow Gallery, Nashville. Photo: John SchweikertThe artist Emily Weiner is drawn to the sort of instantly recognizable imagery that taps into the unconscious and communicates across time. After years spent honing her style while also working as a curator and art writer, she’s lately made waves with her vibrant, almost spiritual oil paintings of urns, columns, jaunty hands and theater curtains framing ombré skies and conspicuous moons. Her new pieces, which will soon make up a solo show at Red Arrow Gallery in Nashville and feature in the inaugural group exhibition at König Galerie’s Mexico City outpost, continue in this vein while expanding her visual lexicon. On one canvas, Weiner has painted an all-encompassing aquamarine spiral that moves toward a tiny half-moon at the center; hung next to it at Red Arrow will be its fiery twin — a mirror-image spiral rendered in a rusty red. (A number of the other works are symmetrical all on their own and, fittingly, the name of the solo show, “Never Odd or Even,” is a palindrome.) Weiner, who emphasizes the eco-feminist, futurist bent of the paintings, says the spirals represent the idea of eternal return; she sees them as “cosmic fallopian tubes.” In another work, a gleaming moon can be glimpsed through a yonic slit reminiscent of a Lucio Fontana cut painting; elsewhere, receding silhouettes of faces evoke mountains or monoliths. “I was thinking about the notion that this is a tainted world that inevitably is going to be saved by a patriarchal god and trying to invert it,” says Weiner. “How can we take care of this landscape that we live in as a mother would?” “Never Odd or Even” is on view at Red Arrow Gallery, Nashville, from Feb. 3 through Feb. 24, theredarrowgallery.com; “Surreal Surroundings” is on view at König Galerie, Mexico City, from Feb. 5 through March 8, koeniggalerie.com.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. 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      Can Maxim’s Restaurant in Paris Reclaim It’s Cool After 130 Years?

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      That’s the hope at the restaurant Maxim’s in Paris, which recently started a new chapter after 130 years in business.Anya Firestone’s job as a luxury tour guide in Paris has brought her to many rarefied corners of the city. But only recently did she do something that countless locals and visitors have done over the last 130 years: Book a reservation at Maxim’s, the storied French restaurant that opened in 1893 and has counted Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Margrethe II of Denmark, Jean Cocteau, Jane Birkin and Man Ray among its patrons.“The place was packed,” Ms. Firestone, 35, said of the night she ate there in late November. “There was energy — the ghosts of Maxim’s are probably happy.”Ms. Firestone, who has lived in Paris off and on since 2010, hadn’t tried to dine there sooner because the restaurant fell “off my radar,” she said, partly because she wasn’t aware if it was still functioning as a restaurant. She was not alone in that perception.“Many people, even most, did not realize it was open as a restaurant,” said Pierre Pelegry, a director at Maxim’s who has worked there for 27 years and was hired by Pierre Cardin, the French fashion designer, after he bought the restaurant in 1981.The focus at Maxim’s in recent years had shifted to private events, Mr. Pelegry said, and for a while it was open to diners only from Wednesdays through Saturdays. It resumed daily bookings in November, two months after the Paris Society, a French hospitality group, took over operations as part of a deal with the Cardin family. (Mr. Cardin died in 2020; his heirs have since been entangled in a battle over his estate.)Musicians performed at a pre-wedding party that Alexa Buckley Roussel and Alexandre Roussel hosted at Maxim’s in September. The restaurant’s ground floor has a small stage. Emilie WhiteWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Should Biden Bow Out, as David Axelrod Urged?

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      More from our inbox:Mike Johnson’s LamentSkip the Drive-Through, for the Sake of the Environment and Mental HealthThe Threat to New Orleans Drinking Water Jonathan Ernst/ReutersTo the Editor:Re “The Axe Is Sharp,” by Maureen Dowd (column, Nov. 19):While reading Ms. Dowd’s column on whether President Biden should run for a second term, I was struck by a historical parallel. Like Mr. Biden, President Lyndon B. Johnson had served a deeply charismatic president and used his extensive senatorial experience to seal that president’s vision with legislation.But facing health concerns and declining popularity because of the Vietnam War, as well as surprisingly strong opposition by Robert F. Kennedy, Johnson decided that his moment had passed.As David Axelrod has noted, it is time to consider allowing other Democratic leaders to step forward. Mr. Biden has served the nation honorably for longer than most Americans have been alive, guiding the country through dark times and leaving a clear legislative mark.For his swan song, he can try to hold on to power until he is 86. Or he can choose to guide the nation peacefully through the turbulence of the coming electoral storm — not from the campaign trail, but as a steady presence in the Oval Office. I can think of no higher service.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More