NRN contributors author cooking, cocktail tomes

Nation's Restaurant News, Feb 2, 2004 by Michael Schrader

Nation's Restaurant News from its inception was intended not only to report on restaurant business but also to explain what was happening in them. Recently, two of NRN's contributing writers, Florence Fabricant and Gary Regan, wrote notable books that restaurateurs will relish reading.

THE NEW YORK RESTAURANT COOKBOOK, Florence Fabricant, 287 pages, New York: Rizzoli International Publications, $29.95.

Fabricant, a freelance writer for The New York Times and columnist for Nation's Restaurant News, has written six previous cookbooks. Her current opus, serving up recipes from New York's restaurants for the home cook. is the most impressive of them all.

Fabricant's well-written tome is a collection of 115 signature recipes from 115 of the best-known restaurants in the five boroughs of the city. It also provides an insider's look at them, summarizing what is distinctive about each, how it originated and how it evolved. The arrangement is according to category, such as appetizers, soups, seafood, poultry, meat and desserts. Fabricant chose the restaurants in consultation with NYC & Company, the official tourism marketing association of New York, so that all of the boroughs and a cross section of the city's ethnic fabric would be represented. The organization's foundation will benefit from a portion of the royalties. This then is a culinary odyssey through the restaurants of one of the dining capitals of the world, from Alain Ducasse, on West 58th Street, to Zitoune, on Gansevoort Street. It is a tribute to both the restaurants and their food. Recipes include such treats as cornmeal-crusted oysters, ricotta-andspinach dumplings with butter and sage, and striped bass with red-wine sauce and sage. This is a must-have book for any food lover who lives in New York or plans to visit.

THE JOY OF MIXOLOGY, Gary Regan, 386 pages, New York: Clarkson Potter, $30. Regan, author of "the Bartender's Bible" and coauthor, with his wife, of four other books, is a freelance writer and columnist for Nation's Restaurant News. Regan's current work is a guide to the craft of making cocktails. It explains how to rim a glass and how to muddle, layer, flame and blend drinks. He presents his information and 350 drink recipes with charm, humor and a warm enthusiasm for bartending. You'll find here an interesting history of bars and bartending in the United States, a summary of the basic philosophy of how to be a bartender and Regan's own system for categorizing drinks into families. It is a useful book, one that will help bartenders not only to remember drink recipes but also to invent new ones.