Sam's Pizzeria, soon to be (insert philistine restaurant/club/boutique name here) (photo courtesy of Facebook)

Sam's Pizzeria, an East Hampton establishment beloved for its thin-crust pizza and its Draconian "for the love of God shut your kids up" policy, has put its Newtown Lane space on the market for sale or lease.

The 3,110 square foot building includes a 91-seat restaurant and bar, a 400 square-foot retail space, and two 2-bedroom restaurants. It can all be had for a cool $6.5 million, according to Brown Harris Stevens.

Founding owner Sam Naska and his family launched Sam's in 1947 and maintained the restaurant's timeless look until its recent sale to Graham Quinn.

The restaurant served as a reminder to East Hampton's classic, sleepy feel - Jackson Pollack reportedly used to guzzle both pizza and booze there - despite looking out of place once pop-up stores and major fashion brands became permanent fixtures on Newtown Lane and Main Street.

Though Sam's sometimes felt like an unwelcome place to dine - a sign in the front implored diners to keep their children in check,  its waitstaff were as sweet as they were gruff, and their surly barflies often sneered at newcomers - it remained an East Hampton institution.

Now Sam's has become "a unique commercial opportunity," leaving full-time residents, weekenders, and time-sharers with one less option for pizza (Fierro's is still good for a slice).

drosen@observer.com

A new reason to say "Bon Appetit" in Billyburg

It seems that the Walentases are bringing the best of Williamsburg's flourishing food scene into their new hotel on the corner of North 11th Street and Wythe Avenue.

According to a report from Brownstoner, at a quarterly meeting of the Brooklyn Real Estate Round Table today, Jed Walentas made some comments that revealed some tasty details about Two Trees Management's new hotel project, including the fact that the restaurant (Brownstoner speculated there might be two, but our sources tell us there will be only one) on the the new development's ground floor will be run by Andrew Tarlow, the culinary mind behind Willamsburg foodie meccas Marlow & Sons and Diner (he also has a hit in Fort Greene's Roman).

Tarlow's involvement in the project brings immediate "cred" to both the gourmet and neighborhood "rep" of the new hotel which Walentas also let slip might be called "The Wythe" and will open on or around May 1st, with rooms starting at around $200 a  night.

So, it appears that Two Trees knows a thing or two about life outside Dumbo, or at least enough to know about who the go-to-guy is for Billyburg eats. This is stimulus money well spent.

tmcenery@observer.com

Bharara.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara has announced a widespread review of New York restaurants to check their compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. In an effort to appear unbiased in the selection of restaurants to review, Mr. Bharara did what most New Yorkers do: he consulted his trusty Zagat guide.

According to a statement about the investigation, "the restaurants selected were those deemed 'most popular' in the 2011 Zagat Guide, which determines its rankings based on thousands of patron-generated surveys."

"In New York City, arguably the restaurant capital of the world, no one should be unfairly deprived of the opportunity to enjoy the City's world class dining offerings, and we will take all reasonable legal steps to make sure they are not," said Mr. Bharara in a statement.

Do you have enough of that wonderful Duff?

"Pretty much anything they can get their hands on," said Matt Barclay at Park Slope's Bierkraft in answer to The Observer's question about what types of beer people were picking up in anticipation of Hurricane Irene.

The rush is, indeed, on at some of the city's tonier beer and wine stores, as news of the storm's approach rises toward an ursine belch. "People have definitely been, like, stockpiling," Mr. Barclay said over the phone, "picking up an extra growler here and there, and then asking about how much the cases are going to cost."

At New Beer Distributors on the Lower East Side's Chrystie Street, the foot traffic bounced yesterday, as the usual assemblage of customers trained it in from the Bronx, Queens, etc. Tomorrow, however, according to an employee, the store will not open as usual in anticipation of Irene shutting the subways. (Incidentally, The Observer's long-planned Urban Oyster beer tour of Williamsburg scheduled for Saturday was cancelled due to safety and convenience concerns. We'll get there.)

Bottlerocket Wine & Spirit in the Flatiron had not seen a jump in foot traffic—at least not as of 12:30 on Friday afternoon. "You've got to realize that in the summer, 40 percent of your customers are gone no matter what, and they're still gone," said the store's manager, Gary Itkin, in answer to our question about hurricane-spurred shopping. "For the moment, right now, the answer's no. But that could change in a few hours as people start to panic more."

So stay tuned (if you're in the sauce trade, drop us a line as conditions shift).

And, please, New York, drink responsibly until you're safely indoors.

Updated 1:53 p.m.: BR Guest, controller of restaurants like Atlantic Grill, Bill's Bar & Burger, Blue Fin and Blue Water Grill, emailed to say they have a new drink special going this weekend: $10 hurricane cocktails all day through Sunday. Plus! Any woman named Irene gets her first hurricane on the house.

tacitelli@observer.com :: Follow on Twitter @tacitelli

This leaf will go on a Cobb!

In a place like New York City, where fertile farmland is forever in the rear-view mirror, rooftop farms aren't anything new.

But what about construction-site ones? Tom Colicchio's Riverpark Restaurant and the Alexandria Center for Life Science have teamed up to plant a farm on a stalled site, thereby creating a mash-up of two of our favorite things. And with more than 600 stalled construction projects littered throughout the city, that's a lot of potatoes.

The 15,000-square-foot farm sits atop the building at 430 East 29th Street near First Avenue and is already supplying fresh produce to the nearby Riverpark. The stalled site is still intended to be the Alexandria Center's west tower, but Riverpark Farm will remain there until construction resumes, at which point it will relocate to another part of the center's four-acre campus.

And such creativity is necessary for green thumbs in an ultra-urban setting such as Manhattan.

"Thousands of soil-filled milk-crates sitting on a concrete foundation is just another way to think about a farmer's field," said Zach Pickens, one of Riverpark's urban farmers, in a statement. "Add some sun, water and patience and a great harvest will follow."

pengel@observer.com

Can Junior's keep up?

We take it back. Yesterday, when it was confirmed that Apple would be coming to Grand Central Terminal, The Observer declared the marriage of two of our favorite things. Nothing could be better. Except maybe if we could gnaw on a Shack Burger while perusing the glass cube, greasing up all the iScreens.

DNAinfo reports that the watched-like-a-Warren Buffet-at-a-quarterly-call Shake Shack wants to open a stand in Grand Central, though it has merely filed an application at this point.

"As we expand Shake Shack we are looking to make our home in vibrant locations throughout New York City and beyond," she said. "We are interested in exploring the idea of bringing a Shake Shack to Grand Central, and have responded to the MTA's [request for proposals]."

The chain, which serves raved-about burgers, fries, frozen custards and shakes, is reportedly eyeing the Zocalo space on the Lower Level Dining Concourse, according to Gothamist.com, which first reported Shake Shack's plan.

The spokeswoman described the terminal, which is seeing a major influx of new tenants, including Beer Table Pantry and the Tri Tip Grill, as "a spectacularly beautiful historic landmark that serves as both a transportation hub and cultural point of interest for residents, commuters and tourists alike.

The choice makes a lot of sense. Not only is the place clogged with commuters, tourists and lines, lines, lines, but it's one of the city's architectural gems—the perfect place for David Swinghamer, Shake Shack's boss and a trained architect no less whom The Observer profiled last year.

mchaban@observer.com :: Follow on Twitter @MC_NYC

On the whiteboard hung in the back of David Burke Kitchen, the overnight chef had scrawled the phrase “Let’s kick ass this week.” Beneath, a recipe for success was listed: teamwork, dedication, passion and more teamwork.

But when asked about preparations for Monday night, opening night of New York City’s Summer 2011 Restaurant Week, David Burke Kitchen Executive Chef Jedd Adair joked, “We just get ready to get our ass kicked.”

Choosing among four starters, five main courses and three desserts, Restaurant Week diners could order a three-course meal for just $35. Over 200 people took advantage of the deal at the main dining room of the Kitchen last night, whereas the summer Monday night diner average usually hovers below 100.

Still, Adair maintained the week is “anticlimactic” because the chefs prepare a smaller range of dishes and production simplifies.

“I mean I had an extra martini last night because of it,” Adair laughed. “You worry about it because the number is somewhat daunting [but] once you get used to it, you do the same thing over and over and over.”

Sporting a Yankees baseball cap at the beginning of the night, Adair serves as Kitchen team coach, shouting instructions laced with encouragement and critique. About five minutes after orders are placed, receipt tickets print through a machine stationed at his right and then he “fires,” reading the ticket aloud to the surrounding chefs: “Fire lobster soup. Order in two skate, side of fries.”

Monday night in the kitchen--for which food preparation began over the weekend--is an intricate balancing act for Adair: he reminds one chef to make sure the hamburgers are hot, sprinkles salt and drizzles sauce, and wipes the rim of plate after plate, erasing fingermarks. He receives the occasional waitress reporting that customers have been waiting for too long, asserts in a matter-of-fact tone that some servings need be redone, and even offers The Observer a glass of water.

“Pick up the scallops, short rib,” Adair demanded.

(All is quiet except the clanking of dishes and the sound of his voice. Adair pivots to poke chicken skewers into a slab of pineapple, as another order prints from the machine.)

The ordered chaos continues: “Pick up four skate, two scallop, two chicken, a short rib, two sides of fries and a fried green tomato. Pick it up.”

Around 7:45, after checking on his rooftop party (one of two private events Monday evening) and making small talk with guests about exercise, David Burke headed back down into the main restaurant’s kitchen, noting that something in the elevator smelled like vanilla.

“Right behind, right behind, right behind you,” warned one waiter bustling through with a box of spoons. “Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me,” sang another returning briskly with plates scraped clean. Burke scooped up a strawberry and popped it in his mouth. Fueled by adrenaline, a hectic rhythm had been established.

“This is nothing,” Burke maintained. “People are ordering the same things.”

Meanwhile, the dessert chef, overwhelmed with dessert tickets declared, “This is insane.”

Next came the order ticket over which Adair scrawled, “I am an asshole!” The list included two skate, two ribeye, two Cobb salads (no egg), two short rib, one tuna taco, one barbecue chicken, one burger medium, two spicy spaghetti, three fried green tomatoes and two french fries.

Apparently not everyone was ordering from the Restaurant Week selections.

At table 11 dined a PPX--restaurant code for VIP. (The code is employed so that visitors do not look at the hostess list and see VIP written next to their names.) Calling the diner the “cheesemonger,” Adair made sure to keep an eye on his expansive order as well, checking in with the chefs on their progress for “the guy at eleven.”

Plates continued to fly out of the kitchen, but around 10:00 came a desperate dessert plea for help, as the chef threw her hands down at her side in exasperation: “Can you help please? We’re like completely gone. We need help.”

Shouting for runners and asking waiters to push out carts of food, Adair sprang to the rescue, sweat dripping down his face: “Guys, we need hands.” He drizzled each plate with a ring of caramel, plopped an apple tart in the center, scooped on a ball of ice cream and poked in a piece of fennel.

Glancing up, the dessert chef asked The Observer, “Can you come back tomorrow?”

Photo by Nisian Hughes for Getty Images

In the past few months, The Observer and the rest of the online community has witnessed a whirlwind rise in popularity of mobile, app-based deal companies. Well, here is yet another one claiming to offer you a good deal.

New York has now been “Poggled.”

Though the brainchild of the Groupon family, “Poggled is not Groupon,” the site’s co-founder Joe Matthews told The Observer in an interview.

What began as a business school start-up, Poggled was initially designed to be a social networking site for avid partiers, but it caught the attention of Groupon investors Eric Lefkosky and Brad Keywell and with their generous support, the flailing knock-off was converted into the coupon company it is today.

Like Groupon, the site posts daily deals. But rather than the random deals that appear in our inboxes daily, Poggled is tailored entirely to promoting nightlife.

“Poggled wants people at the best bars, every night” said Mr. Matthews. Consequently, Poggled deals don’t expire like Groupon.

“Our deals are up forever,” Mr. Matthews told The Observer. The idea being that if you have a good time one night, why not do it all again the following night, and the night after that, and the night after that, and then again the night after that?

Poggled.com also allows subscribers to link their accounts with Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter and automatically keep their friends abreast of their location. Finally, no more texts at 3am from your AWOL friend identifying their location as “tha4 majhaatt.”

According to Mr. Matthews it took 4 or 5 months following the site’s launch for Poggled to hit its stride, but he believes that in that trial-and-error period they discovered the formula for the rapid success of the product.

Poggled launched its New York iteration on June 27. Currently partnered with about a dozen NYC establishments, Mr. Matthews believes the website will have close to 30 partnerships by the end of this week.

Already at full-steam in the Midwest, Poggled Chicago posts around 100 deals a day. Yet, Mr. Matthews has his sights set higher for the Big Apple. “Our ultimate goal for New York City is deals with 200-300 bars and 100,000-200,000 online subscribers,” the co-founder proclaimed.

To reach this goal, Poggled conducts extensive research on a bar or club before contacting them to make a deal. “We want people to go out with their friends and have a good, good time.” When Poggled targets a bar to promote, “it is not so much about the venue, but more the environment, we are looking for the best atmosphere,” said Mr. Matthews.

Curious to see if Poggled was already living up to the hype, The Observer spoke with Matthew Hecht, owner of Sip Bar on the Upper West Side, one of the first New York joints to partner with Poggled. Currently, the site is offering a “$1 for $20 Worth of Food & Drinks” coupon for Sip Bar. Mr. Hecht said that the impact hasn’t been huge, but some people with Poggled coupons do come in. Mr. Hecht is excited about Poggled, as Sip Bar did well with Groupon’s help. Sip has a 3-month contract with Poggled and Mr. Hecht is optimistic about its potential for New York City nightlife. Although he admitted that thus far, “it certainly hasn’t had the same type of sales [as Groupon].”

Mr. Matthews boasts a “success-proven” business plan to reach his goal for the City and it begins with parties. According to Mr. Matthews, Poggled-sponsored parties have the perfect formula for success, which among other things (locked away in the company’s brand safe) includes: “the perfect girl-to-guy ratio, the best venues, and the best nightly deals.”

The Observer has good reason to believe he is right. After all, “Poggled” is the Old English word for “tipsy.”

Palates begone! (Midtown Lunch)

Have you ever tried to get a decent meal in the heart of midtown, that dead zone between Park and Seventh avenues? It's all warmed-over pizza, overpriced hot bars or the Four Seasons, which a guy can only eat so much of. This is why a flotilla of food trucks, offering such inventive fare as Korean tacos and gay ice cream, have been decending on the neighborhood for years now. But, no longer.

Dozens of top-flight food trucks have been driven out of midtown by the NYPD, according to The Times. It has to do with an obscure law from the 1950s that was upheld last month in court, which states no "vendor, hawker or huckster shall park a vehicle at a metered parking space" to sell "merchandise." The judge ruled food could be classified as merchandise, and ever since, the food truck crackdown has begun.

There have been complaints about the trucks for months from restaurant and cafe owners, who complain about having to pay rent and taxes while the food truck scofflaws get a free ride. Maybe some regulation is needed, some designated truck zones and tax payments are in order, but to drive out the trucks for good would be a mistake for the city to make, because then we will be stuck with shitty lunches again.

There is a better solution. Cosi, Famous Ray's and all those anonymous sushi joints need to step up or shut up.

A glass ceiling.

In light of this morning's New York Times acknowledgment that a candidate in the Republican field for 2012 is a woman--"Mrs. Bachmann's rivals," we are told, "will have to find ways to disagree with Mrs. Bachmann without being accused of making subtle references to her gender"--we decided to look back at how many times the phrase "glass ceiling" appears in that paper in reference to a variety of would-be glass-ceiling-busters. (If it were broken, would we still be calling Ms. Bachmann "Mrs.?"

• Results for "Jeane Kirkpatrick" + "glass ceiling": 1
• Results for "Barbara Jordan" + "glass ceiling": 3
• Results for "Christine Lagarde" + "glass ceiling":3 (the phrase wasn't used in today's briefing on her new post at the IMF!)
• Results for "Jill Abramson" + "glass ceiling": 5 (all articles written by Ms. Abramson)
• Results for "Nancy Pelosi" + "glass ceiling": 50
• Results for "Geraldine Ferraro" + "glass ceiling": 74
• Results for "Michele Bachmann" + "glass ceiling": 84
• Results for "Sarah Palin" + "glass ceiling": 237
• Results for "Hillary Clinton" + "glass ceiling": 458

Give it time, Ms./Mrs./Rep./Congresswoman Bachmann. You can stretch this run into infinite think pieces if you have enough funding!

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

“This is our third year doing it,” Mr. Carbone said loudly over the crowd noise. “The whole point of doing it was just to recognize the small, independently owned beer bars that don’t usually get recognized. … Everyone in this room tonight—there’s going to be 34 beer bar owners here, and everyone has small, independent beer bars.”

A bar earns the Good Beer Seal (the seal appears to your upper left) if a bar is, as Mr. Carbone said, independently owned; if 80 percent of its beer is craft domestics or special imports; and if its staff is knowledgeable about the beer and committed to presenting it properly (e.g., in the right glassware at the right temperature). A group of writers and critics, meeting in a back room of Jimmy’s No. 43, picks the bars that get the seal. There’s no membership fee.

We wrote a while ago about the possibility of the Seal breaking wide open to include bars outside of the New York City orbit. Mr. Carbone demurred then—“It may just be O.K. to have a select group of good beer places in New York City,” he said last spring. “Maybe that’s it, maybe that’s all it has to be.”—and there appear to be no plans now to expand geographically.

The newest Seal members are:

• The Stag’s Head
• Waterfront Ale House (two locations)
• Brouwerij Lane
• Bierkraft
• 4^th Avenue Pub
• The Double Windsor
• Mission Dolores

Tuesday’s party was a loud, loutish affair, the exact opposite of what you would imagine in the induction ceremony of an association dedicated to the promotion of wine bars. Still, above the din, snippets of conversation could be heard related to beer distribution, beer marketing, beer serving—beer was taken seriously by this crowd.

Mr. Carbone introduced us to Drew Bushong, the former manager of CBGB and now an owner of 124 Rabbit Club at 124 MacDougal Street. As these things go at Good Beer Seal events, we fell into talking about how America, the greatest country on earth and easily the most bibulous consumer of beer in the world per capita, had produced but two originally named styles of beer: steam (as in Anchor Steam, Fritz Maytag's masterpiece out of San Francisco) and cream ale (as in Genesee, what your uncles drank at barbecues in the '80's and '70's).

The rest, we just tacked on the end or the beginning of foreign styles some version of "American," as in American IPA, or caved altogether, as in any Belgian IPA made in, say, Northern California or North Carolina.

"You wouldn't know it," Mr. Bushong, whose bar was inducted into the Good Beer Seal last year, said. That is, he went on to explain with conviction, American brewers have to start labeling their styles as, well, American. Like, Mr. Bushong suggested, "California Pale Ale—or CPA!"

We were in total agreement. It was our kind of night.

Being in Times Square, we see plenty of strange and slightly inappropriate interactions between people. There was the time a car screeched to a halt in front of our former culture editor as he smoked outside the building and the driver shouted, “Give me a cigarette!” through his rolled down window. (Our editor, always a bit stingy, did not oblige.) But, given the noted lack of drive-thru restaurants in the city, The Observer considered the gentleman in the Escalade to have created as resourceful a solution as any to the absence of food on the go.

Well done, sir. Well done.

He grabbed an orange from a huge tub on the way and placed it on the podium.  

"This is the first restaurant that Joe and I have ever been associated with that was high when it opened," Mr. Batali said with a cherubic grin. The audience, mainly a mix of Americans and Italians, tittered (lost in translation?). He was referring to Joe Bastianich, one of his partners in the place, alongside Joe's mom, [Mama] Lidia, and Oscar Farinetti, founder of the original Eataly in Turin.

"We're at 200 feet, this is the tallest building we've ever had to cook in." He was referring to 200 Fifth Avenue, formerly called the Toy Building, once home to the likes of Mattel and Hasbro and site of annual conventions that dictated what the kids of the Free World would play with in the coming year. Now, with Birreria—a dignified, hip place to get sloshed on beer crafted 30 feet from you sit by Little Rock-born, Rome-raised brewer Brooks Carretta—it's for the adults (doesn't hurt the analogy either that engagement-ring racket Tiffany's has its corporate HQ downstairs).

Martha Stewart showed, to a warm welcome from Mr. Batali, though she left rather quickly, just as Transom steadied itself from a beer, wine and hors d'oeuvres dinner for an approach. Mama Lidia and Sam Calagione, the rock-star-ish founder of brewery Dogfish Head who has helped put the "Birre" in "Birreria," stayed past 9 p.m., around the time the beer really got flowing from the bar.

Mr. Batali, like Ms. Stewart, split on the early side. His orange, however, remained.

tacitelli@observer.com :: @tacitelli

Last weekend we had a private tasting for a very rare Louis XIII cognac with our best customers--just twenty people! Mary McFadden was there with Gregory Speck. We also had a cooking class. I had to get in early for that, because we make a full lunch and serve it with wine, and some people get really wasted.

On Monday we had a party for PR maven Peggy Siegal. Later in the week, Barbara Walters had a long lunch with Judith Giuliani. RFK Jr. came in, and of course Pete Peterson has been here. He always makes it in unless he's in Washington.

At the end of the week there was some drama. The prince came in on Friday and we didn't have his table. Oh, he was furious! He never shows up on time, but thinks he'll always get the same table. The matire'd said he called me every name in the book! But of course he didn't leave; instead he ate lunch in the Pool Room. On his last day before vacation! Can you believe it? What a going-away party! When I went to see he said to me, "You don't belong here; you belong on the other side." I had to pay him back, so when his guest arrived, I escorted him through the kitchen, through the private dining room and down the main staircase into the Pool Room. The prince doesn't know who he's dealing with!

At least he'll be in Paris for a few months, where he can cool off. But he'll be back--our prince always comes back.

editorial@observer.com