The Queens Courier continues its series on gross shit:

When The Courier was at the store, one customer wanted four roosters from the same cage. So, when the man reached in to grab the four birds, one fell to the floor and started walking around the store.

“That happens sometimes,” Ustav said, and no one else in the store seemed to flinch. Then, the birds are tied up and dropped on a scale, which will determine how much it costs.

After that, the birds are brought back to the “slaughter room” — a room located in the back of the store on the first floor — where the killing and cleaning process begins.

First, the bird’s neck is cut and broken in order to drain the blood out of the animal. Then, the bird is thrown into a “plucking” machine that takes all of the feathers off the bird.

“Then we have to clean up the inside and take the guts out,” Ustav said. “Sometimes we cut off the head, but some people like it with the head.”

See also: Live Poultry Markets.

Eid-al-Fitr at Chuck E. Cheese:

For at least five years, Muslim families originally from Beirut and Bangladesh to Khartoum and Kuala Lumpur have flocked to Chuck E. Cheese on Eid, which marks the end of the month-long Ramadan fast. The tradition has spread from Bedford-Stuyvesant to Bay Ridge entirely by word-of-mouth.

A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips*:

As a billionaire in one of the dining capitals of the world, he can eat anything he wants. But he is obsessed with his weight — so much so that the sight of an unflattering photo of himself can trigger weeks of intense dieting and crankiness, according to friends and aides.

His food issues have become New York City’s. Although he has described his battle against unhealthy foods as common-sense public policy that will shed pounds (and save lives), many of his targets overlap with his own cravings.

“I like a Big Mac like everybody else,” he confessed the other day, explaining the city’s warts-and-all approach to fast food. “I just want to know how many calories are in it.”

Under his watch, the city has declared sodium an enemy, asking restaurants and food manufacturers to voluntarily cut the salt in their dishes by 20 percent or more, and encouraging diners to “shake the habit” by asking waiters for food without added salt.

But Mr. Bloomberg, 67, likes his popcorn so salty that it burns others’ lips. (At Gracie Mansion, the cooks deliver it to him with a salt shaker.) He sprinkles so much salt on his morning bagel “that it’s like a pretzel,” said the manager at Viand, a Greek diner near Mr. Bloomberg’s Upper East Side town house.

Not even pizza is spared a coat of sodium. When the mayor sat down to eat a slice at Denino’s Pizzeria Tavern on Staten Island recently, this reporter spotted him applying six dashes of salt to it.

And then there’s the concept of Asshole-In-Chief:

When he does not like the food, he rarely holds back. After dining at Blue Smoke, Mr. Meyer’s barbecue restaurant on East 27th Street, the mayor told Mr. Meyer, “I just don’t like it.”

Mr. Meyer tried inviting him back, but the mayor would not budge. “It never feels good when somebody tells you they don’t like your restaurant, but it’s nice when a politician does not pander,” he said, adding that the mayor has heaped praise on Union Square Cafe.

*In fact, Thompson should consider making this a slogan of sorts, e.g., you think it’s OK to suspend term limits just this once, but consider the deleterious long-term effects . . .

Never, ever:

Weighing 267 pounds and measuring 29.2 inches in diameter, the biggest matzo ball in the world was unveiled Thursday and served up to hungry lower East Siders.

The giant kosher creation was schlepped across the city with a police escort after spending 19.5 hours on a slow boil in a custom-made 100-gallon New Jersey kettle.

The Observer publishes a photo of the Times’ new restaurant critic.

Or is the horrible truth about the ice cream truck business that it resembles Amway? Too many trucks, too little territory:

Few sounds evoke the languorous innocence of childhood summers like the jingle of a roving ice cream truck, its melody drawing streams of children clutching crumpled dollar bills.

In this part of Queens, however, ice cream trucks have become a symbol of sharp elbows, more reminiscent of “Goodfellas” than Good Humor. Martin Price has taken his white and aquamarine Kool Man truck through Maspeth, Glendale and Middle Village for 25 years, but he has complained to the police that a franchisee for Mr. Softee has warned him a dozen times over the past two seasons to stay out Maspeth and Middle Village.

The most recent threats came on July 22, Mr. Price said, when three Mr. Softee trucks and a green Ford Econovan carrying the franchisee converged on his Kool Man truck at 56th Road and 60th Street in Maspeth. The franchisee, who Mr. Price said did not identify himself, was carrying a baseball bat and, according to Mr. Price, warned him: “I bought the area.”

“You don’t own the street,” Mr. Price responded.

But he has been so scared by the possibility of violence that he has been staying away from Maspeth and parts of Middle Village at a cost of 40 percent of his business, he said.

Earlier: This Is No Softee.

Normally there isn’t much point in pointing attention to legislative bills that may or may not ever be voted on, much less passed, but here’s an important one that everyone should get behind:

A bill introduced today in the state Legislature would, if passed, profoundly change the way alcohol is sold in New York. Among its provisions:

• Allow stores that currently sell beer (supermarkets, convenience stores, etc.) to also sell wine and liquor.
• Replace the State Liquor Authority’s licensing system with medallions that could be sold to another operator if a business closes.
• Allow liquor stores to sell “complementary” items including snacks, mixers, etc.
• Permit liquor stores to open as early as 8 a.m. and close as late as 3 a.m. (9 p.m on Sundays).

OK, I’ll bite . . . it’s the pizza. There are a lot worse reasons to run for office than the opportunity to sample pizza in every borough:

[City Councilman John] Liu is most readily known among the press corps in Queens for his overbooked schedule and uncanny ability to rattle off reporters’ phone numbers from memory. But in an interview with TimesLedger Newspapers about his ambitions for comptroller, Liu displayed a lesser known trait: pizza aficionado.

“I eat pizza almost every day,” Liu said, while taking a bite of his second slice of cheese pizza at Amore Pizza in Flushing. “That’s one of the best things about running for a citywide office: I get to sample pizza from all over the city. No matter where you are in New York, there’s always at least one pizza place.”

Liu’s discerning taste quickly became apparent as he rattled off the equivalent of his cheers and jeers list of pizzerias.

“VIPizza, yes. That’s a good place. You know what else is good up at the Whitestone Shopping Centeri Pizza Chef, you should try that one,” Liu said. “But one place you should never go, and I won’t mention names, but there’s a place right across from the Empire State Building that’s just awful. How they can even have the audacity to call that pizza is beyond me.”

Liu also dismissed the popular John’s of Bleecker Street.

“That’s not a real pizza joint,” he said. “There’s a clear difference between a pizza joint and a pizzeria that is more of a restaurant.”

And big props to Liu for having the stugots to publicly diss John’s. He may earn a vote or two from that.

How about five dollars:

Loyalty apparently has no limits: Di Fara’s Pizza has raised the price of one slice to an astronomical $5, but devoted customers continue to gobble up the cheesy fare.

. . .

According to the pizza-centric Web site Slice, $5 for a plain slice is believed to be the highest pizza price outside of an airport or ballpark. Value seekers might want to invest in an entire Di Fara’s pie, priced at $25, or a round pie, at $30, the site notes.

Just last year, Di Fara’s raised its prices to $4 a slice. At the time, the shop said the increase was long overdue, and critical to cover the costly fresh ingredients.

Longtime customers remain unfazed. Some, like Park Slope resident Mitch Feldman, didn’t even notice the increase until queried by a reporter. “It’s certainly a lot of money, but then again, there’s pizza and then there’s pizza,” he said. “I’d rather pay more and get a better product.” He conceded his limit per slice would be $10.

Location Scout: Di Fara Pizza.

You’ve heard it reported anecdotally but now there is firm evidence that you should always buy the cheapest well drinks, because it’s the same stuff:

Hot spots around the city have been nailed by the State Liquor Authority for refilling top-shelf liquor bottles with cheaper booze, watering down drinks or serving up cocktails full of fruit flies.

The SLA slapped staggering penalties on some of the city’s hippest clubs for a slew of violations in 2008-09, records show.

Some of the popular joints found themselves in violation of Subdivision 2 of Section 106 of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Law — meaning they kept their booze in “containers the contents of which were not represented on the labels affixed thereto.”

“We may find contaminated liquor or contaminated products, which may include refilling of liquor bottles with inferior liquor or fruit flies contaminating the bottle,” said SLA spokesman Michael Smith.

Because croissants and cupcakes are exactly like hot dogs and soft-serve ice cream:

Monday was a routine day for Grant Di Mille and Samira Mahboubian, the owners of the Street Sweets food truck, a mobile trove of croissants, cupcakes and cookies that got rolling last month.

The couple loaded the truck by 6 a.m., parked in front of the Museum of Modern Art at 7, traded hostilities with other vendors from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and were surrounded by police officers by 2.

“The police told these guys that nobody owns the streets. But it sure doesn’t feel that way,” said Mr. Di Mille, who called the Midtown North precinct — not for the first time — when a jewelry vendor set up shop directly in front of his sales window.

In four weeks of business, the couple has been threatened at the depot where they park the truck; cursed by a gyro vendor who said that he would set their truck on fire; told to stay off every corner in Midtown by ice cream truck drivers; and approached by countless others with advice — both friendly and menacing — on how to get along on the streets.

“I want to be a good neighbor,” Mr. Di Mille said. “But I am nobody’s fool, and nobody’s pushover, and I should not have to carry a baseball bat on my truck in order to sell cupcakes.”

In the last two years, upscale food trucks have swarmed the streets, entrancing New Yorkers with everything from artisanal Earl Grey ice cream to vegan tacos. These highly visible trucks, their outspoken owners and their followers on Twitter, Facebook and food blogs, have broken the code of the streets that has long kept a relative peace among food vendors.

Turf wars are nothing new for carts selling kebabs and cheap coffee. But the makers of thumbprint cookies, chicken-Thai basil dumplings, and crème anglaise are not happy about the sharp elbows that are part of the city’s sidewalk economy, or the murky bureaucracy that oversees the issuing of permits.

And then you remember where you are:

Organizers say the Greenmarket, held every Thursday, will further chip away at the terminal’s dingy, dirty reputation from yesteryear.

“This market is the next chapter in the terminal’s evolution,” said Susan Bass Levin, deputy director of the Port Authority, acknowledging it was once “a place you would hesitate to go.”

While signs posted on brick pillars still warn that “no person shall spit, urinate or defecate” on terminal property, some of the 210,000 people who pass through every day were delighted to see produce from upstate farms in midtown.

. . .

“I personally wouldn’t eat there,” said Ronald Goodie, 63, of Fort Greene, Brooklyn. “With all the dirt coming in and out of this place, no way, not for me. Why would they pick this place of all places to do that?”

Al Jean-Babziste, 38, also of Brooklyn, agreed, saying, “You touch the door handles and the booths, and it’s all so dirty, and then you sell fruit? I don’t know about that.”

Location Scout: Port Authority.

. . . the street:

In the debate over who is the purveyor of the tastiest pie, tempers often get hot enough to singe the palate.

On either side of Garretson Avenue in Dongan Hills, two giant banners claim to have a definitive answer to this highly subjective question.

“World’s Best Pizza” boast the signs draped in front of Goodfellas Old World Brick Oven Pizza Restaurant and Il Pomodoro, located about 100 feet from each other on Hylan Boulevard.

Both state they won the honor in the “non-traditional” category of the 2009 International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas.

“We can authenticate Goodfellas; they won the contest,” said Linda Keith, who organizes the expo — perhaps clearing up the confusion for the hundreds who drive by the proclamations every day.

The March expo drew more than 6,000 pizza-business people from across the globe, and top culinary judges selected winners from 120 contestants in the “traditional” and “non-traditional” pizza competitions.

“Il Pomodoro is very passionate, I know that. But, no, they did not win,” said Ms. Keith.

They did, in fact, earn a slot as a finalist in the Eastern Division, a division won by the team from Goodfellas, who went on to sweep the contest and win $10,000 in prize money for its seafood-laden creation, “crustacean sensation.”

On closer inspection, Il Pomodoro’s banner does contain the disclaimer. The word “finalist” is written in looping, diagonal script over “2009″ but hardly visible without searching for it.

A cabal consisting of the City and Mister Softee is conspiring to obesify our children. Parents are defenseless against the large sums of money flying around:

As Mayor Bloomberg takes on trans fat and calorie-laden fast food, some Brooklyn parents are outraged the city rakes in thousands of dollars a year from ice cream trucks parking right next to playgrounds and schools.

“It’s very frustrating that they’re here every day,” said Carroll Gardens mom Meryl Allison, who picks up her son Ben at Public School 58 and has to take him past a Mister Softee truck to go to Carroll Park across the street. “You’re a trapped audience. It’s hard to say no to your kids.”

The Parks Department auctioned off the prime Carroll Park spot on Carroll St. — between the entrance to the playground and PS 58 — for $6,500 a year.

But then again, there may be a corkage charge for that, too:

Recession-hit restaurants are helping themselves to your wallet by serving you an extra side of super sneaky charges.

The Post last week found city eateries subtly billing customers for things usually free — including bread and butter.

. . .

Unexpected costs found by The Post include . . . $3 for bread and another $2 for butter at Company, in Chelsea.

No cost was mentioned when bread was requested and delivered to a Post reporter last week — and a waiter refused to give a refund.

“It’s clearly on the menu, and we do have a famous baker,” restaurant spokeswoman Danielle Pagano said, referring to owner Jim Lahey.

The menu listing is in Italian.

Update, 4/28/09: This correction doesn’t change the fact that Company charges $2 for butter:

Due to an editing error, a story in yesterday’s Post misattributed a quote explaining the cost of bread and butter at Company, in Chelsea, to restaurant spokeswoman Danielle Pagano instead of to a waiter. Also, the menu listing is not in Italian.

Like a Brooklyn-Queens real estate spike that indicates people are cutting back, the hot dog vendor bump may be short-lived, and portend worse things to come:

The sinking economy has taken a big bite out of the borough’s top-grossing hot dog carts — which are now struggling to lure enough customers to pay their sky-high rents.

Vendor Timothaos Ayad, who pays the borough’s top-dog price of $48,000 a year in rent to the city to set up his cart outside Brooklyn Supreme Court, said business is down nearly 50% since August.

“I hope I will break even,” said Ayad, 46, a father of three, who has had the pricey contract for more than two years.

Ayad, who peddles $1.75 hot dogs and $5 gyros to the throngs of court workers, jurors and others passing through the bustling downtown Brooklyn spot, said he has been hurt by the fact that so many people now bring their lunches from home as a way to save money.

“In the morning, I see everybody coming by with their bag of lunch,” he said, adding he has decided to throw in the towel and not bid on the spot when it is up again at the end of the year.

“The job is too tiring and the economy is bad, so it’s not worth it anymore,” he said, adding he has to finish out his contract or lose his hefty deposit.

After all that nationwide publicity, he’d be a fool to change the name:

The man who caused a stir by calling his fast-food restaurant Obama Fried Chicken no longer plans to change the name, despite a growing outcry from protesters who say the name conjures up disturbing racial stereotypes.

On Monday, about 20 people, including the Rev. Al Sharpton, protested outside the restaurant, at Rutland Road and Rockaway Parkway in Brownsville, Brooklyn.

“He wasn’t a man of his word,” one of the protest organizers, Kevin McCall, said Tuesday, referring to the restaurant’s owner. “He didn’t keep his commitment of having this sign down. This is very offensive to African-Americans.”

The restaurant, previously called Royal Fried Chicken, took the Obama name in late March in a gesture of fondness for the president, said Mohammad Jabbar, the manager and spokesman for the restaurant.

Under pressure last week, Mr. Jabbar, who said he is not the owner, said the name would be changed to Popular Fried Chicken over the weekend. But on Monday, the sign was still there — a fact noted by the free newspaper amNY, under the print headline “What the Cluck?”

Feel free to make fun of the Yankees whenever you want now:

When the new Yankee Stadium opens April 3, the choice of food will be a bit more varied than before. There will be chains like Johnny Rockets and Brother Jimmy’s BBQ, and sandwiches from the premium butcher Lobel’s.

But those who settle into the 4,000 or so well-upholstered seats of the various club and suite areas, which can cost as much as $2,500, will have access to much more.

A number of restaurants and dining areas will be for their exclusive enjoyment. And the food will be prepared at open cooking stations run, from time to time, by Masaharu Morimoto of “Iron Chef” fame, April Bloomfield of the Spotted Pig, chefs from Le Cirque and cooks from Elaine’s (because Elaine Kaufman is a big Yankees fan).

Some of the chefs will be at the stadium for one evening and others may make multiple appearances. . . .

Those seated in the Delta 360 Club, which has 1,200 seats, will have access to a dining room where chefs from the Food Network will occasionally cook at two open kitchens.

The only thing better would be if the Bleacher Creatures started chanting “Mor-ee-Mo-to” until chef tipped his toque. Which I’m sure they will do. Remember, these are people that still do the Cabbage Patch along with Cotton Eye Joey.

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.

Mets fans* no longer can poke fun at San Francisco for its sushi, Arizona for its crudite platter or Seattle for its grilled salmon (on an organic roll) now that Citi Field is serving pulled-pork sandwiches on brioche buns:

As 6,000 construction workers have been feverishly toiling in advance of the April 13 opening, the restaurateur Danny Meyer has been refining the batting order for the ballpark’s signature food offerings.

Mr. Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group runs six fine-dining restaurants, a jazz club and two hamburger stands, but has never gone outside Manhattan. Now, in Flushing, Queens, his nonunion company will partner with the corporate behemoth Aramark, whose concession workers are represented by Local 153 in Manhattan.

“I’ve been thinking about this my whole life, and I know what I want at a ballpark,” Mr. Meyer said.

Some of the things he wants are pulled-pork sandwiches on brioche buns ($9), steamed corn on the cob with mayonnaise, cotija and a dusting of cayenne ($3.50), “dog bites” (Kosher hot dogs coated in matzo meal with brown mustard for $11), spare ribs seasoned with Kansas City rub ($10) and shrimp rolls — using a Martin’s potato roll — with shoestring potatoes ($14).

. . .

And for the ticket holders with lower budgets, Mr. Meyer will operate a terrace-cum-food court in left-center field called Taste of the City. There will be menu items from his existing franchises like Shake Shack and Blue Smoke, in addition to offerings from two new concepts: El Verano Taqueria (fresh tacos) and Box Frites (fresh-cut Belgian fries with dipping sauces).

(And don’t forget “Asian noodles” at New Yankee Stadium.)

*Excepting Peter Meehan, who waxed rhapsodic about the Laurent-Perrier Champagne at AT&T Park last summer.

Location Scout: Citi Field.

In case you don’t trust the avenging power of a higher authority, you can simply take matters into your own hands:

A riot erupted at a Brooklyn restaurant last week when Orthodox Jewish patrons discovered the “kosher” hot dogs on the menu were chicken franks that didn’t answer to a higher authority.

What ensued was as unholy as the hot dogs. The eatery’s frightened manager was punched in the face and fended off the angry mob with an electric carving knife until cops finally broke up the frankfurter fracas.

“They were yelling at the guy behind the counter,” one witness told The Post. “They started spitting and throwing things at him. They were shaking the counter and trying to jump over to search the fridge.”

. . .

The Torah tussle began when a longtime patron noticed the unusually plump wiener he bought Monday night at Cheskel’s Shawarma King in Borough Park didn’t fit into a challah roll as usual.

Suspicious, he asked for proof of where the hot dogs were bought. The server brought him the package, which confirmed the Bar S brand jumbo chicken frank was not certified kosher.

Actually, the menu is yet to be determined, but Eater reports that Thomas Keller’s Per Se is planning to offer a bar menu:

According to various sources at the restaurant, Per Se is in the planning stages of launching an a la carte menu in its salon and bar area. A reservationist tells us the menu is in trials but has yet to get the final go-ahead.

. . .

On the one hand, it means both fans of Per Se and the uninitiated don’t need to commit to a full nine-course meal, the accompanying price tag, or the two month advance notice usually required for getting a resy to get a taste of Sir Thomas Keller. But this major departure for the restaurant could change the vibe substantially while proving every restaurant — even New York’s most four-starriest –must adapt with the economy in the crapper.

Proving that Brooklyn is all things to all people — including but not limited to pizza, perfume and baby names — it is now also an incubator for a culinary-minded generation whose idea of fun is learning how to make something delicious and finding a way to sell it.

The letter-based restaurant inspection system, an idea floated at the state level about two years ago and which has perversely been turned into a badge of honor in places like Los Angeles is set to be tried in New York City:

For the first time, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene will compel the city’s nearly 25,000 restaurants to publicly post inspectors’ cleanliness ratings, which have previously been available only online or at the department. Rating signs, to be supplied by the city, will be required to be visible from the street, either in a restaurant window or vestibule.

The agency also plans to switch to a letter-grade system similar to that used for years in Los Angeles (using the letters A, B and C for passing inspection grades). The new rules, which will be part of a broad revamping of inspections, will be put in place over the next two years, giving restaurant operators time to comply.

The department said that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg signed off on the program as part of the executive budget announced Friday. He has scheduled a Saturday news conference to announce the new procedures.

“We expect this will improve our inspection program,” said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the city health commissioner. “It will encourage restaurants to be cleaner and inform people so they can make better choices about where to eat.”

Or an absurdly high caloric intake:

We interrupt coverage of the collapse of just about everything in sight to bring truly shocking news about the seven-digit numbers recently posted in chain restaurants.

It turns out that they are not quite what they seem to be at first glance, said Mahmuda Mukti, manager of a Popeye’s on 125th Street in Manhattan.

“Sometimes the customers look at it, and think they’re telephone numbers,” Ms. Mukti said. “I say to them, ‘That’s not phone numbers, that’s calories.’”

By city regulation, the chains have been required since July to disclose the range of calories contained in each item or meal. So, for instance, a very telephonelike number, 880-1545, is listed next to the three-piece chicken meal combo, with the range depending on the side dishes. You might think that it would be hard to pile 1,500 calories into a single meal — close to the daily recommended amount for many women — but you would be drastically wrong.

Khaliqya Terry, 18, easily hit four digits as she worked through a late afternoon lunch on Friday. She had three pieces of chicken, Cajun-battered fries, a small container of mashed potato with gravy, a biscuit and a medium cup of Hi-C.

“I didn’t know they had the calories up there,” said Ms. Terry, a high school student. “How much is mine?”

At least 1,545, maybe more, she was told.

“Is that bad?” she asked.

Bad or good, it’s close to a day’s worth.

She laughed and slammed her hand into the arm of her boyfriend, who had headphones on. “Michael, this is supposed to be the calories for the whole day,” she said. They would probably eat dinner at McDonald’s, she said.

. . .

At the Popeye’s, Dawn Henry’s jaw actually dropped when she saw that the breast, wings and fries ran from 735 to 1,400 calories.

“This really would make you not want to buy it,” said Ms. Henry, 32. She glanced up again at the menu.

“But, oh well,” she said, stepping up to place her order anyway.

On second thought, maybe these guys were on to something. More leading economic indicators:

The Federal Treasury isn’t the only group looking for an innovative way out of the current financial crisis. The food carts around Wall Street have also felt the markets distress.

Sayedi Abdellah met tough times by adding a free soda to his $5 chicken or lamb with rice. Business is up 30 percent, he said.

“To be honest, we’re doing better than what we were doing before things happened,” he said of the halal cart he’s run on the corner of Wall and Water streets for a year.

“If you go in there,” Abdellah said, pointing to a nearby café, “you end up paying at least $10. Now, people I never expected to see are standing here.”

Taken with mercury fears, it could mean the end of sushi. Will pork belly be next? Time will tell:

Many New York sushi restaurants and seafood markets are playing a game of bait and switch, say two high school students turned high-tech sleuths.

In a tale of teenagers, sushi and science, Kate Stoeckle and Louisa Strauss, who graduated this year from the Trinity School in Manhattan, took on a freelance science project in which they checked 60 samples of seafood using a simplified genetic fingerprinting technique to see whether the fish New Yorkers buy is what they think they are getting.

They found that one-fourth of the fish samples with identifiable DNA were mislabeled. A piece of sushi sold as the luxury treat white tuna turned out to be Mozambique tilapia, a much cheaper fish that is often raised by farming. Roe supposedly from flying fish was actually from smelt. Seven of nine samples that were called red snapper were mislabeled, and they turned out to be anything from Atlantic cod to Acadian redfish, an endangered species.

What may be most impressive about the experiment is the ease with which the students accomplished it. Although the testing technique is at the forefront of research, the fact that anyone can take advantage of it by sending samples off to a laboratory meant the kind of investigative tools once restricted to Ph.D.’s and crime labs can move into the hands of curious diners and amateur scientists everywhere.

The project began, appropriately, over dinner about a year ago. Ms. Stoeckle’s father, Mark, is a scientist and early proponent of the use of DNA bar coding, a technique that greatly simplifies the process of identifying species. Instead of sequencing the entire genome, bar coders — who have been developing their field only since 2003 — examine a single gene. Dr. Stoeckle’s specialty is birds, and he admits that he tends to talk shop at the dinner table.

One evening at a sushi restaurant, Ms. Stoeckle recalled asking her father, “Could you bar code sushi?”

Dr. Stoeckle replied, “Yeah, I think you could — and if you did that, I think you’d be the first ones.”

Ms. Stoeckle, who is now 19, was intrigued. She enlisted Ms. Strauss, who is now 18.

Their field technique was simple, Ms. Stoeckle said. “We ate a lot of sushi.”

Or, as Dr. Stoeckle put it, “It involved shopping and eating, in which they were already fluent.”

They hit 4 restaurants and 10 grocery stores in Manhattan. Once the samples were home, whether in doggie bags or shopping bags, they cut away a small piece and preserved it in alcohol. They sent those off to the University of Guelph in Ontario, where the Barcode of Life Database project began. A graduate student there, Eugene Wong, works on the Fish Barcode of Life (dubbed, inevitably, Fish-BOL) and agreed to do the genetic analysis. He compared the teenagers’ samples with the global library of 30,562 bar codes representing nearly 5,500 fish species. (Commercial labs will also perform the analysis for a fee.)

Three hundred dollars’ worth of meals later, the young researchers had their data back from Guelph: 2 of the 4 restaurants and 6 of the 10 grocery stores had sold mislabeled fish.

Otherwise even more soul food restaurants would probably close:

A recitation of the names of the vanished Harlem soul food restaurants — where the waitress/owner called everyone “Baby,” and the temperature in the room was determined by the amount of lard in the skillet — would be longer than the menu at most of the places.

Among those now out of business are: 22 West, where Malcolm X used the pay phone in back to do radio broadcasts; Adel’s, popular for its fried chicken; Pan Pan, which burned down in 2004; Wilson’s, known for its breakfasts; Wimps, revered for its smothered chicken and red velvet cake; Singleton’s, which was among the last restaurants to regularly serve pig tail stew, hog maws, and pig ears; and Wells Supper Club, best known as the restaurant credited with putting chicken and waffles on the same plate.

Onetime staples like butter beans, country fried steak, hog maws, oxtails, chicken livers, ham hocks, neck bones, and chitterlings have become uncommon, and in some cases, unavailable, in this former soul food capital.

. . .

Restaurants, including soul food places, are also operating under increased pressure from the city to offer more nutritious meals. This summer, the city banned restaurants from using artificial trans fat to prepare foods, and also required chain restaurants to post calorie counts of their menu items.

Even before the new laws took effect, some traditional soul food restaurants began to offer more healthful choices, including sometimes using skim milk in macaroni and cheese, and offering the option of oven fried, instead of deep fried, chicken.

The calorie count for a traditionally prepared dish of macaroni and cheese, for instance, is about 650 calories, and a single piece of deep fried chicken can have more than 400 calories, said Lindsey Williams, author of Neo Soul cookbook.

Those numbers are in line with a typical fast food meal: At McDonald’s, a Big Mac has about 540 calories, while a McDonald’s premium crispy chicken club sandwich contains 630 calories, according to the restaurant.

Until then, you’re basically an idiot:

Support for a fast food ban in New York is growing among city lawmakers after the Los Angeles City Council passed an unprecedented bill Tuesday that would make the addition of new fast food restaurants in certain areas of the city illegal for at least one year.

“People are literally being poisoned by their diets — LA’s idea deserves serious consideration as we look for holistic solutions to a serious problem. A moratorium may help stem the problem,” Council Member Eric Gioia, who represents Queens, said in a statement yesterday.

*I’m guessing the Pistachio Crusted Duck Foie Gras Terrine (menu) is just as “bad” for you as a Big Mac.

**Three words for you: Foie Gras Napoleon.

Councilmember Tony Avella, the City Council’s true master of grandstanding (beating out both John Liu and Eric Gioia), has staked out many positions in his run up to a mayoral campaign, from the principled (refusing a pay raise, vowing to investigate the quid pro quo-like lobbying during the congestion pricing debate) to the useful (a do not call list for advertising circulars) to the loopy (section 809 of New York’s Education Law), but this just takes the cake:

The fight over foie gras is coming to City Hall, with a City Council member who is running for mayor, Tony Avella, set to urge his colleagues to support a proposed ban on the force-feeding of ducks and geese.

Mr. Avella, who also has introduced a bill to ban horse-drawn carriages in the city, said he thinks it is inhumane to force-feed birds to fatten their livers for foie gras.

Tomorrow Mr. Avella is scheduled to introduce a council resolution in support of a state bill proposed by Senator Frank Padavan that would ban the force-feeding of birds by hand or machine to enlarge their livers.

“If they can produce foie gras by feeding the animals in a normal process, well, that’s up to them,” Mr. Avella, who represents parts of Queens, said. The resolution will not call for a ban on the sale of foie gras.

And, dude, New York City is just not that kind of town.

As in, come for the bellinis, stay for the $18.95 bowl of minestrone*:

A Cipriani restaurant without a liquor license: aphorisms about dogs without bones spring to mind. How could it go on? And would it even be possible?

On Wednesday, the State Liquor Authority charged several affiliated Manhattan restaurants run by Giuseppe Cipriani and his father, Arrigo, with multiple violations of state laws, and threatened the maximum penalty: revocation of their liquor licenses.

Interviews with people in the restaurant business on Friday suggest that it would not be easy or even practical for the Ciprianis to continue to operate as a dry minichain, but that resourcefulness might go a long way. “They should look at it as an opportunity to get creative,” said Karine Bakhoum, a restaurant publicist.

The Ciprianis run the Rainbow Room, Harry Cipriani and several other restaurants and catering halls in Manhattan. The famous Harry’s Bar in Venice, opened in 1931 by Arrigo Cipriani’s father, is the flagship property of the empire. Ernest Hemingway was its best-known patron, and the bellini — Champagne with peach purée, juice or schnapps — its primary contribution to civilization.

Ms. Bakhoum said that in 2006, she represented Novo, a restaurant that had just opened on Hudson Street before being granted its liquor license. “It had a wonderful Latino menu, so we did a campaign with a water bar and fresh juices,” she said. “You could design your own water, with fruits and extracts. We made it a differentiation point rather than a detraction point. We found that many people weren’t interested in drinking alcohol because of the caloric content.”

Still, restaurateurs say that alcohol sales can account for more than half their revenue — with much higher profit margins than from food sales. The Cipriani chain’s logo depicts a bartender mixing drinks. Can you imagine a bellini built on fortified water?

Another point of inspiration might be called the Club Kalua strategy. Club Kalua is the nightspot in Queens where Sean Bell was shot to death by police officers in November 2006. The subsequent loss of the club’s liquor license became an opportunity to unburden the dancers of bikini tops, and it became a topless club (serving virgin passion-fruit mojitos and Red Bull cocktails).

“You lose a lot of business,” said Roger Duran, Club Kalua’s owner. Still, he said, “It’s working very well for me at the moment.” The patrons who stayed? “They go for the girls, basically.”

*Or the much vaunted $36.95 lasagna:

Over the years the Cipriani restaurant family and its employees have faced charges of sexual harassment, insurance fraud and tax evasion, the last leading to guilty pleas by two family members in July.

But the crime that comes to mind first when I think of the Ciprianis is highway robbery. Based on my recent experience, that’s what happens almost any time Harry Cipriani on Fifth Avenue serves lunch or dinner.