I’m A Patsy! They Just Picked Me Up Because I’m A Pasta Dish!

You can’t tell the Patsy’s without a scorecard:

Patsy’s Italian Restaurant on West 56th Street — Frank Sinatra’s favorite — asked a federal judge yesterday to stop a restaurant from opening in Syosset, Long Island. The reason for the request, according to a legal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, is the “Patsy’s” sign above the new storefront.

If the dispute sounds familiar, it is because Patsy’s on 56th Street, which opened in 1944, guards its name as jealously as it would any family recipe. Earlier this year, it went to court to force a Staten Island restaurant doing business under the name Patsy’s to shut its doors.

Another Patsy’s, a pizzeria on 118th Street, which opened more than a decade before the 56th Street restaurant, feels the same way about its name. The pizzeria filed suit against a Patsy’s in Brooklyn, obliging the Brooklyn Patsy’s to change its name. The restaurant now does business as Grimaldi’s Pizzeria.

The 56th Street Patsy’s is known for its pasta; the 118th Street Patsy’s for its pizza. But the culinary interests of the two have overlapped at times, leading to a lawsuit over which establishment had the right to market marinara sauce under the name.

In light of the past cases, the suit over the Syosset restaurant hardly seems a surprise, though it does suggest that the 56th Street restaurant will guard its name against alleged impostors even beyond the five boroughs.

Big Brother And The Unintended Consequences

Do you load the homeless with transfats or nothing? It’s a sticky issue:

The Health Department’s war on trans fats may have an unintended victim — the city’s food pantries and soup kitchens that feed hungry New Yorkers every day.

Canned meats and beans, jars of peanut butter and other pantry staples donated from around the country include the artery-clogging trans fats.

“We support the ban, but people need to understand this will mean less food in the food pantry,” said Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger.

During yesterday’s lengthy public hearing, Berg told the Board of Health that any plan to ban food with trans fats should provide extra money for pantries and soup kitchens to buy trans fat-free foods.

“It’s a painful dilemma,” Berg said. “Our folks get less quality or they get less food?”

The debate then turned philosophical:

Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden has asked the board to change the Health Code so that trans fats can no longer be used in city eateries. Another proposal would force some restaurants to post caloric contents of its food on menus.

“Trans fats increase the level of bad cholesterol and reduce the level of good cholesterol and by doing so they increase your risk of heart attack and stroke and early death,” Frieden told reporters during a break in the hearing. “Keeping toxic items out of our food — this is a core role of government.”

Hm. At least one constituency disagreed with that definition of the proper role of government:

Outside the hearing, Luis Nunez, president of the Latino Restaurant Association, with 4,000 member restaurants in the city, said that health officials had not prepared them for the proposed ban on trans fat cooking, and were now threatening them with fines or other penalties.

“This big brother policy does not work,” Mr. Nunez said.

Not Clear Whether This Includes The Duane Reade In Forest Hills But We Can Only Hope

This is precisely why they hate our freedom:

New York’s most ubiquitous drugstore quietly got sexy two weeks ago by stocking erotic toys and passion oils, according to Crain’s New York Business magazine.

Among the items for sale from the upscale Kama Sutra line of sex aids are feather ticklers, edible honey dust, vibrators and flavored condoms.

A Kama Sutra executive said selling through Duane Reade was an easy choice, and predicted New Yorkers won’t blink at seeing “pleasure” products next to the pharmacy. “We figured the Manhattan customer was sophisticated enough for our products,” said Beverly Pollington Sirjani, senior VP of California-based Kama Sutra.

If Crisco Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Use Crisco

Hizznanny wants to ban trans fats — not at schools, not in public facilities, but everywhere:

The New York City Board of Health voted unanimously yesterday to move forward with plans to prohibit the city’s 20,000 restaurants from serving food that contains more than a minute amount of artificial trans fats, the chemically modified ingredients considered by doctors and nutritionists to increase the risk of heart disease.

The board, which is authorized to adopt the plan without the consent of any other agency, did not take that step yesterday, but it set in motion a period for written public comments, leading up a public hearing on Oct. 30 and a final vote in December.

Yesterday’s initiative appeared to ensure that the city would eventually take some formal action against artificial trans fats. If approved, the proposal voted on yesterday by the Board of Health would make New York the first large city in the country to strictly limit such fats in restaurants. Chicago is considering a similar prohibition affecting restaurants with less than $20 million in annual sales.

The New York prohibition would affect the city’s entire restaurant industry, by far the nation’s largest, from McDonald’s to fashionable bistros to street corner takeouts across the five boroughs.

The city would set a limit of a half-gram of artificial trans fats per serving of any menu item, sharply reducing most customers’ intake. The fats are commonly found in baked goods, like doughnuts and cakes, as well as breads and salad dressing.

As you might assume, the restaurant industry was skeptical:

E. Charles Hunt, executive vice president of the New York State Restaurant Association, which represents about 3,500 restaurants in New York City, said the proposal before the city’s Board of Health would most likely lead to litigation. The group plans to fight the proposal at an Oct. 30 public hearing.

“They’re going way beyond the scope of an appointed agency,” Mr. Hunt said of the health department. He added that such an action “could be considered in restraint of interstate commerce” even if it was enacted by the mayor and City Council and that there could be grounds for a lawsuit.

. . .

And Mr. Hunt wondered how small restaurants would adapt. “For a health inspector to walk into a mom and pop restaurant in Queens, where they barely speak English, and find a can of Crisco shortening on the shelf and then fine them $1,000,” he said, “well, that’s unreasonable.”

But at least one local restauranteur went off message, reasoning that since his establishment didn’t use trans fats, he didn’t feel the need to speak out:

Some restaurant owners support the plan. Mark Maynard-Parisi, 39, managing partner at Blue Smoke, a barbecue restaurant in Gramercy Park, said the plan was “wonderful.”

Blue Smoke uses a blend of canola and vegetable oils for frying that was recently certified as trans fat free by the health department, Mr. Maynard-Parisi said. “I’m not trying to pass us off as a healthy restaurant,” he said. But, he said, he and his partners “wanted it to be real and, to us, margarine,” which is rich in trans fats, “isn’t real.”

First they came for the trans fats . . .

Then again, why worry? After all, in large swaths of the city, even the smoking ban is largely unenforced.

Or alternatively, let the Health Department inspect places like Blue Smoke in Manhattan all they want — everyone grandstands, no one is punished, everyone wins.

Leading Economic Indicators: Housing Starts And Brooklyn Sales

In Brooklyn, the Bubble still builds:

A new report, exclusively obtained by The Post yesterday, shows that townhouse and apartment prices in Brooklyn remain through the roof, despite a market slowdown nationwide.

And some of the borough’s hottest hoods are even outpacing parts of Manhattan.

The average sales price for one- and two-family Brooklyn homes for the first half of 2006 was $586,000 — a 15.6 percent jump from the $507,000 seen in the same period last year, according to the first-ever midyear sales report for the borough from the Real Estate Board of New York.

Prices for Brooklyn co-ops and condos also continued to surge.

The average apartment sold for $491,000 in the first six months of 2006 — up 4 percent from $472,000 for the same period last year.

But in a strange twist, the surging Brooklyn real estate market actually seems to be an indicator of the cooling housing market:

Interior designer Rony Sandoval recently paid $545,000 for a one-bedroom apartment in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, that was once part of a Catholic school.

He said he first looked in Manhattan but found it “outrageously expensive” before stumbling upon his bargain in Cobble Hill, where apartments sell for an average of $628,000.