What is it with the The Best Western Gregory Hotel in Bay Ridge?

It seems decent enough. The rooms come with cable satellite television with HBO and pay per view movies, daily complimentary continental breakfasts and complimentary newspapers.

So why do bodies keep turning up?

A woman named Pamela Hanson was convicted of murder this week for killing a guy at the Gregory after he spit on her. From today’s Brooklyn Eagle:

“At the death-plagued Gregory Hotel, an enraged stripper was spit on by a customer and then stabbed the man in the neck — paralyzing him — before sticking the knife down his throat.”

Not for nothin’, but that was the third death at the hotel in a six month period. What is it about that place?

Oddly, the guests commenting about the Gregory on Expedia think it’s pretty OK — while the guests commenting on Trip Advisor think it’s pretty dreadful. No one mentions the bodies,

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This dog can’t come in, but he keeps his eye on his young master at Pierrepont Playground in Brooklyn Heights.

Photo by MK Metz

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It’s sea monster time again — specifically, it’s that time of year when the bloated, corroded corpse of a “Montauk Monster” comes washing up on shore somewhere in Long Island and we bloggers have a field day speculating on what top secret government lab is producing these creatures from hell.

This season’s MontaukMonster (let’s call it Monty 2) was recently brought to our attention by Montauk-Monster.com (”The Official Montauk Monster Web Site”). They said that the smelly old thing was found by a local couple in Southold, on the island’s North Fork. They also provide a video, taken in the dead of night, of the group examining the item.

Remember last summer’s Montauk Monster?
And the Dumbo Sea Creature?

They’re baaaack.

- And Now, a Monster at Montauk
- Yet Another Creature Crawls From the Sea — This Time in Dumbo

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If Fort Lauderdale Chef Paula DaSilva was disappointed about not winning Thursday’s grand finale of Hell’s Kitchen, she wasn’t letting it show. She maintained the same cool demeanor and measured tone we’ve seen on TV the last few months. “It’s exactly the outcome I wanted,” said DaSilva minutes after the winner was announced. “As I got to the end of Hell’s Kitchen, I realized I didn’t want to move to New Jersey. I wanted to stay home with my family.” DaSilva lost to Danny Veltri, chef at Flip Flops Grill & Chill in New Smyrna Beach, who becomes head chef for one year at Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City. More than 500 fans came to cheer on DaSilva at a viewing party Thursday night at Fort Lauderdale’s 3030 Ocean Restaurant and Bar in the Marriott Harbor Beach Resort & Spa. The Marriott pulled out all the stops, furnishing the lobby with an extra 80 seats and putting up projection TV screens to handle the overflow crowd. Before the 9 p.m. broadcast, DaSilva worked the room, posing for what seemed like hundreds of photos with fans. Fans like Todd and Sue Rivard and their 13-year-old daughter Stephanie who drove in from Ormond Beach for the event. Self-described foodies, they’ve been coming to the Marriott several times a year for the last eight years and know DaSilva by name. “She seems a bit more fiery on TV,” said Todd Rivard. “We don’t see that side of her.” But they suspected DaSilva might lose when they visited the winner’s restaurant just last week and saw that Veltri had a new shorter haircut, more in keeping with the corporate Borgata than the burger joint the chef oversees. “I’m devastated,” said David Cronin, the Marriott’s director of food and beverage, when he learned that DaSilva had lost. “That’s why I don’t watch reality TV.” Dean James Max, executive chef at 3030 who hired DaSilva right out of culinary school, said he was proud of his protege regardless of the show’s outcome. He hired her as a cook, promoted her to supervisor, sous chef and finally chef de cuisine. She is essentially his right hand, who oversees the 12-member kitchen staff when Max travels to his other restaurants in Columbus, Ohio and Grand Cayman. A third restaurant is set to open in Cleveland, Ohio in June. “It’s been great to see the birth of a star,” said Max. During the hour-long broadcast, the room burst into cheers when host Gordon Ramsay had good things to say about DaSilva. They booed when he criticized. DaSilva arrived in a limousine, her mother, father and six other family members in tow. “I think I’m more nervous tonight than I was at the grand finale,” said DaSilva. It will be back to work for DaSilva. She’s getting ready for a special Hell’s Kitchen dinner at the restaurant next Wednesday. She and four other chefs from the show - Andrea, Giovanni, Ji and Colleen - will prepare a $100 a head, five-course meal for just 95 customers. The dinner is sold out. PHOTO: Chef Paula DaSilva arrives at Thursday night’s viewing party at the Marriott Harbor Beach Resort & Spa in Fort Lauderdale (Michael Laughlin, Sun Sentinel)

Find me a Southerner who doesn’t like fried green tomatoes and I’ll show you a fake. A crispy fried green tomato beats any other fried thing I can conjure, and I can never get enough of them.
I hate to fry and don’t do it nearly as much as I once did, for both health and [...]

JC told me about this place last week and I forgot to look into it. I just got an e-mail from a gal named Aria who says Burguesa opened next to the original Sonny Bryan’s at 2222 Inwood on May 5th. She sends this link. Owner Jeff Sinelli, a serial entrepreneur, also founded Genghis Grill [...]

The tall toques have been passed. Former Craft Dallas execuchef Anthony Zappola has “been promoted” to Craft LA and executive sous chef Jeffrey Harris  is now in charge. Developing.

The Brooklynvegan blog announces the first annual Brooklyn Folk Festival from tomorrow through Sunday at the Jalopy Festival in Red Hook. The festival will feature the best in old-time music, blues, pre-blues, jug band music, New Orleans jazz, folk-style songwriting,

Now this sounds like my kind of tour: Scardello Artisan Cheese owner and cheesemonger Rich Rogers will lead a group of people on the first ever Texas Cheesemaker Tour on June 13. Cheese lovers will hit up Veldhuizen Farm in Dublin and Deborah Rogers Farmstead in Fort Worth, with lunch at Tim Love’s Lonesome Dove [...]

Brooklyn Mariner’s Dream Come True

By Tom Kane
Bay Ridge Eagle

What Brooklyn boy doesn’t dream of sailing out into the Narrows and out to sea, with his childhood sweetheart as his first mate? Well, one Brooklyn boy actually lived that dream and wrote a wonderful story all about this unlikely adventure.

The boy was Ron Ieva and the book is Sailing With Carol. It is a love story about a man and a woman and the boat that took them together to