FireBird navigates the frozen tundra of the Theater District

“There is no such thing as Russian food,” says FireBird executive chef Paul Joseph. And while there are entire neighborhoods in Brooklyn that would take jingoistic offense at such a suggestion, over the course of a meal at FireBird (365 W. 46th St.; firebirdrestaurant.com), this starts to make a sort of existential sense. There is no Russian food; everything is Russian food. There is no Matrix; we are so deep within the Matrix we can no longer see it.

Or, more plainly, there is no Russian food in the same way there is no American food, and to write a menu of such would by necessity include dishes that are actually Southern and Midwestern, or of Italian or Hungarian origin. With a few exceptions, the foods we love are sloppily borrowed from other traditions, while the ones we can claim to have originated are fiercely regionalized (try putting a hot dog on that menu and just wait for the New Yorkers and the Chicagoans to start the next civil war).

But while our culinary history is one of the poor, the tired, the huddled masses bringing their mom’s recipes west to be misinterpreted for the next three or four generations, the Russians did this cultural appropriation dance with style. OK, style and a hearty dose of the old iron fist: When they weren’t copying the grand style of the French, the tsars were taking an interest in the cuisine of their neighbors by invading and forcing some poor serf to keep cooking it for them.

Style is where FireBird excels. If you’ve ever walked the side streets west of Times Square and lamented the number of beautiful old townhouses turned rather unceremoniously into restaurants, FireBird will set those doubts to rest permanently. With grand, curtained doorways and plush, padded banquettes providing an air of opulent coziness even when empty tables outnumber the occupied, there is no way the restaurant could exist anywhere else. It is a warren of these rooms, each encrusted with ancient daguerreotypes of men in fur coats, paintings of wintry street scenes, sepia-faded books and glass-enclosed suits of clothing, culminating in a parlor stuffed with settees situated around a fireplace under a grand crystal chandelier, marble busts looming.

The menu is similarly lavishly appointed, with less clear results. Succumbing to trend, every ingredient in every dish is listed along with its provenance, whether local from the Hudson Valley, as the wild boar, or Armenian, as the lamb. While it makes for interesting reading, it is only occasionally useful. Do we need to be told what a kulebiaka is (it’s a thrillingly Old World dish of puff pastry enclosing salmon, mushrooms and rice)? Absolutely. Do we gain anything from the knowledge that the chicken Kiev comes with a rocambole garlic sauce, which, it can only be presumed, was the demi-glace-ish pool in the bottom of the unwieldy bowl in which the cutlet is balanced? Not particularly.

The dishes that sing best are those left in their natural state. The menu begins with a page of caviars served with blini and “traditional accompaniments,” and if budget allows, they are a necessity, along with any selection from the two-page spread of the vodka list. There are a number of salads that illustrate the European fascination with mayonnaise; the best of these is the Olivier, which combines cubed carrots, cornichons, kielbasa and potatoes to bizarrely tasty effect. It’s served on top of a thin black bread toast and topped with a beautifully poached quail egg, and it tastes of hardship and luxury all at once, like it originated in an isolated palace on the frozen steppes.
While there may not be any such thing as Russian food, there is a Russian attitude: oversized, gilt-edged, slightly out of touch, proud. Too many restaurants in New York manage only to capture a few of these contradictory impulses; by these standards, FireBird is the most Russian restaurant in New York.

Rachel Fields         

“This podcast is literally our last hope,” jokes Rachel Fields, co-producer of “The Versed” poetry podcast, and healthcare magazine editor. “Seriously though, I have always loved poetry, but I think a lot of people find it scary and stodgy and inaccessible.”

“The Versed,” recently featured on The Rumpus’s official Tumblr, the Rumblr, aims to bring poetry to the people.

“We want people to be able to talk about poems in the same way that people talk about movies,” explains Fields. “I have this friend who thinks Prometheus was a good movie. He’s an idiot, but he’ll still talk about it to anyone who will listen. We think poems should be like that too.”

Nora Frazin, Fields’s co-host, says she was listening to the Poetry Foundation’s podcast when she found herself wishing the hosts were “younger,” “sassier” and “more obscene.”

“Then I realized that I am young, sassy, and obscene,” says Frazin, who works at a middle school and aspires to be an English teacher in the near future.

The two Chicago-based friends and poetry-lovers want their podcast to be something people can tune into as they go about their day.

“Poems are a lot less popular than video games,” says Fields, citing her favorite video game podcast, ‘The Indoor Kids.’ “We’re going to turn that around.”

Frazin explains: “Poetry, for some reason, is something that I have found a lot of people hesitant to discuss or express an opinion about.”

“We’re tackling poems that people can read for pleasure,” says Fields.

The producers of “The Versed” believe podcasts are an ideal outlet for things that can be reviewed and discussed. “I like to think of our podcast as your cool, funny English teacher,” Fields explains, “if you met up a few years after high school and he got drunk and started hitting on you.”

One anonymous correspondent wrote in to ask why the “ladies” insisted on sexualizing everything.

“We’re obsessed with sex,” explained Fields on the following podcast, also providing a more serious answer.

Fields and Frazin aren’t afraid to take a relaxed approach to their podcast, which is more like banter among friends at the bar. You’ll undoubtedly find yourself chuckling along, laughing hysterically, nodding frantically or cringing in disgust, ultimately frustrated you can’t simply jump into the consistently lively conversation.

“It is very important to us not to be too rehearsed or edited or academic in our discussions,” explains Frazin.

They also make a policy of being as honest as possible. “We don’t sugarcoat anything and we hate on poems — or, usually, specific lines — that are lazy,” says Frazin. The hosts also aren’t afraid to disagree with one another about taste and interpretation or concede to their own ignorance at times, though Fields says they have yet to find a poem on which they strongly disagree.

Each of the four existing episodes of “The Versed” runs about 25 minutes and features two poems by different contemporary poets — some more contemporary than others — and the hosts’ stream-of-consciousness-style commentary and narrative interjections.

They have discussed poems like Fleur Adcock’s childishly sweet “For A Five-Year-Old” and Sharon Olds’s more carnal “The Pope’s Penis,” as well as their own experiences writing to celebrities, repulsively eating leftovers and playing terribly boring games with children.

On the podcast, Fields and Frazin also respond to feedback from fans, known and anonymous, but prefer when correspondents skip the shyness and identify themselves. After all, they’re not afraid to let it all hang out

Though “The Versed” hasn’t been around too long, Frazin has hopes and goals for its future, including greater participation by way of guest hosts who are opinionated and funny but “relatively unschooled in poetry.” She also hopes to incorporate material by more local and less established poets.

If that’s not enough to convince you to tune in every two weeks, consider Fields’s sales pitch:

“We’ll introduce you to poems that you can refer back to if you want to seduce someone or speak at a funeral or cheer yourself up,” she says.

“Plus, the podcast is short, so you only have to dedicate 20 minutes of your time every two weeks. Imagine if you could get a six-pack by doing three sit ups a year.”

Tune in to “The Versed”

By Mark Peikert

As IKEA and CB2 stores proliferate, design has turned into something both affordable and achievable. Gone are the days of hiring an expensive interior decorator and crossing your fingers; now, you can outfit your entire home in style without breaking the bank.

Of course, a plentitude of choices has its own drawback: making decisions. That’s where Pret-a-Habiter comes in. The onestop shop for all your decorating needs, the company has been handling busy, overwhelmed style-seekers since 2005, first in New York City then gradually expanding across the country to Boston, L.A., Chicago, West Palm Beach, St. Louis and Portland, Ore.

Charging just a flat fee ($2,500–$3,000 per room), Pret takes clients from boring to chic in four easy steps. First, the client chooses a style—classic, modern, country, etc.— then the designer creates a design plan, chooses the furnishings and décor and then whips it all into one beautiful design.

“It’s the greatest time to be a consumer because the range of products, styles and prices—whether it’s IKEA or Target or West Elm or Design Within Reach, it’s all there,” said Pret founder and Executive Director Carl Bradford Stibolt. “You can basically have a fantastic home and it’s not going to cost you a lot of money.”

Focusing on simplicity in decorating rather than markups and hidden fees has allowed Pret-a-Habiter to weather the recession better than most design firms. “The first thing to get cut is luxury, and people still think of interior design as luxury,” Stibolt said. “But you’ve got money invested in your home, and maybe you don’t have the time or the know-how or the eye to put it together. That’s what we do. We know tricks, we know great sources, and you really can have a place that looks good.”

As homeowners and renters slowly become more design savvy, Pret-a-Habiter has reflected the growing trend toward affordable décor that’s not reliant on hourly billing. “Traditionally, you always hired someone based on their style,” Stibolt said. “But we’ll go in and do eclectic or modern. We’ve had bankers who wanted more classic, masculine things, people who want more color in their lives. We see everything; people who are downsizing, people who are here for a few years and want to have a nice place. It’s really been all over the place. Our demographic is people who want to have a designed home but aren’t ready to make that leap to working with a high-end designer, either for budgetary reasons or they don’t think it’s worth it.”

Pret-a-Habiter is also willing to go the extra mile with their services, from accessorizing the finished product to offering a slew of digital services that cut down on the time crunch. “I think where we’re going is very much a digitalized thing,” Stibolt said. “We do an online project management system, and people do go online at midnight, and do it at their own pace. We even have a blog where people can go on and ask a design question, AskPret.com.”

When a company is willing to do all of the legwork for you—from ordering furniture to making sure it’s delivered—there’s not a single reason to avoid making your house into the kind of place that looks as if an adult resides there.

For more information about Pret-a- Habiter, visit www.pretusa.com.

A Pret-a-Habiter designed room. PHOTO BY Barbara Saskia Klap for Pret-a-Habiter