Cooking Light Subscription: Todd English Food Hall

Todd English Food Hall

Plaza Food Hall by Todd English For the past year or so, New York's iconic Plaza Hotel has been on a reinvention tour: renovated rooms, an upgraded pied a terre program meant to encourage, I dunno, Russian oligarchs to buy into the hotel, and a basement-level shopping mall/disaster that would only attract those ame oligarchs if their flight back to Moscow was canceled, and even then only if they couldn't find a hooker in the lobby.But now they have a new place to bide their time; tomorrow, the Plaza Food Hall by Todd glish — es, "by Todd English" is in the name — will open its doors to... tourists, mostly. The menus are color-coded. There are nearly a dozen stations (tapas, pizza, cheese, dumplings, the "Ocean Grill"). Don't fear, if you want something from one counter but are stuck noshing on the sushi bar's Pesto Maki — salmon, tuna, yellowtail, basil, and so on and so bad — all you have to do is ask your "attendant." That's a word you don't see on too many menus.If it sounds a bit like Epcot (why go to France when you can have an Orlando Croissant?) that's because it is. The tourist swag is here, with English shilling everything from water bottles to his daughter's cupcakes to his own Hostess-cupcake knockoffs wrapped in plastic and stamped with his name. Many of the items on the menu are marked with the chef's initials — TE Caesar, Char Grilled Steak with TE Sauce, TE sliders. We wonder, though, how much that means if you have to spell it out like this: TE (Todd English).