News from Prospect Lefferts Gardens and Columbus Circle

December 8

I'm in Denver at the moment, and I'd tell you all about what's going on in the Mile High City, but it’s 4° outside right now, so I haven't been wandering the streets exploring as is my wont.

Instead I’ve been working, researching and generally learning things, some of which I’d like to share with you, dear reader:

1) Poor Prospect Lefferts Gardens! It has lost one of its only full-service restaurants. My friend Milford Prewitt reports on the closing of Fly Fish:

“When it opened, it was named Billy Sunday's Barbecue, but I pointed out to them that Billy Sunday was a kind of Rush Limbaugh evangelistic preacher back during the Depression days who was racist and used the then-new technology of radio to rant and rail against blacks and immigrants with the Bible for support. He used a tent to feed barbecue to his flock after a sermon.

"So they changed the name to Whisky Sunday and that did no better.

"Finally they got out of the barbecue biz, rebranded the whole concept into a New Orleans-style deep-fried fish and chicken shack called Fly Fish."

But alas, some issue having to do with rent meant it shut its doors for good last Thursday, and, Milford tells me, will likely lie fallow through the winter.

Enduro, next door, is still doing very well.

2) If you follow, um, news, you’ve likely heard that AOL and Time Warner are parting ways because the plan for AOL to use its distribution network to broadcast content provided by Time didn’t pan out.

But the news is not all bad for those of us in the world of food writing.

AOL is working on developing content of its own, and that includes food. They’ve brought on Cheryl Brown, quite recently of Gourmet, as food director and, from what I hear, she has brought on a bunch of the people from the former Gourmet test kitchen to do some freelance work at AOL.

That’s nice.