THE LIFE VICARIOUS

ChilltownLunch kind of sort of maybe totally underway.

Our new New Jersey centric food and dining blog, Chilltown Lunch, is mostly up and running and there's a week's worth of posts ready for you to read and all about free drinks, Halloween decorations, taco trucks on TV, 15 cent hamburgers, drinking with the New York Giants and Bayonne politicos who ruin street fairs and hate America.

Read ChilltownLunch here and follow it on Twitter @chilltownlunch here.

ChilltownLunch update, taco truck news, Taste of the Giants.

ChilltownLunch will be launching next week in beta with a full recap of next Monday's 3rd annual Taste of the Giants at Giants Stadium. Tickets are still available for the charity event featuring dishes from restaurants like Blue Smoke, Little Owl, Market Table and STK. It's an expensive occasion, $250 - $400, but VIPs are served by the players, and anyone attending has photograph and autograph opportunities with the team. Plus it's a last chance to run around on the field before the stadium's torn down. As always we'll bring you a full report of the players favorite NJ eateries.

In other news, The New York Times Sunday magazine this past Sunday was focused on food and featured a great article on the cult following of Mexican Coca Cola. If you're looking to try it in Jersey City, it's available from The Taco Truck.

If your loyalty lies with the Lucinda Truck, they've introduced a new $2 vegetarian taco and they're taking phone orders as well as they up the ante in lunchtime competition.

New taco truck competition at Exchange Place: The Taco Truck.

Parked atop Food & Wine favorite Lucinda Truck yesterday afternoon was The Taco Truck, a new Hoboken based truck that after a year of hype made its debut at Exchange Place just a few feet behind their local competition. We learned the truck will be in downtown Jersey City by day and at the Hoboken PATH station at night, although last night they opted for Columbus & Marin which is now home to @lucindatruck, @thetacotruck, @thekrave and @laspicetruck.

(Scrolling menu, recycling center, pork tacos with guacamole and green salsa.)

What makes The Taco Truck stand out other than their cutthroat nature and lack of Mexicans? The menu - which scrolls on a video screen on the side of the truck - undercuts the other trucks on price, (two tacos for no more than $4.50) has an expanded menu of soups, salads, tortas and tamales and even sells Mexican Coke ($2.50) which we only ever find in Hell's Kitchen and Washington Heights bodegas, and they offer Twitter specials. (Like the first ten people to mention Twitter today getting free tacos.) And when you've finished eating and are left with just the wrapping, box and logo tape, there are trash, recycling and compost bins parked outside.

And for the latest Jersey City food news don't forget to follow us @chilltownlunch as we work to debut our new Jersey City dining website chilltownlunch.com next week.

Hudson County emergency drill sounds more like a blender.

As we write this, the emergency response drill that's closed down the World Trade Center PATH station and surrounding blocks this morning is just coming to an end. And if it's a success you can be sure the next time tragedy strikes, we'll be climbing out of those train tunnels on the New York City side. Why? Because of the total failure of the Office of Emergency Management tests conducted on this side of the river all day Friday.

Highlights from the Jersey Journal:

"The sirens were installed to alert residents in case of a terrorist attack or natural disaster and were placed at mass transit hubs and commercial centers in every municipality in the county... The sirens, which sound like loud horns blaring, were designed to reach 70 decibels...  Burns said he wasn't sure what solutions will be tried, either installing more sirens or making the existing ones louder... A total of 31 sirens have been erected in Hudson County, but three of them are not functioning yet... There are eight sirens in Jersey City, four in Bayonne and one in Hoboken, by the downtown PATH station, and one in Weehawken, by the New York Waterway ferry terminal, as well as elsewhere throughout northern Hudson and Secaucus... They were funded with a $795,000 Homeland Security grant from 2006...  The sirens will alert residents to tune to a yet-to-be-determined AM radio station for further directions."

So let's review. Three years ago Homeland Security gave Hudson County $795,000. With that money the OEM bought 31 sirens. They still haven't plugged in three of them. They still haven't acquired an AM radio frequency to alert people of an emergency. So all they have to show for it are 28 sirens that are designed to be no louder than 70 decibels. You know what's missing from this article? Well, besides who manufactured the sirens, sold them to the OEM, failed to properly install them or why they've never been tested before? The article fails to mention how loud 70 decibels is.So there you have it. The Office of Emergency Management spent $795,000 of taxpayer money on sirens that can't be heard over a hairdryer, dishwasher or blender. But they're not a total failure, everyone in the county heard how ineffective this drill was almost immediately.

The open bar may be closed but W Hoboken is open for business.

(Across the Hudson a spotlight shines on the W Hoboken for the first time.)

And the going rate, for such a quiet night as this, is $259 for the a "cozy" room so we can only hope guests receive something close to the value we enjoyed last week because Thursday night, it really was spectacular. While the six hour open bar was likely the least we drank all week, a cocktail was never out of reach despite the throngs. DJ Cassidy's mix of what sounded like Z100's greatest hits, 1979 - 2009, covered every shade of Michael Jackson and kept us on our feet all night long for the first time since Cassidy played NYCWFF last year. (Although we did decline the invitation of the white suited Filipina madam who oversaw the cocktailing models to join her in dancing around a revolving oversized W martini glass containing the measured pour of an Olivia Palermo lookalike.) Later perched back in a Zylo banquette we took in fireworks which didn't end before the sky lit first with Ms then 3s and Es and finally Ws demonstrating this hotel's dedication to get things right for their guests. And Jamie Foxx did something upstairs for a while. (No we never quite made it inside the Chandelier Room, but third time's charm, right? Maybe this week.) And the crowd! The crowd was the perfect mix for Hoboken. Healthy, overwhelmed and endearingly accessible. Needless to say the opening festivities had it all over the hot buffet lunch celebrating the launch of the Westin Newport, even with all the sitting senators and surnames LeFrak in attendance.

A taste of Zylo, the Michael Jordan Steakhouse of Hoboken.

   (From left to right, spaghettini with crab, pizza al proscuitto, ricotta nudi.)

Multiply the success of Michael Jordan's steakhouses by the PR might of Bullfrog & Baum and you have Zylo, the new NJ Italian steakhouse we've read nothing new about since we first read of it on Guest of a Guest back in February. What they wrote? It's "authentic Tuscan fare" open for breakfast lunch and dinner, it seats 105, it's rustic modern.

What it is? Dark, airy, high ceilings, an heir to the Craftsteak aesthetic, which it faces across the Hudson. When the weather gets warmer the glass walls facing east are going to open up to a now barren courtyard that will accommodate outdoor seating too. That Tuscan fare? It means the steaks are all cooked in olive oil and topped with sea salt accompanied by a specific vegetable - roasted onions, tomatoes, mushroom caps or fennel - depending on the cut. The prices are closer to Outback where a ribeye is $26 than Michael Jordan's in Grand Central where it's over $40. Here? It's $31. (Now while we don't pretend to be a restaurant critic - make your own joke - we hope sooner or later they learn the meaning of rare.) With one exception, all pizza and pasta appetizers are well priced under $10, and since this is post is prelude to tonight's grand opening festivities at the W Hoboken in which the restaurant is housed, we thought we'd give you a first look at Zylo's first courses.

A good reason not to run "Nude" in Hoboken's Pier A Park.

We think we've uncovered the motivation for moving "highlights" of this year's Hoboken International Film Festival to the suburbs versus, say, the Landmark Loews in Journal Square. "The year's most controversial film,"  O.B.A.M. Nude, a movie for which we couldn't even find a credit on IMDB, looks to be the sort of storytelling that would send moviegoers satisfied by this fare exiting the theater with teabag stains on their pants. This film is so absurd for words they had to make an arcronym of Occidental Briths A Monster... the untold story of how Satan turns a white college student so hellbent on spearheading a communist dictatorship he'll trade his soul to become Barack Obama. No surprise the only trailer we've found so far is hosted by the New York Post.

And you probably didn't think anything could lower the bar set by last year's festival premiere of the Naked Gun meets 9/11 comedy Postal. Could it be after last year's incident the mayor didn't want another embarrassment in his run-up to reelection?

Kris Kringle, Cozy Room all you need for a Hoboken staycation.

 (HIFF Director Del Vecchio and Charles Durning on the set of Three Chris's.)

Living in Jersey City we used to have options. The Hoboken International Film Festival and the Tribeca Film Festival were once both moments away by PATH. But God does not want Hannah Howard to knock me on top of Charles Durning this year. Why? All the highlights of this year's HIFF have been moved to Teaneck, NJ. Whether you want to see the world premiere of "the year's most controversial film" O.B.A.M Nude, Three Chris's written by festival director Kenneth del Vecchio and starring Charles Durning as Santa Claus, or the gala ceremony honoring Cloris Leachman with a lifetime achievement award, you'll have to pay between $15 and $100, plus tolls.

The good news? Tickets for the remainder of the festival which takes place in town are only $9 each, although that general line-up won't be announced until May 1st. Those screenings will revisit both Pier A Park and vegetarian mecca The Melting Pot just down the block from the new W Hoboken which - if this all reads like the makings of an early summer staycation to you - is now offering discounted rates to Hoboken residents.

Hoboken and Jersey City Italian deli sitcom news you can use.

Last week we alerted you to a Serious Eats post that outed the source of 30 Rock's "Sandwich Day" episode - Fiore's Deli. Realizing there's a Defonte's competitor on this side of the Hudson we walked ourself up Adams Street last Friday and should you want such an experience yourself, here's what you should know Serious Eats failed to mention:

1. The sandwich of Italian roast beef, mozzarella and roasted peppers is always available but the dipping sauce is only available Thursdays and Saturdays. Whether or not the jus makes an impact we don't know, but without it, this is the saltiest sandwich we've ever eaten. 2. Still it's absolutely worth the PATH fare across the Hudson. A Defonte's sandwich is $9.75. This is $5. Total. Show us a quality lunch anywhere here that cheap. Add in round trip train fare and it's still only $8.50. 3. The Teamsters from 30 Rock really do come here on Thursdays for sandwiches. Tina Fey comes in sometimes too, she orders the Italian Combo. 4. The man behind the counter has never heard of Serious Eats and asked if it was anything like Yelp. You have to love a deli that puts meat and before marketing. Still we can't believe no one has added mention of Fiore's to either the "Sandwich Day" episode's Wikipedia page or trivia section on IMDB.

Hungry for more? A new series about an Italian deli in Hoboken after the jump...

Hoboken film and television food news you can use.

Yesterday, via Guest of a Guest, we learned Cloris Leachman, this year's Hoboken International Film Festival honoree, is a lifelong vegetarian. (And new PETA spokeswoman as pictured.) Shortly after that we discovered, much to our surprise, the official hotel of the HIFF is the Doubletree in Jersey City and not the W Hoboken - if only they didn't have a steakhouse inside it! (Zylo is open now, and we'll write more about it Monday.) The good news is, Leachman being a vegetarian there should be little problem honoring her at riverfront fondue spot The Melting Pot as has become custom.

Onto meatier news, if you've ever seen the Sandwich Day episode of 30 Rock, you may have wondered the name of the real deli that fed the fictional Teamsters so well they kept it a secret until Kenneth drank them under the table with his predilection for Hillbilly Milk. Serious Eats got to the bottom of it and the answer is actually in Hoboken, Fiore's Deli at 414 Adams Street, which unlike the long-suspected Defonte's, really does provide dipping sauce.