The San Gennaro Festival has devolved in recent years into a bad Italian-American cliché everyone runs from while simultaneously craving.

Fortunately, a few fearless culinary heroes decided to grab the Mulberry Street clusterfuck by the berries and give it a fierce shake. Gone are the dropped vowels (“Eh, gimme some mozzerhel with my brazhoule!”) and the plaster of Paris saints. OK, that’s a lie.

All of the gaudy crap is still there (you know you want it), but now it’s joined by bib-worthy offerings from Torrisi Italian Specialties, Wylie Dufresene’s dad, Gabe Stulman, April Bloomfield and the two Frankies.

The New York Times dishes on the new-fangled goodies, but to really get into the rhythm and the rhyme of San Gennaro, you’ve gotta be there with a Zeppole in one hand and a cannoli in the other.

Before you head out, get primed for some old-fashioned cheese with the folks at Rubirosa, who somehow make spinning around to Earth Wind & Fire’s “September” look like a good time.

Check, please. DJ Mehdi Faveris-Essadi spun his last tune on the dance floor last week, and music and food geeks everywhere are in mourning.

The French-Tunisian hip-hop electro wunderkind was the single most significant and influential French multi-culti instrument of unification since the Treaty of Versailles. DJ Mehdi was always true to his underground roots, while managing to also flourish in headier climates, producing Chromeo and Example, among others. The 34-year-old Mehdi died as he lived: dancing on a roof.

The legendary Le Fooding festival held a performance in his honor at NYC’s Elizabeth Street Gallery. (Mehdi was scheduled to perform at the festival’s kickoff concert). Mehdi, like all stylish French men, was BFF with foodies.

Below, the slap-happy booty shaker with the Ed Banger Crew perfectly captures Mehdi in his trademark silly-serious style:

Have you heard of Massimo Bottura yet? He’s about to be on the tip of everyone’s tongue.

Massimo, the culinary equivalent of Greg Graffin, has already rocked Europe. He has not only managed to drag your Nonna’s Italian classics into the post-space age, tricking out his Modena restaurant and the two-Michelin-starred Osteria Francescana with all manners of culinary rocket science (he literally spins Parmigiano into air), he’s also deeply committed to the fleeting, visceral joy found in the superficial.

Bottura is avant garde, real where it counts, fake when it’s fun and obsessed with random cultural references (there’s a dish on his menu that refers to Joseph Beuys, everyone’s fave underdog conceptual artist). The music of Thelonius Monk, Bob Dylan and Edith Piaf have been cited as the inspirations that have led Massimo to new levels of cookery creation; he often compares the creation of music and food, saying there are two ways to be a chef today:

“[F]ollow the score as a musician would; being respectful, buying the right ingredients and following the recipe to produce a good cover version. Others are trying to create their own way, their own music.”

Check out a new film he made that’s causing a ruckus in the food geek blogosphere over at Eater, or check out why he chose to sleep next to a sous vide tank of reindeer tongue, below:

Club pop-ups are the new foodie pop-ups.

Pop-ups, in theory, should be everything the brick-and-mortar model is, sans the bricks and mortar and the expense (less overhead = smaller check, right)? In theory, yes. In practice, not so much.

Madame Wong’s, a fried-rice-aluminum-pan takeout joint that magically transformed into a sinister disco joint on Howard Street in Chinatown, had its brief, jittery, expensive, rapid heartbeat moment on the dance floor, and although, according to one Yelper, it makes you “feel OK about skipping a shower” (which may or may not be a selling point), the heat from the NYPD became just a little too hot.

Word is, the party has moved on to the Red Egg in Soho.

Curious what all this pop-up jazz is? Get an eyeful of magic from the network created to explain the world to people too young, too old or too oblivious to participate, CBS:

Consciousness-raising, neo-noir oddball David Lynch has opened a nightclub in Paris called Silencio.

The club is inspired by the eponymous venue from “Mulholland Drive,” and sports Buddhist cocktail bars, a dream forest and a library, among other bizarre curios. Refusing to play to type, it doesn’t feature fuming canines or anthropomorphized industrial wastelands.

The maestro reportedly micromanaged everything, from the level of sodium in the bar snacks, to the style of the furniture, designed to compel sitters to be alert and open to the unknown.

“Silencio is something dear to me,” he told the Guardian. “I wanted to create an intimate space where all the arts could come together. There won’t be a Warhol-like guru, but it will be open to celebrated artists of all disciplines to come here to program or create what they want.”

If you can’t make it to Paris just yet, get your creepy film fix with this short, vintage collaboration David worked on with Interpol. And see what many a musician has to say about the man himself.

Zac Brown is as enthusiastic about his heirloom tomatoes and agave-fig butter, and he wants to spread the love.

Last year, the musician decided that pre-concert meet and greets were lame. So he infused the pre-show glad-handing with some foodie magic, turning them into “Eat and Greets” (or meet and meats). They’re sprawling affairs, created for a few lucky fans before shows, though they have to swift enough to snatch the sought-after tickets released on his site.

Rusty Hamlin, a trained chef, mans the grills and works his magic, to drooling acclaim. (Moonshine vinaigrette, creamy polenta with gouda and wild mushrooms, grilled okra with saffron-chardonnay butter, slabs of beef and pork tenderloin). He sources as locally as possible, with a new menu planned for each stop on the tour.

The next meet and eat takes place Oct. 21-23 at Riley Park in South Carolina. If you’re curious, see what you’d be getting yourself into, below:

As it turns out, your waiter probably capable of accomplishing other things than trying to scare up some gluten-free croutons for you Caesar salad. Crazy, right?

The second annual The Not My Day Job Talent Show on Sunday, Sept. 18 is more than just an important exercise in self-esteem building for underemployed actors and musicians; it also benefits Wellness in the Schools.

Plus, it’s going to kick ass. The restaurant crews of Marc Forgione, Fatty Crew, Kuma Inn, Market Table, L’Artusi, dell’anima, Shake Shack and other killer culinary destinations will be flaunting their skills in feats of dance, music and art.

Snacks from the kitchens, plus cocktails from Ward III, Anfora and PDT, beer from the Brooklyn Brewery and vino from Vinifera will be served as well. Butchery classes, dinners, wine tastings, and other good karma-earning activites will also be auctioned off. Tickets are $30-$80, with 10 percent discounts for folks in the restaurant industry.

Below, check out Marc Forgione give Food Republic the scoop on the day-to-day realities of kitchen work:

Untitled from Food Republic on Vimeo.