The Sun’s Paul Adams is the latest critic to get around to Hundred Acres (pictured), the meticulously-sourced, farm-to-table restaurant which used to be Provence. While the Daily News was haunted by the ghosts of the old restaurant, Adams says “the transformation is a delightful blast of fresh air. A sultry Southern accent marks the restaurant's menu… where "seasonal" isn't just a buzzword, but where you actually look forward to returning season after season to see......

On the stretch of Dekalb Avenue in Fort Greene just east of Fort Greene Park is a stretch of reasonably priced, neighborhood restaurants including the local Middle-Eastern favorite, Black Iris. Cash only and BYOB, the friendly servers at Black Iris seat you promptly in a dim brick-walled room hung with tapestries at one of a dozen tables in a room made drafty by people constantly walking in and out. The menu includes standard Middle......

tre dici STEAK: The second floor of Chelsea’s Italian restaurant tre dici has been transformed into an intimate, 50 seat dining room (pictured) designed in the style of a sexy New Orleans speakeasy, circa 1920. Heavy fabrics covering the windows evoke a feeling of timelessness in the candlelit room, which is lined with luxuriant claret leathers and sensual artwork under an antique silver tin ceiling. The food arrives via dumbwaiter from chef Giuseppe Fanelli’s kitchen......

MOVIE: Tonight the Brooklyn Independent Cinema Series delivers two very different films. First up is The French Riviera, described as "a road documentary that follows a truck driver on a mission to earn enough money selling ice cream in the Icelandic countryside to go on a vacation on a French beach." Next up is About A Son, the "intimate and moving meditation on the late musician and artist Kurt Cobain, based on more than 25......

This week in the Times, Bruni one-stars Lebanese Ilili, saying “Ilili is probably the atmospherically grandest excursion into Middle Eastern cooking that New York has ever seen.” While much of the menu is inconsistent, he loves the kebabs and kaftas. Says the service is “occasionally confused.” And get the essmalieh for dessert. In Dining Briefs, Peter Meehan goes to Abraço Espresso (pictured), says “it’s tiny, it brews excellent coffee, and the little food that it......

This week in the Times, Bruni one-stars Irving Mill (pictured). Says, “It’s a self-conscious heir to Gramercy Tavern…if only it performed that way.” He does like some of the food, and the wine list. “At Irving Mill’s finest moments, with its finest dishes, it’s decidedly more than pleasant,” he says. But the cooking is inconsistent, the menu sounds more flavorful than it tastes, the desserts are only so-so, and the space too big, says Bruni.......

A Columbia grad student, Arun Wiita, and the New York Civil Liberties Union brought a lawsuit against the NYPD last Thursday. Over the summer, Wiita was photographing a subway station entrance and its surroundings at 207th Street and 10th Avenue as part of an ambitious 10-day photography project. He was detained by police, handcuffed and held for 30 minutes; now Wiita is "seeking compensatory damages and reimbursement of legal fees." He believes that his South......

Take a Palestinian professor with a critically praised and questionable book about Middle Eastern archeology and add her desire for tenure at Barnard College, and you have a big headache for school administrators. The NY Times notes that Nadia Abu El-Haj's tenure bid is yet another instance of the "struggle over scholarship on the Middle East" at Columbia University. Barnard officials have already approved tenure for Abu El-Haj, an assistant professor of anthropology who has......

The Khalil Gibran International Academy––a new bi-lingual school dedicated to teaching children Arabic and instructing students about Middle Eastern history––received a new principal after the abrupt departure of its founder Debbie Almontaser in a flap over a t-shirt. The new interim principal is Danielle Salzberg, who is an Orthodox Jewish woman that has been working with the Dept. of Education to establish the Khalil Gibran school. The school's founder stepped down last week after she......

An adventurous appetite for ethnically authentic and delicious victuals in our fair city's outer boroughs often yields both delights and disasters. This is a tale of a delight, three to be precise. Gothamist found the sugary jewels you see before you at Laziza, an oasis of a Middle Eastern bakery set amidst the myriad hookah lounges that line Steinway Street in Astoria. Like many an old-school pastry shop, the display case runs the length of......

THEATER: Biography is a largely forgotten 1932 comedy by S. N. Behrman, who wrote witty and flattering plays for high society. In the Pearl Theatre’s current revival, Carolyn McCormick (Law & Order) plays Marion Froude, a free-spirited, liberated lady in her 40s who draws heat when she decides to write a tell-all about her eccentric life. One of the colorful characters from her past who dreads the exposure is a U.S. Senate hopeful; sparks fly......

A look at some noteworthy television this week: Nature - Dogs That Changed the World: Dogs by Design (Sunday, 8:00 p.m. WNET 13; Wednesday 9:00 p.m. WLIW 21) The second and final part of the story of the dog looks at how humans created the various dog breeds and the modern day consequences. Today (Monday, 7:00 a.m., WNBC 4) Another outing of Where in the World is Matt Lauer starts Monday morning. The Mormons (Monday......

With many local short-season spring vegetables out of commission (ramps, pea greens), at least for a while, one nutty underdog is currently available at many small Middle Eastern, Russian, and Ukrainian produce markets throughout lower Brooklyn and parts of Queens- green almonds. Because they are only available for 3-4 weeks each year, green almonds are usually overlooked, or are considered too hard to find. Some people dismiss the olive-sized green things as too much kitchen......

From beastly brisket sandwiches to Bruni-sanctioned shrines to pork, Brooklyn has established itself as a dining destination worthy of a restaurant week all its own. Now in its fourth year, Dine in Brooklyn (Monday, March 19, through Friday, March 30) offers an opportunity to sample nearly 200 of the borough’s best at $21.12 (honoring Brooklyn’s zip code, ‘112’) for three courses. Participating restaurants range from perennial favorite and harbinger of sustainable cookery Applewood to Park......

Kids and technology can be a bad idea, as some are filming their beatdowns of classmates for YouTube. The Post reported about "cyberbashing" yesterday and found some videos from the NYC area. Basically, it's just sick: In one locally produced video, a mob of pupils from Lehman High School in The Bronx punches and kicks a freshman of Middle Eastern descent as he emerges from the Tremont East diner across the street. They then shove......

Estradasphere's previous efforts ran the gamut from jazz, Klezmer, disco, Nintendo music, film noir, metal, surf guitar, doo wop, Motown, grind, TV themes, Middle Eastern sensibilities, calypso, Tropicalia, and lounge, to name a few. Now they've released Palace of Mirrors, an effort that was over three years in the making. It's a work best described as a score to a film that can never be made. How do you feel the new Estradasphere album's......

If you ask a random sampling of people about their experiences with okra, you are likely to hear stories of a fantastic pot of Louisiana gumbo or a dish consumed at an Indian restaurant. Less often, you might hear about a deep fried, potentially battered, version often associated with Southern foods including fried chicken and BBQ. While the prime examples of fried okra are all about individually crunchy and greaseless bites of self contained......

Representative and head of the Homeland Security committee Peter King of New York wants better airport security. How much better? Well, better enough to protect against shoulder-fired missiles. In fact, let's look at the transcript of what he said on Fox News (yeah, we know, Fox News...) since he mentioned a NYC neighborhood while talking to Chris Wallace:Well, I'm not saying we should be targeting people, Chris, but I think we should put political correctness......

If you’ve been to Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, or Carroll Gardens and kept your eyes open while you were there, you’ve noticed that empty yellow cabs are always cruising up Clinton Street on their way back to Manhattan. What you might not have noticed is that they often make pit stops for a quick bite before crossing the bridge. Quite a few of my cabbie colleagues are Middle Easterners, and they each have their......

Gothamist ate way too much falafel in our college years. Cheap and fast, the Middle Eastern sandwiches were probably the only decent source of nutrition we got back then. But now, sufficient time has passed (we're not going to say exactly how much) for us to have return to the old standby. Chickpea (with locations at 3rd Avenue and St. Mark’s as well as now on 14th Street between 2nd and 3rd) offers perhaps one......

Tsk tsk. It seems that young Americans are more Americentric (self-absorbed) than we thought. A report in National Geographic shows that 63% of Americans aged 18-24 could could not correctly locate Iraq on a map of the Middle East. Other stunning facts revealed in the report: · 70% couldn’t find Israel on a Middle Eastern map. · 90% couldn’t spot Afghanistan on a map of Asia. · 75% couldn’t place Indonesia. · 74% believed English......

Russian food meets Middle Eastern in Rego Park's Uzbeki kosher house of cuisine, Cheburechnaya, which boasts 23 varieties of kebabs, among them lamb testicles, quail, and lamb fat. For the slightly less adventurous, lamb chops, hearts, and ribs are available along with grilled chicken, veal, beef, and grilled tomatoes or onions. Vegetarians fear not, fresh salads, assorted plates of pickled vegetables (cucumbers, tomatoes, sour cabbage, and mushrooms) and heaping plates of garlic-y humus and......

Underneath the Greek restaurant Metsovo and down the candelit stairs Shalel is a dim, decadent Moroccan-inspired bar and lounge. The wine list is extensive, the beers listed by country and the cocktails, in a word, uninspired. We tried the a Moroccan lager ($7) so you don't have to- it's not our favorite, but a spicy malt flavor does compliment phyllo wrapped delicacies better well. Thinking Belgium would be a better bet for lounging about on......

Well, New Yorkers definitely said something after they saw something: There were two scares in Midtown Manhattan yesterday, and luckily, they were false alarms. First, a Bronx man claimed to have a bomb in his belongings at Penn Station, leading other people to alert authorities. While Raul Claudio did not have actually have a bomb, there is some speculation his anger over the Amtrak ticket representative's failure to find his reservation (he was heading......

The eternal Sunday riddle: Should you have breakfast or lunch fare at brunch? It's one that Gothamist can sympathize with on a regular basis. Sometimes you just can't decide. And, that's why we were so delighted to come across a dish called Ajhi at Tripoli Restaurant, a Middle Eastern fave on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn specializing in Lebanese cuisine. Ajhi is a Lebanese omelet made with fresh herbs, onions, pine nuts, and ground lamb. Sounds......

Gothamist can't abide fruit cake. (Who the heck does?) But, there is something to be said about the virtues of dried fruit on its own, in cake-free form. One of our favorite spots to shop for dried produce is in the heart of the Middle Eastern section of Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue. No, not Sahadi's, the iconic Arabic grocery emporium in Brooklyn Heights, but its neighbor across the street: Oriental Pastry & Grocery. A much smaller......

Gothamist wanted to hold out from commenting about this, because, quite frankly, it made us ill. It's bad enough that we have to hear about a sexual harrassment case involving Bill O'Reilly, who skeeves us out on non-litigious days, but with the possibility of reading producer Andrea Mackris's suit against him, thanks to The Smoking Gun, and a chunk of free time this weekend, we say uncle. Gothamist is sad that we will never be......

Margaret Braun, Sugar Artist...

Gothamist loves Mexican food, and was therefore very pleased to find that Mexican fare had finally made its way to Fort Greene, Brooklyn. While Fort Greene is full of French restaurants (Chez Oskar, A Table are just two), as well as Middle Eastern and South African fare, it's been a long wait for tacos, guacamole, and the like.So what a pleasant surprise it was to stumble upon Peque�a a few months ago. As its name......

If you are unfamiliar with the oft-used term "feh" it is defined by one Yiddish-to-English dictionary as: "It stinks! No good." Suffice to say, "feh" is most certainly not what Gothamist looks for in a dining experience. But we can't help but notice that one Brooklyn restauranteur, Nando Ghorchian, has perfected the artform of the middling meal with a string of mediocre haunts in Brooklyn Heights, ranging from Montague Street's Caffe Buon Gusto to the......