This week in the Times, Bruni one-stars Primehouse New York . Calls it “an estimable [steakhouse], with virtues that will rightly earn it the affection of many discerning carnivores and give it a solid chance in a competitive field.” On the downside, the quality of the meats isn’t always quite what it should be, service is uneven, and beyond the steaks, the menu doesn’t have much to offer. In Dining Briefs, Bruni revisits One if......

After Letterman announced his show's comeback with new episodes, writers' strike or no writers' strike, the leaders of late night all followed suit. Conan O'Brien, who has been growing a "strike beard" and paying his non-writer employees out of pocket, will return on January 2nd -- and his West Coast network-mate, Jay Leno, will do the same. Yesterday the WGA released the following statement regarding this move.“The AMPTP walked away from the bargaining table on......

Two years ago the famed Saturday Night Fever dance floor was sold at auction for $188,000 when the Brooklyn club where the movie was filmed, Odyssey 2001 (later called Spectrum), was closed. Just yesterday the legendary movie turned 30 and amNewYork got nostalgic looking back at the Bay Ridge kid, Tony Manero, who sought refuge on that dance floor.Thirty years ago this weekend, a tough young kid from Bay Ridge strutted across America's movie screens......

The New York Times recently dispatched no fewer than five reporters to the streets of the city in order to uncover the latest piece of breaking news: cab drivers can be rude and will attempt to take financial advantage of you if given the opportunity. The investigation uncovered a citywide fleet of yellow taxis in which just over half are compliant in installing credit card readers, and many that did have them falsely told passengers......

Recently, legend became reality when a 10-story building in SoHo was being converted to a luxury condo. Unearthed in the walls was a large mural created by graffiti pioneers Fab Five Freddy and Futura 2000.The artwork contains a variety of images and writing executed in spray paint, grease pencil, magic marker and whatever else was on hand — in silver, gold, pink and red. There are cartoonlike pictures of a bomber airplane, images of a......

This week in the Times, Bruni two-stars Allen & Delancey. Loves the atmosphere; says “the food at Allen & Delancey is at once sophisticated and accessible, reliant on fail-safe luxuries deployed in a modestly creative and occasionally playful manner.” Says that in some ways it’s similar to what he did uptown (at Gordon Ramsay at the London) but it works much better in this context. In $25 and Under, "> Peter Meehan goes to Food......

ART: Last night the works of ex-Guided By Voices frontman Robbert Pollard were unveiled at an invite-only opening, and today it's a free-for-all. Come by and check out his debut art exhibit, which "will consist of more than 50 collages that date from 1990 through 2007. Using elements from 1950's -70's era magazines, pamphlets and obscure pictoral paperbacks as his primary tools, he portrays allegorical personas and hallucinogenic-type environments to create small, almost random synapses......

The AP reports on two Picasso paintings that have hung in the MoMA and Guggenheim for decades, and the fight to keep them there. Julius H. Schoeps claims they are the property of his great uncle who was persecuted in Nazi Germany, and has demanded the museums hand over the paintings, "Boy Leading a Horse" (MoMA) and "Le Moulin de la Galette" (Guggenheim). The suit was filed at the District Court in Manhattan. Both museums......

No More Bolaris in the Forecast You won’t be seeing John Bolaris anymore on WCBS. He was last seen this past weekend and his bio has been taken down from the CBS 2 website. He will be starting at Fox owned WTXF in Philadelphia next month. We should mention that before the Long Island native was basically run out of town on a rail down there after predicting a blizzard that never happened, although he......

Sumner Redstone, who as majority shareholder still calls the shots at Viacom, has arranged a special holiday treat for his already well-exploited “permalancers”. (The term refers to the practice favored by Viacom and other companies of employing workers full time but classifying them “freelance” to keep their sneaky hands out of the insurance jar.) Though Viacom permalancers had previously been eligible for healthcare benefits after a year, new rules dictate that insurance will only be......

After months and months of delays, the BAM Cultural District may be moving forward. The NY Times is reporting that city officials have chosen Harlem-based developer and Brooklyn resident Carlton Brown to create what the Times' Terry Pristin calls the "cultural district's centerpiece." This is the first Brooklyn project for Brown, who developed the Kalahari and 1400 on Fifth in Harlem and the Solaire, the city's first residential green building, in Battery Park City. The......

This week in the Times, Bruni goes to Grayz, gives the restaurant one star. He says of the restaurant that refuses to call itself a restaurant (it’s a ‘cocktail lounge that serves small dishes’): “These dishes demand fuller attention than the setting allows, and the prices—$39 for the short ribs—only make total sense if eating is the point of a visit.” In Dining Briefs, Bruni goes to Belcourt, which he says is much better than......

It's been a busy month for NY Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff. After tackling Jean Nouvel's skyscraper, Renzo Piano's Times building and the West Side Rail Yards designs, today he turns to the feverishly celebrated New Museum, previewed yesterday by Gothamist. Designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of Japan-based SANAA, the highly refined seven-story, 174-foot building succeeds, says Ouroussoff, on a "spectacular range of levels: as a hypnotic urban object, as a subtle......

'Tis the season...not only for typical holiday shopping, but for auctions as well (the auction season kicked off earlier this month when a Matisse sold for over $33M). So what's the ultimate gift this year? If you missed out on the $18.5M Faberge egg, how about the Norman Rockwell painting of Santa Claus? The painting, titled Extra Good Boys and Girls, is expected to take in between $2.5 and $3.5 million, according to Christie's New......

Unnamed sources are telling the Daily News and The Post that a deal between the stagehands’ union and Broadway producers is within reach. The two sides have an agreement on the main sticking point, the dispute over the number of stagehands required for a show’s “load-in” and are currently negotiating salaries. As one source put it, "Everybody is confident we can finally get this done." There’s even optimism that some shows affected by the strike......

This week in the Times, Bruni three stars Fiamma and rates it a top pick. Says that the restaurant is not, by any means, classically Italian, but “when a restaurant turns out this many dishes that make you stop mid-chew, nudge a companion and nod your head vigorously—because you’re excited; because you need to start working off the calories any way you can—it needn’t worry about fitting into a tidy box.” Also in the Times,......

The Times checks in on the New York City Opera and the New York City Ballet, who have been battling over their shared theater at Lincoln Center.The organizations had tried to come to terms on renovation plans several years ago in the early stages of Lincoln Center’s redevelopment effort. But discussions fell apart over issues like whether to create a center aisle (the opera was strongly in favor; the ballet, adamantly opposed) and how to......

While everyone knows that the proposals five development teams have offered up for the MTA's West Side rail yards are likely to change, the NY Times' architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff made it clear that he hopes they do, with a withering review of the five plans. Noting the great opportunity that developers have, Ouroussoff says the designs "are not just a disappointment for their lack of imagination, they are also a grim referendum on......

It's been five years since Jam Master Jay (Jason Mizell) was murdered in his Queens studio, and though some people have recently started piping up about who may have pulled the trigger - no suspect has been named. Moving forward -- his friends, family and fellow musicians have begun to get closure in other ways. Mizell's widow, Terri, started the Jam Master Jay Foundation for Music -- a non-profit that provides funding and resources to......

THEATER: Eugene O’Neill’s early one-act plays get a rare blast of daylight in The Pioneer, a new production that stages four of his nascent gems plus a whimsical monologue O’Neill wrote from the point of view of his dog. The plays boast O’Neill’s signature assortment of furious, flailing characters that would come to dominate his full-length work. Writing for the Times, Rachel Saltz notes that the plays range from “interesting” to “wonderful” and concludes that......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a woman fell from a building at 35th St. and 5th Ave. in Manhattan, a body part was found on 20th Rd. and 18th St. in Queens, and a pedestrian was fatally struck at 50th St. and 6th Ave. in Brooklyn. Architects may lose the 408 foot spire that tops off the Freedom Tower because giant antennas may be technologically obsolete. An alliance of broadcasters are considering moving to......

The Todd Haynes Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There has gotten so much press for so long we kept forgetting it wasn't actually released until today! The high-concept Oscar contender, for those who haven’t heard a million times already, features six different actors portraying a Dylan-type character at different stages of his career. It opens today at select theaters but film buffs have been cultivating opinions about the polarizing film since it first screened......

This week in the Times, Bruni one-stars Sam Mason’s Tailor. Loves the design of the place, and—along with everyone else—the pork belly, the arctic char and the drinks. Overall? “[Mason’s] infatuation with his own imagination doesn’t leave room enough for a self-appraisal of the results… a duck-and-eel terrine in a chocolate consommé tastes like cat food splashed with Yoo-hoo.” Hee. In Dining Briefs, Bruni goes to Toloache. Calls the upscale Mexican restaurant a “welcome addition”......

There are 9.3 million vanity license plates in the United States, but every now and then there is one person whose choice of to proclaim on his/her plates causes some problems. Typically, the problematic plate is weeded out thanks to the DMV’s “blue list”of banned letter and number combinations ranging from the obvious, like GOD, NYPD and POL1CE, to the less so, like 3M TA3. Still the NY State DMV’s online plate lookup allows for......

Nicolai Ouroussoff, the architecture critic for the NY Times, enjoys working in his employer's new headquarters, he writes today, but the building designed by Renzo Piano falls short of the best skyscrapers in the city. For one, it allegedly harbors a streak of nostalgia, which in the world of architectural discourse amounts to an aesthetic identity crisis. The nostalgia in question is a longing not for neo-Gothic frills and cornices, but for the 1950s era......

Saturday night viewers of NBC didn't get a new episode of Saturday Night Live, but 150 audience members at the UCB Theater did! Live and un-aired, the show was to help raise money for crew members affected by the strike. Amy Poehler, who organized the event, made this statement:"The Upright Citizens Brigade Theater is a second home to a lot of these performers and writers. We are doing this to raise spirits, raise awareness, and......

Broadway’s blackout grew blacker still Sunday night when talks between the stagehands’ union and producers broke down again. Around 9pm, after two days of negotiations averaging about 12 hours a day, the league of producers reached the end of their patience. A spokesman for the union, Local One, issued a statement saying that “producers informed Local One that what Local One offered was not good enough, and they left.” This despite the intervention of Disney’s......

For the first time since November 8th, Local One, the stagehands’ union, is meeting with the Broadway producers’ league to talk it out. (Local One has been on strike since last Saturday over proposed changes to their contracts.) Insiders are expressing guarded optimism about the talks because they’re proceeding with the help of Disney’s senior V.P. of labor relations, Robert W. Johnson. Disney is not a member of the producers' league and thus not directly......

NY Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff reviews Jean Nouvel's future 75-story tower at 53 West 53rd Street, describing it as "the most exhilarating addition to the skyline in a generation." He compares Nouvel's latest to the Woolworth, Chrysler and Seagram buildings. Filling a 17,000 square-foot vacant lot next to MoMA, the structure will be the future site of a developer Hines' 100-room hotel and 120 "highest-end" (Hines' words) luxury apartments. MoMA, which sold the lot......

EVENT: White Castle is sponsoring an "over the top" (heh) event today at Port Authority...it's the 30th Annual White Castle Empire State Golden Arm Tournament of Champions. Over 100 ladies and gents will face off to become the arm wrestling champ! The event starts at 12:30 and the finals begin at 3:30pm. More info here. 12:30 and 3:30pm // Port Authority Bus Terminal [North Wing/Main Concourse at 625 8th Ave] // Free MUSIC: The Scotland......