The NY Times' Eric Asimov highlights the proliferation of wine bars throughout the city (131 at last count by newyorkwinebarguide.com), particularly those offering snacks and small plates far beyond the charcuterie and cheese one might typically expect. And they're not all Italian either. In fact, Asimov spans the globe in his wine bar visits: Spain at Pata Negra, France at Solex, and South Africa at Xai Xai. The lower cost of real estate involved in......

John DeLucie has been entrenched in New York's restaurant scene for well over a decade, with stints at three-star restaurants and high end hotel kitchens along the way. Most recently running the show at La Bottega, he is currently a partner and the chef at the Waverly Inn, where New York's celebs go to see and be seen while dining on haute versions of comfort food classics. You recently had a group of second graders......

The growing backlash against bottled water as an environmental abomination is stretching into some of NYC's premiere eating and drinking establishments. Ten years ago it was the de rigeur of fashion to be toting a bottle of water everywhere one went; now it marks you as a polluting pariah. According to the New York Post, bottled water is being banned at places like the Waverly Inn, Il Buco, Del Posto, Gemma in the Bowery Hotel,......

Eating out and being philanthropic may seem mutually exclusive, but there is a way the money you spend to eat out can help others at the same time. During the month of April, restaurants will pair up with the “Spring for City Harvest” campaign, each eatery offering special appetizers, entrees, desserts, and in some cases complete prix fixe menus. They will donate 10% of proceeds directly to City Harvest, where the money raised will be......

Easter, as you may know, is the holiday that often seems to celebrate the wonders of brunch, although rumor has it there's some religious thing involved as well. Whatever the holiday means to you, here are some Easter brunch (and dinner) options that sound particularly delectable. Lunetta: Chef Adam Shepard is serving up a "Pasqua Supper" for Easter Italian-style. He's pulling out the ingredients you've been craving all winter -- fava beans, asparagus, and lamb,......

Marty Markowitz: President of Mixed Messages? Every summer he tells fat people in Brooklyn to lose some weight already with his “Lighten Up Brooklyn” program, but in the spring he’s all, “You look great! Now eat at as many of these local restaurants as you can!” Last week the borough president (pictured) announced the impending arrival of Brooklyn’s version of Restaurant Week, called Dine in Brooklyn. This year it runs from March 24th to the......

Photo of NYC water drinker by macskata, photo from a tent camp in Mudtukadu Ami Vitale/UNICEF. To raise money and awareness about the lack of clean and accessible drinking water, which is the second largest worldwide killer of children under five, the Tap Project is happening again in New York City (and nationwide) through March 22nd, World Water Day. Select restaurants will be inviting customers to donate a minimum of $1 for the tap......

New Yorkers like to go out. A lot. A website aptly called Outalot allows fast and easy browsing of three nightlife basics: restaurants, bars, and movies (Gridskipper calls it "menupages-meets-yelp"). The Google Map based-site lists restaurants by cuisine, bars by type, and provides local cinemas' showtimes. You can bookmark your favorites (and check out your friends') and green thumbs up/down symbols quickly signify how others' feel about an establishment. Though many New Yorkers pride themselves......

First there was the Spitzer Spritzer at Teddy's and now, Sandwich #9: Hot Tongue on Rye. Eisenberg's owner Josh Konecky explains to Gobble the creative process behind today's special: So, who came up with the sandwich? Spitzer came up with it. [pause]. No, I came up with it. Did you already order? Yeah. I didn’t order the tongue. What’d you order? The chicken? No, the roast beef. A lot of people don’t like tongue.......

Writing for the Times, Frank Bruni calls the wine and charcuterie restaurant Bar Boulud (pictured) “a terrine machine, a pâté-a-palooza, dedicated to the proposition that discerning New Yorkers aren’t getting nearly enough concentrated, sculptured, gelatinous animal fat” and awards it two stars. Bruni also revisits Fiamma and calls the owners out for jacking up prices by 20% just days after he rated it three stars. The Post’s Steve Cuozzo says the critical raving about the......

Heads up: David Chang's latest creation, Momofuku Ko, will be open for online reservations at 10:00 a.m. today, so cancel your meetings, bookmark the URL and prepare to crash the site's server. Will the dainty new baby live up to the breathless hype that swirls around Chang's burgeoning empire? Only the quick-clicking lucky few will find out anytime soon. As we described last week, Chang deliberately decided not to take reservations by phone and created......

THE JAKEWALK: This romantic Carroll Gardens wine, cocktail and cheese bar is named after a Prohibition-era malady called the “Jake Walk”: a stiff-legged gait that afflicted drinkers of Jamaica Ginger, an alcohol-based “tonic” tainted with a leg-paralyzing neurotoxin. It’s the third in a growing “Smith Street empire” run by the owners of nearby haunts Smith & Vine and Stinky Bklyn. Their new venture, which opened last night, boasts (deep breath) 50 wines by the glass,......

Wildly successful young chef and restaurateur Michael Psilakis – whose Anthos is one of only two Greek restaurants in the world with a Michelin star – refined his talent not in culinary school but in the kitchen beside his Greek mother during his childhood on Long Island. After earning a business degree, he found himself drawn back to the food world, where he worked his way up from waiter to owner of the Long Island......

Pictured: Fluke Sashimi, Poppy Seeds, Chives, Spicy Buttermilk. Coddled Egg with Sous Vide Onions, Sweet Potato Puree, Osetra Caviar, Potato Chips, Parsley by Kathryn Yu It's the law of supply and demand -- if something is hard to get, everyone wants it. This especially applies to Momofuku Ko, the latest spot from chef-superstar David Chang. There's no secret handshake or phone number needed to get in (in fact, there's no phone), just an internet......

The incoming president of the Obesity Society has resigned amidst controversy surrounding his work on behalf of the restaurant industry. Last month Dr. David B. Allison (pictured), a professor of biostatistics and nutrition at the University of Alabama, drew fire from colleagues when he submitted an affidavit questioning the city’s new rules requiring chain restaurants to prominently display calorie information on their menus. The Obesity Society supports the requirement, which will go into effect at......

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......

Fans of Ditmas Park favorite the Farm on Adderley, get ready: The newest venture from co-owners Gary Jonas and Allison McDowell, a French bistro dubbed Pomme de Terre, is on the verge of opening. Apparently the regular customers at the Farm are jonesing for another mid-range restaurant in the neighborhood, and it's unlikely a recent shooting on the very same corner will deter them. Jonas and McDowell have teamed up with restaurateur Jimmy Mamary,......

The incoming president of the Obesity Society has filed a 33-page affidavit questioning the city’s new rules requiring chain restaurants to prominently display calorie information on their menus. Dr. David B. Allison (pictured), a professor of biostatistics and nutrition at the University of Alabama, cites a study indicating that dieters who get distracted by calorie information are more likely to overeat. And even if the daunting calorie details prompt diners to go for lower calorie......

For a pair of diners with zero romantic involvement, Soba Totto proved the perfect refuge from the relentless Valentine’s Day spirit. Thanks to owner Ryuichi “Bobby” Munekata, the man behind upscale yakitori joints Yakitori Totto and Torys, Soba Totto is one of the few Japanese spots in town offering both top-notch soba and top-flight yakitori. In a begrudging acknowledgment of the so-called holiday, two juicy skewers of hatsu, or chicken heart, were ordered. Out of......

Okay, it's freezing. Not just freezing -- bone chillingly bitter. We've been at our desk for hours now and still can't manage to fight off the chill from our morning commute. This kind of weather makes us crave warm, cozy comfort food -- hopefully at least one of these options is close enough to you for a quick dash out, or even better, to deliver to you. Soup: Get a warm and cozy homemade soup......

It's time for the Lunar New Year, which starts February 7th and lasts for 14 days, and this year is the Year of the Rat, 4706. Sure, there are plenty of things to do to celebrate the holiday, but to us, it means one thing -- a new year banquet. We've found a few places that are offering banquets in honor of the Year of the Rat, including variations of traditional Chinese Lunar New Year......

Fellas, if you’re in some sort of relationship and haven’t nailed down the V-Day itinerary yet, it’s about time to start making some quick decisions and, regrettably, commitments. Reservations fill up fast and no matter what she says about ‘not expecting anything special’, we all know that’s a big trap. But it doesn’t mean you have to submit to an overpriced prix fixe dinner at a stuffy, overcrowded restaurant; here are some less predictable ways......

New Yorkers may be outraged about the city's attempted regulation of trans fats and mandated calorie posting, but at least our local government isn't going as far as their counterparts in Mississippi. Local legislators are trying to make it illegal for restaurants to serve food to obese patrons to combat the state's high obesity rate; approximately two-thirds of the state's residents are obese according to federal health statistics. Alan Richman, food critic at Bloomberg, has......

While we're always on the hunt for both the new and the unfamiliar in New York's kitchens, we also have standby favorite restaurants. One place we find ourselves returning to over and over again is Bedford Street's 'Ino, the sliver of a cafe and wine bar specializing in panini, tramezzini, bruschetta and a laundry list of wines (mostly Italian), with a handful available by the glass or half-bottle. Intimacy comes to mind in a......

THEATER: We saw Fiona Shaw in Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days on Saturday and highly recommend it. Shaw is mesmerizing in her performance as Winnie, crystallizing in her 90-minute virtuoso performance all the desperation, self-delusion and absurdity of an entire lifetime. (Her little-seen costar Tim Potter is also a hoot as Willie.) The production is as bitterly funny as it is affecting, and, as a metaphor, the blasted landscape that devours Winnie is as potent as......

Even after only being open since October, Dell'Anima, the brainchild of some Babbo and Del Posto alums, is already tough to get into. Sure, it's partially because it's a small space, with seating for just over forty, but it's also due to the cozy, warm and inviting atmosphere, friendly and knowledgeable staff, and for the delicious rustic Italian fare. Grab yourself one of the six seats in the open kitchen and watch Chef Gabriel Thompson......

We’re not going to hesitate to echo the praises surrounding The Smith, 3rd Avenue‘s (between 10th & 11th) latest go-to spot (formerly a very-out-of-place Pizzeria Uno). Whether you’re hankering for a good pork chop, a unique cocktail, or some cheddar grits, The Smith fits the bill. The interior is spacious, though dark in the back far away from the windows, and the walls are decorated with subway tile and vintage nude photographs. Despite its......

The company that founded Chuck E. Cheese, which famously replaced lazy live musicians with ruthlessly efficient animatronic animals, now has their sights trained right on your server. According to this breathlessly excited vision of the future, soon “a new trend will be found at your favorite restaurants”! [Emphasis added.] Computerized touch screen ordering at your table is destined to radically marginalize the entire restaurant service industry, liberating diners from the bondage of inattentive service and......

There are a number of restaurants opening in 2008 that we've been eagerly awaiting and we thought we'd highlight some that particularly piqued our interest and have us drooling in anticipation. John Dory -- this new meatpacking seafood spot comes from Spotted Pig owner Ken Friedman and Partner/Executive Chef April Bloomfield. Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich are also partners, not to mention neighbors. Sara Ochs will serve as the Chef de Cuisine. It is designed......

On a frigid night this week, Gothamist and two friends decided to duck out of the cold and pop into Mole, a twenty-five seat Mexican spot on Allen Street owned by the husband-wife team of Nick Cervera and Lupe Elizalde, also proprietors of Taco Taco in Yorkville. Strung with lights out front, and decorated inside with colorful Mexican tiles and exposed brick, Mole is cozy, but has an extensive menu with specials changing nightly.......