Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni awards two stars to Mia Dona (pictured), the best rating that a somewhat casual place like this could hope for: “The food is robust, often rustic and sometimes proudly unsubtle, hammering away at its intended effect.” The East 58th Street Italian restaurant is a remix of Michael Psilakis and Donatella Arpaia’s shuttered restaurant Dona, and compared to Anthos, Psilakis’s haute Greek place, Mia Dona rolls like “a Buick, a more......

Howard, Tyler, and Trip begin the final puzzle, by activitystory at flickrToday on the Gothamist Newsmap: a person trapped under an automobile at 9th Ave. and 55th St. in Brooklyn, a missing delivery man at De Kruif Pl. and Dreiser Loop in the Bronx, and a scaffolding incident on 7th Ave. and 25th St. in Manhattan. NYC's Dept. of Health wants pharmacists to be allowed to administer flu shots, citing the death toll of......

Photograph of one of the wooden platform rubbing boards boards at the Kings Highway subway station by Triborough on Flickr In the wake of a 14-year-old's fall into subway tracks after the platform edge crumbled, giving way, concerns are being raised over dangerous platforms at other stations. amNew York listed nine in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Manhattan: Brooklyn, Q line: - Avenue J: boards are separated from the platform and warped. - Avenue M:......

After last night's two-alarm fire, most of Hunts Point Market was open for business. However, the offices of Master Purveyors and Desola Provisions were destroyed; Desola's Bill Beskin told NY1 aside from the offices being "completely burned out, "The coolers, all the meat, everything is, we're fine." Still, inspectors are making sure the meat is still okay (Desola supplies to the Stage Deli, Master to Peter Luger's). Over 100 firefighters battled the blaze, and three......

This evening, there was a two-alarm fire at the Hunts Point Market in the Bronx. Hunts Point Cooperative Market, the "Largest Food Distribution Center in the World," is where many meat and meat products are processed and distributed in the tri-state area. Over 100 firefighters were on the scene to fight the fire and the main fire has been extinguished. No injuries have been reported yet and the Fire Department does not know the......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a shooting on 155th Ave. and 79th St. in Queens, a bank robbery at the Chase branch on De Kalb and Bedford Ave. in Brooklyn, and a pedestrian struck at Hunts Point and Lafayette Aves. in the Bronx. The Guggenheim sent out a postcard inviting people to a seminar about Andy Warhol. The message on the reverse side is expletive-laced and describes Warhol and his fans in derogatory terms......

Following complaints that a persistent odor was permeating the Hunts Point neighborhood in the Bronx and nauseating residents, the Department of Environmental Protection hired an outside consulting firm to sniff around the borough and see what it could discover. According to the New York Post, smell inspectors were dispatched throughout the south Bronx with cellphones to take calls directly from residents calling an odor hotline. They discovered that a lot of different things smell very......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: two pedestrians struck at 71st St. and Northern Blvd. in Queens, a shooting at St. John's Pl. in Brooklyn, and a collapse at 52nd St. and 7th Ave. in Manhattan. Someone stole the "diamond dress" that Carol Channing wore during her stage run in "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," from an unattended luggage cart. The $150,000 dress was about to be donated to the Smithsonian Museum. Annheuser Busch is moving a......

When Omar Freilla founded Green Worker Cooperatives, an incubator for eco-friendly worker coops, he set the initial goal of $700,000. “We weren’t even sure how we were going to raise that much,” he said in a recent telephone call. Almost four years later, the organization has raised well beyond their initial goal, thanks to RSF Social Finance and numerous local churches. Environmental justice isn’t new to Freilla. Before founding GWC, Freilla spent his days as......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a cyclist struck on Fresh Meadow Lane and 67th Ave. in Queens, a water rescue north of the GW Bridge in Manhahattan, and someone fatally jumped from a building on West 15th St. in Manhattan. The NYPD will boost efforts to get citizens to respect their authority by mounting Big Wheels Segways at beaches and parks this summer. Satellite radio duo Opie and Anthony have been suspended for laughing......

Over the past decade, Major League Baseball has experienced its largest shift in ethnicity since Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. Numbering about two in ten in the mid-1990s, Latin American players now constitute about 30% of the rosters in the big leagues, and nearly half of the 2006 All-Star players were Latin American. The trend should continue: a 2005 New York Times article stated that almost half of all minor leaguers are Latino. The......

Almost two years after the Fulton Fish Market relocated to Hunts Point, a new book documents the market of days gone by. South Street, published by Columbia University Press, is a collection of photographs by Barbara G. Mensch, who began taking pictures of the fish market when she first moved to a nearby loft in 1979. The photographs are haunting and intricate, whether they document piles of dead fish on the street or a......

Unlike new neighbors of the partially decommissioned Brooklyn House of Detention, who seemed to have been caught flat-flooted at the prospect of the jail's re-opening and expansion, the residents of Hunts Point in the Bronx were organized in voicing their displeasure with the proposal to build a jail in their neighborhood. Demonstrators gathered in Hunts Point Friday, again protesting a proposed jail set to be built on an industrial site in the Bronx neighborhood. The......

The great divide between New York City restaurant chefs and serious home cooks is becoming narrower by the day. Chefs pen guest columns for the New York Times telling us what to look for when buying turnips and get interviewed by bloggers about where the most durable knives can be found, all in the name of improving the home cook’s game. A chef might even be followed around the city in order for us to......

Some new details about why an angry Kennedy Fried Chicken owner burned down his neighbor-turned-competitor's store in the Bronx. The owner-arsonist, Kabeer Ahmad, says he was drunk. Shocking! The court documents have Ahmad stating, "I went out drinking last night [New Year's Eve] and after I got drunk I went to the store at 870 Hunts Point Avenue about 3 a.m. and told the customers and employees that the store was closing and that everyone......

Yesterday, the Mayor unveiled the South Bronx Greenway Plan, which is part of the Hunts Point plan that " improve access to the waterfront, provide much-needed recreational opportunities, improve transportation safety and greatly enhance the network of bike and pedestrian paths on the South Bronx peninsula." The city will start four projects that will bring a waterfront park (with floating dock for boaters and kayakers) and paths for joggers and bicyclists. Construction will begin......

The Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau announced that the NYPD shut down a sport betting and numbers ring in the Bronx, indicting 11 people, 3 of whom have links to the Lucchese and Genovese crime families. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly admited that "the size of this operation was not particularly significant" - it only generated $200,000 in yearly profits - but the gambling ring was run out of the Hunts Point market. And the ring was......

New York Magazine decides to look at the city in the year 2016 in terms of architecture and real estate development - and how that'll impact New Yorkers. It's a great look at how drastically the city could change in ten years, which is all overwhelming, exciting, and kind of scary, because for every rendering of glassy buildings, what does that mean for the neighborhoods? Are they plans for more affordable housing to meet......

EARTH DAY EVENT: Earth Day isn't just for hippies. This weekend celebrate our planet at Earth Day NY. Exhibitors will educate you on how to treat Mother Nature a bit more kindly and show you how to find the nature right here in New York City. All Weekend // Friday noon to 7pm, Saturday 11am to 5pm // Grand Central // Free EVENT: Hosted by sneaker aficionado Bobbito Garcia, the Global Artists Coalition and Converse......

After months and months of delays the Fulton Fish market finally left Manhattan and moved its entire operations to Hunts Point at the end of last year. So how has it been affecting local businesses? Eh, not so much. Though neighborhood stores like Twin Donut and the Blue Eagle Restaurant, not to mention the many surrounding mechanics and handful of banks, expected to see a boost in customers when the market came to town......

Quite soon you may no longer have to put up with the indignity of saying hello to a human being at the front desk of your building (if there is a front desk! our building is of a decidedly lower-class.) Why? According to the New York Sun, those flesh-and-blood humanoids that you have to tip $200 or so every year will soon be replaced with cost-effective computer systems: Cyberdoormen - increasingly popular with the city's......

Steve Tarpin, Steve's Authentic Key Lime Pies...

After numerous delays, including a lawsuit, the Hunts Point Fish Market finally opened yesterday. The 430,000 square foot, $85 million facility was met with praise from some, while others knitpicked about some details (aww, too cold!). Mayor Bloomberg claimed that Hunts Point would bring $1 billion in economic activity a year in The Bronx, but some fishmongers said that business was down 40% on the first day. There is some concern about the shared......

There will be a place for the fishes to sleep, as the Fulton Fish Market will finally be able to move to its new Hunts Point facility in the Bronx. The fish vendors and the company that would unload the fish (yes, these are all discrete jobs) have settled after various court entanglements. Laro had been tasked by the Giuliani administration to head all fish unloading for the market, to ensure that it wouldn't be......

Mayor Bloomberg announced an ambitious plan to build or renovate over 100,000 homes for low- and middle-income residents. The fact that this is very similar to his political rival Fernando Ferrer's proposed affordable housing plan was not lost on Ferrer. The Mayor's plan is a change from his original 68,000-unit, $3.5 billion plan (the new plan would cost $7.5 billion) and highlights the fact that affordable housing might be the biggest issue in this year's......

A judge has delayed the Fulton Fish Market from moving to the Hunts Point facility in the Bronx because of concerns that the mob might work its way back into facility. In 1995, NYC created law that, as the Post puts it, "set up a restrictive system of bidding and vetting designed to keep mobbed-up wholesalers from extorting payments from the fish-truckers for the timely unloading of their highly perishable goods." For the new market,......

Saturday -- the first annual Hunts Point Fish Parade, starting at noon: The parade will conclude at Hunts Point Avenue, at the foot of a street festival and community fish fry. The day-long celebration will feature multiple stages with live entertainment and a new work by the Hunts Point-based internationally acclaimed modern dance company, Arthur Aviles Typical Theater. Food tents will showcase the seafood and great bounty of produce, meats, and other foods that pass......

Liao Yusheng has a great gallery of the Fulton Fish Market. The Fish Market will be moving to Hunts Point, Bronx, in 2005, so seeing these pictures can be a substitute for those of you who don't want to wake up at 4AM to see real fishmongering in action. There's a great segment from Food TV show that has Gourmet editor and former Times food critic Ruth Reichl eating fish from all the sellers. The......