This week the Times’s Frank Bruni awards two stars to Eighty One (pictured) in a decidedly mixed review. He thinks the “dizzying” Upper West Side restaurant in the Excelsior Hotel has “attention deficits” and needs Ritalin: “It provides an especially clear example of a kind of culinary preening – call it ego food – that may speak less to the satisfaction of customers than to the self-regard of proprietors.” Nor does Bruni care for the......

When Mr. Skewer & Co. Brazilian Grill began building out its space a month ago, anticipation ran high among meatheads. Could it be true? Amid visions of short ribs and other meaty treats, some wondered, “Would there really be a rodizio opening on W. 14 St.?” As a recent visit to the new spot revealed, Mr. Skewer has about as much in common with a Brazilian churrascaria as its neighbor Quizno’s does. For one thing,......

Beast, on the corner of Vanderbilt and Bergen Streets in Prospect Heights, serves a wide range of tapas and brunch plates with a Spanish flare. As befits the restaurant's bristling name, the first of two dining rooms is dark – almost medieval – and dotted with appropriately colorful creatures: monsters, gargoyles, and demons. The kitchen is open and separates the front from the back room; curious diners can usually observe a small army of......

After undergraduate studies in French Literature at Columbia, Michigan-born chef Anita Lo found herself unable to resist the call of the kitchen, and relocated to France to study at the esteemed Ritz-Escoffier school. Graduating first in her class, Lo soon got her start in New York in the kitchen of David Bouley. Eight years ago she struck out on her own with the Greenwich Village favorite Annisa, which serves contemporary American cuisine with accents......

Photo courtesy Carol Rosegg. Elmer Rice's 1923 play The Adding Machine is an expressionist parable about a miserable bean counter named Mr. Zero who, after twenty five years at the same desk, is replaced by the titular technological marvel. For Rice, the roar of the twenties was the sound of capitalism crushing workers' souls; his play would go onto inspire Tennessee Williams and presage Death of a Salesman. Now a musical adaptation of Rice's play,......

Hallo Berlin Express: A weird name and a weirder awning, but sometimes good food comes in weird packages (consider Masala Munch.) This new 30-seat joint on 9th Avenue near 50th Street is the sister of the bigger German eatery Hallo Berlin. Eating in Translation stuck his beak in when they opened this week, and walked away full of schnitzel, spaetzle, soup, and cucumber salad. There are also German fish sandwiches, and a German "single soul......

Speed Racer, from the mysterious sibling filmmakers behind the Matrix trilogy, is opening to well-deserved critical derision. It’s a 135-minute insipid, soulless commodity that lifts some of the Japanese original’s storyline but absolutely none of the charm. The movie opens with a 34% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes; perhaps J. Hoberman’s pan gets it best: “Ideologically anti-corporate, previous Wachowski productions aspired to be something more than mind-less sensation; Speed Racer is thrilled to be......

Glory Days, the new musical written by a pair of twenty-somethings from Virginia, closed after its official opening night last night, joining such Broadway flops as Moose Murders and Teaneck Tanzi in the illustrious "Open/Close Club." The negative reviews proved too much for producers, who chose to pull the plug and eat their $2.5 million investment. In writing his delicate pan, Ben Brantley noted that the producers “have done this little, hopeful show no favors......

As if offering a final coda (or is it?) to the suspenseful Momofuku Ko reservation saga, the Times’s Frank Bruni has officially opined on the breathlessly hyped, 12-seat restaurant from rock star chef David Chang. Bruni extols it with three stars, calling it “noteworthy beyond its addling all-computer reservation system and the intense, revelatory pleasures of its partly Asian, partly French, wholly inventive food… Ko in its early months serves a few dishes that merely......

Elaine Stritch's long and colorful career is packed with so many memorable roles that it's impossible to really say what she's best known for. Her show-stopping rendition of "Ladies Who Lunch" in Sondheim's Company? Or maybe her Tony-nominated performance in Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance? Her movie and television appearances in everything from Woody Allen's Small Time Crooks to 30 Rock? Or her critically-acclaimed solo cabaret show, which she's taken from Broadway to the......

Photos © Joan Marcus. Elevator Repair Service [ERS] is rightly regarded as one of New York’s most innovative theater companies. Led by Artistic Director John Collins, who moonlights as a sound designer for The Wooster Group, the ensemble creates irreverent, idiosyncratic performances that wrest free from the straightjacket of naturalism with an absurd humor and colorful physicality. Their 2006 "workshop" production of Gatz was a high-water mark – performed over the course of seven hours......

Fish Market: This little bar and restaurant is a loving homage to the now closed Fulton Fish Market; photos of the market from the ‘30’s line the exposed brick walls, illuminated by nautical lamps under a vintage copper ceiling. Andrea Strong takes a glance at the new South Street restaurant, which also features an impressive view of the Brooklyn Bridge. She says Chef Eddie Montalvo’s menu is as ambitious as it is pricey; with standout......

Even though it had been open less than a week Wildwood Barbeque, the latest addition to the burgeoning New York City barbeque scene, was mobbed with merry meatheads Wednesday night. Folks were queued up at the entranceway, as they waited to taste meats from Pitmaster Big Lou Elrose. Big Lou had been deputy pitmaster of Hill Country and has cooked many a barbeque competition. He's clearly just at home smoking with the Texas post oak......

Robert Downey Jr. finally gets his big paycheck job with Iron Man, adapted from Marvel’s comic book series. Hollywood-Elsewhere’s Jeffery Wells calls it underwhelming: “I was never twitching in agony, but the advance word had suggested it might lift me out of my chair. Forget it.” He’s also troubled by “the jingoistic get-the-dumb-terrorists plot that John McCain or Dick Cheney will be totally delighted by if and when they see it. That's supposed to......

Whether you spell it Issan or E-san (as the folks at Poodam’s Thai Cuisine do), the cuisine from this Northeast region of Thailand by Cambodia and Laos is some of New York City’s most delicious and spiciest. The restaurant’s name translates to black crab. While that particular delicacy doesn’t appear on the separate Issan menu, there is yam poo dong, or pickled crab. When you order it the waitress will likely ask if you’ve......

This week the Times’s Frank Bruni hands down his verdict on Commerce (pictured), the trendy new inhabitant of 1911 West Village carriage house formerly occupied by Blue Mill Tavern, among others. Overall, he deems the new tenant fussy and cacophonous; chef Harold Moore’s “polyglot menu and intricately wrought dishes let him strut his stuff in a way that a more archetypal bill of fare might not. In doing so he creates a rankling dissonance, his......

Freshly fried plantain chips and homemade chimichurri sauce start the meal off right Shachis, the Venezuelan spot in South Williamsburg run by Pedro Boyer and his partner Alan Rodriguez. You can snack on the chips while perusing the menu, which specializes in arepas – Venezualan corn cakes – but also offers delightful Latin American entrees incorporating flavors of saffron and piquillo peppers, yuca, and sweet plantains. A handful of simple salads are a gateway......

It's a long way from MASH to Ocean's 13, but Brooklyn's own Elliott Gould is still in the game, doing everything from the voice of God in the animated Ten Commandments to a forthcoming movie called The Deal, in which he shares the screen with William H. Macy and LL Cool J. The six-time host of Saturday Night Live was back in town over the weekend for the premiere of The Caller at the......

Using a Leica M2 with a 90mm lens, Cuban photographer Alberto “Korda” Díaz snapped the iconic photograph of Ernesto “Che” Guevara during a mass funeral for the victims of a mysterious series of explosions in Havana harbor that killed at least 75 people 1960. The service was held the day after the tragedy, and Korda, who was Castro’s official photographer at the time, managed two photos of Guevara as he briefly stepped onstage to......

Wildwood: Pit master “Big Lou” Elrose has come a long way from his Ozone Park lunch wagon; the 6’4 Brooklyn-born behemoth has now transferred from Hill Country to this new Park Avenue South barbecue restaurant, part of the B.R. Guest empire. The atmosphere is urban industrial and reclaimed rustic, with high ceilings and a 50-foot-long bar. Big Lou’s famous ribs, pork brisket, pulled pork and smoked chicken can be paired with such sides as Cast......

The Times’s Frank Bruni chimes in at last on the abundantly reviewed Merkato 55 (pictured), an ambitious pan-African brasserie in the Meatpacking District that “pivots into a sexy evening for the Marc Jacobs set. It’s Spice Market on the Serengeti.” Dishes like the cast-iron pot of lamb meatball in smoked tomato sauce are "a delight," but overall it’s hit or miss. And some unlucky waiter made the mistake of pouring water into his wine glass......

With all the alarming facts about catastrophic climate change at our fingertips, most of us know by now that every day needs to be Earth Day. And one of the easiest ways to start minimizing environmental impact is by considering what goes into our own mouths. Here in New York, Broadway East, a new “plant-based” (but not strictly vegetarian) restaurant, has made sustainability a top priority. Tables in the elegantly designed eatery are made from......

The term "diner" usually evokes thoughts of breakfast at midnight and dense menus of Dickensian length. But at the Jackson Diner in the heart of Jackson Heights in Queens, crowds assemble for some of the city's best North Indian food. In the heart of the borough's "little India," a large and casual banquet room with deep purple paper placemats is the go-to spot for a reasonably-priced unlimited lunch buffet and Indian food hankerings of......

Photo courtesy Gerry Goodstein. How bad does a show have to be to become good? That’s the question posed by self-described “part-time conceptual artist” John Borek, who has recently revived the notorious 1983 Broadway flop Moose Murders in Rochester. The murder-mystery farce by Arthur Bicknell, which takes place one dark and stormy night at an isolated lodge, closed after 14 performances and widespread critical derision; the term “Moose Murders” has since become a Broadway euphemism......

Pictured left to right: Garrett Lombard, Denis Conway and Tadhg Murphy. Photo courtesy Pavel Antonov. In The Walworth Farce, Enda Walsh’s pitch black comedy currently in from Ireland at St. Ann’s Warehouse, all the world’s a stage in a squalid council flat, and all the men and women merely amateur players. Dinny (Denis Conway), a heavyset man with an air of menace, is the author of a deliriously farcical play that he and his two......

Today Frank Bruni reviews Adour (pictured), the four-month-old St. Regis Hotel restaurant conceived by extravagant French chef Alain Ducasse. While it’s not “rapturous” enough to merit the Times’s highest four star rating, it’s still “first-rate: polished service, a knockout wine list, beautiful oil-poached cod, gorgeous roasted lamb and exquisite desserts.” And Bruni does confirm our earlier speculation about some kind of haute bagel on the menu. On the other side of the spectrum and the......

Traffic on the main commercial strip of Red Hook – Van Brunt Street – will most definitely change when the blue walls of IKEA open their doors in August. One wonders where all these hungry consumers will flock to eat, but an obvious choice, if they can get a table, is The Good Fork. The Andrew Bird-endorsed restaurant is run by Korean chef-owner Sohui Kim and her husband Ben Schneider, who designed and built......

Photo: Diego Bresani You don’t have to wait until summer to catch sweet some rays out on Fire Island; playwright Charles Mee and a troupe of 108 actors and musicians have brought the beguiling little beach community to Tribeca, where they’ve transformed a cavernous space at the 3LD Art and Technology Center into a beach party of epic proportions. The wholly immersive experience begins as soon as you step inside the theater and realize that......

The Habitat: This charmingly designed bar and restaurant we reported on a few weeks ago opens tonight. Built almost entirely out of salvaged lumber, The Habitat has achieved a rustic back porch ambiance by building an actual porch next to a wall dressed up with exterior siding and fake windows. Chef Ashley Engmann's small plate menu has empanadas, a pecan mandarin salad, cheeseburgers, and other sandwiches. 12 New York microbrews are on tap. 988 Manhattan......

Keanu Reeves in Street Kings, Richard Jenkins, left, and Haaz Sleiman in The Visitor Keanu Reeves and Forest Whitaker play bad cop/badder cop in Street Kings, an adaptation of James Ellroy's (L.A. Confidential) novel about a brutal gang of LAPD cops. Though directed by David Ayer, who wrote the solid Training Day, the Washington Post says the “big-name casting brings no honor, or even fun, to the hackneyed roles.” And the movie’s “moral relativity...seems like......