Last night the committee that represents Tribeca for Community Board 1 voted against recommending full board approval for a liquor license for Brushstrokes, David Bouley’s planned Japanese restaurant and cooking school, which would be his fourth eatery in the neighborhood. In withholding approval for the license, the committee cited prior health code violations, a carbon monoxide leak, the glut of limos crowding the street outside his restaurants, and controversy surrounding Bouley’s attempt to claim $2.2......

Today the Times’s Frank Bruni marvels at Manhattan’s new wave of high tone restaurant openings during a recession, and pins the trend not on entrepreneurial bravado but on the fact that it takes years to get a fancy eatery open, and most of these new places were envisioned in flusher economic times. It is true that in 2005, the top fifth of earners in Manhattan made 52 times what the lowest fifth make – $365,826......