Restaurants

If you missed the barrage of Bastille Day celebrations over the weekend, fear not because there will be ample opportunity for Francophiles and foodies alike to mark the beginning of the end of the ancien regime tonight at the hundreds of brasseries and bistros in the city.

Zagat has a list of some of tonight's culinary-themed festivities, including a DJ, specialty cocktails, and complimentary amuse-bouches at the bar of Alain Ducasse's new bistro Benoit; and the week-long pre-fix menu featuring escargot, duck confit, and crème brûlée at West Village Eatery Le Gigot.

We can't help but remember a time when Bastille Day was less than trés chic.  read more »

"I'm in this business for 40 years," said Joe Chirico, standing in front of Marco Polo Ristorante, the restaurant he owns on Court Street in Carroll Gardens. "I started with Joe's Luncheonette two doors away--after so many years of being in fast food, I decided I needed to open a good restaurant."

Last week, Mr. Chirico was celebrating the 25th anniversary of his Italian restaurant with family and longtime friends and customers, including Borough President Marty Markowitz. When the restaurant opened, Mr. Chirico said of the neighborhood, "It was mostly Italian, but now it's changed for the better. We're getting more young people coming from everywhere, especially from Manhattan. This neighborhood is special, it became a very, very happening neighborhood for professional people; everybody likes to live in Carroll Gardens."

And now a new generation of entrepreneurs are following in Mr. Chirico's footsteps all over the borough, and that is especially true in Prospect Heights.  read more »

"This is an awesome space, an awesome location," chef Scott Conant said, during a packed-house grand opening party at his new digs in the meatpacking district--er, at least, sort of in the meatpacking district.

"It's not really in the meatpacking, it's on, you know what I'm saying?"

The former L'Impero and Alto cook's latest restaurant Scarpetta opened Monday evening in the former Gin Lane and old Village Idiot space at 355 West 14th Street, just east of Ninth Avenue.

"A lot of the core clientele, a lot of Upper East Siders and a lot of people from Uptown, they're not going to be kind of spooked by going too much into the meatpacking. Too far inside of it, it might scare 'em off. But because it's on it, they feel comfortable coming down.

"I looked everywhere," Mr. Conant said. "But I really wanted it to be a West Village restaurant. It's probably one of the last neighborhoods that is pure New York."  read more »

Great N.Y. Noodletown is a long-established restaurant on Bayard and the Bowery that seats about forty and has brown glazed ducks in the windows.

Sunday, which began bright and cold after a long and rainy Saturday, seemed perfectly suited to a bowl of Seaweed Noodle Soup, so I put on my shoes and began walking east. I had forgotten it was Chinese New Year: the sidewalks of central Chinatown were packed from storefront to street as people gathered to celebrate the Year of the Earth Rat.  read more »

Ruby Café on Mulberry Street is getting a sibling.

Australian-born entrepreneur Nick Mathers has closed on a 3,000-square-foot space at 121 West 10th Street, according to broker Steven Kamali. Mr. Mathers, who opened the Aussie-inspired Ruby Café four years ago at 219 Mulberry Street, will open Little Ruby’s, a high-end restaurant on the ground floor in late-August, and plans on opening a lounge in the basement in November.  read more »

The most prominent feature of Rayuela, the soon-to-open "freestyle Latino" eatery at 165 Allen Street, is the two-story olive tree that sits in the middle of the restaurant. Like most else in the establishment, the tree was imported.

"I spent three days without sleep looking for this tree in California," co-owner Hector Sanz told The Observer. "It is a menzanillo, a rare type of olive tree."

Rayuela, which means "hopscotch" in Spanish, will open next Friday and join a host of other modern Latin restaurants (Mercadito, Centrico) that have sprouted up downtown over the last few years. However, Mr. Sanz makes it clear that it will be different from its predecessors.  read more »

Bonnie's Grill, home to perhaps Park Slope's best beef burgers (yet arguably worst veggie burgers), remained shuttered on Friday--one week after becoming the latest casualty in the Health Department's reactionary rat-frenzy crusade.

The tiny hipster hangout, located along trendy Fifth Avenue, between 1st and Carroll streets, has twice failed inspections since March. (Read the reports here and here.)  read more »

It's curtains for Manhattan's most infamously rat-infested landmark.  read more »