-Food and Wine magazine released its Best New Chefs 2007 list earlier this week. April Bloomfield, the 32 year-old chef and co-owner of West Village gastropub The Spotted Pig, is among the ten honorees to be featured in the magazine’s July issue. Eater attended Wednesday night’s announcement party at 7 World Trade Center and watched “everyone who has ever been on an episode of Top Chef” party like it was 1999, the not-so-distant year that Rocco DiSpirito was named a F&W Best New Chef.

- More pig-related news: chef Jason Neroni and pastry chef Mandy Brown have left Porchetta on Smith Street, citing "irreconcilable differences."

-The NY Times ran an article (reg. required) on the author of the DIY-style The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine, who appears to be busy hitting Fort Greene squirrels over the head with hammers and cooking them for dinner. He rejected one because it had mange. A more humane approach to Brooklyn hunting and gathering this weekend is to join master forager Steve Brill, who will lead a tour through Prospect Park in search of Japanese Knotweed, an invasive plant whose Springtime shoots and stems can be cooked up like asparagus.

- Also this weekend, friends don’t let friends buy bunnies. From the lollipop and gumdrop-covered headquarters of The National Confectioners Association is its Make Mine Chocolate awareness campaign, which seeks to replace Easter Sunday gifting of pet rabbits with the gift of immense chocolate bunnies. A huge amount of unwanted, post-Easter pet bunnies end up in droves at animal shelters after the holiday; one of the MMC campaign’s talking points is that “chocolate or candy bunnies cannot run away or escape.” True. Gothamist would like to add that by gifting chocolate bunnies instead of live ones, there’s a much better chance that the guy in Fort Greene won’t be making rabbit terrine any time soon.

Photo: The Spotted Pig