Openings Roundup

Bro, the Lower East Side has finally arrived! Know how we know? There’s totally a bangin’ new rodeo themed bar/restaurant with a mechanical bull!!! We’re going to be getting so much sweet action once the hotties see us taming that bad boy. Plus there’s like 16 killer beers on tap, chicken fried stake and pork chops! So untuck that striped shirt and ramble on down here, cowbro! Oh, and since the place still hasn’t settled on a name, try to come up with one on the way – we’re thinking maybe The Slouching Beast or Brodeo. 133 Essex St, near Rivington.

Dell’Anima: Babbo’s former sommelier Joe Campanale has opened a cozy new Italian restaurant with chef Gabriel Thompson, formerly of Le Bernardin. Blogger Josh Friedlander at American Madness finagled a pre-opening seating and calls it one of Manhattan’s best Italian restaurants, as well as a place where “each seamless, hand-blown piece of glassware is costlier than your flatscreen TV.” (Wait, we have a flatscreen TV?!?) Josh declares the squid-ink fettuccine “divine” and the risotto “a revelation” that does “not sink to the pit of the stomach and absorb one’s will to live.” 38 8th Ave, (212) 366-6633.

Brasserie 44: The Royalton Hotel has renovated and renamed 44; it is now Brasserie 44 – or B44 if you’re into the whole brevity thing. John McDonald, the big shot behind Lever House, Chinatown Brasserie, etc., has done it up real nice in an inviting nautical theme, with lots of teak and rope. Thrillist dubs the aesthetic “haute pirate”; you’ll want to make sure you’ve dug up some of that buried treasure before coming aboard. (Peruse the menu.) B44 is open for all three meals and they’ve got over 3000 bottles of wine – most on display behind a glass viewing wall. (There better be a good bottle of rum there, too, or McDonald’s walking the plank.) In the Royalton Hotel, 44 W 44th St, between 5th and 6th, 212.869.4400.