Here, pour yourself a morning cup o' contempt, courtesy Frank Bruni's review of Delicatessen (pictured), the overpriced, overcrowded Soho comfort food lounge where tools and over-privileged scenesters flock to judge each other. (You know, the place that's driving neighbors to urinate on it.) After conceding that "this seriously mediocre but ingeniously conceived restaurant" isn't catering to epicures, but rather "night crawlers looking for foodstuffs that double as alcohol sponges," Bruni decides that "many of these......

After serving tours in the Middle East, it was a Brooklyn backyard barbecue that proved deadly for Sergeant Kidson George. The 26-year-old man was gunned down on the porch of a Crown Heights home where he was celebrating the 4th of July with his girlfriend and others. George was shot twice in the chest by his girlfriend's former boyfriend, sending children screaming and dashing for cover. An unidentified 27-year-old woman was hit by a stray......

Fresh from attending the Bronx Food and Arts Festival on Sunday, Dave Cook of the highly recommended food site Eating in Translation reports that Hunts Point barbecue rig Mo Gridder’s – famous for its St. Louis cut smoked rib platter served in the parking lot of an auto center – is moving into its very first restaurant space without axles. Owner Fred Donnelly will open Mo Gridder’s II in the Belmont Section of the Bronx,......

New Yorkers love their barbecue, and they're certainly not going to let a little near-record-breaking heat get between them and their meat. Throngs of sweaty 'cue lovers waited in line at the sixth annual Big Apple Barbecue Block Party to get a taste of dishes served up by award-winning pitmasters from across the country including brisket, sausage and coleslaw from The Salt Lick BBQ in Driftwood, Texas; pulled pork shoulder from Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q......

Sometimes you have to eat a species in order to save it. To raise awareness about threatened Pacific wild salmon, Water Taxi Beach in Long Island City will be adding wild salmon barbecue to the menu this Saturday. The feast is being held in cooperation with Save Our Wild Salmon, a group that’s traveling the country to educate people about the Northwest salmon crisis. According to Save Our Wild Salmon’s website, last year just......

Saturday's thunderstorm ended just in time for Brooklyn Pigfest benefiting the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy. Beer, BBQ and bluegrass were promised and that's exactly what was delivered, along with an impromptu game of "tip cup". Those in attendance imbibed, and seemed to enjoy, the many varieties of Brooklyn Brewery beer (open bar was included with admission). The food was plentiful, and though it was PIGfest, the macaroni and cheese was the highlight of our......

Today the Times’s Frank Bruni reviews The Harrison (pictured) in Tribeca; the paper gave it two stars in 2001 and Bruni maintains status quo with two stars today. There’s a different chef in the kitchen, Amanda Freitag, and Bruni digs the restaurant’s “populist bent, its awareness that breaded or fried objects are a sure path to many a diner’s heart.” But don’t get him started on the ambiance: “The Harrison’s visual evocation of a country......

A 7-year-old Manhattan boy is hospitalized today with burns over 70% of his body after an attempt to make S'mores in a Murray Hill basement went horribly wrong. As opposed to the usual case of youthful misadventure, responsibility for the boys injuries appears to lie with a supervising parent, who allegedly threw a volatile flammable liquid on an open flame, which exploded in the boy's face. The boy was roasting S'mores with a friend on......

Barbecue fans will want to start bracing their colons for the 6th Annual Big Apple Barbecue Block Party, which has been announced for June 7th and 8th in Madison Square Park. Gothamist tore through the festival of regional barbecue last year, devouring everything from pork shoulder to Brunswick stew to candied ribs. New York will be well represented this year by Hill Country, Rack and Soul, Blue Smoke, and Dinosaur Bar-B-Que; other purveyors range......

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......

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......

Chef Anita Lo, whose intimate and sophisticated Barrow Street restaurant Annisa has been a hit for years, has now opened a bigger venture in the West Village. It’s a 120-seat Asian barbecue restaurant called Bar Q, which specializes in dishes like baby back ribs made with Lo’s mother’s “special sauce.” In an interview last February, Lo said she’s been thinking about opening an Asian barbecue restaurant for at least six years, in part because her......

Sunday’s 3rd Avenue In Brooklyn Is About To Be Rampant With Yuppies Times article glossed over the presence of a new restaurant on the block, Brick Oven Bar Be Que & Pizza. One gets the sense that owner Emmanuel Maropakis is involved in something downright quixotic here. Messages like “Free Coffee” are spray painted on the outside of the brick building, and at different times during the day such words appear only with considerable eye......

Barbecue and sushi aren’t the first two cuisines you'd expect to find cohabitating under one roof. Leave it to Jim Goldman, a.k.a Brother Jimmy, to open Lucky Mojo, which features that oddball pairing – plus Tex-Mex and New Orleans fare. An eclectic, highly uneven menu isn’t the only challenge this new Long Island City spot faces. Lucky Mojo’s space has been afflicted with bad juju of late. In the ’90s it was home to the......

Good news for old-school New Yorkers: the new 2nd Ave Delicatessen is expected to open sometime next week in its new Murray Hill Location on 33rd Street, near Third Avenue. Lovers of the deli’s famous matzo ball soup and pastrami sandwiches were devastated last year when, after a half-century in business, the 2nd Ave and 10th Street legend was snuffed out. The closure came in the wake of a bitter rent dispute between deli......

BENEFIT: Tonight catch a special performance by Alanis Morissette, while rubbing elbows with Matt Dillon...all for a good cause! The inaugural fundraising benefit for the Adrienne Shelly Foundation will be held this evening, and you can get in with a ticket from $150 to...well, $10,000 bucks. You'll be supporting the late Shelly's foundation which "supports the artistic achievements of female actors, writers and directors through a series of scholarships and grants." 6pm // Skirball Center......

An Avis truck exploded at 64th Road and 108th Street in Queens, injuring one person and damaging windows in surrounding buildings. The box truck was parked behind some businesses and blew up around 8AM. At first, residents were concerned it might be some sort of attack, but it seems that a propane gas-barbecue inside the truck ignited, causing the explosion. And authorities say the vehicle was a catering truck. WCBS 2 has video of the......

This year's Zagat NYC guide is out on the streets today. The familiar burgundy book is still a staple to many searching for the top food in the city, although many argue that the voting process leads to inconsistent results. That said, here are the numbers, the highlights, and the rest:This year's edition covers 2069 restaurants and compiles results from over 34,000 surveys. Gordon Ramsay knocks one over the fence with the top newcomer, earning......

On a hunt for the best mac and cheese in the city? See if you can make your way through this list. Enjoy the food coma afterwards and ponder the origin of the word "marconus". Texas barbecue shrine Hill Country now delivers. Amen. Adam Roberts, a.k.a. The Amateur Gourmet, has made the blog-to-book leap, with How to Shop, Chop, and Table Hop Like a Pro (Almost), and is parading around the internets on a virtual......

September 3: West Indian–American Day Carnival Some may go for the dancing and general festivities, but some of us will be headed to this celebration for the food. The Eastern Parkway service roads will be lined with stands selling dishes from throughout the Caribbean, including jerk chicken, oxtail, fried flying fish, curry goat, roti, callaloo, and more. 8am–6pm, Eastern Pkwy between Utica Ave and Grand Army Plaza Brooklyn. For more info or directions, visit wiadca.org.......

This week's New York Mag runs down some of this season's upcoming restaurant openings -- better start planning now. We've already given you the scoop on Will Goldfarb's Picnick and Peter Hoffman's Back Forty, due in September and October respectively, but we're looking forward to some of the other spots highlighted by Rob and Robin, especially noodle shop Bun, from Mai House chef Michael Huynh and his wife, Thao Nguyen, and El Quinto Pino, from......

Since the spring, the Post’s Page Six gossip column has for some reason been following the strange saga of the love life of Long Island native and Philadelphia television anchor Alycia Lane, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Liz Cho. It has, of course but it has provided some strange entertainment since May when the tabloid revealed that she had sent e-mails containing private photos of herself to NFL Network anchor Rich Eisen......

Esca's Dave Pasternack is a Midtown Lunch'r too. His faves include Pakistani Restaurant on 38th and 9th, Grand Sichuan, and Han Bat on 35th between 5th and 6th. Restaurant Girl makes her Daily News debut, dines with Gael Greene, looks glamourous. Zagat goes mobile with Zagat.mobi. iPhone not included. Epicurious 2.0 has arrived with a redesign and more bloggers (because what isn't better with more bloggers?). RUB commissioned Orange County Chopper to create a mobile......

A 16-year-old Bronx boy was arrested for the Sunday murder of Rayquon Story aboard a 5 train. The police tracked down the suspect after someone gave Story's aunt a Myspace picture and said, "This is the kid who shot your nephew." The person in the photo was identified as Robert Denis, and he was charged, as an adult, with murder, attempted murder, manslaughter, and criminal possession of a weapon. The police reveal some more details......

If you've lived in New York for any period of time, you know that the food here is incredible -- the variety, the quantity, and the quality. You'll also know that you don't have to pawn off your valuables to taste all that the city has to offer. This week's New York Magazine celebrates the city's cheap eats. Rob and Robin provide an extensive list of their picks, including some of our favorites: Bocca Lupo,......

Centro Vinoteca: The owners of Gusto have teamed up with Chef Anne Burrell in this two story corner spot in the West Village. Burell's experience as Batali's Sous Chef on Iron Chef America shines through in her Italian menu. 74 Seventh Avenue South, at Barrow Street, 212-367-7470. Omido: Designed by Avroko (who did Public, among others), this high-end sushi restaurant brings a bit of luxury to midtown West with touches like foie gras and gold......

We're just going to get this out of the way: Justin Timberlake is bringing deep-fried pickle-sicles back. The modern day song and dance man has gone and opened his very own restaurant called Southern Hospitality (at 1460 2nd Ave and 76th St). It opened last night to a crowd of A-listers people you may have heard of, hankering for some barbecue. Amongst the items offered are deviled eggs, pulled pork, mac-n-cheese, fried catfish, and yes...the......

Summer always brings to mind certain culinary delights -- barbecue, corn on the cob, hamburgers and hot dogs, lemonade, and seafood, particularly anything you'd find at a New England clam shack. We're fortunate enough to live near Pearl Oyster Bar if we need a quick fix, but what about those for whom the closest decent lobster might actually be in New England? Send 'em a Lobstergram. The folks at Lobstergram sent us one to try......

LAist was comped front row seats by the Dodgers due to Malingering being struck by a foul ball last week, and she came back with some great photos, and earlier made fun of 4th of July on Venice Beach. But the biggest stories of the week was that the Mayor's Hot Tamale was revealed, and that a Kwik-E-Mart was erected in Burbank. Phillyist was busy doing the Fourth of July up right, exercising their......

Will we be able to enjoy a picnic and fireworks or will the rain wash out our 4th of July fun? The afternoon picnic or barbecue should be safe from the rain but the fireworks are looking iffy. A warm front that currently stretches southward from the Great Lakes will be crossing our area this evening. Ahead of that front we should see mostly overcast skies, possibly a light shower, and a high around......