Corton: One of the most anticipated openings of the season, this modern French restaurant, formerly Montrachet, is the love child of big shot restaurateur Drew Nieporent (Nobu) and chef Paul Liebrandt, who dreams of owning a cryogenic freezer "for freezing the cooks when they misbehave." Located in Tribeca, the 65-seat space serves a three-course prix fixe for $76 and a tasting menu for $110. What financial crisis? Appealing options for the not-broke-yet include Ocean Trout......

This week the Times's Frank Bruni has a mouth-watering rave for Southern Italian restaurant Convivo (pictured), chef Michael White's revision of the stuffy L'Impero in Tudor City. He declares that Convivio has emerged from the transition "as a pasta lover’s dreamland...soulful and unpretentious...Mr. White can do it all...and is doing even better work with pasta at Convivio than he has done at Alto." Skip the seafood, though: "Roll-ups of fried swordfish with a yogurt sauce......

Philippe Express: Don’t let the name throw you; the cuisine here is Chinese, not French, and Seth Rogen has no connection with the place. Chef Philippe Chow is all about Chicken Satays, Crispy Beef, and Salt and Pepper Prawns, which has worked well for him uptown on 60th Street. This downtown satellite, opening tonight, features red banquets and automated touch-screen ordering. And in a “Big Brother’s Watching You Eat” twist, the touch screens will remember......

After years of massive expansion, real estate brokers are bracing themselves for a reversal of bank oversaturation. There are as many retail bank branches in Manhattan as there are Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts combined. Now Washington Mutual has postponed opening new branches (understandably), and other banks are consolidating their branches. One broker predicts that "we might have empty corners without a lot of takers out there chasing the space." But Mitchell Moss, NYU professor of......

Bike-friendly city Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan told reporters last night that August's street closures in Manhattan will be back next year. The Summer Streets program, which prohibited traffic on a 7-mile stretch from the Brooklyn Bridge to Central Park on three consecutive Saturdays, was "clearly a hit on Park Ave," Sadik-Khan tells the Daily News. She also says it's "highly likely" Summer Streets will be extended next summer to the other boroughs. While some retailers......

Tierra: Tapas now and forever! Franklin Becker, the chef who recently stepped in to try and breathe life into Sheridan Square, now has another responsibility: Tierra. Per the press release, it’s where "Old School Tapas" meets "New School Tapas." The menu emphasizes adventurous wine pairings with items like Cabrales Filled Dates, Warm Goat Cheese Torta, and Chicken Livers on Toast. It opens tonight in the space formerly occupied by Tasca, and the publicist's breathless description......

It was previously reported that Target would be opening their promotional "Bullseye Bodegas" at four temporary locations around Manhattan on September 11th. Now the opening date is September 12th, so either the reports were wrong or someone in marketing realized that 9/11 might not be the most ideal day to launch a campaign with the word "bullseye" in it....

The team behind Edible Brooklyn and Edible East End are launching their latest food-focused mag, Edible Manhattan, next week. per Grub Street, there's an in-depth look at the popularity of the Manhattan cocktail by St. John Frizell, a profile of the owners of Little Giant, a day with Nach Waxman of Kitchen Arts & Letters bookstore and a classic quote from Greenmarket farmer Eugene Wyatt: “When I have vegetables for sale at my stand, customers......

Get yourself some popcorn, because this week Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni is taking the hammer to big shot media power-lunch nest Michael's. Turns out dinner there is an overpriced joke: "I thought Michael’s prided itself on produce. Then I had its appetizer of peekytoe crab with spears of white asparagus, which might as well have been spears of white wax for all the flavor they had....[Michael’s] certainly charges like a serious restaurant, levying a......

Manhattan, once one of the few spots that seemed immune to the foreclosure bug that has swept the nation. But the NY Times reports that more apartment owners in Manhattan are missing payments, putting their apartments up for sale to avoid losing them with foreclosures for this July up 78 percent from the year before. Manhattan homeowners may have believed that they were invincible because of the relatively stable real estate market with those folding......

The experimental Bx12 Select Bus Service that runs between upper Manhattan and the Bronx has been a big hit according to New York City Transit, with a trip from end to end on the route taking an average 12 minutes less time than before. (One transportation advocate says her average 65 minute commute has been cut to 48 minutes.) You'll recall that the route now features more buses (up to ten more during peak hours)......

Could it really be that Manhattan's obscene rents are becoming ever-so-slightly less obscene? That's the Observer's perception, and they've got market reports from the Real Estate Group New York [REGNY] indicating that rents on studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments are lower this summer than last. According to REGNY, in June the average rent for a Manhattan two-bedroom apartment in a non-doorman building was $3,950, 6.5 percent less than in June 2007. All this has the......

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg and other city officials unveiled the newly renovated access path between Highbridge Park and the High Bridge in Manhattan. The $4.2 million project (which included a new pathway and restored iron stairway between the bridge and a water tower) is part of a $60 million plan to restore the High Bridge as part of Bloomberg's PlaNYC initiative. The Mayor said, "I’d like to think that the High Bridge will do for uptown......

Just because Merrill Lynch reneged on leasing office space in a tower planned for where the down-at-heel Hotel Pennsylvania still stands, don't think the property owner won't demolish the 89-year-old hotel anyway. Vornado Realty Trust still hasn't publicly settled on plans for the property, but the Observer reports the company recently applied for a Certification of No Harassment from the city, a prerequisite for demolition. Vornado is debating whether to construct a giant office tower......

Annette Mateo appears to have been one toke over the line last night when she allegedly carjacked an NYPD van and took it for a joyride that almost immediately became devoid of joy. According to the Post, Mateo had gone to file an unspecified complaint at a police station in Harlem and became frustrated with the lackadaisical response from officers there. Storming out of the building at 9:40 p.m., she came upon two rookie cops......

This week the Times’s Frank Bruni rhapsodizes about Perbacco (pictured), which has been open for about five years on East 4th Street, but has a much-buzzed about new chef: 26-year-old Italian hot shot Simone Bonelli, who comes from “the northern city of Modena and the kitchen of Osteria La Francescana, where Italy’s old guard meets Spain’s New Wave.” A two star rating from the Times is a slam dunk for a casual restaurant in this......

The most indispensable member of Council Speaker Christine Quinn's staff seems to be an unpaid 81-year-old World War II veteran, her father Lawrence P. Quinn. An endearing profile in the Times today spotlights his ongoing efforts for his daughter, who will run for mayor next year. Ms. Quinn, an openly gay liberal, calls him "an all-purpose schlepper" who comes in handy for retirement home photo-ops. Mr. Quinn, a practicing Catholic, seems to be crying for......

The surf was definitely not up on the city's waterways today, but that didn't stop a crowd of surfers from hanging ten in a paddle parade around Manhattan. The surreal sight of men and women standing on boards as they paddled up the East River was brought to you by Sea Paddle NYC, the second annual fundraiser for autism charities and the Surfers' Environmental Alliance. Razor Wire reports the 28 mile odyssey started at South Street Seaport at 9 a.m. this morning and finished in Battery Park City this afternoon. More photos here....

The International Olympic Committee filed a copyright infringement claim yesterday against YouTube for hosting video of a Free Tibet protest at the Chinese Consulate in Manhattan Thursday night. The video depicts demonstrators conducting a candlelight vigil and projecting a protest video onto the consulate building; the projection features recent footage of Tibetan monks being arrested and riffs on the Olympic logo of the five interlocking rings, turning them into handcuffs. YouTube dutifully yanked the video,......

Photo courtesy istolethetv. The first Summer StreetsSaturday took place over the weekend, with the city barring motor vehicles from 6.9 miles of streets from the Brooklyn Bridge to East 72nd Street and Central Park. Cyclists and pedestrians reveled in the car-free oasis as the vehicular traffic was replaced by music, dance, yoga and other exercise classes from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. But some drivers, retailers and garage owners were less enthused. Mark Barbosa, a......

Today’s police brutality video comes via a security camera that caught an NYPD officer beating a handcuffed Army vet. The Daily News has a description of the July 18th attack, but the video isn’t on line… yet. According to police sources, the officer (not pictured here) paused for 90 seconds during the beating to take a call on his cell phone, and then resumed “smashing the man with his baton.” The recipient of the alleged......

In May a lavishly appointed homage to New Orleans's French Quarter opened in the theater district. Called Bourbon Street Bar & Grille, the two-story restaurant evokes the Big Easy with gas lamps, wrought iron railings, reclaimed stained glass windows, and a massive high-topped bar that dominates the ground floor lounge, where Allen Boyd's classic New Orleans cocktails are served with all fresh ingredients and accompany a casual dining menu. Upstairs, there is an outdoor......

A reader has just sent word that a "van just exploded into a fireball, a door flew off and hit a cop car. No one was inside." The tipster, who emailed this photo, tells us this is happened on 38th Street and Lexington Avenue. When pressed for more details, he replied, "I got nothing to offer man. Here's to Fridays! Have a good one." More on this as it comes in, but last year, cabs......

Aside from the music, this evening's Bon Jovi concert on Central Park's Great Lawn will be different from the regular Metropolitan Opera or NY Philharmonic concert-- primarily because of the things one won't be able to bring into the park. While security is generally laissez-faire towards alcohol and food at the classical music events, today's free show is another story. Ticket holders will not be allowed to bring strollers, umbrellas, alcohol, cameras, backpacks, large bags,......

Macondo: Named after the fictional Colombian village in Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, this new Lower East Side restaurant gives Latin street food a gourmet twist. We stopped in for dinner Thursday night, and though they're still working out the kinks (the frozen drinks took forever, and some of the staff had no idea what they were setting down on the table) it's worth a trip for the cod fish Arepa alone.......

The expected new home of Major League Baseball's television network is being chopped down in size because of financial concerns. Vornado Realty Trust is having trouble securing the financing to erect a high-rise tower on 125th St. and Park Ave., and is currently renegotiating with MLB about its lease. The tower may only rise 14 stories, down from 21 stories--apparently lack of interest from other potential tenants is also hamstringing the initial architectural plans. It's......

The Department of Transportation announced a plan to test charging higher parking meter rates at high-demand times--the parking meter version of congestion pricing, as it were--in Manhattan and Brooklyn this fall. According to the NY Times, the goal is to "increase turnover in curbside parking spaces in the test areas...so that drivers will spend less time cruising in search of an open space," which in turn would decrease pollution, searching for a spot, double parking,......

The former executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, George Marlin, is urging federal investigators to look into WTC rebuilding delays, since seven years after the WTC attacks, Ground Zero is mostly still a giant hole. Marlin is recommending that the feds look into the delays as beyond a matter of bureaucratic wrangling and incompetence, but an issue of criminal wrongdoing that could include waste, fraud, abuse, and the the......

The no-cover daytime jazz club EZ's Woodshed in Harlem is closing after two and a half years. Its owner, Gordon Palotnick, took a quixotic stab at sustaining the music that is identified with Harlem. Instead of a smoky late-night club, Palotnick opened a weekdays-only, daytime juke joint that only served soft drinks; and he didn't charge a hefty cover charge either. Despite his best efforts--immersing himself in hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and......

Somehow, in spite of the faltering economy, brokerage firms say second quarter apartment sale prices were about the same or maybe even slightly higher than in the first quarter--though sales were down 22% versus 2007's second quarter. The NY Times noticed, "Strong luxury sales and faltering studio sales had the perverse effect of catapulting the median price — the price of the apartment exactly in the middle of all sale prices — to a record.......