The servers at THOR, where chef Jesi Solomon (formerly the sous chef at Stanton Social) has now taken the reins, aren't afraid to gush about the menu items they love. To hear them tell it, the Maple Brined Pork Tenderloin is “a party in your mouth,” and the veal burger lathered in foie mustard is “silky and irresistible.” Certainly they're biased, but for the most part Solomon's “modern American” menu—with seasonal highlights and gastronomic weapons......

The Times published their fat fall restaurant preview today, and it features a long report from Frank Bruni on how the weak economy is changing the city's dining experience. The good news? It's easier to book a reservation during the popular 7 p.m. time slot; the bad news is that restaurateurs like Donatella Arpaia are overbooking to make sure they don't have empty tables due to no-shows. “I’d rather have people wait at the bar......

Today the Times's Frank Bruni has kind words for Nolita newcomer Elizabeth, which "has its problems, annoyances and confusions...and it still doesn’t seem entirely sure of what it wants to be...But it also has an adventurous, sometimes silly spirit that’s winning in its way." (Note the skull pictured here.) "My waitress’s outfit one night (scary knee-high boots with a skimpy black satin dress) made me wonder if she was poised to mete out cocktails or......

La Bouillabaisse: That new French bistro in Red Hook, across the street from IKEA and connected to Annabelle's bar (formerly Lillie’s), has just opened. As reported back in June, the restaurant is the baby of Neil Ganic, who won a following through previous iterations of Bouillabaisse on Atlantic Avenue in the ‘90s. Besides serving the bar crowd next door and in the backyard, Ganic’s menu features his old signature dishes like a poached-pear–and–blue-cheese salad, according......

This week Frank Bruni files two shorter reviews for the Times instead of handing down his usual hefty decision on a single restaurant. He heads east to follow up on Sushi Yashuda on 43rd Street, declaring that from the time it opened "more than eight years ago, when William Grimes awarded it three stars in The New York Times, it has been among the best. And a recent visit suggested that there’s been no slippage,......

Clo: Like uWink before it, Clo, an new automated wine bar in the Time Warner Center, has liberated customers from burdensome interaction with human servers and their constant demand for gratuities. The video above, courtesy WCBS, shows the computer-run bar in action. (Do what you need to do to tune out the shrill newscaster voice.) The Times explains that customers can simply touch on a wine name to get details on tasting notes, food......

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......

A new restaurant in Little Italy, Dolce Vita, has been trying to serve food that would make the tourist-flooded neighborhood "authentic" again, but according to an open letter posted on Eater, the other restaurateurs are jealous and trying to destroy them: "If you are the new guy on the block and not in everybody else’s back-pocket or part of Old Little Italy, you apparently do not have a prayer of making it. Police are sent......

Vintage Irving: Hey everybody, there’s a new wine bar and small plates place opening! Now you have a zillion and one to choose from – except this one’s different, at least a little; it features a cozy private tasting room where the owners plan to host sommeliers and celebrity chefs, starting with Top Chef survivor Sam Talbot, Eater reports. In the meantime, the public is free to enjoy what Strongbuzz describes as the “countryside café”......

The last iPhone dining application to make news was Urbanspoon, which frustrated Times critic Frank Bruni a little bit with its random slot machine approach to locating a good nearby restaurant. So we're curious to see if the latest iPhone toy, LocalEats, is more Bruni's speed. This feature seems pretty simple; drawing from a list of the 100 best restaurants in Manhattan and Brooklyn (as decreed by the folks at Where the Locals Eat), LocalEats......

This week finds the Times's Frank Bruni rhapsodizing about Matsugen, the new haute soba restaurant in Tribeca from chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who's kind of a big deal. Actually, as Bruni makes clear, only half the place is Jean-Georges; the other half, which includes the kitchen, is run by Taka, Yoshi and Masa Matsushita, brothers who also operate Matsugen restaurants in Tokyo and Honolulu. "Their soba, condiments, dips, broths and interlopers... are so clearly and cleanly......

Last month chef Michael White and his business partner Chris Cannon opened Convivio in the space formerly occupied by L'Impero, which White took over after the abrupt departure of chef Scott Conant (who has since opened Scarpetta). Where L'Impero was perceived by some as stuffy and overly formal (Times critic Frank Bruni said it evoked "the upholstered interior of a very large coffin"), Convivio aims for a more casual, though still elegant, atmosphere, with "burnt......

Dan Kaufman, the man accused of stealing customers’ credit card info at several Brooklyn Heights eateries, now knows what it feels like to be on the wrong end of crime. According to the Brooklyn Paper, Kaufman returned home to find the locks changed at his apartment on Pierrepont Street. When a locksmith finally came and opened the door, he discovered that the place had been “ransacked.” The article doesn’t definitively say who’s responsible, but one......

In a city with an abundance of Italian and Latin flavors, it's surprising that these cuisines don't intermingle more often. At Miranda, on North 9th & Berry in Williamsburg (across from Hotel Delmano and Silent H), the husband-wife team of Sasha Rodriguez and Mauricio Miranda fuse mixed heritages and culinary experiences into grains, appetizers, and entrees with sauces both ragu and mole. The dining room is cozy, with a moderate sound level and low light......

This week the Times’s Frank Bruni hands down a generally favorable verdict on Persimmon Kimchi House, the 20-seat, communal table restaurant from chef Youngsun Lee, who cut his teeth with David Chang (Momofuku). Bruni admits that “…at least a third of the dishes I tried prompted yawns or head-scratching. But at least another third riveted me, and all in all I enjoyed what struck me as the polar opposite of a cookie-cutter, fashion-driven meal, the......

Popular Lower East Side gastropub Spitzer’s Corner is in trouble for serving alcohol to minors. Eater has it that the establishment, which boasts 40 "world-class" craft beers and microbrews on tap, was “infiltrated” by an undercover police informant who was served alcohol without being carded. The owners are paying a fine, the bartender is fired, and the neighborhood nightlife – which on weekends makes Mardi Gras look like a model U.N. meeting – just might......

PetalBelle: Aw, this cute new SoHo waffle place from the owners of Lombardi’s will, Thrillist reports, be serving Belgian “liege” waffles made with “a wide-grain Scandinavian sweetener some call ‘pearl sugar,’ and others ‘Nütra Sweet.’” Eater further notes that there are “four flavors of gelato" and – deep breath – "basic coffee drinks." 158 Sullivan St, (212) 677-1580 Botinica: Red Hook has a fancy new bar to go with its fancy new Swedish retailer. It’s......

Restaurants that we'd recommend off the L train's Montrose stop are few and rarely worth visiting twice. Mojito Loco is an exception, with recipes coming from the Peruvian chef-owner's fearsomely delicious arsenal. The dining room itself is a vortex of well-kept neighborhood restaurant and '80s music-video showcase house (think: Rod Stewart on repeat). And at Mojito Loco every hour is happy hour, which means extra-strong $5 margaritas in six flavors, mixed drinks for $7, and......

This week the Times’s Frank Bruni opines on Scarpetta (pictured), the new Meatpacking District Italian restaurant from Scott Conant (L’Impero, Alto) that the Village Voice loved and the Sun disdained. Bruni bestows a big three stars, raving about the unassuming dish of spaghetti, tomato and basil: “However Mr. Conant is choosing and cooking the Roma tomatoes with which he sauces his house-made spaghetti, he’s getting a roundness of flavor and nuance of sweetness that amount......

Chickpea: We used to love Chickpea, that fresh falafel place on Third Avenue and St. Mark’s Place that let you squirt as much tahini as you wanted into your pita. But we lost interest when they went through that whole confusing name change contest – marred by allegations that the game was rigged – and ended up calling themselves Kosher Village. Now it’s Tahini, and they bake their falafel, which is as about healthy as......

Dan Kaufman, the co-owner and manager of Busy Chef in Brooklyn Heights who stands accused of identity theft and credit card forgery, is out on bail thanks to his girlfriend, who put up $50,000 after a judge refused to believe that Kaufman's own bail money was obtained legally. A grand jury convened this week to hear the 19 charges against Kaufman, who allegedly charged a total of $24,978.53 to 19 customers' credit card accounts. The......

The Sun’s Paul Adams is the latest critic to get around to Hundred Acres (pictured), the meticulously-sourced, farm-to-table restaurant which used to be Provence. While the Daily News was haunted by the ghosts of the old restaurant, Adams says “the transformation is a delightful blast of fresh air. A sultry Southern accent marks the restaurant's menu… where "seasonal" isn't just a buzzword, but where you actually look forward to returning season after season to see......

Convivio: The Tudor City restaurant formerly known as L’Impero has been reborn as Convivio (pictured), a more casual but still swish venture from the same team, Chris Cannon and chef Michael White. Located in a historic 1920s building, the space is made deluxe with burnt orange banquettes, a hand-hammered copper bar top, and reflective lacquered ceilings. White – who spent seven years studying Italian cuisine in Imola – emphasizes the southern part of the boot......

Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of that horrible steam pipe explosion in midtown that left one woman dead and others seriously injured. And Public House on 41st Street has some theme drink specials tonight to commemorate the occasion. We're talking $8 Car Bombs, $6 PipeBomb Drinks, and a “Taste Bud Explosion Platter” with wings, nachos and calamari. This is going to be the best steam pipe explosion anniversary party in town! Or, rather, it was;......

Urbanspoon is a free iPhone application aimed at the indecisiveness gripping a certain subset of young moneyed urban dwellers. Sometimes it is really hard deciding between dinner at Pastis, Spice Market or Buddha Bar! So with a shake, your iPhone becomes a cross between a Magic 8 Ball and a slot machine that uses GPS technology to land on a nearby restaurant, categorized by price, proximity and cuisine. But the app was not so killer......

This week the Times’s Frank Bruni reminds everyone about Oceana (pictured), that fancy three star “seafood restaurant in Midtown that looks like an ocean liner.” After more than fifteen years in business, he says it’s still “very much worth boarding.” And save room for dessert, which is “splendid.” The frozen banana mousse, “presented with both sticky rice and puffed, caramelized rice, [is] the transmogrification of a bowl of Rice Krispies with bananas into dessert, and......

Eater is reporting that chef Cesar Ramirez is out at West Village restaurant Bar Blanc. Stepping up to the stove will be, like Ramirez, another veteran of David Bouley's restaurants, Sebastiaan Zijp. According to the restaurant’s PR, Bar Blanc’s “partners decided to go their own ways and [the parting is] quite amicable, believe it or not.” Eater cites an additional report in their inbox that “puts the parting at less than ‘amicable,’” and “that it......

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.......

In “soft-opening” mode since Wednesday, Macondo is a new Lower East Side restaurant (157 East Houston) that aims to “elevate ‘comida de la calle’ (Latin street food) to the gourmet level.” Small plates span the Spanish-speaking world, with cocas from Barcelona, empanadas from Colombia, piragüas from the Caribbean, churros con chocolate from Spain, tacos from Mexico, and arepas from Venezuela. The place was well packed by 8 p.m. last night, and if food critics think......

New York's beloved little wine, dine and party boat, The Frying Pan, has finally opened up for business after being anchored by permit problems. After they didn't open up in May or June, things were starting to look grim. Today brings good news from Grub Street, however, as they report the Pan "quietly reopened last Thursday" and now sports "a fancier covered bar area, some new antique bar stools, a central fountain, and Ping-Pong and......