This week the Times’s Frank Bruni awards two stars to Eighty One (pictured) in a decidedly mixed review. He thinks the “dizzying” Upper West Side restaurant in the Excelsior Hotel has “attention deficits” and needs Ritalin: “It provides an especially clear example of a kind of culinary preening – call it ego food – that may speak less to the satisfaction of customers than to the self-regard of proprietors.” Nor does Bruni care for the......

Groundbreaking postwar artist Robert Rauschenberg died last night at the age of 82. The adventurous painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, set designer and composer was born Milton Ernest Rauschenberg on Oct. 22, 1925, in Port Arthur, Texas, a small refinery town with little cultural stimuli. (In his adult life he took the name Robert.) His father worked for a local utility, and the family’s lifestyle was so financially tight that, according to the Times, Rauschenberg’s mother......

Today’s wake for a beloved New York institution is being held in honor of Mei Lai Wah Coffee House in Chinatown. It seems the Times’s Eric Asimov, who usually writes about wine, doesn’t subsist on vino alone; he needs his coffee and steamed pork buns as well. And ever since Mei Lai Wah closed last week after a long, losing struggle with the Health Department, Asimov has been in mourning: Mei Lai Wah was indeed......

The Gray Lady slums it out to far East Williamsburg to report on the hipster bohemian squalor of the sprawling McKibbin Street “dorms;” two hulking buildings converted from garment factories to lofts in the late nineties by a trio of savvy Stuyvesant alums. It’s since become a filthy, bed-bug ravaged rite of passage for the young DIY arts set, who pile on top of each other in warren-like lofts more crowded than one of Dan......

As if offering a final coda (or is it?) to the suspenseful Momofuku Ko reservation saga, the Times’s Frank Bruni has officially opined on the breathlessly hyped, 12-seat restaurant from rock star chef David Chang. Bruni extols it with three stars, calling it “noteworthy beyond its addling all-computer reservation system and the intense, revelatory pleasures of its partly Asian, partly French, wholly inventive food… Ko in its early months serves a few dishes that merely......

Apparently, Mayor Bloomberg uses the word unconscionable so much that the Times poured 969 other words into analyzing the verbal tic. According to the article, Bloomberg’s U-bombing is definitely excessive; he drops the heavy pejorative in situations that don’t merit it, like when a reporter dared ask him if his trip to Israel was calculated to woo Jewish voters. (“That’s unconscionable. You should be ashamed to ask that question,” he reportedly snapped.) And when a......

Today Frank Bruni reviews Adour (pictured), the four-month-old St. Regis Hotel restaurant conceived by extravagant French chef Alain Ducasse. While it’s not “rapturous” enough to merit the Times’s highest four star rating, it’s still “first-rate: polished service, a knockout wine list, beautiful oil-poached cod, gorgeous roasted lamb and exquisite desserts.” And Bruni does confirm our earlier speculation about some kind of haute bagel on the menu. On the other side of the spectrum and the......

The 20-member New York Times editorial board nearly endorsed Barack Obama for president, but ultimately Times chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. pushed through a Clinton endorsement, anonymous sources have told The New Republic. The behind-the-scenes article echoes conjecture from New York Magazine that Sulzberger’s BFF gym buddy Steven Rattner, a major Clinton donor and former Times reporter, may have been the deciding factor. An unnamed Times staffer regrets the error: “We're on the wrong......

This week in the Times, Bruni one-stars Lebanese Ilili, saying “Ilili is probably the atmospherically grandest excursion into Middle Eastern cooking that New York has ever seen.” While much of the menu is inconsistent, he loves the kebabs and kaftas. Says the service is “occasionally confused.” And get the essmalieh for dessert. In Dining Briefs, Peter Meehan goes to Abraço Espresso (pictured), says “it’s tiny, it brews excellent coffee, and the little food that it......

After a turbulent couple of months at Gawker, the New York Times Style section is checking the media website’s pulse and wondering, with equal parts hope and desperation, if Gawker has finally jumped the “snark”. The Times’s uptick in Gawker stalking mirrors their aggressive game of catch-up with “teh internets” by increasingly emphasizing blogs on their website, and the article finds the Gray Lady digging a nice, cozy grave for Gawker owner and editor Nick......