This week in Eat Cetera: Trigo transforms into Bar Artisanal, tour the Meatpacking District in a rickshaw with a Thai Princess, and brace for the new Taste of the Upper West Side. more ›

This week the Times's outgoing dining critic Frank Bruni files on Bar Artisanal, the Tribeca restaurant that opened in February as Trigo, then closed three months later and reopened under new ownership with a different menu. Quoth the Bruni: "Cheese animates and dominates Bar Artisanal — and helps give it what modest appeal it has. Take away the cheese and what’s left is a calculating, somewhat cynical operation, connected to the Hilton Garden Inn... Bar Artisanal pillages and repackages current trends with astonishing thoroughness, commanding attention for that alone. If restaurants could be preserved in amber and tucked away for future students of gustatory anthropology, this might be the one to save and label, 'New York City, circa 2010.'" more ›