The father of a 14-year-old Connecticut girl filed a missing persons report with police after his daughter left the house Saturday morning and didn't come home that night. The unidentified girl wasn't answering her cellphone, but police were able to track her down using her the phone's signal, finally locating her Sunday afternoon in a room at the Belleclaire Hotel on the Upper West Side. Inside the room, police found condoms, a vibrator, and an 18-year-old Belgian man named Anthony Freson, who swears the girl told him she was 18 when they "met" in a Yahoo chat room in April.
Belgian Teen Arrested After Liaison With 14-Year-Old Girl
James Ensor MoMA Retrospective Really Is Astonishing
Not that we needed any convincing about Belgian artist James Ensor (1860-1949), but after New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl declared that the "astonishing" Ensor retrospective at MoMA "will affect many viewers like the detonation of a bomb whose fuse has been fizzing inconspicuously for a century," we quit procrastinating and finally humped it to midtown on Saturday. It was definitely worth the trip, and we were pleasantly surprised to find that the exhibit wasn't disastrously mobbed in the way that blockbuster museum retrospectives tend to get.
Restaurant Rouge Tomate Opens, Looks Gorgeous
Award-winning architectural firm Bentel & Bentel has just unveiled Rouge Tomate, an ambitiously designed bi-level restaurant in midtown that's founded on the principal of S.P.E. (Sanitas Per Escam, Latin for Health Through Food). It's the first New York location of a Belgian chain started by a former Mercedes-Benz salesman. In keeping with the eco-friendly approach, executive chef Jeremy Bearman (L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon in Las Vegas and db Bistro Moderne here in NYC) is committed to market-driven and locally sourced seasonal menus.
Belgian Recreates NYPD and FDNY in Miniature
For some unknown reason, many Europeans are smitten with the NYPD. There are more than a few replica NYPD cars over the pond (ranging from quite accurate to comically inaccurate) some available for rental.

