The real prohibition didn't last, so it isn't that surprising that the prohibition party at the pop-up "experimental restaurant" What Happens When isn't lasting either. In the wake of the SLA's decision to strip the well-regarded restaurant's liquor license, chef and owner John Fraser has decided to simply shut the joint down after Saturday's service. more ›

This week in Eat Cetera: Endless specials at West 3rd Common, vegetable-filled Mondays at Dovetail, another new bar from Niagara, lunch at Avenue C mainstay Esperanto, and new menu additions at Abe & Arthur's. more ›

With more than 575 people sick in 43 states, public fears over salmonella-tainted peanuts are affecting restaurant menu offerings in the city. The Times reports that peanut-based desserts made by Gramercy Tavern’s Nancy Olson and Dovetail’s Vera Tong have been removed at least temporarily from dessert menus, and more customers want to know the origin of peanut products served by restaurants. The salmonella crisis allegedly stems from tainted peanuts sold by Peanut Corp. of America, a Virginia-based company, to an assortment of manufacturers and food producers like Clif Bar and Little Debbie. more ›

Last night was the annual At The Table event for Women Chefs & Restaurateurs, a group that supports “education and advancement of women in culinary fields.” Chefs, culinary school students, and supporters gathered at the Prince George Ballroom for a sweet and savory tasting, general networking, and to raise awareness for the group’s scholarship and internship programs. more ›

Writing for the Times, Frank Bruni calls the wine and charcuterie restaurant Bar Boulud (pictured) “a terrine machine, a pâté-a-palooza, dedicated to the proposition that discerning New Yorkers aren’t getting nearly enough concentrated, sculptured, gelatinous animal fat” and awards it two stars. Bruni also revisits Fiamma and calls the owners out for jacking up prices by 20% just days after he rated it three stars. more ›

Today the Times’s Frank Bruni marvels at Manhattan’s new wave of high tone restaurant openings during a recession, and pins the trend not on entrepreneurial bravado but on the fact that it takes years to get a fancy eatery open, and most of these new places were envisioned in flusher economic times. It is true that in 2005, the top fifth of earners in Manhattan made 52 times what the lowest fifth make – $365,826 compared with $7,047 – comparable to the income disparity in Namibia. Yet thanks to tax cuts and stagflation, the income gap has only widened in the past three years. Dinner at Per Se is as unattainable as ever for New York’s lower orders, but even with Wall Street turbulence it’s unlikely the ranks of the well-heeled will thin to the point where a fashionable restaurant can’t manage. Of course, chefs like Ken Friedman (The Spotted Pig) are artists and don’t chain their muse to the vagaries of the economy: “I’m certainly not the kind who would look at the Dow. Does a writer write or not write a book based on the economic climate? Does a songwriter write songs that way?” more ›

Frank Bruni, the Times’s top restaurant critic, awards the new 2nd Avenue Deli one star today, which isn’t bad considering it is, despite all the history, still a deli. We popped in there for food and photos just before it reopened at its East 33rd Street location and found the sandwiches (pictured) as monumental as ever; a second visit turned up no sign of the free bowl of gribenes (chicken skin fried in chicken fat) that the owner Jeremy Lebewohl had promised free at every table. more ›

This week in the Times, Bruni three-stars Le Cirque, bumping the restaurant's rating up from the two stars he awarded it in 2006. Executive chef Christophe Bellanca’s menu “nimbly straddles the line between predictable decadence… and creative flair,” he says. He also says that you’ll pay—a lot—for what you get, and that Le Cirque isn’t quite as reliable as other three star restaurants. more ›

This week in the Times, Bruni one-stars Mesa Grill (pictured), knocking the restaurant down from the two stars given it by William Grimes in 2000. Says that while the Bobby Flay restaurant “has considerable charms… on balance [it] presents only flickers of the excitement it did [when it opened] in 1991… It’s an overly familiar, somewhat tired production. More to the point, it’s an inconsistent one.” more ›

Paul Adams goes to Back Forty (pictured) for the NY Sun this week. “The restaurant takes its focus on farm-to-table cuisine almost to the point of self-parody,” he says. Back Forty could benefit more by the presence of Peter Hoffman (the chef and owner) in the kitchen, not so much at the greenmarket, says Adams. more ›