Ed Schoenfeld, dubbed "the curator of Chinese food in America" by Gourmet, tells Leonard Lopate how to order properly in a Chinese restaurant (how'd we do, Ed?) The episode aired at noon today on WNYC, so the podcast should be available shortly. Slate gives us a video slideshow of how chefs and cooking are portrayed in film, including Ratatouille, Big Night, and Mostly Martha. Best pasta to beat the heat -- the classic combo......

- Outsourcing is coming to a high-end restaurant near you, and no we are not talking about phone reservationists working abroad who do not understand that a 5:45 reservation is unacceptable to you. - Florence Fabricant has the official word in this weeks "Off the Menu" on Back Forty, the upcoming casual spot from Savoy owner Peter Hoffman, which we first told you about in the fall. Located in the old Radio Perfecto space with......

-- If you like bagels and butt-holes, then this story is for you. Everyone else: look away! -- Curbed visits the disturbingly asymmetric New Museum development on Bowery-- when will buildings look normal again? -- Hilarious: One of Blogger's default templates makes the window at Saks 5th Avenue. -- Does "depraved indifference" homicide warrant 25 years to life? In this case, being totally drunk, driving your car on the wrong side of a highway......

Passionate men cook great food. And Ali is one of the most passionate men you’ll ever meet. That’s all you need to know before you go to Ali’s Kabab Café in Astoria. I discovered Kabab Café just before I started driving a yellow cab and well before I ever dreamt of conducting eating tours. I had a couple of friends who’d moved to Astoria back when people still contended that it was going to be......

Usually I get my restaurant recommendations out of my fares. The time we spend together in the cab is perfect for my screening process. After weeding out (and occasionally kicking out) those who would send me to Applebees, I can judge a fare for ten or twenty minutes before deciding if we have similar taste buds and philosophies on life as well as, by extension, eating. But a few weeks back, one of YOU,......

City yellow cabs will get more colorful in the fall of 2007 as the city embarks on a project to decorate cabs with flower decals. Yes, you heard it right - the City of New York is working on the temporary, mobile public art project, Garden in Transit, which will "celebrate the 100th anniversary of New York’s first motorized taxi." Starting this fall, children will paint flowers onto decals that will then be placed on......

With some not great news about cab drivers lately, we'd like to draw our attention to one of our favorite blogging cabbies, New York Hack. And she recently picked up a famous fare - Jon Stewart. This came after some rude drivers got pissed off at her after she wouldn't let them cut her off. Well, they were actually momentarily polite, making this a classic story: At the next red light, they pulled up next......

If you see a Lexus hybrid cab, hail it and see if Cliff Adler is driving. He was just named the city's safest cabby by All State Insurance. And to celebrate, All State is footing the fare for anyone who hail him for the week. Adler's driving records has been spotless for the 32 years he's been driving - amazing when you think about it. (He also received a $2,500 check from All State -......

- Famous Fat Dave is the only guy who could turn a car accident into a beef jerky occasion. - Gotham Gal puts street fairs "under the category of city pests like rats, pigeons and cockroaches." - Brownstoner commenters report from Crown Heights: "Crack everywhere between Atlantic and Eastern and east of Grand Avenue till the horizon." - Ambush! Tom Suozzi got up in Eliot Spitzer's grille over the weekend. - Still no sign......

- Our friends at Curbed give us a bit of news about the new Fairway in Red Hook -- it's slated to open on May 17th. - For the extremely lazy dieters out there: If you're on a mission to shed some pounds and can't be bothered to jot everything down in a food diary (an incredibly sobering experience, for the record), you can now phone it in. Sprint has launched MyFoodPhone, a food journaling......