- Jim Leff has built a Google mash-up of his favorite “obscure street food in Easter Jackson Heights.” In related news, The Arepa Lady is on MySpace? Fake or real, you decide. - We have always loved Alex Garcia's food, from back in the day by Douglas Rodriguez's side opening Patria to his excellent nook of a spot at Erizo Latino in SoHo where he pioneered the Turkey T-Bone. That being said, we were happy......

- The good folks at Gawker run a witty IM conversation between Choire, Emily and Balk mercilessly dissecting Bruni’s Room Service roundup last week in Dining In/Out. - Augie revisits L’Impero. - Chowhound sets up an interview between Jim Leff and one of his long-time board moderators. - Timed for this past Saturday’s green tinged festivities, here is a glimpse inside corned beef. (via Serious Eats) - Kiri Tannenbaum, for the NY Post, looks in......

- Mr. Bruni opens the door and takes a peek inside on soft openings. - For the hard-core international diner, Pim has a “whose dish is this?” quiz. Bonus points if you can make some matches without using the English translations. - We will take any opportunity to throw the spotlight on the fine man that Charles Gabriel is. Looks like he is all set to open up another spot in his family of restaurants.......

Bruni doubles up on steakhouses this week, reviewing both Porter House and STK. Porter House gets one star: to Bruni, it amounts to "a generically sophisticated upgrade of the kind of chain establishment found in lesser malls." His direct comparison is, in fact, to Outback. As for STK, he can't tell if it wants to be a restaurant or a nightclub, and with the dark lighting and throbbing music, says "it's two kinds of meat......

So the new Chow.com food portal from CNET has been out of beta for a few days and here is a quick peek at it. The Chowhound site, whose purchase certainly became the centerpiece of this buildout, has been folded in and has been buttressed with a bunch more content – a metablog on food media, video pieces, feature stories and an ever expanding recipe repository. Stop on by, some of the things we......

- When our work colleague showed us this in his copy of the Post yesterday he said the below described sandwich was for sale at McDonald's: A new steak sandwich going on sale today in London will make your mouth water and your wallet cry - because it costs a whopping $148. The McDonald sandwich consists of pricey Wagyu beef, Brie de Meaux cheese, 24-hour fermented sourdough bread, and foie gras-flavored mayonnaise. Turns out it......

We are generally big fans of Chowhound, the grassroots food-lovers' message board. We turn to it when we go on trips to get ideas on hole-in the wall places not to be missed, we search it for opinions about restaurants or where to find the best eats in the city. But one of Chowhound's biggest problems is its lack of a decent search feature -- the current search, to put it plainly, absolutely sucks. Enter......

July 8: Red, White & Views! Sparkling Tasting The 14 Wall Street Restaurant is highlighting eight types of bubbly for you to sip while you enjoy their panoramic views. Nosh on artisanal cheeses and learn, once and for all, how to open those bottles without taking out someone's eye. $40.00, reservations required. Email NIKI_LEBOUQUIN@ yahoo.com or call (212)233-0320. 6-8pm, 14 Wall Street, 31st Floor Penthouse. July 9: Chips, Soda, and a Chowhound Drop by Tekserve......

This week's NYT Dining section dove into one of Gothamist's favorite subjects: street food. The Times highlights the "Arepa Lady," who is very well known to visitors to the Chowhound message boards; Alpha hound Jim Leff has attempted to explain her magic: Nearby, others grill arepas on street carts, but they are not The Arepa Lady (look for the tiny, ageless woman with the beatific smile). They all use the same ingredients and similar grills,......