Hallo Berlin Express: A weird name and a weirder awning, but sometimes good food comes in weird packages (consider Masala Munch.) This new 30-seat joint on 9th Avenue near 50th Street is the sister of the bigger German eatery Hallo Berlin. Eating in Translation stuck his beak in when they opened this week, and walked away full of schnitzel, spaetzle, soup, and cucumber salad. There are also German fish sandwiches, and a German "single soul......

Robert Downey Jr. finally gets his big paycheck job with Iron Man, adapted from Marvel’s comic book series. Hollywood-Elsewhere’s Jeffery Wells calls it underwhelming: “I was never twitching in agony, but the advance word had suggested it might lift me out of my chair. Forget it.” He’s also troubled by “the jingoistic get-the-dumb-terrorists plot that John McCain or Dick Cheney will be totally delighted by if and when they see it. That's supposed to......

Wildwood: Pit master “Big Lou” Elrose has come a long way from his Ozone Park lunch wagon; the 6’4 Brooklyn-born behemoth has now transferred from Hill Country to this new Park Avenue South barbecue restaurant, part of the B.R. Guest empire. The atmosphere is urban industrial and reclaimed rustic, with high ceilings and a 50-foot-long bar. Big Lou’s famous ribs, pork brisket, pulled pork and smoked chicken can be paired with such sides as Cast......

Gowanus Yacht Club: Outdoor seating at Carroll Gardens’ kitschy beach bum beer garden was born again on Thursday night; Eater is rightfully ecstatic, and has some photos, which show the place looking pretty much the same as ever. Wouldn’t have it any other way; Gowanus Yacht Club is an ideal summer's eve refuge for enlightened discourse on the finer points of yachting, whilst sipping fine lager and feasting on hamburgers and hot dogs. (A vegan......

The Habitat: This charmingly designed bar and restaurant we reported on a few weeks ago opens tonight. Built almost entirely out of salvaged lumber, The Habitat has achieved a rustic back porch ambiance by building an actual porch next to a wall dressed up with exterior siding and fake windows. Chef Ashley Engmann's small plate menu has empanadas, a pecan mandarin salad, cheeseburgers, and other sandwiches. 12 New York microbrews are on tap. 988 Manhattan......

Chef Anita Lo, whose intimate and sophisticated Barrow Street restaurant Annisa has been a hit for years, has now opened a bigger venture in the West Village. It’s a 120-seat Asian barbecue restaurant called Bar Q, which specializes in dishes like baby back ribs made with Lo’s mother’s “special sauce.” In an interview last February, Lo said she’s been thinking about opening an Asian barbecue restaurant for at least six years, in part because her......

Atlantic Yards developer Bruce Ratner wasn’t the only one causing controversy at the Brooklyn Museum’s gala celebration for the Takashi Murakami retrospective last Thursday night. Some attendees say Jamie Snow, wife of Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, was rather boorish in her accumulation of freebies at the event. Each diner at the gala was entitled to one special edition technicolor fiberglass placemat designed by the trendy artist, but it seems Snow’s sense of entitlement was......

Totally Baked: Not for Atkins adherents, this sleek new Chelsea eatery is determined to put the baked potato back on top. Here the Yukon Golds are partially scooped out and piled sky high with a smorgasbord of inspired toppings, 18 in all, including wild mushrooms with shallots, creamed spinach with leeks, and pulled pork. Each potato comes with a side salad; what you see here is the “Sweet Spa Potato.” Those feeling flush will want......

© MURAKAMI, a retrospective of the work of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, opens Saturday at the Brooklyn Museum. Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles, where it was on view until February, the exhibit primarily focuses Murakami's work between 1991 and 2000, when the artist began exploring "his own reality through an investigation of branding and identity." (One additional work, Murakami's 6,613 pound, 18 foot-tall Oval Buddha sculpture, will be on......

Photos © John Coffer Noah Kalina, the photographer who made a splash by taking a snapshot of himself every day for years, now has some unusual competition: John Coffer, a master of nineteenth-century tintype photography, is unveiling his series “The Daily Tintype” tonight at Gerald Peters Gallery on East 78th Street. The willfully anachronistic exhibit features 365 tintypes from his daily life, one per day from 2007. Coffer (pictured above) himself is quite a character,......

Has Bruce Willis left behind beer and barstools for wine and a more posh drinking atmosphere? The NY Post is saying yes. Willis has reportedly become a partner with the Bowery Wine Co., where he was spotted bartending at his private party last week. The watering hole (which is "upscale and loungy") is set to open its doors to the public this weekend, and is located at 13 East 1st Street (housed within Avalon Bowery......

BATCH: The wrapping around pastry chef Pichet Ong’s 12 seat dessert shop, Batch, is being torn off today and visitors are invited to “preview” his new array of sweets. Ong is trying to capitalize on the success of P*ong, the cozy savory/sweet pastry restaurant next door that’s so good Bruni called 2007 “the year of P*ong.” (Okay, so Bruni’s 2007 wrap-up had a lot of ‘year of’ declarations, but he still likes the place enough.)......

New York City's urban rustic trend keeps on trucking with the newest addition to Greenpoint’s ever-expanding nightlife scene, The Habitat. Housed in an old convenience store and built with lumber salvaged from as far away as Maine, the bar and restaurant will let Brooklynites savor back porch ambiance without having to breathe the air from the nearby sewage treatment plant. The kitchen is located behind what looks to be the exterior wall of a......

T.B.D.: After finally getting their paperwork in order, the new 2,500 square foot t.b.d. opened on Franklin Avenue in Greenpoint Tuesday night. As previously noted, the cavernous new lounge, located in a former warehouse, has twelve beers on tap, as well as wine and spirits. There’s also some comfort food, like mac ‘n’ cheese, shepherds pie, and chili dogs. And $15 gets you their “bucket of crap” – the old six pack of cheap beer......

Will 2008 be the year frustrated artists stop whining about the Whitney Biennial for being too cliquey, too scattershot, too short on women, minorities, and criminally overlooked artists like the ones doing all the griping? Hardly, but this year’s themeless Biennial, which opened last night, goes a long way toward appeasing the disgruntled hipster artist crowd with a big, rowdy slate of installations and events at the Park Avenue Armory through March 26th. Curators Shamim......

Any Greenpoint residents still speculating about renovations to the cavernous space on the corner of Franklin and Green – the one with the big silver garage door and the new lights along the northern wall – now have their answer: A bar called t.b.d. Co-owner Diane Foley explains that she finally gave up trying to come up with a name and just went with what she was using for all the paperwork. The future......

Olana: The internets are doomed to failure unless someone invents a way to click on a photo at the end of a wet, snowy day and be immediately teleported to the desired location – like those plush chairs clustered around the bar, where one of Olana’s specialty cocktails would be presented at once. A recent visitor to the new upscale restaurant and bar had kind words for a drink called the Corpse Reviver: a “smooth”......

tre dici STEAK: The second floor of Chelsea’s Italian restaurant tre dici has been transformed into an intimate, 50 seat dining room (pictured) designed in the style of a sexy New Orleans speakeasy, circa 1920. Heavy fabrics covering the windows evoke a feeling of timelessness in the candlelit room, which is lined with luxuriant claret leathers and sensual artwork under an antique silver tin ceiling. The food arrives via dumbwaiter from chef Giuseppe Fanelli’s kitchen......

Islero: This new Spanish restaurant (pictured) takes its name from the bull that killed famous toreador “Manolete” in 1947, shocking the nation and resulting in three days of Franco-decreed mourning, during which only funeral dirges were permitted on the radio. Anyway, there’s no bull on the menu, but chef Jessica Floyd, previously of DB Bistro, does have an appetizer of crispy pork belly, olive oil poached apple, fino vinegar jus and candied pinollas. An entrée......

Padre Figlio: In Italian, the name means father and son, so it’s no surprise that this new Italian steakhouse is run by Mario and Antonio Cerra, the father and son team behind Da Antonio. After ten years, they’ve sold that establishment and are joining forces again to focus on high-end Italian meats, such as rib eye and a porterhouse of Piemontese beef for two. Exotic meats include New Zealand venison, buffalo, ostrich and boar. There’s......

Beginning at noon this Saturday the New Museum will open its new doors, but this morning we snuck a peak inside. The gray aluminum mesh exterior of the building is a whimsical stack of rectilinear boxes shifted off-axis, not unlike a pile of blocks arranged haphazardly by a toddler. It's a bold, dynamic presence on the Bowery and, along with the Bowery Hotel, signifies yet another firm step away from the area's gritty past.......