Every NYC movie/tv show can create a new pop culture landmark and tourist destination. Serious Eats points out that When Harry Met Sally had Katz's and Sex and the City had Magnolia, and now Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist has staked a claim on Veselka. Owner Tom Birchard told SE that they were "slammed all weekend" with folks allegedly wanting to recreate the scene where Michael Cera and Kat Dennings enjoy some pierogies at the......

Corton: One of the most anticipated openings of the season, this modern French restaurant, formerly Montrachet, is the love child of big shot restaurateur Drew Nieporent (Nobu) and chef Paul Liebrandt, who dreams of owning a cryogenic freezer "for freezing the cooks when they misbehave." Located in Tribeca, the 65-seat space serves a three-course prix fixe for $76 and a tasting menu for $110. What financial crisis? Appealing options for the not-broke-yet include Ocean Trout......

Roadside tacos have become a common Williamsburg fixture, with Endless Summer parked on Bedford, El Diablo behind Union Pool, and the Authentic Mexican taco truck on the southern edge of McCarren Park. Now La Superior gives Mexican road food a stationary kitchen, dishing out teeny tacos high on flavor, homemade salsas, gorditas and flautas—both staples of the street—and much more. Portions are tapas-sized, so order extra, and start with the ezquietes: roasted corn kernels cooked......

This week the Times's Frank Bruni has a mouth-watering rave for Southern Italian restaurant Convivo (pictured), chef Michael White's revision of the stuffy L'Impero in Tudor City. He declares that Convivio has emerged from the transition "as a pasta lover’s dreamland...soulful and unpretentious...Mr. White can do it all...and is doing even better work with pasta at Convivio than he has done at Alto." Skip the seafood, though: "Roll-ups of fried swordfish with a yogurt sauce......

Philippe Express: Don’t let the name throw you; the cuisine here is Chinese, not French, and Seth Rogen has no connection with the place. Chef Philippe Chow is all about Chicken Satays, Crispy Beef, and Salt and Pepper Prawns, which has worked well for him uptown on 60th Street. This downtown satellite, opening tonight, features red banquets and automated touch-screen ordering. And in a “Big Brother’s Watching You Eat” twist, the touch screens will remember......

Sycamore: A Flickr user named Finstr took this atmospheric photo at the opening night of Ditmas Park's newest bar. The opening of yet another bar in Brooklyn hardly merits mention, but Sycamore's a bit unique in that it's located within a flower shop. Or rather, one walks through a flower shop on the way in. Or you could also just buy your flowers and leave. Flatbush Vegan went all the way with the thing, though,......

James (pictured), in Prospect Heights, specializes in farm-fresh French-American cuisine. It's said that chef James Calvert once catered a nightmarish photo shoot for the demanding Britney Spears, who dismissed his buffet and demanded BLTs. She then sent those back, insisting upon BLTs sans mayo. Irrevocably scarred, Calvert went on to open what Frank Bruni at the Times describes as "the kind of modest, warm refuge produced by a chef who wants to simplify things, to......

Yesterday State Senator Jeff Klein, a Democrat from the Bronx, released his third annual "dirty dozen" list of New York City's most unsanitary restaurants, based on inspection scores and citations for pest problems. Unfortunately for celebrity chef Mario Batali, the press conference was held outside his Del Posto Ristorante in the Meatpacking District. The three star restaurant was hit with dozens of violations in June, including a citation for food that was "spoiled, adulterated, contaminated......

Tierra: Tapas now and forever! Franklin Becker, the chef who recently stepped in to try and breathe life into Sheridan Square, now has another responsibility: Tierra. Per the press release, it’s where "Old School Tapas" meets "New School Tapas." The menu emphasizes adventurous wine pairings with items like Cabrales Filled Dates, Warm Goat Cheese Torta, and Chicken Livers on Toast. It opens tonight in the space formerly occupied by Tasca, and the publicist's breathless description......

J.E. Englebert, owner of Prime and Suzie Wong, has publicly threatened chef Ilan Hall (pictured), who won Top Chef during the show's second season. Englebert is outraged because he says Hall reneged on an agreement to run the kitchen at ¡pasé!, a Spanish eatery/lounge planned for Chelsea. According to the Post, Englebert has vowed to "rip his head off for screwing me! I thought we had a done deal... He may be a reality-TV star,......

Hea: Pronounced HEE, this South Asian and Japanese restaurant is named for "an extremely popular Cantonese slang word invented by Hong Kong teenagers, which refers to a relaxed or 'chill' state of being." To keep things chill, the bi-level place emphasizes "communal relaxation" with a bar lounge on the first floor (pictured) and formal dining with a sushi bar upstairs, where diners will be greeted by a 300-year-old calligraphy table, "behind which glitter ancient Chinese......

The servers at THOR, where chef Jesi Solomon (formerly the sous chef at Stanton Social) has now taken the reins, aren't afraid to gush about the menu items they love. To hear them tell it, the Maple Brined Pork Tenderloin is “a party in your mouth,” and the veal burger lathered in foie mustard is “silky and irresistible.” Certainly they're biased, but for the most part Solomon's “modern American” menu—with seasonal highlights and gastronomic weapons......

The Times published their fat fall restaurant preview today, and it features a long report from Frank Bruni on how the weak economy is changing the city's dining experience. The good news? It's easier to book a reservation during the popular 7 p.m. time slot; the bad news is that restaurateurs like Donatella Arpaia are overbooking to make sure they don't have empty tables due to no-shows. “I’d rather have people wait at the bar......

Today the Times's Frank Bruni has kind words for Nolita newcomer Elizabeth, which "has its problems, annoyances and confusions...and it still doesn’t seem entirely sure of what it wants to be...But it also has an adventurous, sometimes silly spirit that’s winning in its way." (Note the skull pictured here.) "My waitress’s outfit one night (scary knee-high boots with a skimpy black satin dress) made me wonder if she was poised to mete out cocktails or......

La Bouillabaisse: That new French bistro in Red Hook, across the street from IKEA and connected to Annabelle's bar (formerly Lillie’s), has just opened. As reported back in June, the restaurant is the baby of Neil Ganic, who won a following through previous iterations of Bouillabaisse on Atlantic Avenue in the ‘90s. Besides serving the bar crowd next door and in the backyard, Ganic’s menu features his old signature dishes like a poached-pear–and–blue-cheese salad, according......

This week Frank Bruni files two shorter reviews for the Times instead of handing down his usual hefty decision on a single restaurant. He heads east to follow up on Sushi Yashuda on 43rd Street, declaring that from the time it opened "more than eight years ago, when William Grimes awarded it three stars in The New York Times, it has been among the best. And a recent visit suggested that there’s been no slippage,......

Clo: Like uWink before it, Clo, an new automated wine bar in the Time Warner Center, has liberated customers from burdensome interaction with human servers and their constant demand for gratuities. The video above, courtesy WCBS, shows the computer-run bar in action. (Do what you need to do to tune out the shrill newscaster voice.) The Times explains that customers can simply touch on a wine name to get details on tasting notes, food......

This week the Times’s Frank Bruni rhapsodizes about Perbacco (pictured), which has been open for about five years on East 4th Street, but has a much-buzzed about new chef: 26-year-old Italian hot shot Simone Bonelli, who comes from “the northern city of Modena and the kitchen of Osteria La Francescana, where Italy’s old guard meets Spain’s New Wave.” A two star rating from the Times is a slam dunk for a casual restaurant in this......

A new restaurant in Little Italy, Dolce Vita, has been trying to serve food that would make the tourist-flooded neighborhood "authentic" again, but according to an open letter posted on Eater, the other restaurateurs are jealous and trying to destroy them: "If you are the new guy on the block and not in everybody else’s back-pocket or part of Old Little Italy, you apparently do not have a prayer of making it. Police are sent......

Vintage Irving: Hey everybody, there’s a new wine bar and small plates place opening! Now you have a zillion and one to choose from – except this one’s different, at least a little; it features a cozy private tasting room where the owners plan to host sommeliers and celebrity chefs, starting with Top Chef survivor Sam Talbot, Eater reports. In the meantime, the public is free to enjoy what Strongbuzz describes as the “countryside café”......

The last iPhone dining application to make news was Urbanspoon, which frustrated Times critic Frank Bruni a little bit with its random slot machine approach to locating a good nearby restaurant. So we're curious to see if the latest iPhone toy, LocalEats, is more Bruni's speed. This feature seems pretty simple; drawing from a list of the 100 best restaurants in Manhattan and Brooklyn (as decreed by the folks at Where the Locals Eat), LocalEats......

This week finds the Times's Frank Bruni rhapsodizing about Matsugen, the new haute soba restaurant in Tribeca from chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who's kind of a big deal. Actually, as Bruni makes clear, only half the place is Jean-Georges; the other half, which includes the kitchen, is run by Taka, Yoshi and Masa Matsushita, brothers who also operate Matsugen restaurants in Tokyo and Honolulu. "Their soba, condiments, dips, broths and interlopers... are so clearly and cleanly......

Last month chef Michael White and his business partner Chris Cannon opened Convivio in the space formerly occupied by L'Impero, which White took over after the abrupt departure of chef Scott Conant (who has since opened Scarpetta). Where L'Impero was perceived by some as stuffy and overly formal (Times critic Frank Bruni said it evoked "the upholstered interior of a very large coffin"), Convivio aims for a more casual, though still elegant, atmosphere, with "burnt......

Dan Kaufman, the man accused of stealing customers’ credit card info at several Brooklyn Heights eateries, now knows what it feels like to be on the wrong end of crime. According to the Brooklyn Paper, Kaufman returned home to find the locks changed at his apartment on Pierrepont Street. When a locksmith finally came and opened the door, he discovered that the place had been “ransacked.” The article doesn’t definitively say who’s responsible, but one......

In a city with an abundance of Italian and Latin flavors, it's surprising that these cuisines don't intermingle more often. At Miranda, on North 9th & Berry in Williamsburg (across from Hotel Delmano and Silent H), the husband-wife team of Sasha Rodriguez and Mauricio Miranda fuse mixed heritages and culinary experiences into grains, appetizers, and entrees with sauces both ragu and mole. The dining room is cozy, with a moderate sound level and low light......

This week the Times’s Frank Bruni hands down a generally favorable verdict on Persimmon Kimchi House, the 20-seat, communal table restaurant from chef Youngsun Lee, who cut his teeth with David Chang (Momofuku). Bruni admits that “…at least a third of the dishes I tried prompted yawns or head-scratching. But at least another third riveted me, and all in all I enjoyed what struck me as the polar opposite of a cookie-cutter, fashion-driven meal, the......

Popular Lower East Side gastropub Spitzer’s Corner is in trouble for serving alcohol to minors. Eater has it that the establishment, which boasts 40 "world-class" craft beers and microbrews on tap, was “infiltrated” by an undercover police informant who was served alcohol without being carded. The owners are paying a fine, the bartender is fired, and the neighborhood nightlife – which on weekends makes Mardi Gras look like a model U.N. meeting – just might......

PetalBelle: Aw, this cute new SoHo waffle place from the owners of Lombardi’s will, Thrillist reports, be serving Belgian “liege” waffles made with “a wide-grain Scandinavian sweetener some call ‘pearl sugar,’ and others ‘Nütra Sweet.’” Eater further notes that there are “four flavors of gelato" and – deep breath – "basic coffee drinks." 158 Sullivan St, (212) 677-1580 Botinica: Red Hook has a fancy new bar to go with its fancy new Swedish retailer. It’s......

Restaurants that we'd recommend off the L train's Montrose stop are few and rarely worth visiting twice. Mojito Loco is an exception, with recipes coming from the Peruvian chef-owner's fearsomely delicious arsenal. The dining room itself is a vortex of well-kept neighborhood restaurant and '80s music-video showcase house (think: Rod Stewart on repeat). And at Mojito Loco every hour is happy hour, which means extra-strong $5 margaritas in six flavors, mixed drinks for $7, and......

This week the Times’s Frank Bruni opines on Scarpetta (pictured), the new Meatpacking District Italian restaurant from Scott Conant (L’Impero, Alto) that the Village Voice loved and the Sun disdained. Bruni bestows a big three stars, raving about the unassuming dish of spaghetti, tomato and basil: “However Mr. Conant is choosing and cooking the Roma tomatoes with which he sauces his house-made spaghetti, he’s getting a roundness of flavor and nuance of sweetness that amount......