Fifty years ago, chef and food writer James Beard consulted on the very first menu at the Four Seasons restaurant. Beard's input helped galvanize the kitchen in its early days, and over the last 50 years the Four Seasons has developed and maintained its position as the city's preeminent Caesar salad and power lunch spot, complete with seating charts that are more detailed than most star maps. On Saturday afternoon, the James Beard Foundation honored the Four Seasons' co-owners Alex von Bidder and Julian Niccolini at their annual Chefs & Champagne event. more ›

FOOD: Those with a taste for expensive ham and the means to pay for it will be tantalized by tonight’s one-night-only 5 course tasting menu at Suba, a Spanish restaurant on the Lower East Side. Chef Seamus Mullen has obtained the prized “Rolls Royce of Ham” – Jamón Ibérico – and will be offering it tonight with Ossabaw Island hogs and Iberian wine. There are just a few seatings still available for tonight's event, which will also feature a winter salad with raw artichokes and pine mushrooms and a gnocchi dish with littleneck clams, among other delicacies. If the $110 price tag seems steep for the tasting menu and wine pairings, just think: The first shipments of ibérico ham that arrived last month after USDA restrictions were lifted cost $90-$99 a pound at Despaña. – John Del Signore more ›

What do you get when you mix hot chefs like Seamus Mullen, Joey Campanero, and Josh DeChellis with top mixologists like David Wondrich, Dale DeGroff, Audrey Saunders, Julie Reiner, Jim Meehan and Eben Freeman (and many more, pictured above), a brand new space in the East Village and swirl in a dash of festive atmosphere? The opening party for the Astor Culinary Center. more ›

Celebrate the extension of the vendors' permit through the end of their season in October and add on extra festivities for Mexican and Central American Independence Day. Caesar Fuentes, the organizing force behind the vendors, promises that "the food vendors committee will host a livelier than usual weekend event - more soccer games, pinatas, music, and a 2 day art exhibit featuring photographs taken by the food vendors." Sounds good to us. more ›

Despite Meatopia IV's downright pagan theme, Slaughter of the Innocents, which involved spit roasted kid goat and suckling pig as well as the consumption of copious amounts of other young animal flesh, the good lord chose to spare the soul of Mr. Cutlets, aka Josh Ozersky, and the band of meat-crazed revelers that came out Tuesday night to Water Taxi Beach to celebrate Josh's 40th birthday. more ›

This week in the Times, Bruni goes to the new Landmarc in the Time Warner Center, awards the restaurant one star. “It’s three times the size of the original Landmarc in Tribeca,” he says, “whose menu and competent cooking it replicates but whose warmth it largely lacks.” He compares the food to what you’d find at a Midwestern Marriot, but says that perhaps it’s just what the overly self-conscious Time Warner Center needs. more ›

This week in the Times, Bruni goes to Insieme, awards the restaurant two stars. Says, “When Isieme is good, it’s outstanding, and any serious food lover should head here fast…” He hates the atmosphere, though, and the salmon. Insieme is the second restaurant in midtown this year where he’s been “frustrated by the way some dazzling cooking is undercut not only by unevenness across the menu or inconsistency in the kitchen but also by atmospherics that don’t pull their weight and live up to the rest of the production.” more ›