Nestled between a Williamsburg condo construction site and another building occupied by a battalion of fashion models, the swank new tapas restaurant Bar Celona seems poised to cash in on (and advance) the neighborhood's steady drumbeat of gentrification. At first glance, one might assume this chic place is just a tad out of step with the still slightly scruffy South Side, but let's not forget that the well-appointed Dressler is just a few blocks away, and Aurora isn't exactly a dump, either. Bar Celona's interior design may be seductively or surreally luxurious, but that doesn't take anything away from the stellar cocktails or chef Jordy Lavanderos's first-rate menu. Also: fireplace. more ›

Today Frank Bruni at the Times bestows two out of four stars on the Upper West Side Fatty Crab (photos/menu), an impressive rating for a casual restaurant. But Bruni just can't get enough of "the Fatty spirit, the culinary equivalent of a stoner’s foggy contentment...Are its flavors in fact too big, too unrelenting? What qualifies as a bold deployment of chilies and aiolis, and what’s just indiscriminate overkill? Many a meal at Fatty Crab raises those questions and walks a fine line, but pretty much every time I began to doubt the kitchen’s care and skill, something came along to restore my belief." more ›

Mayor Bloomberg rolled out his first television commercials of his campaign today, almost six weeks prior to when he hit the airwaves in his 2005 run. With the $3 million he's pouring into the ads, that run in both English and Spanish on major networks over the next two weeks, Bloomberg will be spending half of his competitors' total individual budgets for the primary season since they are accepting public financing. The Times says that Bloomberg's could be "the biggest and most expensive political advertising campaign in the city’s history." more ›

This week Frank Bruni at the Times takes his turn with L'Artusi (photos), the plus-size Greenwich Village twin to the dainty, crowded dell'Anima. Bruni doesn't hate it like NY Mag's Adam Platt, but it's definitely a mixed review: "They have gone not only bigger—with nearly 115 seats, L’Artusi is more than twice the size of dell’Anima—but also bolder, and the uneven results are a lesson in overextension. If they turned a more skeptical eye to some of Mr. Thompson’s inventions, edited the menu to about two-thirds its current length and focused harder on the execution of what remained, they’d have an excellent restaurant. As it is, they have a fitfully enjoyable one." The New Yorker's review is also mixed, and notes that "the décor has an identity crisis." more ›

Police have arrested and received a confession out of one of two suspects in the hate crime killing of an Ecuadorian man in Bushwick this past December. Police picked up 25-year-old Hakim Scott at his home in the Bronx and quickly got a full confession out of him. Police Commissioner Kelly said, "He said he had seen the news reports and that they had troubled him. He said he wanted to get it off his chest." Cops had used eyewitness accounts along with RFK Bridge surveillance footage to track down a vehicle driven by the other suspect, Scott's friend Keith Phoenix, a 28-year-old Bronx man (pictured) still being searched for. The assailants attacked the late Jose Sucuzhañay and his brother Romel when they saw them walking arm-in-arm along Bushwick Avenue and believed that they were homosexuals. A spokesman for the family said, “With anything, you are going to be appalled by any type of hate crime, whether mistaken as gay individuals or as immigrants, I think.” Mayor Bloomberg emphasized that "there is no such thing as a second-class citizen," giving remarks on the arrest in both English and Spanish. more ›

In 1960, big shot restaurateur Joe Baum opened La Fonda del Sol, making a huge splash with what was then a novel concept: the "theme" restaurant. Though the chef was Swiss, the cuisine was South American, served in a kitschy setting replete with an adobe hut for a bar. Fast forward to '09, and a new restaurant with the same name is opening in the MetLife Building, with Colombian-born chef Josh DeChellis at the helm. more ›

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. more ›

Get yourself some popcorn, because this week Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni is taking the hammer to big shot media power-lunch nest Michael's. Turns out dinner there is an overpriced joke: "I thought Michael’s prided itself on produce. Then I had its appetizer of peekytoe crab with spears of white asparagus, which might as well have been spears of white wax for all the flavor they had....[Michael’s] certainly charges like a serious restaurant, levying a tariff of $35 for a lunchtime burger that’s not Kobe and doesn’t ooze foie gras. So it should perform at the level of a serious restaurant. These days, it usually doesn’t." He pauses to lavish some kind words on an omelet, but then it's back to bashing: "Shouldn’t a diner paying $38 for sea scallops get more than two, situated at opposite ends of a long hillock of sautéed snow pea leaves? Maybe that’s enough for a businessperson having a light lunch on a big expense account. For anyone else, it isn’t." Kill the rich! Zero stars! more ›

Mayor Bloomberg has been learning Spanish since becoming Mayor, and the NY Times observed one of his lessons with tutor Luis Cardozo. Cardozo had been a lawyer in Colombia, but in NYC (he immigrated in 1999 to flee the violence), he runs a language school. The lessons are casual conversations, with Mayor Bloomberg driving the discussion and Cardozo gently correcting the mayor. The Mayor hopes to be fluent by next year. And back in 2005, Post reporter Sandra Guzman appraised Bloomberg's Spanish in a campaign ad: "Bloomberg's accent is gringo, not in a cowboy way, more like a student who's really trying hard." more ›

Macondo: Named after the fictional Colombian village in Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, this new Lower East Side restaurant gives Latin street food a gourmet twist. We stopped in for dinner Thursday night, and though they're still working out the kinks (the frozen drinks took forever, and some of the staff had no idea what they were setting down on the table) it's worth a trip for the cod fish Arepa alone. The fresh tropical fruit cocktails are quite refreshing; the frozen Avocado and Mezcal cocktail was a winner, and the Açaí and Pomegranate Rum, a sort of Brazilian tropical mojito, was almost irresistible. We'll be back for you, little mojito! 157 East Houston Street, (212) 473-9900. more ›

In “soft-opening” mode since Wednesday, Macondo is a new Lower East Side restaurant (157 East Houston) that aims to “elevate ‘comida de la calle’ (Latin street food) to the gourmet level.” Small plates span the Spanish-speaking world, with cocas from Barcelona, empanadas from Colombia, piragüas from the Caribbean, churros con chocolate from Spain, tacos from Mexico, and arepas from Venezuela. more ›