For a city that offers food from all corners of the globe at all hours of the night, there are surprisingly few places for New Yorkers to have the opportunity to dine in the dark. Camaje in the West Village is one option, but "blind dining franchise" Dans Le Noir has had a rough time getting things off the ground. Fortunately for diners desperate to grope blindly for their food, Dining in the Dark is coming to The Breslin for a limited-time engagement next month. more ›

Deep in the heart of a very definable neighborhood rarely referred to as NoMad, the Ace Hotel has out-cooled itself again. When the people at Ace sat down to dream up New York chic, they checked off the boxes for coffee with Stumptown, oysters at John Dory, perfect and drippy lamb-feta burgers at the Breslin, and an outpost for the bastion of avant-garde downtown style at Opening Ceremony. With only one checkbox left for start-up hungry entrepreneurs and bloggers, the Ace was near giving up. How would they fit into this mess? But, if you build such a compound, tired and half-motivated entrepreneurs and bloggers will come. And they did, flooding the poorly lit lobby with more MacBooks using the free WiFi than the eye could see, occasionally taking espresso breaks. And now Google is getting involved. more ›

A small hotel chain that got some ink spilled about it last year in The NY Times, The Ace Hotel, will now bring its charm to New York. They're currently setting up shop at 29th and Broadway, and bringing a Stumptown Coffee (a favorite amongst Pacific Northwesters) with it. The grand opening will be in Winter 08/09, and it will come with a new restaurant from the people behind The Spotted Pig. The Ace tell us a little bit about what to expect:

Ace is the low card and the high card. Our basic rooms are affordable but replete with cool amenities. Our big suites offer all the luxury you would expect from a high-end hotel. Ace Hotel New York is improvisational, a mix of styles, historical periods and objects that come together in layers. The hotel’s design takes its cues from the vibrancy of street life, the honesty of materials and the potential of invention. It is about soul, latent in the old architecture and re-introduced through the new design.