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......

Design by Grimshaw Billings Jackson with Systra/HNTB, photo courtesy MTA/Rob Wilson.. It's prototypelooza today! First ten possible prototype back racks of the future were revealed, and now the MTA has upstaged the DOT with their own street furniture prototype, installed in front of 151 West Broadway between Worth and Thomas Streets. The second of three multi-purpose prototypes, it's designed to prevent subway flooding while ventilating the subway system AND providing benches to sit on AND......

Everyone is talking about the Herzog & de Meuron's 56 Leonard reveal, the apartment complex that looks like it was designed by a Gehry-influenced Dr. Seuss. The building will be a 57-story residential complex in Tribeca, housing 145 residences, each with its own unique floor plan and private outdoor space. The architects describe the units as “houses stacked in the sky,” but they aren't for those scared of heights. Come Fall 2010, residents will......

Finish your lunch before reading further; Eater has received a nauseating email from a diner who found a little something extra in her bowl of grits at Tribeca's Kitchenette: "Halfway through my friend's grits, she noticed a worm on her spoon. When we combed through the bowl, however, we found that the entire portion was filled with worms and larvae. It was atrocious." Wait, it gets better – the server offered to bring them a......

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......

Curbed points out that "according to a Forbes report culled from data supplied by Hotpads.com," Tribeca is overpriced! The website "produced a price-to-earnings spread for each ZIP code in the nation's 40 largest cities by comparing rental costs with buying costs for similar properties" and blah blah blah 10013 is #1! The zip just edged out Boston's Chinatown to become numero uno. Don't misunderstand, however, Forbes notes that "expensive does not mean always mean overpriced.......

Well, that’s that. Four years after gentrification forced them to relocate from their longtime space on Ludlow Street to Tribeca, Collective: Unconscious, a hotbed for experimental theater and art, will close for good. The funky little theater was adept at connecting broke performers with broke audiences and letting the sparks fly with minimal risk. The lease on the Tribeca space, where they moved in 2004, is up at the end of the month, and per......

Network executives are probably already buying the rights to this NY Times story about a group of stay-at-home dads (well, ones with stay-at-home careers, like sculpture and screenwriting) who convene while their kids attend P.S. 234, the coveted public school in Tribeca. The group formed when one dad was jealous after seeing moms hanging out after dropping their kids off. One explained why it's all cool for them to hang out, "We do more parenting......

Clover Club: This new Cobble Hill lounge has no connection to this Clover Club “located in beautifull [sic] Mark, Illinois,” so leave your green face paint at home. The atmosphere here, as evinced by the photo, is old world charm and sophistication, hearkening back to an era when men dueled with pistols, not text messages, and the curse of the Cosmo had not yet darkened New York. Small plates include oysters on the half shell,......

Mark Gibian's sculpture in Brooklyn (entitled "Crescendo") became the latest part of the Williamsburg waterfront in mid-May; "the four-ton, crescent-shaped stainless steel sculpture was hoisted over the East River and installed on new 400-foot pier that's been constructed at Northside Piers." The sculpture is functional, providing shade and including a bench; the Brooklyn Eagle reports that a shade structure was required under the zoning. While an exact date hasn't been set, the Piers (a direct......

Today the Times’s Frank Bruni destroys Ago (pictured), the new Italian restaurant in Tribeca’s Greenwich Hotel owned by Robert De Niro. It’s a savage burn, and way more entertaining than any movie De Niro’s been involved with during the last decade. Things go sideways immediately when the bartender unleashes “the Poseidon Adventure of wine spills” on Bruni’s lady friend and his party of four has to wait almost an hour for their table, which is......

Save room for tongue! Bubby’s restaurant, the longtime Tribeca haunt of lettuce-fed models, will now be serving beef exclusively derived from grass-fed steers. Cattle raised on a grass, as opposed to the unnatural method of grain or corn, are much healthier and yield beef lower in saturated fat. While the trend is nothing new, what sets Bubby’s apart is that owner Ron Silver has committed to using every single part of the steer, from “tongue......

The Tribeca site where 14,000 pounds of steel fell on a construction trailer last December was hit with more violations yesterday when a "piece of steel fell 18 stories onto a baseball field where dozens of children were playing." Really--the Goldman Sachs site at 200 Murray Street is next to a baseball field and Little Leaguers were playing there yesterday. Apparently construction workers were bringing up a 30" by 30" piece of steel in......

Tribeca’s 15-year-old Franklin Station Café will close next month, and the Downtown Express has a nice, long goodbye (928 words!) to the neighborhood mainstay. The French and Malaysian bistro, located at the corner of West Broadway and Franklin across from the 1 train stop, was one of the few moderately-priced places left in the increasingly cost-prohibitive neighborhood, and had long been a favored hang-out for locals. No surprises here, folks; the closure was brought on......

This week the Times’s Frank Bruni awards two stars to Eighty One (pictured) in a decidedly mixed review. He thinks the “dizzying” Upper West Side restaurant in the Excelsior Hotel has “attention deficits” and needs Ritalin: “It provides an especially clear example of a kind of culinary preening – call it ego food – that may speak less to the satisfaction of customers than to the self-regard of proprietors.” Nor does Bruni care for the......

In 2006, Lou Reed revived his album Berlin by performing it in its entirety with a small orchestra for five sold-out shows at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. The 1973 album, which riffs on themes of drugs, love and suicide, was a commercial failure when it came out; Lester Bangs described it as “the bastard progeny of a drunken flaccid tumble between Tennessee Williams and Hubert (Last Exit From Brooklyn) Selby, Jr.” But in......

Using a Leica M2 with a 90mm lens, Cuban photographer Alberto “Korda” Díaz snapped the iconic photograph of Ernesto “Che” Guevara during a mass funeral for the victims of a mysterious series of explosions in Havana harbor that killed at least 75 people 1960. The service was held the day after the tragedy, and Korda, who was Castro’s official photographer at the time, managed two photos of Guevara as he briefly stepped onstage to......

Errol Morris in a conversation with Anthony Swofford after the screening of Standard Operating Procedure at the Tribeca Film Festival. Academy Award-winning director Errol Morris was on hand last night for a Tribeca Film Festival screening of his new documentary Standard Operating Procedure, a nuanced exploration of the detainee abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Those familiar with Morris’s innovative oeuvre won’t be surprised to hear that, far from a tendentious indictment of......

Indie animator Bill Plympton has just finished his sixth animated feature, for which he hand drew every cell. Called Idiots and Angels, it tells the haunting and humorous story of a dyspeptic working stiff who wakes up one morning and finds, to his horror, angel's wings sprouting out of his back. Try as he may to rid himself of the grotesque mutation, they inevitably take over his life and soon become the wings of desire......

Governor Paterson joined Mayor Bloomberg at Manhattan Community College this morning to kick off the 7th annual Tribeca Film Festival, which is expected to attract at least 500,000 visitors and $125 million. Paterson used the appearance to announced an expanded state film tax credit, intended to stop the loss of movie money “to our neighbors, like Canada, Connecticut and Massachusetts.” The governor’s office say these “neighbors” have cut into the state’s film revenue to the......

Forgetting Sarah Marshall opens today, remember? Of course you do, because the movie’s marketing campaign has flooded the city for months with posters like “You Suck, Sarah Marshall,” pissing off a lot of real-life Sarah Marshalls in the process. By now, you know that it stars Jason Segel (Knocked Up) as a jilted slacker who books a Hawaiian vacation to get over his ex, only to find her at the same hotel with her......

David Bouley, the acclaimed chef from Connecticut whose eponymous restaurant brought four star dining to Tribeca in the '80s, has a lot on the stove these days, as his big plans to expand his culinary empire in the neighborhood are finally coming to a boil. Sometime in the next month or so, Bouley expects to relocate his flagship restaurant to 161 Duane Street, where a Renaissance ambiance, replete with stone from Versailles, awaits his flock.......

Photo: Diego Bresani You don’t have to wait until summer to catch sweet some rays out on Fire Island; playwright Charles Mee and a troupe of 108 actors and musicians have brought the beguiling little beach community to Tribeca, where they’ve transformed a cavernous space at the 3LD Art and Technology Center into a beach party of epic proportions. The wholly immersive experience begins as soon as you step inside the theater and realize that......

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......

As David Letterman joked to Jay-Z about getting married on his show last night (previously recorded), in real-time the rapper was partying in Tribeca, possibly in celebration of his wedding. While there's no confirmation, all signs point to he and Beyoncé finally tying the knot -- something that has been speculated they would do all week. People points out that the alleged bride, Beyoncé Knowles, told Cosmo in 2006, "I never pictured myself as a......

Restaurateur David Bouley has emerged victorious (for now) after what he described as a “witch hunt” by some Tribeca Community Board members trying to stymie his liquor license application for Brush Stroke, a planned three floor Japanese restaurant on West Broadway. The dissenting board members have fiercely opposed what would be the fourth Bouley establishment on their turf because limos double-park out front and sometimes his restaurant waste leaves stains on the sidewalk. In an......

Last night the committee that represents Tribeca for Community Board 1 voted against recommending full board approval for a liquor license for Brushstrokes, David Bouley’s planned Japanese restaurant and cooking school, which would be his fourth eatery in the neighborhood. In withholding approval for the license, the committee cited prior health code violations, a carbon monoxide leak, the glut of limos crowding the street outside his restaurants, and controversy surrounding Bouley’s attempt to claim $2.2......

The last time we checked in with the latest flock of Next Top Models they were posing as homeless women, with homeless women. Seems they disrespected their $6 million Tribeca loft, too...turning it into a hot mess. The NY Post reports that the 14 wannabe models are accused of trashing the loft (located at 39 Lispenard Street) where they lived for 10 weeks. They moved out 3 weeks ago, leaving the landlord to tally up......

It's not just property values that are collapsing in New York; a construction crane collapsed in Tribeca and injured two workers who were working to repair the crane on the 300-unit residence building. The crane was 200 feet tall and buckled Friday under the strain of an overweighted payload of lumber. Initial reports said that there were no injuries and that several buildings surrounding the 450 Washington St. address had to be evacuated. A later......

What Lower Manhattan will look like after Silverstein's buildings are completed; the Woolworth Building with its ornate green roof is on the left, 99 Church is the tall building to it right (and to the left of what is an illuminated Church street); to the right is the WTC site, with Freedom Tower and the other three towers; image from dbox/Silverstein Properties Developer Larry Silverstein announced yesterday that he will build an 80-story building......