“You could be a transgendered elephant walking in here and as long as you pay your check, you’re fine,” diner Lars Hoel told the Times yesterday during his last breakfast at Florent, the 24-hour French bistro that’s been a Meatpacking District institution for 23 years. The transgendered elephant refuge closed last night after the gay pride parade and a private party for staff and friends of owner Florent Morellet....

Alloro: Green Lantern, party of seven? The photo above depicts Alloro, a new 50-seat Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side. The chef is Salvatore Corea, a native Calabrian, who’s leaving front-of-the-house duties to his wife Gina, just like a real-life Artie and Charmaine Bucco. Let’s just hope the mob doesn’t torch their place. Per the press release, the menu features “classic Italian specialties transformed into gastronomical creations,” such as loin of lamb in a fresh mint reduction with eggplant purée and pecorino cheese foam. And Alloro has the additional virtue of granting diners invisibility on St. Patrick’s Day. 307 East 77th Street, (212) 535-2866....

Northeast Kingdom sits on the southwest corner of Wyckoff and Troutman streets in Bushwick, a block from the L train's Jefferson stop and myriad one-story warehouses and industrial spaces. Native Vermonters Paris Smeraldo and his wife, Meg Lipke, have invoked a funky ambiance with taxidermy and vintage wallpaper alongside a bar backed with orange and yellow stained glass. Throw in the flickering candlelight and you've got a place to linger for hours after dark.......

Chef Marco Canora is having a good morning; Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni says “there may not be any dish I’ve enjoyed more in recent months than the pork blade steak” at Terroir (pictured). His column this week looks at how chefs at wine bars like Terroir and Gottino have transcended the “glorified snacks” that used to be de rigueur, to “exemplify a wine-bar evolution so thorough that nomenclature can’t keep up.” Less criticism than......

Streetsblog points out a handy new website called Ride the City that’s beta testing a version of Google Maps integrated with ideal cycling routes. The New York City site lets users plan a bicycle commute from point A to point B in any borough, choosing between the “safest” route along as many bike lanes and greenways as possible, and the “fastest” route which lets you plot the most direct course by bike. All known bike shops along the route also come up on the map....

The Times’s Frank Bruni reports “a mix of exciting, intriguing and frustrating moments” in his review of Elettaria (pictured), the haute-Indian restaurant in the Village. BYO rimshot because one liners abound: “Elettaria describes itself as ‘spice-driven.’ (I’m waiting for the restaurant that’s driven by Morgan Freeman.)” But seriously folks, he loves the fluke in a sauce of coconut and tapioca pearls, while other entrees prove disappointing. Still, it gets a star for the “definite peaks......

This cake is light and luscious, like a barely cooked chocolate mousse. It's best served with strawberries, which are coming in gorgeous from New Jersey to the Greenmarkets right about now. Full recipe after the jump.......

Those retro TV dinners with the pre-formulated portions aren’t just for Eisenhower-era loners anymore; the factory-made frozen meals have been cleverly revived for big city sophisticates dining at the Regency Hotel's 540 Park restaurant. The first Swanson TV Brand Frozen Dinner sold for 98 cents in 1953; at the Regency it’s been brought up to date for $30. Chef Andrew Rubin is offering three iterations on the classic, each one served on that famous, sectioned......

If you thought dropping $81 on a hamburger at The Old Homestead was enough to prove you’ve arrived, think again, hayseed – New York’s newest culinary status symbol, the “Richard Nouveau” burger at Wall Street Burger Shoppe, is going to cost you over twice that. They’re charging $175 for the experience, but money’s no object when it comes to showing the other hedge-funders you’ve completely lost touch with reality, right? Momentarily the city’s most......

As the weather warms up, restaurants who keep their windows open wide maintain a serious advantage over their stuffier competitors. On a recent heated evening, this is how we stumbled upon the LES's Kampuchea, a crowded spot that riffs on Cambodian street food. While hardly authentic, Chef Ratha Chau's menu is heavy in chili, lime, coconut, and lemongrass: sweet meets sour meets spicy all over your palate. Soups and noodles comprise most of the......

After undergraduate studies in French Literature at Columbia, Michigan-born chef Anita Lo found herself unable to resist the call of the kitchen, and relocated to France to study at the esteemed Ritz-Escoffier school. Graduating first in her class, Lo soon got her start in New York in the kitchen of David Bouley. Eight years ago she struck out on her own with the Greenwich Village favorite Annisa, which serves contemporary American cuisine with accents......

Today’s wake for a beloved New York institution is being held in honor of Mei Lai Wah Coffee House in Chinatown. It seems the Times’s Eric Asimov, who usually writes about wine, doesn’t subsist on vino alone; he needs his coffee and steamed pork buns as well. And ever since Mei Lai Wah closed last week after a long, losing struggle with the Health Department, Asimov has been in mourning: Mei Lai Wah was indeed......

Whether you spell it Issan or E-san (as the folks at Poodam’s Thai Cuisine do), the cuisine from this Northeast region of Thailand by Cambodia and Laos is some of New York City’s most delicious and spiciest. The restaurant’s name translates to black crab. While that particular delicacy doesn’t appear on the separate Issan menu, there is yam poo dong, or pickled crab. When you order it the waitress will likely ask if you’ve......

Jersey based pizza fanatic Scott Wiener (pictured) may have found a way to turn his appetite into a career with his just-launched Pizza Tours of New York City. Every Sunday, Wiener will escort up to 32 ravenous adults on a pizza tasting odyssey to half a dozen pizzerias stretching from Lombardi’s on Spring Street to Louie & Ernie’s in the Bronx. The licensed New York City tour guide is charging $55 a person for the......

Sure, websites like Menupages are handy when you need to line your stomach for a night of debauchery, but how do Manhattan transplants find the best place to meet up for high fives and car bombs? And how do you find the best bar to avoid them and enjoy your favorite microbrew? A new website, Beer Menus, is more than just a bar search engine; it’s a great resource for tracking down microbrews and......

A Wired reporter bemoaning the pizza backwater that is San Francisco rang up Mario Batali to find out why New York Pizza is so magnificent and got an intriguing theory out of the celebrity chef: New York’s old pizza ovens “capture the gestalt of beautifully cooked pizza.” A food development consultant believes Batali’s abstract ‘gestalt’ is, to scientists, vaporized ingredients that become “volatilized particles and attach themselves to the walls of the baking cavity. The......

With all the alarming facts about catastrophic climate change at our fingertips, most of us know by now that every day needs to be Earth Day. And one of the easiest ways to start minimizing environmental impact is by considering what goes into our own mouths. Here in New York, Broadway East, a new “plant-based” (but not strictly vegetarian) restaurant, has made sustainability a top priority. Tables in the elegantly designed eatery are made from......

Today Frank Bruni reviews Adour (pictured), the four-month-old St. Regis Hotel restaurant conceived by extravagant French chef Alain Ducasse. While it’s not “rapturous” enough to merit the Times’s highest four star rating, it’s still “first-rate: polished service, a knockout wine list, beautiful oil-poached cod, gorgeous roasted lamb and exquisite desserts.” And Bruni does confirm our earlier speculation about some kind of haute bagel on the menu. On the other side of the spectrum and the......

Any Greenpoint residents still speculating about renovations to the cavernous space on the corner of Franklin and Green – the one with the big silver garage door and the new lights along the northern wall – now have their answer: A bar called t.b.d. Co-owner Diane Foley explains that she finally gave up trying to come up with a name and just went with what she was using for all the paperwork. The future......