This week the Times's Frank Bruni has a mouth-watering rave for Southern Italian restaurant Convivo (pictured), chef Michael White's revision of the stuffy L'Impero in Tudor City. He declares that Convivio has emerged from the transition "as a pasta lover’s dreamland...soulful and unpretentious...Mr. White can do it all...and is doing even better work with pasta at Convivio than he has done at Alto." Skip the seafood, though: "Roll-ups of fried swordfish with a yogurt sauce......

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......

Today the Times's Frank Bruni has kind words for Nolita newcomer Elizabeth, which "has its problems, annoyances and confusions...and it still doesn’t seem entirely sure of what it wants to be...But it also has an adventurous, sometimes silly spirit that’s winning in its way." (Note the skull pictured here.) "My waitress’s outfit one night (scary knee-high boots with a skimpy black satin dress) made me wonder if she was poised to mete out cocktails or......

Last month chef Michael White and his business partner Chris Cannon opened Convivio in the space formerly occupied by L'Impero, which White took over after the abrupt departure of chef Scott Conant (who has since opened Scarpetta). Where L'Impero was perceived by some as stuffy and overly formal (Times critic Frank Bruni said it evoked "the upholstered interior of a very large coffin"), Convivio aims for a more casual, though still elegant, atmosphere, with "burnt......

Convivio: The Tudor City restaurant formerly known as L’Impero has been reborn as Convivio (pictured), a more casual but still swish venture from the same team, Chris Cannon and chef Michael White. Located in a historic 1920s building, the space is made deluxe with burnt orange banquettes, a hand-hammered copper bar top, and reflective lacquered ceilings. White – who spent seven years studying Italian cuisine in Imola – emphasizes the southern part of the boot......