In 1993 Matthew Kenney debuted his first restaurant, Matthew’s, to enviable acclaim; before he knew it Food and Wine Magazine had declared him one of the ten best new chefs in America. A flurry of activity followed, as Kenney involved himself with a series of popular restaurants throughout Manhattan that emphasized regional Mediterranean cooking. In 2004 he switched gears, opening Pure Food and Wine, an organic raw food restaurant on Irving Place that continues to......

We'll be liveblogging the MTVU Woodie Awards tonight (hopefully Jared Leto won't break our blogging fingers) -- if you're looking for something else to do though, here are some suggestions... READING: Spend an evening with Global City Review contributors Linsey Abrams, Fred Tuten, and Michelle Yasmine Valladare. The publication "celebrates the difficulties and possibilities of the 'global city' and other constructions of community...while honoring the subversiveness and originality of ordinary lives," and reflects on New......

This week Inside Edition aired footage of rats in some of New York's more popular restaurants. The statement we received from the program states: "In middle to late August, Inside Edition’s 'Rat Patrol' took to the streets of Manhattan between 1am and 4am peering their cameras and flashlights into the windows of a wide variety of eateries from fast food places to fine dining establishments." In total they found 22 restaurants harboring the urban......

June 30: Italian Wine Merchants - A Study of Friuli Learn about Friuli-Venezia Giulia through a study of wine and food. Friuli's whites will keep you cool during the summer, but the red varietals hold their own as well. 1:00 - 3:00 pm, $75.00. Register online or by calling 212-473-2323 x106. Italian Wine Merchants - Studio del Gusto, 108 East 16th Street between Park Avenue South & Irving Place. June 30: 5th Annual Tuttorosso Pasta-Eating......

June 14-16: Food Film Festival, Part 1 This weekend is the official kickoff of the first annual NYC Food Film Festival at Water Taxi Beach. This weekend features regional american burgers and asparagus, with Hamburger America (for those of you who missed our QBQ Burger Bash last year), Asparagus! A Stalk-Umentary, and more, including your chance to taste the famed green chile cheeseburger. Drool. You can find the full schedule here. June 14, 19:......

June 7 - June 11: Broadway Panhandler "Yard Sale" Just because they don't technically have a yard in their new location won't stop Broadway Panhandler from having its annual Yard Sale, where you can find discounts of up to 75 percent off on select cooking supplies. 65 East 8th Street, 212-966-3434. June 8: Beard on Film Join directors whose films will be featured at the upcoming NYC Food Film Festival (June 14–16, 21–23, September 6–8):......

THEATER: Listen up: The World Financial Center’s unique Word of Mouth Festival is going on through Saturday only. Taking inspiration from the festival’s location, The Women’s Project is presenting a series of short plays by women playwrights called Girls Just Wanna Have Fund$. They’re all site-specific works about the relationships between women and wealth (or lack thereof); audiences are escorted through various spots around the World Financial Center to watch each performance. (There's an article......

THEATER: There’s a growing cultural phenomenon in Japan called hikikomori, in which young people (as many as 1 million) withdraw into their rooms and refuse any contact with the outside world, sometimes for years. (In America, it’s called adolescence.) The Attic, by acclaimed Japanese playwright Yoji Sakate, is about “a mysterious company that sells tiny ‘attics’ over the internet to people who want to withdraw from society. One man embarks on a quest to find......

The police are still trying to understand what happened during yesterday's morning stabbing of a 16-year-old student. Mark Tyrell, who attends Chelsea Career and Technical high, was stabbed repeatedly on East 14th Street after emerging from the Union Square subway station. Police believe the incident started on the subway platform when Tyrell ran into some people. When Tyrell was chased out, he was attacked outside a pizzeria, where an employee told the NY Times, "One......

This morning around 9 a.m., during the morning rush hour, a 16-year-old boy was stabbed in Union Square. Police say that the teen had gotten out of the subway and got into what WABC 7 calls a "verbal dispute" that caused the group to chase the boy towards his high school. (WABC also showed footage of his bloody jacket and backpack at the scene.) The group caught up with him outside 104 East 14th Street,......

THEATER: Self-proclaimed “super-ultra-nerd” Brooke O’Harra has spawned Panic at P.S. 122. Written by Rafael Spregelburd, her production invokes the mood of low-budget horror movies to tell the tale of a mother and her two children as they attempt to recover the key to their safety deposit box - from the hands of the dead! Panic is part of the Buenos Aires in Translation (BAiT) festival, featuring the U.S. premieres of four playwrights from Argentina’s capital,......

READING: The New School's wonderful public lectures and reading series are back in swing as the school year revs up, and tonight, the ethereal Mary Gaitskill will discuss her book Veronica (a National Book Award finalist) with moderator Jeffrey Renard Allen. - Krissa Corbett Cavouras 6:30pm // The New School [66 W 12th St, room 510] // $5 THEATER: The Soho Think Tank is legendary for nurturing some of the freshest new work in town.......

READINGS: Jennifer Paddock will be at the Borders to read from her sophomore novel, Point Clear, which follows a young writer, Caroline, as she leaves her MFA program and seeks out stories in the devastated wake of Hurricane Ivan. Paddock combines her story with Caroline's writing, which is an interesting technique, if not a little meta. - Krissa Corbett Cavouras 7 PM // Borders [461 Park Ave at 57th St] // Free THEATER: "Hilarious" and......

We recently got the opportunity to take a peek at Japonais, the much-anticipated Chicago import from partners Rick Wahlstedt, Miae Lim, and Jeffrey Beers. A great deal of detail went into the majestic space -- approximately 11,350 square feet (includes both inside and outside areas), which seats close to 300 patrons -- decked out with gold banquettes, red plush chairs, and multiple seating areas, including the bar and lounge, main dining room, an upstairs......

ART OPENING: The Martinez Gallery presents SELF-PORTRAIT an exhibition that "puts the artists behind the graffiti movement on display, challenging stereotypes about both the form and its practitioners. This collective self-portrait, which includes the work of twelve contemporary graffiti writers, exposes a history that the institutional art world and politicians, ignore and even censor." Featuring CASE 2, COCO 144, GIZ, JA, KEZ 5, LES, NATO, NOXER, RATE, SKUF, TRACY 168 and VFR. - Jason Laning......

We were walking up in Gramercy before and noticed that the police had blocked off Irving Place between 15th and 16th Street. We asked an officer on the scene what happened-- he said a piece of the wall of the building across from Washington Irving fell off. First reports indicated that someone was hurt, but we were unable to verify that. Interesting coincidence: this is directly across the street from the notorious "stooling" incident......

TOURNAMENT: When we were younger, we totally kicked a*s at Memory, but we're not sure that we'd do too well competing against the mental athletes at the National Memory Championship. The tournament consists of memory challenging tournament-style competitive events including memorization of: 99 names and faces, a shuffled deck of cards, an unpublished poem, speed numbers, and a list of 500 words. They will be broadcast on HDNet, Tuesday, April 18th at 10pm but you......

Pretty much anything or anyone can be found on Craigslist. For five years, New Yorkers have been hip to the site for their no-fee apartment needs or to unload post-college Ikea furniture. But when the "Hot Sketch Comedy Submissions" call went out earlier this year to every city of the Craigslist board, aspiring writers everywhere heard it and sent in their best sketches to Chris Kula and Charlie Todd. The pair has turned this material......

Andrew Rasiej, Candidate for Public Advocate...

The city is no longer awash in saffron, but we promise there is still a lot to do this weekend... COMEDY: The "Dark Side of the Moon" Show: Buy, Beg, Borrow or Steal starts tonight at the UCB Theater. This totally psychadelic and surreal theater experience pokes fun at the popular rumor that The Wizard of OZ syncs up perfectly with Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon (it DOES. Instructions: wait for the 3rd......

The Mayor and Schools Chancellor Klein were happy to announce that more city schools were coming off the state's failing list. Though seven schools were added, with only 35 schools on the list, it's a new low for the city. The Mayor touted his education reforms, including new curriculums and promoation polices, as being a factor in the improvement. We'll likely hear the soundbite "Reduced failing schools by 55% from 3 years ago" as the......

Sounds intriguing, doesn't it? Tommorrow night from 6:30 - 9:00 at Cibar there's a wine tasting to promote Alexander Payne's new film, Sideways. Payne brought us About Schmidt and Election, both of which Gothamist thought were hysterical even without free booze to soften us up. The ad, which you need to print out in order to attend, bills it as a "special wine tasting," which we hope can be interpreted as "free wine tasting."......

Gothamist, like many other New Yorkers, will be strategically avoiding the various lifestyle headaches that promise to accompany the Grand Old Party to our beloved city. For those natives fleeing the island as the Republicans descend, we'll take a page from the administration's book and offer our suggestions for a Gothamist Food "Go Bag" stocked with some of our favorite hometown provisions: - 1 dozen bagels from Absolute Bagels on Broadway at 107th Street -......

- Does it matter if Belle de Jour is a fake? - The smoking ban turns one - Workout whiner or victim? - Your pants catch fire on the subway and... - The LES plague - West Side development gets a step closer to reality with formal presentations - Couture, schmouture - this dress from Sex and the City was ugly! - Eating at Casa Mono on Irving Place - A-Rod's pretty face gets beaned!......

After conquering the West Village (with Po, Lupa, Otto, and Babbo) and Midtown West (Esca), Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich set their sights on Irving Place by taking over the former Irving on Irving space with Casa Mono, a variation on Spanish tapas bar. Gothamist checked out Casa Mono one evening to see that the Batali-Bastianich touch and name bring the foodies comin'.......

It gets worse with the Irving Place stooling: The woman who was hit by a stool thrown out a 6th story window at Washington Irving High School was seven months pregnant. Fortunately, doctors expect the woman to recover without any harm to the baby. The Daily News learned the kids involved with the incident probably watch too much TV: "Police sources said the two students told detectives they were reenacting body slams and smackdowns......

Gothamist knew the kids at Washington Irving High School on Irving Place were violent, but this is crazy: A woman was injured by a stool that was thrown out the 6th floor window of the high school. "It was a big thud. Next thing she wasn't walking; she went down very fast," said real estate broker Robert Morrison, who was walking across the street. "Blood was profusely coming out the side of her head." The......