If the underground sliver of space that houses Bar Henry hits you with a wave of nostalgia when you step through the door, it’s because it used to house Zinc Bar. Once jammed with students and aging bohemians, clogged with smoke and a tangle of jazz band equipment that you had to step over to reach the bathroom door (often while the band was playing), Zinc Bar was a quintessential Greenwich Village live music spot. But before you get too nostalgic, note that Zinc Bar hasn’t died, it just moved around the corner, where you can still hear famed jazz guitarist Ron Affif play on Monday nights.

Meanwhile, Bar Henry benefits from the lingering magic of this space, though both the music and the smoke are gone now. In this incarnation, it’s been spiffed up with a black and white marble floor and red plush seating in the back. Continue reading…

This Louisiana specialty used to be hard to come by, but thanks to the wonders of FedEx and one dedicated Louisiana family, live crawfish are now just a click away. The Louisiana Crawfish Co. ships bags of live crawfish around the country–you can either get it FedExed or pick up your crawdads at the airport. This is essentially how fish mongers are getting them anyway, and Louisiana Crawfish Co.’s prices are about 2.5 times the wholesale value of $2 a pound (scaled for volume, so you might as well buy more)–not bad in non-Southern cities where many fish mongers inflate the price of crawfish to 5 times the wholesale value.

The crawfish season only runs through May, so start planning that crawfish boil now. Here’s how to do it.

Bonus: Louisiana Crawfish Co. also sells turduckens.

Louisiana Crawfish Co. 888-522-7292

Urban Daddy: Live Crawfish from the Louisiana Crawfish Company

Has there ever been a real Maryland-style seafood restaurant in New York? You can find Philly cheese steak, Southern food, Austrian food, Cuban food, even Malaysian food faster than you can find a decent crab cake in this town. And the attempts of New York chefs to appropriate Maryland seafood are often bungled, such as the “crab boil.” As the folks at the Hideaway know, you should never, ever boil the delicate blue crab. They should be steamed.

Choptank, backed by several Maryland natives including food and cocktail consultant (and friend of mine) Kevin Patricio, has boldly gone where no New York restaurant has gone in recent memory: into the wilds of Baltimore, land of “The Wire.” There are Old Bay potato chips on the menu and pictures of tall ships on the walls—just like home, hon. Continue reading…

The Breslin is a restaurant for people who like to eat. That may sound redundant, but given the lengths to which some restaurants go to accommodate picky eaters (an entrée of “steamed vegetables with boiled egg” at one downtown spot comes to mind), the Breslin embraces food with genuine gusto.

Granted, chef April Bloomfield’s British pub fare is extreme cuisine. Bacon-wrapped eggs, stuffed pig’s foot and fried head cheese are all on the menu, should you be craving them. But there’s also sea bass, chicken (aka poussin) and some excellent salads if you’re not a particularly adventurous diner. The menu—and the food—almost seeks to provoke: the “onion and bone marrow soup with parmesan toast” ($10) turns out to be a particularly meaty, velvety riff on French onion soup, with the bone marrow only adding to a beefy flavor that already existed in the original. Tread carefully, but do not be afraid. Continue reading…

There may be no second acts in American lives, but there are in the New York restaurant business. Donatella Arpaia, who opened davidburke & donatella with chef David Burke, then Dona, Anthos and Kefi with chef Michael Psilakis, has moved onto act three with Mia Dona, which she recently reopened as a solo project.

As in the music business, solo albums are tough. You wonder if one star will be able to carry it for the whole team or if the magic will get lost in the switch. But pay attention at Mia Dona and you’ll find not just the old favorites but some interesting new notes as well. Continue reading…

When somebody asks you to recommend a “cool new restaurant,” you’re liable to start ticking off names by neighborhood – usually in the Meatpacking District, West Village, Noho, Williamsburg or someplace with similar caché. But it’s time to radically adjust your thinking, because the new hot neighborhood is… the East 50s.

If anyone could reinvigorate formerly sleepy Turtle Bay, it would be powerhouses like Graydon Carter at Monkey Bar and now Billy Gilroy, of Macao, Employees Only and now East Side Social Club. (Le Relais de L’Entrecote and the newly reopened Mia Dona are other noteworthy additions to the neighborhood.) Though restauranteurs have come and gone since Gilroy first opened Page-Six favorite Match in the ‘90s, he still has a following, and the boldfaced names have followed him here. Continue reading…