If you didn’t know this Cobble Hill space was an old TV repair store until just a couple months ago, you would think new gastro pub Henry Public had been here forever. Past an antique bar, refurbished gas lamps and black and white photos of Frederick Douglass and the old Brooklyn Eagle headquarters hang in [...]

When an upscale chef embarks on a downscale restaurant, does the place get elevated or the chef get knocked down a notch? Tom Valenti is the latest of a number of respected New York chefs to go the casual route, opening the West Branch, a gastro pub to complement his successful Upper West Side restaurant [...]

Throwing their hat into the ever-expanding NYC burger ring is Rockwell’s Express, slated to open on East 8th Street in September in the old Rickshaw Dumpling space. A source on the commercial real estate side tells us that the burger shop, which has a full restaurant in Westchester, is a “fast-casual concept” with a service [...]

What’s the magic formula for opening a restaurant in this economy? Old-timey décor and bartenders in handlebar mustaches and suspenders? Gourmet burgers on the menu? The people behind several successful inexpensive-but-charming restaurants at the helm?
Prime Meats, the new German-inflected Brooklyn restaurant by Frankie’s Spuntino owners Frank Castronovo and Frank Falcinelli, has doubled down on previous [...]

As we head into the holiday weekend, the Times Dining section has a handy article on how to grill burgers. Some of the pointers, from 30 chefs with major burger cred, echo the ones in this earlier Gastro Chic article on what not to do when grilling burgers. Some are good new tips.
The final burger [...]

This hilarious bad review of RF O’Sullivan’s in Boston by A Hamburger Today reminded me: there are so many people that don’t know how to cook a burger. Why? Because it’s not as easy as it seems. Once you clear away several widely-held misconceptions, however, it gets a lot easier.

Do not use any kind of [...]

Finally! Minetta Tavern is open. Yes, that one, the place that’s been around for 72 years.
Amid all the buzz about Keith McNally’s new venture, there was always one thing that wasn’t clear. Why had he chosen this crusty old place as the next incarnation of McNallyism? If you’ve lived in New York long enough, you [...]

Burger blowhards are everywhere these days. Just as every Ray’s Pizza calls itself “the original,” every place that can scoop together a handful of ground meat and throw it on a grill likes to call their burger “the best.”
After a disappointingly diminutive burger at Resto and a misfired one at Bar Marmont, I was getting [...]

One last dispatch from LA.
Something momentous has happened in Hollywood, though many there don’t even realize just how big a deal it is. One of the chefs from the Spotted Pig, Carolynn Spence, who trained under April Bloomfield, has decamped to Bar Marmont. As any New Yorker who counts the Spotted Pig among her favorite [...]

What happens when Frank Bruni leaves the building? Can a restaurant keep its standards high after a positive review, or do they just keep on gettin’ through the gettin’ through? Bruni knighted Resto a “terrific new restaurant” in mid-May. Since his rapturous descriptions of Resto’s hearty, meaty fare appeared at the beginning of a hot [...]