Results tagged “libertine”

After Olives and Libertine owner Todd English bailed on his wedding at the last minute, friends and family of the jilted bride-not-to-be decided to party on, making the most of the celebrity chef's leftovers. The Post reports that 150 guests of Erica Wang decided to forge ahead with the fancy affair at the the St. Regis Hotel, enjoying a five-course dinner on English's dime. The scene sounded similar to the non-wedding bash had at the Mandarin over the summer when baller Richard Jefferson left his fiance at the altar.

This week Frank Bruni at the Times reviews Double Crown, the new bi-level restaurant and bar in the East Village that, in his words, "ponders the glories of culinary cross-pollination, making a promise of 'British-Indio-Asian' fusion that sounds more like a threat, given that it’s a two-hyphen fusion and that one of the words bumping up against one of the hyphens is 'British.' And isn’t India in Asia? Note to self: bone up on world geography... Its take on British imperialism goes something like this: Sure, foreign lands were plundered and indigenous peoples oppressed, but think of the snacks!" Bruni bestows two stars for not taking "its pledged fusing too seriously or executing it too strenuously."

This week Frank Bruni at the Times bestows two glittering stars on Allegretti, where one of his dining companions swoons for the fish soup, sounding like an absolutely insufferable food snob: "'It tastes exactly the way it should," she said, rushing the words out as soon as the soup was down. She wanted the rest of us to know. She wanted to crow. She wanted to be done with talking and get back to the soup. She was even making those mm-mm noises...What she meant, as I learned when she passed the soup to me, was that it tasted of Mediterranean waters — scorpion fish, rouget — and of Mediterranean sunshine, the tomato flavor robust and true...Watching and nodding as I myself made joyful sense of it, she said, 'Are we in the south of France or what?' Actually, we were in Chelsea, though it was easy to be confused."

Hea: Pronounced HEE, this South Asian and Japanese restaurant is named for "an extremely popular Cantonese slang word invented by Hong Kong teenagers, which refers to a relaxed or 'chill' state of being." To keep things chill, the bi-level place emphasizes "communal relaxation" with a bar lounge on the first floor (pictured) and formal dining with a sushi bar upstairs, where diners will be greeted by a 300-year-old calligraphy table, "behind which glitter ancient Chinese characters formed by natural sand crystals." We'll take centuries-old calligraphy over chipper hostesses any day! Chef Heng Meng Kong's menu ranges from asian spice rubbed charred beef with pumpkin peanut sauce to pan roasted miso black cod with asparagus lemon dressing. (Opening Monday.) 145 East 13th Street, (212) 982-1688