Okie use' ta mean you was from Oklahoma, a Dust Bowl refugee tells Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, "Now it means you're a dirty son-of-abitch. Okie means you're scum." Much has changed since the Dust Bowl, but as far as barbecue goes, Oklahoma is still seen as being barren as a windswept prairie. So it seems at first glance. Mable's Smokehouse and Banquet Hall, the newest occupant of 44 Berry Street, a large brick building in Williamsburg that traffics in sleek lofts and homestead rusticity, aims to rehabilitate that state's barbecue tradition among the bearded barbecue connoisseurs of North Brooklyn. more

We have guitarist Ry Cooder to thank for much in this world: the mandolin part on the Rolling Stones' Love in Vain, the soundtrack to Wim Wender's Paris, Texas, his transcendent collaboration with Malian artist Ali Farka Touré on Talking Timbuktu and, indirectly, Cubana Social, a new restaurant and bar on North 6th Street in Williamsburg. It was, after all, Cooder's 1997 album Buena Vista Social Club, a collaboration with Juan de Marcos Gonzalez, that restored to Cuba the burnished slow glow of a country stuck in the molasses of the past. The Cuba that emerged from the album and its swaying son rhythm is languorous, romantic and irresistible. more

Chef Sara Jenkins is the canary in the mine, an augur of our stomachs, Tiresias of the ladle and fork. In 2008, she opened Porchetta, a sandwich-sized restaurant in the East Village that served porchetta sandwiches and little else. It was, one remembers, an austere time, when sitting down to eat with forks and knives seemed too extravagant. Porchetta captured the zeitgeist and was a smash. Sad for pigs; wonderful for people. Now, three years later with Porsena, Jenkins strikes again. No double-dip recessions here. No sandwiches, either, to double dip. Porsena is an Italian restaurant, one that does Jenkins' lengthy resume (Il Buco, I Coppi, Mangia) proud. Like birds flying westerly, this is a good omen. more

It wasn’t too long ago that one could stand on a wintry night in the vestibule of Angelika Film Center after seeing some depressing indie flick and gaze like the Little Tramp across the street to 25 W. Houston St., a building which housed a Jamba Juice, the lushly lit and elegant Italian joint Centovini and Moss, the highend design store that features chairs on which no one ever dares sit. Centovini, in particular, came to represent all that successful adulthood—that ever-retreating bunch of grapes—meant: a world of fine stemware, exposed bulbs and an extensive wine list. Couples, when couples were in there and that didn’t seem often, seemed to be discussing things like where to go for vacation (upstate or Acadia) or what Kiehl’s facial cleanser to use (she likes the non-foaming #1, he needs, he said, the more astringent number #2). But it was all a mirage. Last year, Centovini closed and this October, the space reopened as the decidedly more casual Burger and Barrel. more

El Haab, The Haab or simply Haab, Joaquin Velasquez’s new Mexican joint, opened with little fanfare in mid-August on a charmless Williamsburg street. This follows in the proud tradition of hardworking, low-key restaurants that have popped up on the strip of Grand Street between, say, Union and Graham avenues. more

In 1971, the same year mall-maker James W. Rouse first attempted the modern food court at Plymouth Meeting Mall in suburban Pennsylvania, the Journal of Theoretical Biology published an essay by English evolutionary biologist W.D. more

Congratulations on earning two Michelin stars for Chefs Table at Brooklyn Fare. That so new a restaurant (you opened in May 2009), attached to so informal a venue (its part of a supermarket) in so exotic a borough (you are the first two-Michelin-starred restaurant in Brooklyn) only proves your culinary mettle is, indeed, extraordinary. more

WHEN DA SILVANO opened its doors in 1975 on a lonely stretch of Sixth Avenue, radicchio was still a newfangled ingredient and Italian food, in the consciousness of many Americans, remained remanded to red sauce. Owner Silvano Marchetto’s innovation—to bring true Tuscan cuisine to the table—was revolutionary indeed. Thirty-five years later, Da Silvano has become shorthand for food lackadaisical and overpriced, and for a restaurant where the paparazzi are at least as important as the pappardelle. For the last five years, this has been the milieu of Alex Palumbo, who, as manager and Marchetto’s lieutenant, presided over the entire airkiss shitshow. But when his shift was over, Palumbo would head back to his home on North 10th Street in Williamsburg. It is to Brooklyn and beyond, to his Piemontese roots, that Palumbo has returned with Osteria Il Paiolo, his newish and recently liquored osteria. more

Galileo was wrong. He said so himself in later years: The earth doesn’t revolve around the sun. For now and here in New York City, the world revolves around a tender piece of deep golden fried chicken. The fried chicken scene, like the photosphere, is speckled and varied. Stephen Tanner, a skinny motherfucker with a beard, has colonized North Brooklyn. He began at a very good shitbox in the back of a bar under the Williamsburg bridge called Pies N’ Thighs in 2008. When the original location closed, Tanner brought his snake oil mojo to the kitchen at Egg, then to Pies N’ Thighs 2.0 and now to a spicy fried chicken sandwich at The Commodore. more

There's a saying in Yiddish my Great-Aunt Sadie used to tell me when we'd visit her in Ft. Lauderdale: "If you're going to eat pork, get it all over your beard." As an 8-year-old to whom puberty and halakha were both just three-syllable words, I was confused. Now I realize it's the Yiddish version of "Go Big or Go Home." At any rate, Traif, a new restaurant at the Brooklyn base of the Williamsburg Bridge, is full of happy eaters, beards glossy with bacon grease. Apparently they each have a Great-Aunt Sadie of their own. more