Just down the block from neighborhood stalwart Dumpling Man (and squarely in its narrow shadow) lies Marco Polo Café, the Italian-Asian cheap-eats love child of husband and wife team Stefano Magaddino and Huihui Jiang. Magaddino, Sicilian by way of Buffalo, and Jiang, who was born and raised in mainland China, opened the diminutive dine-in and take-out restaurant in the summer of 2008, combining the similarly ...

THE HALOGEN-BRIGHT morning sun beat down on my crusted eyelids. Opening them felt like I was prying the top of an ancient jar of mustard. To my right, my girlfriend’s carcass was comatose, immune to meddlesome light. I stood and stretched. My back snapped and crackled like bubble wrap, my muscles sore and flu-achy. Perhaps it was the tub of Buffalo Trace bourbon I consumed the previous eve, but it took several...

IF APPLE STARTED making restaurants, they might be exactly like Macbar. From its bright yellow, seamless plastic interior to the inventive if environmentally unsound food packaging and the noodleshaped case you get if you order a medium macaroni and cheese, this place screams sleek and chic.

WILLIAMSBURG’S SWEEPING OLD spaces may have been designed for industrial work, but they were really made for bars.The Woods is tucked away in an old brick building that used to house a metal shop, but when the workers would call it quits after a backbreaking day on the job, did they look around at the high ceilings and exposed brick walls and think one day people will drink here?