http://www.nypress.com/articles.sec-30-1-food-reviews.html 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 foodcentric traditions of their respective heritages. “The first word he taught me in Italian was ‘mangia,’” Jiang recalls.]]> 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?]]> 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.]]> WHEN I FIRST heard about this Charles character, he sounded like a dick. There was plenty of hullabaloo about him having no phone number, the sign hanging outside advertising the restaurant that used to live in his space and all sorts of nonsense that made me figure if someone was going to work so hard to keep me from seeing him, perhaps I shouldn’t. And so for a while I didn’t.]]> I ADMIT, I seldom meet a dirty martini I dont like.Yet never have I sipped one so savory and smootha blend of Russian Standard Platinum vodka and what must be the most luscious olives on Earththat I wanted to haul myself off the velvet banquet on which I was lounging and kiss the bartender.]]> ON A RECENT Friday night on Second Avenue, I watched as young people strolled by, couples came tumbling out of bars and the well dressed and nightclub-bound were hopping into cabs. This wouldn’t be surprising, of course, except that I was between E. 77th and E. 78th streets—miles from anywhere that I would expect to see people who looked like they knew how to have fun.]]> THE EASIEST QUESTION anyone will ask you at Park Slope sandwich shop Reis 100 is, “wheat or white?” Other then that, you’re stuck with more complicated choices involving pastrami, bacon, prosciutto, Nutella, duck paté, chicken, smoked salmon, anchovies, olive tapenade, gruyere cheese, egg salad, tuna, kimchee and/or mushrooms. Just to name a few.]]> APPARENTLY, IN-THE-KNOW drinkers are calling Los Feliz “the tequila mansion.” This multi-level spot offers three distinct bars. At street level, you’ll find a trendy restaurant with a hopping scene while the subterranean spaces both invoke an air of mischief. The first floor down lets you enjoy some tacos and jalapeño margaritas in what can best be described as a tequila cave.]]> OPENING A BAR on the corner of 16th Street and Prospect Park West, right by the Pavilion Movie Theater and Prospect Park, proved one of the smartest things boozy businessmen Jeff Switzer and Greg Curley could have done.]]> ENTREPRENEUR Hayne Suthon has a thing for gimmicks. Responsible for drag cabaret Lucky Cheng’s and the tacky exuberance of now-extinct, Hawaiithemed Waikiki Willy’s, the lady likes to fake it for dramatic effect.The tricky thing about Marfa, the high-concept simulacra of a dining spot in the Texas artist outpost, is that it’s more identifiable to Donald Judd fetishists and less welcoming to foodies or need-to-be-entertained tourists.]]> IF THEY COME, you will build it. In these lean times, belt-tightening young professionals might start joining the artists in a gentrifying neighborhood before there’s even a single place to rent David Lynch films. Some denizens of the Jefferson L stop probably like this; the longer the Big G takes, the longer they can afford to live on their meager salaries. Tandem, however, with its tasteful decor and reasonable prices, makes for a harbinger of doom even the most selfloathing of colonizers would be hard pressed to resist.]]> DESPITE BEING UNSAVORY between Friday night and Sunday morning (the original reason the Jews planned their Sabbath that way), the Lower East Side does occasionally birth a spot that reminds me why the area is worth loving.]]> ENOUGH ABOUT THAT new wine bar that opened down the block; it wouldn’t be New York without gritty drink holes. Blue Ruin and Local 269 are two of the city’s newest dive bars, and they want to beat that fancy vino spot to a bloody pulp with a two by four. A visit to both was in order, to see which one would do better in this drunken rumble. ]]> WHEN I THINK of raw food, it doesn’t usually get my salivary glands working. In fact, many people appear to have an aversion to the non-cooked, vegetarian, dairy-free fare that makes up a raw diet. But at Rockin’ Raw, Luis Salgado has made it his goal to prove naysayers wrong by serving up a rich menu filled with Peruvian, New Orleanian and Creole-styled cuisine—all raw. ]]> WHEN IT COMES to corn on the cob Im generally a purist: boiled corn, butter, salt. Anything else is some sort of succotash.When I farmed in New Hampshire, I ate corn on the cob a minimum of five times a week during August and as far into September as I could keep plucking fat ears of Silver Queen from their stalks.]]> AFTER A NIGHT of drinking and frivolity, what we eat to soak up all that alcohol often says a lot about where we come from. Offer me a cheese steak sometime after 2 a.m., and my inner Philadelphian will scarf that down without thought to calories or cholesterol.]]> I WAS SUSPICIOUS from the very beginning. “Is it some sort of cake-flavored ice cream with a butter-cream foam emulsion thing?” I asked the friend who raved about the birthday cake at new Lower East Side eatery and lounge LEV- ANTeast. “No,” I was told. “It’s straightup birthday cake.” I was intrigued. Surely no birthday cake fits all; one person’s strawberry shortcake would be different from another’s Cookiepuss.]]> DO YOU REMEMBER the old Luna Lounge? It was on the LES, it booked good bands and every show there was free. Then the rapidly necrotizing neighborhood kicked it out for being too awesome and the club moved to a big, weird space on Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg, where things didn’t quite work out. Following these indignities, it makes sense that its former owners would want their next project to have nothing to do with live music. Satellite Lounge, the latest project from former Luna honcho Rob Sacher, focuses its energies on the comparatively simple task of just being a bar.]]> JOAQUIN BACA, THE chef behind Brooklyn Star, likes a challenge. Opening a restaurant in New York is hard enough with a team of backers. Baca financed, designed and equipped his new joint on his own. He even served as general contractor (and sometimes laborer) on the build out. Then there’s the matter of his resume. Baca was once the right hand man of Momofuku’s David Chang. The first chef at Noodle Bar, then a partner who helped open Ssam and Ko; Baca has, in Chang’s, a lengthy shadow to step out from.]]> AS A 25-YEAR-OLD karaoke virgin, I was afraid that Baby Grand, the new “singing bar” in Soho, would be a tacky joint. But when I strolled in one recent Friday night with my spotlight-loving sister in tow, the diminutive spot was a far cry from the American Idol reject’s lounge I had envisioned.]]>