As the old saying once went, “A you’re alright, B you’re brave, C you’re crazy, D you’re dead.” It’s not news that Alphabet City is no longer the minefield of socioeconomic misfortune it once was, but even today, when the focal point for gentrification outrage has migrated to Brooklyn neighborhoods like Bushwick and Crown Heights, there’s still a surprising amount of upheaval happening on the east side of Manhattan.

Avenue A is as established as Central Park West (hell, even the rhyme couldn’t find anything negative to say about it). Avenue B, for its part, was once a pleasingly lawless strip – close enough to the safety of A for a quick escape but darker, studded with rowdier bars, velvet-curtained second-floor hideouts, and those mystery loft/storefront/abandoned tenement spaces that drew band practices and parties. Now, that velvet-lined den is a well-marked, bowties-and-arm-garters cocktail lounge and Tompkins Square Park is home to hipster hockey leagues.

But even three short years ago, Avenue C was another story, a country unto itself where brand-name pharmacies and supermarkets still feared to tread. Between the Laundromats and bodegas were long stretches of rusting fire escapes, graffiti murals featuring neighborhood heroes, not rock idols, and families picnicking on their stoops. Since then, a smaller, more interesting kind of takeover has happened, one not led by kids looking for the next cheap buzz but by food and drink pioneers looking for a quiet space to do their own thing.

At Bobwhite Lunch & Supper Counter (94 Ave. C; bobwhitecounter.com), that thing is a concept that, by all rights, should be old news. All fried chicken, all the time? Hold on a second, Dirty Bird, Hill Country Chicken, all five locations of BonChon and Charles’ Pan-Fried just called to invite you to 2008. But what Bobwhite has done is subtler, more exciting than simply lodging another vote in the brine-or-no-brine debate. They’ve built an old-fashioned lunch counter straight out of small-town Virginia in an elegant, modern space – no tired red plastic baskets and gingham to be found. Fried chicken dinners come with a buttermilk biscuit, honey, hot sauce or the mustardy relish called chow chow for customization; sides include Brunswick stew, a homely regional favorite that includes tomatoes, corn and pork.

Edi & the Wolf (102 Ave. C; ediandthewolf.com) is another unexpected space, this one tying the nouveau industrial aesthetic of dark wood and iron to bright, big windows and bunches of side-of-the-road greenery dotting the communal table. Perhaps because Austrian cuisine’s reputation is still tied to hearty schnitzels and sausages, Edi’s food manages to be both authentic and innovative, depending on who you ask. The schnitzel is there, but so is a farmer’s cheese and pumpkin seed spread to share, and wild mushroom ravioli with grilled chard.

And while cocktail atavism is big business on the LES and across Manhattan, with “original formulation” spirits and ungarnished Old-Fashioneds the only way to go, nobody is going as far, and having as much fun, as Evelyn Drinkery (171 Ave. C; evelynnyc.com). Skip way over Prohibition, past the Roaring Twenties and back into the late 19th century and you’ll find the phosphate, the soda fountain standby that added an acid tang to everything from cola to claret. Evelyn plays with these in a number of cocktails dispensed through a CO2 tank for light, fizzy refreshers that belie the complex combinations of bitters, spirits and house-processed juices underneath. For the New Yorker’s take on the soda fountain, there are also egg creams, made with infused milks and flavored syrups to take on not just the old classic (in which they rightly use Fox’s U-Bet rather than making their own), but Earl Grey tea, an Orange Julius, and the root beer float.

Avenue C still feels like home for the families and the Laundromats, and in these heady days it’s easy to believe that the neighborhood will find its own balance, keeping out the cheap beer holes and encouraging the pioneers looking for a little room to express themselves. If not, there’s always Avenue D.

New Yorkers may soon have to wave goodbye to plastic foam coffee cups and take-out boxes. Last month, during his final State of the City address, Mayor Bloomberg announced that he wanted to ban the non-biodegradable plastic foam substance known as polystyrene, a move that would follow the likes of west coast cities like Seattle, San Francisco and Portland.

Environmental groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) applaud the mayor’s effort, saying that banning these substances could have a real impact on everyday urban living.

“Bloomberg has a sensible proposal to keep our streets clean and dispose of our household waste as well as phasing out a petroleum based product that has a short, useful life but stays around for many decades,” said Eric Goldstein, the environment director for the NRDC.

But it’s not easy being green, especially for businesses in New York concerned that alternatives to polystyrene could be expensive and really cut into small business’ pockets, as well as cost jobs of polystyrene manufacturers.

Even big businesses like Dunkin Donuts could be hurt by the ban. The corporation released a statement of disapproval of the proposed ban: “A polystyrene ban will not eliminate waste or increase recycling, it will simply replace one type of trash with another.”

“This is yet another mandate that government is imposing on a business when they’re already struggling to survive,” said Mike Durant, the New York director of the National Federation of Independent Business. “This will threaten jobs like any other mandate you see that comes from government.”

In fact, a study released by the American Chemistry Council found that the proposed ban would actually cost the city $100 million annually. A Styrofoam cup, according to the New York Restaurant Association, costs seven cents, cardboard cups cost 15 cents, and a plastic cup could cost 45 cents per container. This may sound like only a matter of pennies, but according to the study, New York City restaurants could see a $57 million increase in costs. In addition, as many as 1,200 polystyrene manufacturing jobs could be lost with the enactment of a ban.

But despite the alleged costs, the ban is backed by multiple legislators like the Upper East Side’s Senator Liz Krueger, who wants the substance banned statewide.

“This would be a great step forward for our city, both for the environment and public health – but we shouldn’t just stop at the city limits,” said Krueger last month after the State of the City address.

So what is polystyrene? Usually called Styrofoam, polystyrene is a petroleum-based expanded foam plastic. The substance is often preferred by restaurants because it insulates hot beverages better than paper or cardboard. According to the American Chemsitry Council, most polystyrene nowadays is actually made from a combination of petroleum and natural gas.

Those on the side of small businesses say that New York City should implement a recycling program for polystyrene. But according to NYC.gov, polystyrene is not recyclable because it is “very difficult to keep clean and separate from other types of plastic.” Because it is difficult to clean and extremely lightweight, polystyrene would be costly to ship to a recycling plant, according to NYC.gov, and would cost the city money.

Alex Dmitriew, the commercial zero waste coordinator for San Francisco said that for similar reasons, the city of San Francisco also could not have a polystyrene recycling program, so the substance ended up as trash, and more often, litter.

“Typically polystyrene never really goes away. It breaks down but never deteriorates, it can end up in our sewer system and on our streets,” said Dmitriew.

San Francisco has had a polystyrene ban in place since 2007, and has been encouraging the usage of sugar cane and plant-based containers, known as PLA or bagasse products. According to the compostable container and utensil distributor worldcentric.org, these organic products biodegrade in 60 days. Whereas, according to the NRDC, most polystyrene and plastic products are non-biodegradable, and stick around in the environment for thousands of years.
An organic PLA hot beverage 8-ounce cup costs less than 10 cents on the worldcentric.org website, only three cents more than the American Chemistry Council’s listed cost of polystyrene containers.

But a 2006 study done by the Plastic Food Service Packaging Corporation found that despite being a petroleum-based substance, polystyrene actually uses less energy than organic substances, because the foam material is 90 percent air.

Eric Goldstein called foul on the results of this study.

“The restaurant industry knows that for environmental safety reasons the city is moving in this direction of phasing out their policy, so they string together some arguments and throw around some numbers,” said Goldstein.

San Francisco has actually found that the city is much cleaner since the implementation of the ban six years ago. According to Dmitriew, within two years of the ban, the city saw a 41 percent decrease in polystyrene litter.

“Polystyrene is far from a perfect substance but it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t seriously impact people who are having trouble making ends meet,” said Andrew Mozsel, a representative for the New York Restaurant Association. He mentions that smaller mom and pop restaurants as well as ethnic restaurants would most likely be affected.

Dmitriew said that San Francisco’s government was concerned about the impact on businesses, and admitted that polystyrene is the cheapest substance around. He said that the city issued an ordinance, saying that any restaurant can apply for a waiver if they feel that they will face economic hardship. In reality, he said, only two restaurants asked for a waiver, out of more than 4,500 food establishments citywide, and the city was more than happy to help the establishments out.

Most restaurants and diners on the Upper East Side that we spoke with, like Three Star Diner on East 76th and 1st Avenue, and Gracie’s Corner Diner on East 86th and 1st Avenue, said that they do not use polystyrene cups or plates, and so the ban would not affect them much.

“We haven’t used Styrofoam in over 15 years. It’s flimsy and doesn’t hold up well. Hot food starts to melt the Styrofoam. We like to use hard, clear plastic,” said Gus Klimis, the owner of East Side Eatery on 1st Avenue and 91st Street.

“Most of our prepared foods have to be heated up, so Styrofoam wouldn’t work. So we don’t use Styrofoam,” said Garman Calle, the manager of E.A.T. on 3rd Avenue and 81st Street.

In most of the United States, if all you knew about Spain came from the Spanish restaurants in your town, you’d be laboring under the impression that everyone in Spain listens exclusively to folk music, uses too much paprika and hasn’t yet reached the Iron Age, preferring to cook exclusively in terra cotta crocks. These are places to which you go out for tapas, apparently the staple food of Spaniards. Unlike many such national minstrel shows (the red-sauce Italian, moo-shu Chinese or plate-breaking Greek), these notions are based in a reality that continues to exist; however, they should never have come to represent a nation of millions.

In New York City, there is one kind of restaurant that is sorely lacking; one that is the bedrock of Spanish food culture. It’s a small, casual bar that just happens to serve better food than it needs to, a place where eating is not the point of your evening, it’s just an ever-present element thereof. You go out to meet friends, to talk, to hang out; you have some cheese, a plate of anchovies, a little bread to keep you going. Arguing about who makes the best pan con tomate and whether to get the squid or the chorizo may be most of the conversation, but you’ll never sit in front of a massive plate, taking photos and eating in silence until the next course comes. It’s aspirational living at its best, being incredibly exacting about food while treating it with the nonchalance it deserves.

This is what you get at Bar Jamón (125 E. 17th St., casamononyc.com), the round-the-corner companion to Mario Batali’s longstanding Casa Mono. The narrow, dark-wood-lined space is unforgivingly small, the room dominated by a winding, high-topped table and a narrow marble bar at the entry that also serves as wine display and prep space. Enormous mirrors cover the walls at both ends of the room, one marked in white with the menu, the other reflecting diners’ flushed, laughing faces back to them in the shimmer of candlelight.

It is a perfectly romantic location to put your date through a surreptitious battery of tests: Are they adventurous, or will they blanch when told that the “pulpo” in pulpo with spicy garbanzos is octopus (though you might let them—more for the rest of us!)? Can they appreciate a dish almost ludicrous in its simplicity like that pan con tomate, two slices of toasted bread smeared with olive oil and tomato pulp and a judicious scattering of chunky salt? It’s the best in the city precisely because of that simplicity, relying on the quality of the sharply green oil and obscenely red tomatoes rather than chef-y theatrics to dazzle.

Should your date fail the tests, there’s plenty to drown your sorrows in a wine list that is second to none for highlighting the varietals that are routinely overshadowed by dark red malbecs and tempranillos on most round-the-world wine lists. For a lighter way to spend your night, one of the Basque txakolis is the only way to go. What is otherwise an exceptionally well-balanced, mid-weight white is made sublime by its presentation: poured in a thin stream into a small carafe from as high as your waiter’s wingspan can manage, the aeration lending a slight effervescence that lurks without overpowering the palate. Like sparkling wines it pairs perfectly with rich, fatty foods like cheeses and the eponymous jamón, but as a heavier white it works just as well with brighter, more acidic foods like olives and stuffed piquillo peppers.

Whatever you do, don’t order all at once. Get one plate at a time, linger over your (generously sized) glass of wine, people-watch, have a real conversation with your companion. In other words, get Spanish.

Veselka Bowery

Sequels are a terrible idea. Be it movies or restaurants, the impulse that makes a person want to capitalize on a success by replicating or, god forbid, altering it, ultimately ends only in disappointment. Success is a slippery thing made up of hundreds of variables, only a handful of which can be controlled. Audiences are irrational, and dishes that thrilled them one week may flop the next. A concept that had two-hour lines forming at your door in one location may create a ghost town 15 blocks north.

It is there that Veselka saw it had a fighting chance. After all, what uncertainty is there about the East Village institution? The most cutting criticism you can dredge up is that it’s not the most authentic Ukrainian food in the neighborhood, and while it’s still plenty authentic for the early-bird babushkas who take their borscht there daily, that’s hardly the point. Veselka’s appeal lies in its effortless integration of American diner classics and Eastern Bloc comfort, the old-school New York service ethos that is surly and brusque one minute, warm and motherly the next, and its wholly democratic clientele. Veselka is not looking for an audience to manufacture a particular atmosphere; Veselka waits for you to come to it in whatever form you find yourself.

So maybe you want to come to Veselka on a date, or with the family, or before an evening out. The original Veselka is just not equipped for that—once you’re out of college, taking a date to a 24-hour diner is decidedly a dealbreaker. Perhaps the owners finally saw this one chink in their armor—or maybe they just wanted to get paid. Either way, they decided it was time for a sequel, leaving loyal customers nervously hoping against hope as the new venture, Veselka Bowery (9 E. First St., veselka.com/bowery), underwent a lengthy construction.

Tucked away on a side street in the lobby of one of the cookie-cutter condo buildings that spell the end of the Bowery, this Veselka is open and airy, glass-fronted and high-ceilinged, with warm wood tables and polished concrete floors. It’s almost too open in spots—lifelong New Yorkers, used to being crammed into corners, often don’t know how to fill large spaces. Instead of a bakery counter, the entryway faces a long bar lined with every possible iteration of the Eastern European stalwart spirit, vodka. That’s right, this Veselka has a full liquor license, and is putting it to good use with an extensive list of well-balanced cocktails that orbit around vodka’s sun.

The menu is described as more contemporary, but it turns out to have room for all the classics (breathe easy, there are still plenty of pierogies here) while bringing everything up to a new standard of presentation and refinement. Instead of a couple of slices of challah and some foil-wrapped butter pats, bread for the table comes with a housemade farmer cheese that is somehow never enough, no matter how many times it’s replenished. Pickles in the finest Slavic tradition accompany meat and vegetable boards built for leisurely nibbling with cocktail in hand. And entrees, while slightly overwrought in their descriptions, are just interesting enough in their execution. Even the ill-advised-sounding lobster pierogi are appropriately delicate and shockingly tasty.

Service is no longer brusque, just forthright and friendly. It’s off-putting at first, but the longer you stay, the more pleasant it becomes. It may not be quite as polished as the decor would suggest, but that fact keeps you grounded to the essential Veselka-ness of the place, the nonjudgmental, takes-all-comers attitude that has fueled the business for 58 years.

There are some who will be wary of Veselka Bowery no matter what anyone says, and that’s just fine. The original location is ready for you in all its 24-hour hangout glory, and it’s guaranteed to never change. But if you want to have a grownup restaurant experience with all the comforts of home, I’ll see you at Veselka Bowery.

Michael Psilakis has found the secret to world domination: Steadily, quietly build your empire in places nobody would think to look until you’ve achieved full saturation, at which point it will be too late for them to resist. This has long been a tactic for military leaders and Bond villains, but has never been a particularly popular strategy for those who like to use their power for good rather than evil. Like chefs.

The tried-and-true strategy for restaurant empire-building these days is to open in the next neighborhood to explode—or, if one of your partners is a celebrity sibling, on the long-smoldering Lower East Side. Make it small, preferably uncomfortably so, and watch as wait times climb into the hours while your staff rushes diners out the door, throwing dishes large and small at them all at once and letting them sort out what was what as they stand on the sidewalk, stuffed and dazed, 35 minutes later. From there, you quickly spin out a few more branches doing basically the same thing, spend all that banked-up patron capital, and then pray they like you enough to come back six months after the shine has worn off.

Think of it. Even the venerable Momofukus, which began with the noble goal of differentiation, have become multiple iterations of either the small-plates/large format spot for groups (Ssam, Noodle Bar) or the intimate tasting-menu-only extravaganza (Ko, Sydney, Australia’s Seiobo).

Psilakis’ trajectory, however, seems more in line with the heady days of the ’90s. In 2008 he opened Kefi, an approachable Greek tavern serving the chef’s childhood favorites writ large, as well as Anthos, a refined interpretation of the cuisine that garnered a Michelin star in its first year. Never mind that he was single-handedly steering the revival that took Greek cooking out of the plate-smashing, Opa!-shouting ghetto and brought it to napkins and tablecloths; he was building grand restaurants without the Vegas-targeting gimmickry or faux-exclusivity of his peers.

His stable today consists of the abovementioned Kefi, now a grande dame of the city’s Greek scene, and several locations of his casual MP Taverna in such gauche locations as Roslyn, Long Island, Irvington, in Westchester County, with one soon to come in Astoria, Queens, bringing coals to Newcastle in an incredibly audacious way. Most interesting of his properties, though, is Fish Tag (222 W. 79th St., michaelpsilakis.com/fishtag), nominally a wine bar-meets-seafood restaurant but in reality a playground for pescetarian experimentation.
Dishes run roughshod over national boundaries, from a smoked trout salad that is squarely Nassau County to Catalan shrimp served on top of one of the most convincing renditions of patatas bravas served outside Madrid. Greek grilled octopus is buried in a warm, mustard-dressed salad of new potatoes straight from a Munich picnic. Sheep’s-milk dumplings are of the same technique as Italian gnudi but tasting of feta cheese you once had in a dream, served with crumbled merguez sausage and drowned in a roasted red pepper coulis you will end up sneaking indelicate spoonfuls of, praying for a loaf of bread.

It takes a lot to overcome the space, the below-ground level of a townhouse on West 79th Street, a low-ceilinged rectangle with bar up front by the only window and spartan gray seating at back centered around a butcher-block-topped island that seemed to serve no purpose grander than well-disguised wait station. It takes even more to overcome the loneliness of a recent 6:30 pre-theater reservation. Fish Tag did so handily.

A meal of small plates was thoughtfully coursed from lightest to richest, revealing a cohesive progression of flavors we hadn’t imagined when we ordered with wild abandon. Service is on point, friendly and helpful without calling you “dude” or upselling the table on hand-wrought breads or unnecessary snacks.

If he so desires, Psilakis has built himself a restaurant that could easily take over the world. And if he does, I, for one, will welcome our new Greek overlord.

With so many Italian eateries in New York City, it can be difficult to find an “authentic” one—offering 100 percent home-cooked food and an ambience that transports diners to Italy, if only for an hour or two. Dopo Teatro East, which opened on East 62nd Street between First and Second avenues at the end of June, does just that.

Diners are greeted with a “buona sera” as they enter the front of the restaurant, where they find a bar stocked with drinks to complement the restaurant’s dishes. An ornate—yet not gaudy—chandelier with small crystals hanging from it adds to the sophisticated character of the setting.

The manager, Albi Mecaj, and the chef, the Italian-born Salvatore DiBella, are very attentive to diners and help them to pick the exact kind of meal they are looking for, from the main course to the beverage to the dessert.

“You have to offer 100 percent,” Mecaj said. “While you’re in the restaurant, everything has to be constant, from the beginning to the end. And the perfect example that I always give when I train my employees, I tell them, ‘Picture this as a show, as a theater show. The moment the curtains open, the show starts, and there is no way you can [make] a mistake and come back, because it’s live.’”

In the short time the restaurant has been open, it has already attracted regulars, and it’s no surprise after tasting some of the most popular dishes.

My first plate, filled with seafood, offered an eclectic but savory combination of flavors. The grilled vegetables mixed with grilled calamari and grilled scampi was rich with flavor, and the balsamic reduction dressing drizzled over the top added an additional punch. The yellowfin tuna medallions, served with olives, capers, thyme and aged balsamic reduction, is a must-try for seafood lovers—it had a distinctive, yet not overwhelming taste. I also tried thinly sliced salmon over fresh fennel, which was light and refreshing.

The pasta samplings were equally satisfying. The large tube pasta with eggplant, salted ricotta, tomato sauce, garlic and basil was perfectly prepared—each item in the dish had a distinctive taste. The ravioli filled with buffalo mozzarella, butter and sage was also a delight—once I cut into the ravioli, I found that the mozzarella was a perfect consistency—soft, but not greasy or too stringy. The sage was a nice touch, and had that melt-in-your-mouth quality. Mecaj said the ravioli filled with shrimp in lobster reduction is his favorite pasta dish served at the restaurant—and I agree. The fish and pasta complement each other in both flavor and texture, and no grated cheese or any additional flavoring is necessary on this dish.

I also tried a plate of pan-seared sea bass with prawn, Prosecco reduction, cherry tomatoes and capers. The sea bass was light and delicious, and the cherry tomatoes and capers also added some welcome flavor.

A glass of sparkling Prosecco wine made these dishes all the better—and especially worked well with the flavors of the fish. Toward the end of the meal, I tried one of the restaurant’s top red wines, which was slightly stronger, and also a well-selected complement.

The dessert, called semifreddo, with gelato, small nuts, strawberries on the side, and a generous amount of chocolate syrup poured around the plate, was satisfyingly sweet, and had a cooling-down effect on a scorching August evening.

Dan Bolton, a jazz pianist, played throughout the evening, blending well with casual conversation, the chef’s Italian, and the sounds of knives and forks at work.

A garden in the back, designed by Mecaj—is immediately inviting. Lanterns of various colors and designs hang from the ceiling. Restaurant staff hopes to soon place tables and chairs in that area.

Dopo Teatro has another location near Times Square on West 44th Street between Seventh Avenue and the Avenue of the Americas. That location attracts more of a tourist crowd, and the Upper East Side opening was an effort to branch out, Mecaj said.

Restaurant prices range from $10 to $14 for salads, $14 to $19 for antipasti, $16 to $20 for pasta, $27 to $30 for fish, $22 to $32 for meat, $7 to $9 for vegetables, and $14 to $18 for pizza pies—another restaurant specialty.
Dopo Teatro East: 345 E. 62nd St., New York, NY 10065

In back, a trio of diners sat against the slither of a greentiled wall devouring rolls. “I’m full but I wanna continue eating,” one paused long enough to exclaim. “This is sooooo good!” But was it? I sat with my somewhat-willing date by the sushi counter, where odd fish hunks were protected by cellophane, near a clutter of fish sauce containers, rice wine and a bottle of Johnny Walker Black. A cackle from the kitchen announced our dinner: a warm sweet potato roll, a plate of pieces crowned by a red, whipped mash of spicy tuna and yellow tail, and a fleshy, gelatinous line of solo yellow tail bites, each bulging indelicately from a wrapping of sticky rice.

We drowned our wasabi with soy sauce and readied the sticks. Were we sure we wanted to do this? “I was just thinking…” I began to say. “Shhhh,” my date shushed, and she was right: contemplation is often the lesser part of bravery.

Ignorance is bliss, especially when it comes to raw fish. I’d gone to Fu’s after reading the restaurant inspection posted online by the New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH) from the previous week. It listed a number of “Critical” violations, including “Evidence of mice or live mice” and “Live roaches present.” According to the DHMH, the restaurant is “not yet graded.”

After eating a number of C-grade meals, I discovered that I didn’t come down with anything worse than low-level anxiety. This was partially warranted
because, in an effort to balance the competing prerogatives of informing the public and giving restaurants a fair chance to clean up their acts, the city ends up glossing over some of the worst offenders.

The NY-DHMH is in charge of health and safety inspections for the city’s approximately 24,000 restaurants. Last summer, the government organization installed a new inspection system that awards grades based on points. The less points a restaurant scores, the better its grade, which must be posted in the window for anyone to see. A score of 0–13 points earns an “A,” 14–27 points earns a “B” and from 28 on, a restaurant earns a “C.” There is no grade lower than C.

In a June 2010 press release, before the grading system took effect, Health Commissioner Peter Farley said the purpose of the grades was “to help consumers make informed choices about where to eat out.”

But can consumers “make informed choices” when the worst-performing restaurants, the ones they are most likely to avoid, are also the least likely to have a grade? As of last week, there are around 2,400 restaurants that scored over 27 points on their last inspection, putting them in the C range. Less than a third of these restaurants actually have a C grade.

A graded school quiz is simple to interpret. A student answers questions, earns a certain number of points and receives a grade based on that total. The Health Department’s grading system does not work that way. It’s more like grading at a lax progressive school, where students pay a shitload to get a second or third chance, past performance is taken into account and it’s in neither the student body’s nor the administration’s best interest to flunk anyone.

On a regular basis, restaurants that scored in the C range on their last inspection will maintain its grade of B or A. The Breslin restaurant at The Ace Hotel, for example— which recently earned a Michelin star—has an A grade, although it scored in the C range on its most recent inspection. It’s not special in this regard: a quarter of all restaurants that scored 28 points on their last inspection still have A grades.

The grading system provides more conditions under which an inspection won’t be graded than conditions under which it will. A restaurant’s first inspection isn’t graded unless it receives an A. If it doesn’t, it has about a month to clean up before it receives a second “graded” inspection. Fu Sushi, which remains officially “Not Yet Graded,” is in this category. If a restaurant still scores in the B or C range on its “graded” re-inspection, it can choose to appeal the ruling to an administrative tribunal, where it can plead its case, pay fines, attempt to reduce its score and post a “Grade Pending” sign. A restaurant scoring in the C range will receive ungraded “compliance” inspections about every 30 days until it scores under 28 points or is shut down. Inspections based on complaints (for C restaurants and others) are also not graded.

Implicit in the relative rarity of graded inspections is the idea that a badgrade is seriously bad news for a restaurant’s bottom line. “A ‘C’ grade can be a scarlet letter for a restaurant,” says Andrew Rigie, the director of operations at the New York State Restaurant Association. “You’re issued a ‘C’ grade once, and if a customer sees that, they may never come back to that restaurant.”

While there are no statistics yet available for exactly how much restaurant owners stand to lose with a C, the fear of a C grade is palpable at the Administrative Tribunal, which is on the 11th floor of a cramped office building near the World Trade Center. The waiting room manages to combine the drudgery of the DMV with the anonymous dread of an STD clinic. The room has 16 rows of interlocking chairs and, at midday, they’re mostly filled. People are generally occupied with a newspaper or the important business of foot tapping and cheek puffing. The more prepared go over fat folders of documents to prepare their defenses, or just hold them in their lap, drawing strength from their weight.

Every few minutes, a clerk at the front counter calls out a restaurant address and an owner’s name and sends him or her scuttling off to one of the little hearing rooms in back. The room makes a commercial for The Price is Right feel like a luxury getaway. The walls and support pillars are scuffed. Signs say you can’t eat, and no one does. You can’t talk on your phone, but doing so doesn’t seem to land anyone in trouble.

I talk to the owner of a pizza place in Queens (who for obvious reasons wishes to remain anonymous), who says his appointment for the tribunal was at 10 a.m. Although he arrived at 9:30 a.m., it’s now nearing one in the afternoon, and he isn’t sure when his case will be heard.

According to Pizza Guy, he was sucked into food court after his father passed away a few months before, leaving him a restaurant he had no desire to operate. He’d prefer to sell it as soon as possible. When his restaurant’s address is finally called, he bolts to the front to receive further instruction.

“From what I’ve seen, this is one of the better agencies in New York,” Pizza Guy says, better than what he remembers at the DMV.

Next, the owner of a recently opened cafe (who also would rather not be identified by name) explains that when the inspector visited his restaurant, there were plastic bags filled with construction debris that hadn’t been removed. He says the inspector declared there was food in the bags, a violation, but refused to open them up and look when challenged.

His restaurant is in the B range, but Cafe Guy says, “A B [grade] is telling the consumer there’s some inferior situation going on.” After 20 years in the restaurant business, and payments to a consultant in order to ensure his cafe is up to code, he declares, “I would eat off the floor in my place.”

He thinks the system is too complicated. If it takes him hours to figure it out, how is a tourist supposed to understand it? The system counts critical and minor violations towards a restaurant’s final grade, which means it’s possible to have an A with evidence of rodents, and a B when enough bathroom doors don’t close on their own.

There is also the problem of milk temperature. If someone takes milk out of the fridge for five minutes, it could easily rise to a temperature that will put it into the violation range on an inspection, even though that milk was going right back in the fridge and was at the right temperature a minute ago.  Inspections are inevitably snapshots, nailing down judgments across a hundred fine lines.

SIDEBAR: Read What Food Scores the Best

The repercussions for inspectors who screw up are also unclear, Cafe Guy  explains, and he suspects a sort of “juking the stats” of food inspections to raise revenue. Food court will bring a man to think many things he wouldn’t otherwise.

Restaurant owners outside the tribunal have similar criticisms. “The inspector used to come in, and you didn’t get nervous when they walked in the
door,” Vinnie Mazzone says. He owns Vinnie’s Chicken Masters, in Sheepshead Bay, where he masters chicken by rubbing it in spices, frying the hell out of it and serving it hot with thumb-thick steak fries. His restaurant has an A grade, and he was one of the few restaurant owners who would speak on the record with his full name.

For Mazzone, the notion of having to put up a grade is an affront to his pride. “I take it as an insult,” he says. “I don’t need anyone to grade my store.”

Mazzone also finds the system needlessly complex, with scoring arbitrary depending “on time of day.” But given the many chances that restaurants
are given to improve their score before grading, he says, “If you wind up with a C, there’s something seriously wrong with your place.”

There’s no one like an epidemiologist to put the concerns of restaurant owners in perspective.

“I’m not going to apologize that the general public may not know the nuances between an ‘A’ and a ‘B,’” Dr. Mel Kramer says. “And let me tell you something: These things are not mission impossible.”

Kramer has a PhD in environmental health and a masters in public health. He runs EHA Consulting Group, which handles inspections for facilities like
hospitals and corporate dining rooms, which aren’t covered by the Health Department.

What’s more worrisome to Kramer— and it’s worth noting his job is to worry about this sort of thing—is the fact that New York City’s system for reporting foodborne outbreaks of illnesses pales to that operated by the state of Minnesota. He also mentions a less-than-reassuring study from the Journal of Food Protection that “basically said that fairly large numbers of food workers admitted to working more than one shift when they actively had vomiting or diarrhea.”

According to Kramer, the fines and settlement offers of the new grading system are not extraordinary “in an environment where you’re trying to cut cost
and maximize efficiency,” adding that “we do the same with parking tickets.” Although there can be cases where minor violations tip the scale and change a grade more than a major one might, Kramer says, “That’s generally not the case.”

What matters is not quibbling, but the sum of the effort. “Anything that elevates the level of sanitation to the public… is positive,” Kramer says.

To date, the city has inspected most of its 24,000 restaurants. In a report after the first six months of the grading program, the city said “of restaurants
that scored in the C range on their first inspection, 72 percent improved enough to earn an A or B on the second.”

Kimlau Square is a little park in the southern section of Manhattan’s Chinatown. Follow the stern gaze from the statue of Lin Zexu and, in about 40 feet, you’ll hit Dim Sum Go Go. The restaurant is a New York magazine “Critic’s Pick,” and has received a recommendation by the Michelin Guide every year since 2007. The week I visited, it had a less-prestigious distinction, having earned the worst score of any sit-down restaurant in Manhattan.

Officially, the restaurant is not yet graded. Still, it had racked up 91 points (this score has since been disputed and lowered to 47). It had seven
critical violations, including: “Eggs found dirty/cracked; liquid, frozen or powdered eggs not pasteurized,” “Live roaches present in facility’s food and/ or non-food areas” and “Food not protected from potential source of contamination during storage, preparation, transportation, display or service.”

I sat at my white tablecloth during the mid-afternoon lull and started in on my pot of tea, propelled by a half-baked rationale about the fortifying power of hot liquids and antioxidants. I had three dipping saucers, one with red-flecked vinegar, another with a leaky mix of ginger and scallion and a third with oily chunks the color and consistency of jerky. I think, maybe, it was shrimp. I checked off the box for 10 assorted meat dumplings on a paper menu left on the tabletop.

The waiter informed me that the dumplings would be some combination of pork and seafood. In a matter of minutes, he returned with a cylindrical
bamboo steamer. After a voosh of escaping vapor, I discovered 10 plump designs, each as vivid as coral blooms. There were pink bows and translucent yellow purses. A rubbery chunk of pork was topped by a dumpling button, which in turn had a sprinkling of orange fish roe. I had no idea what sort of meat was contained inside of each little dumpling.

I glanced at the Chinese business lunchers and wiped-out tourists as they munched away. The inspection score was bad, really bad. But not bad enough to
close the place down. I was hungry, and a system for restaurant improvement relying on simplified public assumptions didn’t have much to say about that. Food is good enough to eat, or it isn’t. And anyway, it all looked sooo good.

By Josh Perilo

In a recent issue of Saveur magazine, the cover story posed the question “what was the greatest meal you ever had” to 25 notable writers and personalities. When I read that query, I immediately started scanning through the volumes of my own amazing food memories, some recent and some from long ago. To avoid being influenced by the responses inside, I ran home and began delving into my foodie past. I knew that there had to be one meal that was some kind of epicure lynchpin.

The task became more complicated than I had expected. What constituted an amazing meal? Was it the food alone? Was it more about the entire experience? Did it have to be at a restaurant, or could it be a home-cooked meal?

My mind immediately raced to the last “amazing” meal I had, which was at a restaurant. The night I proposed to my wife, I took us to La Grenouille (3 E. 52nd St., 212-752-1495), the old-school French bastion of mid-20th-century haute cuisine. I had toiled over the choice of restaurant for months beforehand. This had to be the meal to end all meals. The cuisine was important, but I knew that this night had to be about more than just a plate of good grub. I wanted something classic. I wanted something unique. I wanted something that we could look back upon and feel lucky about experiencing.

That is exactly what we got. The food was satisfyingly indulgent in a way that modern high cuisine just doesn’t get. Instead of blowing the diner’s mind with food combinations that had never been thought of before, the attention was put on the handful of rich, high-quality ingredients that were used to construct plates with serious intensity of flavor. But the food wasn’t the sum total of the experience, as I had hoped it wouldn’t be.

For anyone that has visited La Grenouille, they know that the room itself is reason enough to go. Old-school down to its extremely formal butler service, this is a place that crosses its t’s and dots its i’s when, it seems, few restaurants even know how to write their own name.

While probably the ultimate restaurant experience of my life, I knew there was an even greater meal from much farther back. All the way back, in fact, to a quiet evening at my Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Kansas City in the late ’80s. Every summer each grandchild would spend a week hosted by Grandma and Grandpa Hatfield, and it was like a mini private vacation for us all. Their focus for each grandchild was different, and as soon as they knew I was on my way, Grandma Florence would make a trip to the grocery store.

I received my passion for cooking from Grandma Hatfield, and my week every summer in KC was when I indulged my culinary fantasies. Chocolate cheesecake, chicken gumbo, wiener schnitzel… I experienced all of the great recipes of the world with her. One summer night, however, she had a surprise waiting for me.

“One of grandpa’s friends is a hunter,” she explained, pulling a frosty bag from the freezer, “and he gave us several pheasant that he shot a couple of weeks ago.”

Pheasant. Just the arcane notion of eating the flesh of a bird that wasn’t from the breast of a chicken made me start to salivate.

“I saved them until you came because I knew that you would appreciate them.”

This was a handpicked, specially designed meal, just for me. My grandmother braised the pheasants in sauerkraut, cider and caraway seeds, and served the mixture over white rice. And it remains the single greatest taste I have ever experienced to this day.

And yet, it was so simple. I thought the same thing as I took the first bite of veal kidneys in cognac and mustard sauce at Grenouille. The waiter bent in to ask:

“How is it?”

I paused, then said, “It’s perfect. It’s so simple.”

“Ah yes,” he chuckled, straightening himself back up. “It is like how Gran Mere would make, no?”

Yes. Exactly like how she would make.

The outdoor terrace of Tavern on the Green is going to become home to a number of food vendors starting Oct. 15, according to the Parks Department.

The famed eatery served its final meal at the end of 2009 and the city bandied a couple of suggestions around for the space (including hosting bike rentals there), before settling on renting the place out to food vendors.

Food offerings will include selections from Ladle of Love, Pera Mediterranean Brasserie, Rickshaw Dumpling Truck and Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream.

The city is giving the vendors a one-year contract for the space with an option to renew.

At some point they would like to get a full-time restaurant into the space.

“We’re going to offer a new request for proposals for the space at some point in the future that hasn’t been decided yet,” said Phil Abramson, a Parks Department spokesperson.