The catalog-like interior at ABC Cocina.

I arrived in New York City at the turn of the century, and I’ve been writing professionally—or at least for pay—ever since. In the decade-plus that I’ve been fortunate enough to make a living as a writer, I’ve seen scores of publications fold up like origami cranes and fly away. Some vanish in the night (the dad model). Others peter out (the old-soldier model). Weeklies go quarterly; dailies go away.

In the gloaming, the siren of commerce often calls, and I’ve watched colleagues flee from journalism to put their skills to use for brands, gradually at first, but in a rush these last few years. Where once there was Radar, now there’s Ralph Lauren Magazine or the J.Crew Tumblr. Where once there was Nylon, now there’s the online magazine for Aritzia. There was once news. Now there’s Nowness. There were once newsletters. Now there are catalogs. It’s capitalism’s gain but journalism’s loss.

This tectonic shift seems particularly salient right about now. This is the first review I’ve written since news came down that the Village Voice, which has made a habit of ritual staffing seppuku, fired its longtime restaurant critic Robert Sietsema, and that Tejal Rao, another award-winning restaurant critic at the paper, had quit. Their unceremoniously burnt ends and uncertain futures—Eater.com had not yet announced that Mr. Sietsema would join its staff—weighed heavily as I visited ABC Cocina, the newest outpost of Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s global restaurant empire.

The restaurant, which opened a few weeks ago, looks lifted from a high-end interior design catalog. The space is dark and cavernous, warm and inviting, with a professional beauty.

Hot pink Thonet chairs, pushed under vintage Parisian tables, offer pops of color. Sofa benches made from septuagenarian Anatolian grain sacks form the banquette. Seashells and glass-studded wasp combs are embedded into the concrete walls. Paulette Cole, the CEO of ABC Carpet & Home, describes it as “feminine.” (I would say it is feminine only in the way all warm caves are feminine; it’s what I imagine the inside of L’Origine du Monde looks like on a particularly groovy night.)

Both ABC Kitchen and ABC Cocina are housed in and partially owned by ABC Carpet & Home, a home furnishings company founded in 1897. Nearly everything in the restaurant is for sale, from the chairs ($195) to the sofa bench ($8,995) to the wasp combs ($450-$750). So if it looks like a catalog, it’s because it is one.

Does it matter that ABC Cocina, a restaurant, is an advertisement for ABC Carpet & Home, a home furnishings store, or that its food and ambiance are Absolutely Branded Content? That depends on what’s really being sold.

On the most superficial level, ABC Cocina is simply a tremendously inventive and subtle pan-Latin-inspired farm-to-table restaurant. None of the chefs’ surnames end in vowels—though Ian Coogan, the chef de cuisine, is half-Mexican—but it feels authentic.

Dan Kluger, the polar-bear genius behind ABC Kitchen, and Mr. Vongerichten, the French genie who floats above him like a disembodied Gaussian blur, aren’t aping a taqueria or
paella-frontin’. Instead, they gingerly graft the rigorous sourcing and ingredient-driven philosophy of ABC Kitchen with the pantries of Latin America.

The menu is large but simple, carefully but not overly wrought. It draws inspiration from what looks like the route plan for Iberia airlines: lots of Mexico, some Chile, a ton from Spain and a dose of Nueva York. There are six sections. Three with ampersands—they sound like Sherwin Williams paints: “Light & Bright,” “Gold & Crispy” and “Masa & Tortillas”—and three without: “table snacks,” “wood burning grill” and a sleeper section called simply “rice.” There are over 40 items in sum. I couldn’t try everything, but everything I did try was excellent, full of both expected pleasure and the pleasure of the unexpected.

The guacamole ($11) is doted upon and, in a way pools aren’t, made exponentially better with the addition of some pea. One part tristate peas to two parts avocados, studded with jalapeño and spring onion, topped with toasted sunflower seeds and fresh spring peas, the guacamole is hot and fresh and surprising.

That equipoise between heat and balm is the signature of ABC Cocina. It’s to be found in everything, from a small dish of warm marinated olives ($7), wherein a chili-cumin marinade heats and a
poblano-pistachio-mint pesto cools, to the fluke, served raw, cured in kombu sliced thin, drizzled with a chili ferment and then salved with mint zest.

The dipping sauce that accompanies a pair of pretty spring-pea empanadas ($6) does both at once. It’s made of fermented jalapeño yogurt and is a little painful and soothing in one bite, like in that Crystals song, “He dipped me and it felt like a kiss.”

For every delicately balanced Jenga tower of flavor, there are aggressive go-ahead dishes for those left cold by subtlety. The maitake mushroom combines a woodsy meatiness, thanks to a mythopoeic sojourn in the wood-burning
grill, and a tempering creaminess, thanks to a glop of cheese from a herd of Connecticut show goats, that even the most torpid can appreciate. Gooey spicy ham and cheese fritters ($10), tiny fried disco balls, are the Studio 54 of tapas, but much more welcoming.

Like a Diego Rivera mural, all the tacos are painted in broad strokes and bright colors. But to the suitably attuned, there’s subtlety to be found. The savory glazed short-rib tacos ($14) are a case in point. A hot pink dash of pickled onions, which incidentally match the Thonet chair, set off an interplay among the sweet char, the corn masa and the epic crunch of a frizzled onion. “A taco is just a vehicle,” Mr. Vongerichten told me, “for flavor.”

He spoke to me from Shanghai, where he was visiting Mercato, his Italian restaurant on the Bund, and his chef there, Sandy Yoon, a French-trained Korean-American woman. None of that is incidental.

One of the things that make ABC Cocina successful is how Mr. Vongerichten uses globetrotting empire-building to gleefully cross-fertilize. He’s like a bee in a global meadow. “I came to Shanghai with 30 recipes to teach my chefs,” he said, “I expect them to present me with 20 I can bring home.”

That cross-cultural body of knowledge is on most brilliant display at ABC Cocina in Mr. Vongerichten’s deft handling of heat and his mastery of chili, both skills he picked up in Asia. “There are many of the same flavors in Asian and Latin flavors,” he said.

Without being preachy about it, Mr. Vongerichten uses global knowledge, local ingredients and great skill to make the case that all three are necessary for greatness.

That’s essentially the same argument ABC Carpet and Home makes. Since 2003, when Ms. Cole became CEO, it has used sustainable practices, ethical sourcing and an active philanthropic arm to argue that the relationship between business and politics need not be deleterious. “At ABC,” said Ms. Cole, “we want to show doing business in a socially conscious way is not only positive for humanity but profitable too.” So, you know, that’s good.

But along the way, the ABCs—for the kitchen and cocina are just an embodiment of the carpet and home—make an even more stirring and, to me, hopeful argument: not all catalogs are liars, not all brands bullies or showrooms false. This goes back to the fates of Mr. Sietsema and Ms. Rao, and to the scores of huddled editorial refugees welcomed into the arms of the great corporate colossus. Perhaps—not certainly, but certainly maybe—the transformations of writers and editors (and chefs and restaurateurs) to company men isn’t a zero-sum game. Maybe we can all win.

That’s a tough sell for a leftie like me, but at ABC Cocina, where the farm’s for sale, the table’s for sale and the sofa’s for sale, I’m buying it all.

Elizabeth Olsen, home gourmand

While it’s not particularly our forte, The Observer fasted on Monday. Mostly fasted, rather. It was a religious holiday of sorts, indeed more of a pilgrimage, for which we practiced the ancient art of self-denial. Relais & Chateaux’s Dîner des Grands Chefs was our evening’s sacrosanct destination, and we intended to arrive with a pilgrim-pure palate.

As we approached Gotham Hall’s regal colonnade, we were beginning to feel slightly faint. Swaying ever so slightly in our heels, we dashed upstairs, past the congested red carpet, for some sustenance, which, before we could object, came in the form of a flute of 1999 Cuvée Louise Pommery Champagne. We weren’t alone in our pre-sunset indulgence: after a lap around the room, we noticed 25 empty bottles of bubbly neatly (and proudly) displayed at the bar. But a few minutes later, the tally was trente-cinq. At that point, we stopped counting.
The room, a balcony above the former bank-floor at Gotham Hall, had a decidedly Parisian scent: tobacco, liberally, if not effectively, doused in floral perfume. It was heavenly.

As we walked around the space, an ever-so-slightly misplaced spotlight blinded us momentarily. Lost, sightless in this cocktail Zion! As our optic nerve relaxed, little shadows remained on our retina. Were we swimming in a black-tie vat of vintage Champagne? No, sadly not. We promptly accepted a beet-and-goat-cheese canapé to re-moor.

Among the bilingual crowd, Michael and Elyse Newhouse, Greta Gerwig, Debbie Bancroft, chef Daniel Boulud (in his double-breasted chef’s jacket) and various francophilic foodies congregated around the various bars.

We spotted model Coco Rocha from across the room, standing, statuesque, with her husband, James Conran. “I do!” Ms. Rocha exclaimed when we asked who reigned over the kitchen in their household. “I clean,” Mr. Conran admitted. “We just moved into a new house, and she’s like deathly afraid of turning the oven on. She would sacrifice me to the flame. I think she has a good life insurance policy on me,” he joked, with manifest adoration and a knowing nod in his wife’s direction. “The first thing I ever made was broiled salmon,” Ms. Rocha divulged, but admitted a deep-seated love of pierogis.

Elizabeth Olsen soon appeared wearing a floor-length dress in authoritative red. “It’s Valentino. They were really nice and let me borrow a dress for the night,” she said. The efflorescing actress confessed that she was a natural in the kitchen. “I love cooking. I’ve never taken classes,” she told The Observer. “I always make my own recipes, I never follow recipes. I’m literally collecting all the different tools in my kitchen: for every Christmas and every birthday I get a new tool, and it’s really exciting and satisfying.”

Her most recent additions? “I just got the two things I was really looking for, which was a mandolin and one of those blenders that also heats up and makes soup at the same time.”

An omnivore, Ms. Olsen professed her gastro creed. “I just think everyone needs to do everything in moderation and try a little bit of everything.” She gestured to a friend who had accompanied her for the evening. “She doesn’t eat pork because she thinks pigs are too cute.” To be sure, her friend was flush with porcine fondness. “I really want a teacup piggy. Like a 20-pounder,” she declared.

Following the already tottering crowd downstairs, The Observer felt we had been transported to some féerique woodland bower. Each table was garnished with a towering cherry blossom centerpiece, vines and ivy crawling throughout. Encircling the tables, 45 master chefs were already hard at work, preparing 15 individual menus for the eager group.

Just as we were finding our seat, we noticed Gillian Miniter at a neighboring table. Watching the chefs execute their craft, we asked Ms. Miniter if she was a capable cook herself. “You know, I have to be honest, I have not cooked in a long time, and I’ll tell you why,” she began. “I used to be a cook and I used to be into cooking, but I’m married to a man who’s not interested. So I would prepare a meal, and he would say, ‘Yeah, it was O.K., I’d rather go out.’ So, guess what, I make him a cup of tea like once a month, and it’s a big deal!” Our kind of cuisinier!

The theme of the meal was Springtime in New York, and The Observer could verily taste the seasonal motif throughout. After more champagne (bien sûr!) a lobster agrodolce was served, followed by pan-seared Maine scallops.

During a brief lull in the gastronomic action (sauciers were saucing, seafood was sautéing, and Champagne flutes were, as ever, chiming), we spoke with master chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten. We were curious to know M. Vongerichten’s thoughts on foraging, a new gastro trend in which chefs gather their ingredients from the wild. “I love it!” he said of the movement. “I was tweeting about it this weekend,” he added, producing his cellphone from the folds of his chef’s coat to show us photos of the various flora he had collected. We tried to picture the towering god of gastronomy, back stooped, picking through shrubbery, but our imagination failed.

As we found our seat, veal filet with bitter caramel and endive tatin were being served. The evening was topped off with a selection of fine American cheese, chocolate mousse and a glass of Porto Rozès from 1947.
Profoundly satiated, The Observer finished our last heavenly glass of Champagne (the port lacked that divine pneumatic sparkle) and bid au revoir to our tablemates. Turning around just before we left the space, we couldn’t help but smile as waiters returned to fill the flutes of guests requiring one final dram of the golden draught.

This, and nothing else, is love, we thought as we walked out into the balmy night.

Most New Yorkers have never been to Rao's--the wait for a reservation can be longer than most Manhattan marriages--so the fact that a group of Las Vegas residents were invited to patronize the storied establishment without any reservation at all was cause for alarm, or at least an explanation. On Monday evening, March 1, Bon Appétit magazine corralled a singular pairing of homegrown New York media types and imported haute cuisine chefs from Las Vegas at Rao's to celebrate Vegas Uncork'd by Bon Appétit, the annual food and wine festival held in the Nevada hub the first weekend in May.

Jean Georges Vongerichten arrived early, smiley in a black pull-over, but could only stay from 6:30-6:45pm as Donald Trump was coming to dine at Mr. Vongerichten's Columbus Circle restaurant in the Trump International Tower--dueling namesakes leaves no time for Rao's.

Other celeb chefs included Francois Payard and Jet Tila, a top chef at Wynn Resorts who explained the difficulties of making Steve Wynn's personal sushi now that Mr. Wynn has gone vegan.

Rafish Adam Rapoport, newly minted editor of the host magazine, moved his eyes towards the ceiling pensively before answering what his last meal would be. "Well, I would make my last meal, because I'm a control freak. But the question is, would I go the mom route, like mom's meatloaf and mashed potatoes or something else?"

He wore dark-washed Levi's and a trimly tailored dark blazer.

"And then the bigger question is, who would it be with? Do I know it's the last meal?"

Unlike Alex Trebek, Mr. Rapoport was giving questions rather than answers.

Finally, he sat down at the red leather booth and taking a fork full of Rao's Cheesecake perfected his answer.

"I would get an aged rib-eye from the Florence Meat Market and I would cook it medium rare over really hot charcoal--no gas. Then I would have it sliced over arugula with lemon and olive oil and on the side I would make some roasted Yukon Gold potatoes, but peeled so they're crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. I would have two vodka sodas while I'm grilling and then a good Burgundy, maybe a Nuits-Saint-Georges."

He leaned back and sighed with satisfaction.

Dessert?

"Oh. I'm not really a big dessert guy. Maybe a biscotti?"

-cmalle@observer.com

"Ray's is right down the block!"

On Wednesday, April 8, the influential Times critic awarded Mr. Lahey's stylish new eatery, backed by the formidable food-industry duo of Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Phil Suarez, just a single star.

Mr. Bruni had raved about Mr. Lahey's prowess with his pizza crusts but ultimately complained that "he hasn't yet nailed the toppings."

Mr. Lahey, whose menu notably bares no mention of pepperoni, felt the critic missed the point: "The driving force was to change this genre of food-making so it's not falling into the same stupid clichés, like, the thick crust on the edge and lots of tomato sauce and cheese.

"If you want your cheese and sauce, you can get it [at Ray's]," he said. "They'll actually put extra shit on for ya!"

The gregarious baker, who also operates the popular Sullivan Street Bakery at 533 West 47th Street, spent the subsequent afternoon trying to keep his troops focused despite the lackluster mark.

"You want to get two," Mr. Lahey said of The Times' hallowed ratings system of zero to four stars. "10 Downing got two. I've been to 10 Downing. It's dogshit!"

Mr. Lahey, 42, has always had a way with words.

When the Daily Transom ran into him at a culinary event last spring, he and Mitchell Davis, vice president of the esteemed James Beard Foundation, had attendees in a titter with their back-and-forth banter about the dubious term "master baker."

"I have nothing against masturbating," the quick-witted Mr. Lahey had said at the time, "but master-baking? Master-baking is something you do by yourself."

A leading proponent of the rather effortless, knead-less method of baking, Mr. Lahey is one of several high-profile restaurateurs now attempting to, um, elevate pizza-making in New York City.

Filmmaker Bob Giraldi recently opened a fancy pizzeria called Tonda in the East Village and brasserie bigwig Keith McNally will be opening another next year at the corner of Houston and Bowery.

"It's the new food fad," Mr. Lahey said of the renewed interest in the Italian staple.

The lunch crowd was still bustling at Co. when the Daily Transom popped in for a bite around 2 p.m. on the day of the Times review.

Mr. Lahey walked in about a half-hour later, dressed in jeans, a black shirt and a brown winter cap covering his shiny bald head.

It had been quite an eventful week already for the loquacious chef.

Two days earlier, his wife gave birth to a beautiful, 8-pound, 6-ounce baby girl named Anjali. "I'm in love," the proud papa said, flipping through photos of the child on his iPhone.

The good-humored Mr. Lahey added that he had taken some "really gross birth pictures," which he intended to someday use to scare off his daughter's future boyfriends.

"My brothers made a joke at my expense, saying, 'How are you going to deal with your daughter when she comes home at 15 years old with a boyfriend three years older than you?'" Mr. Lahey told the Daily Transom. "And without a beat, I said, 'Well, I'll probably start doing some of her girlfriends!'"

He added, "Woody Allen can do it."

The conversation inevitably turned to the day's disappointing review.

Mr. Lahey said he was surprised that his tiny, laid-back pizzeria even warranted a full-on critique, especially one so soon.

"We've been open only 90 days," he said. "We have not had a chance to even breathe in 90 days. What the fuck are we being reviewed by The New York Times for, you know, 90 days into being open? It makes no sense.

"If I knew we were going to be under the microscope, I would have possibly treated the opening of the restaurant a lot differently," he continued. "I didn't open this restaurant to get reviewed by The Times. Otherwise, I would have made the food a lot differently. I would have bought really nice plates and beautiful stemware. And we would have done slightly less informal service, know what I mean?"

Mr. Lahey was nonetheless heartened by a much more flattering review, published two days earlier, by The New Yorker's Lila Byock.

"That to me is worth more than The Times," he said. "This means if I do a book deal—a second book deal—I'm at least at $700,000 now, because that's all they care about: 'Were you in The New Yorker?' Gabrielle Hamilton got an $800,000 advance on a book just because she was in The New Yorker."

Ms. Byock "gets it," he said. Mr. Bruni? Not so much.

Even some of The Times' positive comments irked the chef.

"The pizza bianca, I think, sucks," Mr. Lahey said of his own highly touted appetizer, which Mr. Bruni loved. "I think it's dogshit! I don't think it's a good product. And he praised it to the high heavens! That's one of the products I desperately need to upgrade and work on because it's not where I want it to be.

"But," he added, "I just had a baby this week, so I have to stay focused on that. The business won't burn in a week. Not with all this buzz."

e

Macaulay Culkin's older sister Dakota died on Wednesday after being struck by a car in Los Angeles. [Us Weekly]

Some very attentive Gwyneth Paltrow fans believe the actress may have recently gotten breast implants. [P6]

An ex-American Idol producer is denying Paula Abdul's claims that her stalker, Paula Godspeed, was purposely cast on the show to create conflict. Ms. Godspeed committed suicide outside of Ms. Abdul's home last month. [People]

Jean-Georges Vongerichten will take over the Greenwich Hotel's troubled Ago restaurant. [Eater]

Gossip Girl's Penn Badgley said that Jessica Stroup and Shenae Grime of rival high school soap opera Beverly Hills 90210 should "eat a double cheeseburger or something" and praised his female co-stars for not being "bone-thin." [US Weekly] 

Reportedly, a first-class passenger on a flight with Ivana Trump offered to switch seats with the socialite after she was given a coach seat due a flight change. Her rep insists that this had nothing to do with her pouting or complaints about nearby children, but because the concerned stewardess, "asked someone to switch because Ivana always travels in first class." [P6]

Anti-Scientology protesters picketed Katie Holmes's Broadway debut last night. [US Weekly] 

Former drunk-dialer and recent crazy-emailer Pat O'Brien was fired from The Insider. [NYDN, first item] 

Jean-Georges Vongerichten will shell out $1.75 million to waiters at his restaurants who claimed that managers were stealing their tips. [Grub Street] 

When my son was a boy, he loved to watch the noodle man at Honmura An, the only authentic soba restaurant in the city. The noodle man worked in a glass booth in the dining room, where he’d pummel the dough, toss it in the air and roll it out, never once making a hole. Then, using an enormous carving knife, he’d slice the dough into perfect, foot-long strands that he hung up to dry.

Honmura An closed last year, leaving its fans bereft. But now soba cuisine has returned with Matsugen, Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s new Japanese restaurant in Tribeca. Alas, there is no noodle man on display here. He is hidden backstage, where a special mill has been installed to grind the buckwheat kernels into flour for the dough made daily. If it’s not fresh, it’s not soba.

Mr. Vongerichten opened Matsugen in partnership with the Matsushita brothers, Taka, Masa and Yoshi, who have branches of the restaurant in Tokyo and Honolulu. For once, he is not doing any cooking (his sole contribution to the menu is his molten chocolate cake, the most imitated dessert in town—if not the world—which gets a Japanese accent from a dollop of green-tea ice cream). Yoshi runs the kitchen, while his brother Taka and, on all of my visits, Mr. Vongerichten himself greet customers in the front of the house, which is run by the latter’s staff.

LIKW HONMURA AN, Matsugen has a pared-down Japanese aesthetic, both in the food and the design. It’s not a blockbuster show with a dripping ice Buddha, like Megu down the block. The stark white Richard Meier décor of the premises that used to be 66 is now gray, and the smaller rooms, which have bare wood tables, frosted paneling and stainless steel wire mesh walls, are minimal bordering on grim. Up front there is a sleek lounge area with a sunken sushi bar and an appetizer bar. The jolly communal table from 66 has been retained, along with the four tanks of tropical fish that provide theater in the rear dining room and separate it from the kitchen.

Although this is a downtown restaurant, Matsugen’s clientele—among them many Japanese—is a cross-section of hipsters, older couples, businessmen and families with kids (including a small boy equipped for an evening of social intercourse with both a computer game and earphones). Across the way one night, a corpulent figure out of a drawing by George Grosz sat back in anticipation as a waiter set down an array of metal equipment for the most expensive dish on the menu: shabu shabu with wagyu rib eye (at $160, beyond my budget). I hope he didn’t overcook it.

Matsugen’s enormous menu covers all the bases, from sushi and tempura to more than a dozen appetizers, soups, grilled meat and salads. There are rice dishes cooked in an earthenware pot, one of which, made with sweet, delicate crabmeat and Japanese mushrooms, provoked sighs of rapture at my table. There’s even a version of the ubiquitous black cod with miso, a thick, buttery wedge cut in three browned chunks, and deliciously fatty grilled pork belly, served on a black lava rock from Mount Fuji.

Skip the boring prawn tempura, which is not worth $22. (I know, the prawns are huge, flown in from Japan and all that, but they were overcooked and no better than I’ve had in dozens of other restaurants.) Instead, order the shrimp cake: four juicy wedges variously topped with a piece of green pepper or a mushroom under a jellied glaze, displayed like jewels in a box. The lobster salad, a dish I ordinarily would not order in a Japanese restaurant, was outstanding, not just because of the pristine ingredients, but for the light, citrusy carrot dressing that comes on the side. It’s nothing like the cloying versions you find in other places.

But there is one dish you must not miss at Matsugen: uni with yuzu jelly. I’ve never tasted anything like it. The sea urchin roe is spread out in a glistening line in what looks like a miniature wooden boat. Because it comes from Japan—not California, as in most Japanese restaurants here—the uni has a pronounced funky taste redolent of the sea, the yuzu adding a subtle note of citrus. Uni also comes on scallops topped with caviar, and even on soba noodles.

SOBA, our waiter explained, traditionally winds up the meal (before dessert, of course). There are three kinds of noodle, the lightest of which is like angel hair. Seiro noodles, smooth and of medium husk, are served cold in a house special with a mind-boggling array of stuff—scallions, bonito, yam, sesame, okra, wasabi, cucumber, shiso and nori—topped with a raw egg yolk you swirl in with your chopsticks. It was a thrillingly complex bombardment of tastes, but so rich we couldn’t finish it (perhaps because we’d kicked off dinner with that jellied uni). Hot seiro soba with duck and scallions was also terrific, with a rich earthy broth. Afterward you are brought a teapot of the liquid the noodles were cooked in—very nourishing, I’m told, but an acquired taste.

Desserts include a popular Japanese specialty new to me, warabi mochi. It’s made of bracken (a type of fern) and arrives in a wedge that looks as though it has been dug up from an Irish bog. It was strange, but I quite liked its nutty taste. My favorite, though, is made of red beads of grapefruit combined with yuzu jelly and served in wedges of grapefruit skin, the way you get pieces of orange after dinner in Chinese restaurants.

Depending on what you order, you can have a stellar meal at Matsugen or an ordinary one, an expensive or a reasonable one. (But the prices do tend to add up.) On each visit, however, I discovered not only a new dish, but one I’d go back for.

That’s the excitement of this restaurant. It’s uncompromising, delivering an authentic experience of Japanese cuisine. And if you want to take it out for a test drive before committing, try the goma dare, a coarse-grained inaka soba served cold with sesame sauce. At $14 it’s one of the cheapest dishes on the menu, and it’s Mr. Vongerichten’s favorite.

mhodgson@observer.com

"Having run away to Istanbul to try and start enjoying life it's funny how NYC comes with you," he writes to The Daily Transom. And:

The New York Times is reporting that Scarlett Johansson recenlty dropped $1.95 million on a Leonard Street condo.

Built in 1901, this former textile building was converted to condos and brought in some notable tenants; including, Jean-Georges Vongerichten. Ms. Johansson's duplex loft includes 22-foot ceilings, Tuscan walls, Brazilian cherry wood floors, and double-height windows.

Corcoran brokers Daren Herzberg and Julie Pham had the listing.

- Michael Calderone