Spiga.
(Marvi Lacar for the New York Times)
As I read the many interesting comments that readers of this blog submit, I’m struck time and again by how differently people feel about what constitutes a proper, just balance of power between diners and restaurateurs.
Some readers seem to feel that restaurants bully diners — with dress codes, say, [...]

Taavo Somer, one of the owners of Freeman’s, says that his restaurant is trying to diminish the wait time for a table.
(Photo: Rahav Segev for The New York Times).
August, which I review in today’s paper, belongs to a distinct breed: the relatively cramped, frequently jammed downtown restaurant that generally doesn’t take reservations. Think Freeman’s. Think [...]

We arrive at the Greek restaurant Kellari at 1 p.m., which is the time of our reservation. All four of us are there. The restaurant is more than half empty. We check in with the hostess, expecting that she’ll take us immediately to one of the many lovely tables available in the more attractive, front [...]

Minimalism on the Plate: cocoa caviar and beet-tangerine ravioli at WD-50, left; and Belgian endive “cuit sous vide” at Per Se.
(Photos: left, Joyce Dopkeen/The New York Times; right, Paxton for The New York Times)
“I’d like your opinion,” a reader of this blog wrote to me not long ago, “on the annoying restaurant practice of charging [...]

Ici, in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, is one of the New York restaurants with outdoor dining options.
(Lars Klove for The New York Times)
This past week was the one in which it finally seemed safe to say goodbye to winter. As one warm day yielded to another and another, there no longer seemed to be much of [...]

Enjoying a burger at Shake Shack. But, in the background, the line …
(Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times)
In the wake of the adoration and wild popularity of the Shake Shack (Times review), something else has developed. It’s not quite a backlash, but it’s definitely a sense of frustration over just how difficult the Shack can [...]

Dona, on East 52nd Street.
(Photo: Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times)
Over the last few years, the crudo craze has shaped menus at many Manhattan restaurants, which bow to it in reflexive, and often uninspired, fashions.
At Dona, a new restaurant on the East Side, the chef Michael Psilakis brings real energy and creativity to his [...]

Left: José Andrés sets a quail egg yolk on a mini Caesar salad at one of his restaurants, the Cafe Atlantico in Washington. Right: Mr. Andrés’s new book.
(Photos: Left, Linda Spillers for the New York Times; right, Lars Klove for The New York Times)
I’ll admit it: I cracked the cover of the new book “Tapas: [...]

Café d’Alsace on the Upper East Side.
(Photo: Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times)
In this well-fed and cutthroat city, every new week brings as many as a half dozen new restaurants, and I’m not counting franchises, corner take-out places and lounges with glorified canapes.
Each of these restaurants would like to believe it has selling points [...]

(Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times)
In my time I’ve witnessed acts of unshakeable confidence and dauntless courage, but I’ve witnessed nothing — nothing, I say! — that prepared me for what I saw at the home of my friend and colleague Julia Moskin on a recent night.
There, in the deceptively safe environment of an [...]

Gilt, at the New York Palace Hotel, is one of the few New York restaurants to retain a “jackets required” policy — at least in theory.
(Shannon Greer for The New York Times)
These aren’t exactly dressy times. You can walk into most high-end restaurants in jeans and sneakers. You could probably walk into many of them [...]

Two of the chefs honored by Food & Wine were Jonathan Benno (above left, at the French Laundry in 2002) and David Chang of Momofuku in New York.
(Left, Peter DaSilva for The New York Times; right, Ruby Washington/The New York Times)
In the restaurant world, we don’t have anything that garners the kind of widespread [...]

Just a month and a half ago, when I first ate in the upstairs dining room at Country, my choice for the first of the four courses (including dessert) on an $85 prix fixe menu was seared squid.
If you go to Country this week, that dish is nowhere to be found.
Nor can you find a [...]

A reader recently questioned the prudence of ordering a tasting menu, citing a recent experience of a five-course tasting menu that was just $7 less than the dishes on it would have been if ordered à la carte.
The reader added that the tasting-menu portions were puny and that the a la carte portions would [...]