Odds and Ends Notebook

February 05, 2003 Odds and Ends... New LES resident and faithful scribe Margit, the managing editor of AOL Digital City New York, emails us this tip from this week's NYMag Intelligencer: "Rumor has it that Keith McNally, of Pastis and Balthazar, will open a German Jewish restaurant, tentatively named Schneider’s, on Rivington Street this summer." Wow. No word on location, though maybe this is what's going on under all that plywood on the corner of Rivington and Norfolk... The Manhattan User's Guide finally hits the web [via gawker]. Dare we pray that it will become "Daily Candy with a brain"? Here's hoping, even if the recent review of The Tasting Room (1st St. @ 1st Ave.) makes the absurd claim that "to eat at the Tasting Room is to enjoy the work of the most underexposed, underrated chef in town." (Recall that the Tasting Room prompted one of William Grimes' funniest reviews ever: "It would be a lot easier to like the Tasting Room if I did not feel that I had to love it.")... We'd be remiss not to link one more NY Mag article about a party at grimy hangar Idlewild (Houston @ Eldridge) which, the promoter is quick to point out, "is not an orgy."