9/26/2002: One of the joys of keeping a car in the city now is circling blocks on the LES looking for parking. That's how I noticed the airy new joint on the corner of Norfolk and Houston last week. Didn't know its name until EMA invited me to dinner there last night and I found out that it's called Petrosino. First impressions overwhelmingly positive. Great concrete aesthetic at the bar and a wonderful casual Italian menu. Loved the food (seafood orichetti, yum) but the bill was waaaay too high for service that was very uneven. We fared better than friends two tables over who had the wrong main course brought not once but twice. Yikes... Caught the always-excellent Dare Diablo at Merc Lounge after dinner. Rockin'.

9/18/2002: New restaurants continue to sprout on the Lower East Side. A few nights ago a little group of ours made it to Apizz, the strangely named new joint on Eldridge that, alas, has already been played up by the execrable Daily Candy. It's a gorgeous spot on a block otherwise overrun with housing projects. A massive brick oven takes up about a third of the total floor space (everything, it seems, is cooked in it). Alas, the food is not yet up to par. From-the-oven pizzas are plain and the spinach lasagna was drab. We'll give it another go in a month or two, as the spot is too beautiful not to mature.

9/12/2002: On Sept. 11 '01, I ate a quiet meal with good friends in the back garden at Gnocco, an East Village Italian restaurant on 10th Street that always manages to taste a little better than the unambitious menu suggests. Arriving back in NYC this past Sunday from a summer away, I had a similar culinary experience at Trattoria Paolina, a new Ave. B Tuscan restaurant from the folks behind the West Village's Piadina. Paolina's dull menu produced delicious food that suited the beautiful corner space they've carved out. Walking home, I mentally recorded a quick update on the Lower Ave. B dining scene: Casimir is still hopping; Belmondo is absolutely comatose; and Pierrot appears to have added live jazz on Sunday nights. Also blissfully noted was new techno-salon TKNY, which earned its own article in today's Times.

9/9/2002: I'm back in NYC, so Below 14th resumes... now! (Well, okay: sometime this week.)