1/29/2003: A new Below 14th feature, courtesy of alert photog Brad W.: The weekly WD-50 Progress Update. Some may ask, why all the hype? Time Out provided the answer back in September (a more naive, carefree time when WD-50's opening was set for October).


On: 1/28/03 | Status: Lots o' boards. | Outlook: Summer solstice.

1/27/2003: Three OPEN/NOT OPEN updates today. Venue: WD-50. Status: NOT OPEN. Plywood is still covering the front, and a peek inside makes it apparent that there's still weeks to go before the doors open. Venue: Rice to Riches. Status: NOT OPEN. The world's most elaborate rice pudding emporium is still closed, but they've added full-motion flat-panel screens behind the counter to serve as menus, plus a giant photograph of rice in hyperspace (yes, rice in hyperspace) by the door. You can't make this stuff up. Venue: Tenement. Status: OPEN*. Why the asterisk? We've learned Tenement's dirty little secret, and now we understand why the place is deserted at 10pm on a Friday: No liquor license. Ooof.

1/24/2003: Reliable correspondent Brad W. emails: "Can I officially launch the Mooza eulogies? My date and I arrive without a reservation, but it's a Tuesday in July, so no big deal. We approach the hostess about a table for two. She seems befuddled, so she gets a manager. The manager tells us 'five minutes' and invites us to the bar. Fifteen minutes later, while reviewing the array of obviously empty tables, I ask the manager how things are going. 'You're the party of twenty, right?' 'No, I'm the party of two from 20 minutes ago.' 'Oh, give me five minutes.' Another fifteen minutes goes by, so we leave. The party of twenty hadn't been seated at that point either. Mooza, we'll miss you!!! But as Homer Simpson pointed out, trying is the first step towards failure." And this was a good day at Mooza.

1/24/2003: Fresh news still backlogged, but first a few follow-ups. Gawker linked to our Paul's Boutique post, which makes us realize we need to be more exact with our command of the language. It's the decor, not the cuisine, that's Jewel Bako meets Butter. (The menu when it was R99 was best described as "really good hangover food"; here's hoping for more of the same.) Coincidentally, this morning we received an email from Allen, the owner's brother. "I was looking for information on my brothers new restaurant Paul's Boutique. I am in Texas and have not seen pictures yet of the finished product. I went down for twelve days and helped my brother with renovations. He is the new owner and closed for renovations shortly after purchasing it. His name is Jack. Go in and say hello if you get a chance." Jack, welcome to the LES!

1/23/2003: We're not the type to bask in schadenfreude (well, actually... ), but we'd reserved a special side of it this morning to trumpet the demise of Orchard Street eatery Mooza (Orchard @ Houston/Stanton). [We're also not the type to say told-you-so (well, actually... ), but we called this one a few months back.] Mooza, blessed with the best back garden in the whole LES if not all downtown Manhattan, suffered from that winning combination of freakish service combined with nearly inedible food at prices above what you'd pay at, say, AKA Cafe or Paladar -- places where you can actually digest your meal. So such sweet joy to find Mooza gone, replaced with a joint called Cafe Lika. But upon further investigation... O wretched life! Lika trumpets the fact that it's part of the Yaffa/Simone Cafe Axis of Evil, but as an article from the Gotham Gazette points out, Mooza was owned by the very same people. And so, alas, the apparent death of Mooza turns out to be nothing more than callous rebranding. Let the second deathwatch commence!

1/22/2003: Lots of neighborhood news to catch up on this week. Let's start closest to home (well, my home)... Tiny brunch haven Rivington 99 (Rivington @ Ludlow), closed for the last month for renovations, has remade itself rather dramatically. Think Jewel Bako meets Butter, all in a 20x20 space. The menu appears blessedly unchanged, but they've gone and tarted up the name. In honor of the Beastie Boys album of the same name (cover art for which was shot on this very corner), it's now known as Paul's Boutique.

1/21/2003: Stepping afield of downtown Manhattan for a moment... God smiled on us and somehow we found ourselves ensconsed at the French Laundry in Napa Valley for lunch on Sunday. We're not sure what we did in a previous life to merit a special 14-course tasting menu (we'll deal with it our next time in the Bardo). Meantime: Digestion.

1/15/2003: After attending an amusing performance of Adult Entertainment last night, we headed across the village to Otto (8th St. @ 5th Ave.) at SA's ahead-of-the-curve urging. The buzz on this place is huge: a new thin-crust pizza joint from Babbo's Mario Batali, but at 10:15pm we cruised in and were seated immediately. The food is great, and a full meal with wine ran us just $60 (Petrosino, poke your eyes out). Highlight was the most unapolagetic dish I've ever seen served in a Manhattan restaurant, a true icon for these Atkins Diet times. It's a pizza called the 'Otto Lardo,' and it's basically a thin crust topped only with pig fat. Unbelievably good. Might even use the word addictive. Memo to Below 14th readers: do not, I repeat do not, tell Pizza Hut about this.

1/7/2003: We promised to try Dish (Allen @ Stanton/Rivington), but alert reader Francesco V. beat us to it. "I ate there last night, in an almost empty restaurant... Make that an empty and freezing cold restaurant. We had to retreat from a table at the front of the house, simply for want of warmth, and several other diners followed us back. But no warmth was forthcoming -- no heat radiated from the kitchen at all and even the atmosphere lacks warmth. The food managed only 'lukewarm', in every sense of the word." Sounds great! We're more excited than ever to give it a go!

1/6/2003: As 2003 dawns, the big question remains, What's the deal with Rice to Riches? By this point, we know the new Spring Street establishment is a rice pudding emporium. Now we need a Fortune article to analyze the amount of money the owners continue to pour into interior design versus what one imagines must be a competing impetus to open the fucking restaurant. There was a period last month where, on my daily jaunt to and from the 6 train, I realized they had installed, then removed, a curved "Rice Pudding" sign (under the gigantic Rice to Riches sculpted arch) twice in one week. Now they're hard at work adding hints of orange to rounded interior surfaces. Okay, it's attractive, but this had better be the best rice pudding ever to warrant this insanity.

1/2/2003: For archival purposes: The 2002 LS.com LES Awards, featuring food and drink references and other tidbits of Lower East Side goodness, were announced a few days back in the main blog. Read Part I (Food & Drink), Part II (Neighborhood, Miscellany and The Future), and the reader response.