Dinosaur Barbecue Opens Tonight at 5pm

We've been anticipating Dinosaur Barbecue opening since January last year and have kept a close eye ever since. We wait no longer. Tonight at 5pm Brooklyn's Dinosaur Barbecue opens to the public. The restaurant was in soft opening mode over the weekend with friends and family Thursday - Saturday and a VIP event last night. Stage's Upstate 'cue was served for each occasion and we had the good fortune of attending. Here's a look at the space and some of the 'cue.

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Kajitsu Takes Two

[ed lefkowicz for the nytimes] chilled eggplant at kajitsuMasato Nishihara worked at Kajitsu's East Village location for three years. He moved on somewhat recently, Ryota Ueshima took his place, and the restaurant relocated to Murray Hill. The vegetarian multicourse tradition (called kaiseki) remains, it just happens in a softer, more inviting setting. "The new place shimmers," Pete Wells writes in his review of Kajitsu this week.

Kajitsu is structured around shojin ryori, a seasonally-driven form of cooking that traces back to 13th Century Buddhist monks. Because of the Zen Buddhist belief that it is wrong to kill animals, fish included, shojin ryori is a completely vegetarian form of cooking. That aside, the ideals that drive shojin ryori are not unlike those found in the New Nordic movement, one that's given us restaurants like Aska, Acme, and Atera. At the root of each culinary practice is a strict adherence to local, seasonal ingredients.

"To express wonder that Kajitsu’s chef, Ryota Ueshima, can fashion a delicious multicourse meal out of nothing but plants and mushrooms," writes Wells, "is like being astonished when a French baker makes dessert from flour, butter, sugar and eggs."

"You could design a calendar simply by eating at Kajitsu every four weeks and taking pictures," the critic writes, then reveals the fact that Ueshima changes the menu on the first of every month. "Anticipating the season and showing off local ingredients are both old kaiseki traditions," he continues, "but I found that the things I enjoyed least at Kajitsu were Western vegetables that had not come into their own yet." These few missteps aside, Wells enjoys his meals at Kajitsu and awards the restaurant two stars. [NYTimes]

Show Me a Sign: Estela, Open to the Public Tomorrow Night

Thomas Carter ran the wine program at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. Ignacio Mattos has worked in kitchens all over the world with stateside stints at Chez Panisse, Il Buco, and, most recently, Isa. Though his time at Isa was cut short when Taavo Somer, the restaurant's owner, dismissed mattos just over a year ago to date (June 11th, 2012).

Mattos spent the past year out of restaurant kitchens, but the opening of Estela tonight in the former Nolita House space marks his return. At Estela, Carter and Mattos aim to fill a void where good wine and good food are enjoyed in a casual atmosphere - without, as Carter mentioned in an interview with Eater, "a lot of the other bullshit."

Expect small, tapas-inspired plates. Mattos tells Eater, "These should just be plates of food, nurturing and relatively cheap, that remind you of the home-cooked meals you never experience anymore." Carter has built the wine program around unique, estate driven wines and will sell them following what we call the Downtown Approach, where casual service and fair prices replace the suits and high markups synonomous with the uptown experience.

Estela opens tonight, but is closed to the public for a private event. The restaurant will open at 6pm every night (closed Mondays) and close at 11pm during the week and midnight on weekends. The bar will be open until 1am.

47 East Houston Street | 212-219-7693 | www | map

Eat the Week; June 10th - June 14th

Lunch at Carl's Steaks in Yankee Stadium | Pete Wells awards two stars to Montmartre and calls it the most improved restaurant of the year | Signage goes up at ZZ's Clam Bar, Team Torrisi's latest | Donde Dinner? - 144 East Broadway

Donde Dinner? - 144 East Broadway

Donde Dinner? wants to make your next dining experience an adventure. So, every Friday, we pick a restaurant and post its address for you. The catch is, that's all the information you get. No name, no type of cuisine, and no Googling. But first, here's last week's address:

1 Fifth Avenue = Otto

This week's restaurant follows typical Donde Dinner? fashion. Price, quality, and accessibility have all been taken into account. You won't be waiting at the bar for two hours with $15 cocktails and you never have to worry about a dress code. Just hop on the train, or your feet, or your bike, and head to:

144 East Broadway (map)

Show Me a Sign: ZZ's Clam Bar

The Lobster Club was included in our Taste of Tastes to Come roundup we posted back in September. It was going to be the first of two new projects from Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi and was originally slated to open before their fun, fancy, fine-dining, and critically acclaimed Carbone. The Lobster Club was going to be a casual, Italian American-Inspired sandwich shop themed after the succes of the triple-decker sandwich the duo serves at Parm. But plans have changed, signage has gone up, and the team behind three of the city's hottest Italian restaurants is opening ZZ's Clam Bar tomorrow at 169 Thompson Street.

ZZ's Clam Bar is going to be a 12-seat cocktail and raw bar serving a variety of oysters and, as Jeff Zalaznick (Torrisi and Carbone's business partner) told Florence Fabricant, "15 beautiful crudos." Fabricant also notes "ZZ is Zalaznick's nickname." ZZ's will be open Tuesday through Saturday for dinner only. 

169 Thompson Street | 212-254-3000 | www | map

Stulman's Sixth Gets Two

[Sasha Maslov for the Times]When Montmartre first opened, people anticipated casual French fare (as advertised), bistro food kissed by chef Tien Ho's delicate Southeast Asian touch. Ho, who's worked for Daniel Boulud and David Chang, has been touted as one of the city's finer chefs. Expectations for Montmartre were high, but Gabe Stulman's latest Little Wisco endeavor seemingly left little to be desired out of the gate. A month and a half after opening, the team revamped the menu and today Pete Wells refers to Montmartre as "the most improved restaurant of the year."

"Prizes seemed unlikely after I ate there in April," Wells writes early in the review. Menu items like veal blanquette, skate wing, and raw kale salad seemed good on paper, but the critic found the execution, and some of the food, a bit bland.

The new, improved menu came sometime at the beginning of April. "The effect was transformative," Wells writes, "as if National Grid had finally turned on the gas." A synergy was found between Stulman's vision and Ho's creativity in the kitchen. According to Wells, "Once in a while, Montmartre still gets a case of the blahs," but he awards the restaurant two stars.

For Montmartre, like Perla, Stulman brought in a chef from outside his Little Wisco empire. At his other restaurants (Joseph Leonard, Fedora, Jeffery's Grocery, and Chez Sardine), growth happened organically so to speak. At those restaurants, front and back of house staff shuffled around to grow the brand. At Perla, Stulman took a chance on chef Michael Toscano's forward-thinking Italian comfort food. It was an instant hit. Chef Tien Ho's tightly-bound talent and extensive knowledge of worldly cuisines took some time to hit its stride. Now that it has, Stulman has another hit on his hands. [NYTimes]

Cheesesteak from Carl's Steaks at Yankee Stadium

We'd never pass on an opportunity to see a ball game. So when an extra ticket to last Wednesday's day game landed in our lap, we hopped the uptown D train and went to watch the Yankees host the Indians. And eat lunch.

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