The Sun Will Come Out The Marrow

After winning the first season of Top Chef, Harold Dieterle set his sights on New York, where he opened Perilla with Alicia Nosenzo in May 2007. The food there, according to the restaurant's website, is "seasonal American." Kin Shop came next, and for that menu Dieterle looked to Thailand. The team opened The Marrow in the last weeks of 2012, and this time, Dieterle let his roots inspire the cooking. In his review of Dieterle's third restaurant today, Pete Wells explains, "Half his menu is inspired by his father’s German roots. The other half draws from the Italian cuisine of his mother and her relatives."

Wells finds a riff "between dishes that are completely sure of their purpose and the ones so overembellished it’s unclear what the idea was meant to be." The restaurant's namesake dish, served with sea urchin, is "a pun on textures, a delicious joke that you got with your tongue. Some dishes, though," he continues, "made me wonder whether I’d missed the punch line."

Wells is enamered with Jill Roberts' wine list and pastry chef Ginger Fisher's desserts. The ginger stout cake, for example, "really is worth jumping up and down about." But, because of inconsistencies Wells finds throughout the menu, he awards The Marrow just one star. [NYTimes]

Lucky Peach Issue Six Hits Shelves Today

If you subscribe to Lucky Peach, or frequent any of the Momofuku restaurants, you probably already got your hands on Issue #6: "Before and After the Apocolypse." If you don't, the magazine is available in stores today. It's broken down into two sections: pre and post-apocolypse. Editor Peter Meehan writes the topic came about after he and co-editor David Chang had a discussion about Collapse, "a feature-length interview with Michael C. Ruppert, a reporter, who chronicles how our current economic and every systems will systematically fail, and how our civilization will collapse soon after." The issue calls on Michael Pollan, Ted Nugent, and Anthony Bourdain to shed some light on the current state of the food world. There's also talk of zombies and plagues, a taste test of canned tomato sauce with Mark Ladner, and some bomb shelter essentials. Get your copy here.

Num Pang Number Three

Beloved Cambodian sandwich shop Num Pang opened its third location last Wednesday. First was 12th Street in 2008, then came East 41st in 2011, and now Ratha Chaupoly and Ben Daitz have invaded NoMad. The new outpost is the biggest of the three and offers plenty of inhouse seating. Along with the sandwiches, salads, and sides served on 12th and 41st, rice and noodle dishes are available unique to the 1129 Broadway location. Variations of pork, steak, fish, vegetables, and coconut tiget shrimp makeup the options for the new menu additions. The Broadway location also has a license to serve beer and wine, and will be pouring "Cambodian Sangria."

Num Pang | 1129 Broadway | Mon - Sat, 11am - 11pm, Sun, 11am - 10pm | www | map

Eat the Week; Feb 18th - Feb 22nd

Signage goes up at Montmartre, Gabe Stulman and Tien Ho's bistro opening on 8th Ave | Wells awards just one star to David Santos' Louro | We get a preview of Nightingale 9, the new Vietnamese restaurant from the Seersucker team | Donde Dinner? - 928 Second Avenue

Donde Dinner? - 928 Second Avenue

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:

338 East 6th Street = Awash

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:

928 Second Avenue (map)

Nightingale 9 Opens Tonight

Nightingale 9 is opening tonight on Smith Street. In preserving past and present, fading from the former signage hasn't been painted over. But don't worry, it's not really Benevento Florist, it's the highly anticipated restaurant from the Seersucker team. The Nightingale 9 sign hangs on the restaurant's north-facing window; the name painted therein inspired by an old Brooklyn phone exchange: NI9.

We got a sneak peak of the new digs at last night's preview party and found wonderfully flavored food riddled with the nuances that have made Seersucker the neighborhood favorite it is. Most of what was being passed around, albeit delicious, isn't going to be on the menu. But the fried rice, chicken congee, and buttermilk-brined, rice-battered fried chicken with fresh grated coconut showcase clean flavors and a learned execution. Chef Robert Newton isn't "trying to reinvent the wheel," he told us. Instead, he aims to do what he and partner Kerry Diamond do at Seersucker and Smith Canteen; provide well-sourced, thoughtful food. At Nightingale 9, it just happens to be of Vietnamese influence.

Nightingale 9 | 345 Smith Street | 347-689-4699 | www

Weekdays 6pm - 10pm; weekends 6pm - 11pm

Closed Wednesdays

Tell Louro I Love Her

David Santos was the chef at 5 & Diamond and Hotel Griffou before he started hosting super clubs at his Roosevelt Island apartment. For a $75 donation, guests were treated to a seven-course, Portuguese-inspired meal with dishes like coriander cured snapper and sweet potato and duck tongue salad. About a year after the super club started, Santos opened Louro in the West Village, and today Pete Wells awards the restaurant one star.

At Louro, Santos continues the super club theme on Mondays, "when the restaurant puts away its à la carte menu and serves a fixed-price meal," writes Wells. It also goes the B.Y.O.B. route Mondays, "While some restaurants that offer tastings also push a wine pairing that can double the check, Louro let me carry in beer I’d picked up at the supermarket."

Santos takes a worldy approach in the kitchen, where "His cooking ranges avidly through flavors from around the globe, but what it expresses most clearly is the sheer pleasure of being set loose in the kitchen." The small plates and eggs & grains dishes at Louro are the most exceptional, compared to "the larger meat or fish dishes, which tended to be forgettable." While Wells is clearly taken by the passion in Santos' cooking, he writes, "My praise for Louro would be louder, though, if the more substantial dishes were as satisfying." [NYTimes]

Show Me a Sign: Montmartre

Gabe Stulman and Tien Ho announced they were opening a project together back in September. It was learned later that the project would be called Montmartre, and at the end of last week, an awning went up outside the restaurant's 158 Eighth Avenue address.

Monmartre will be Stulman's first venture outside the boundries of the West Village, where his Little Wisco empire has quickly grown to include five restaurants. The Chelsea restaurant's name is inspired by where Stulman worked in college; Cafe Montmartre. It was here that he got his first taste of the "neighborhood vibe," and that same feeling is what's come to define his vision.

Tien Ho is creating a French-American menu for Montmartre and the restaurant will be his first full-time gig since leaving Ma Peche at the end of 2011. Ho worked at Cafe Boulud before joing the Momofuku empire at Ssam Bar. From there, he went on to open Ma Peche in the Chambers Hotel as the executive chef. He has an affinity for unique wine and obscure wine-growing regions and we will likely see that passion on the wine list when the restaurant opens in the following weeks.