Kitchen Dish
DO OVER L'Impero was renamed Convivio (45 Tudor City Place at 42nd Street, 212-599-5045) on Monday, and the restaurant's cuisine has changed from northern Italian to southern. The prices have come down, too, with a four-course prix fixe for $59 at dinner and $49 at lunch. Michael White is still the chef. The room has been redesigned by Vicente Wolf to look more relaxed — with orange banquettes — but the tables remain dressed in white tablecloths.
MENU PAGES The team behind Rayuela — the restaurant named after a novel by the Argentine author Julio Cortázar — has opened Macondo (157 E. Houston St., between Allen and Eldridge streets, 212-473-9900). The spot is named after the mythical Colombian town that is the setting for Gabriel García Márquez's novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude."
"There are translations from those books to what we do in the restaurants," the restaurateur and avid reader, Héctor Sanz, said.
Rayuela means "hopscotch," and the food there jumps from one Latin-American country to the next, and then on to Mr. Sanz's native Spain.
Macondo is attempting the same thing with Spanish tapas and Latin-American street food. So Venezuelan arepas, flatbreads from Barcelona, and shaved ice from Puerto Rico all are on the menu, interpreted by chef Máximo Tejada.
Evoking, perhaps, Mr. Márquez's magical realism, the restaurant's back room is covered with Brazilian ivy, and in the ceiling is a 20-foot-by-12-foot "skylight" that is in fact a latex LED screen that changes colors.
BON MATIN Le Singe Vert (160 Seventh Ave., between 19th and 20th streets, 212-366-4100) is now serving breakfast Monday through Friday. The menu includes obvious items such as omelets, eggs Benedict, French toast, and croissants, but also charcuterie and cheese plates, pâté sandwiches, and a mixed green salad.
COMING SOON First-generation Dominican-American Cynthia Diaz will open a tapas bar and cocktail lounge in Williamsburg named Bar Celona (98 S. 4th St., between Berry Street and Bedford Avenue) later this summer or in early fall. Ms. Diaz has a degree in fashion marketing and has worked in the fashion industry, but her family is involved in the supermarket and food-service businesses. Tapas, priced between $13 and $15, will feature imported Spanish olives and cheeses — and will be served until midnight. Cocktails are being developed by Tad Carducci and Paul Tanguay, the same team that did the beverage program at the new Mercadito Cantina.
Mr. Thorn is food editor of Nation's Restaurant News. He maintains nrnfoodwriter.blogspot.com.
