NEW CHEF, NEW IDEAS Louie’s Westside Cafe

(441 Amsterdam Ave. at 81st Street, 212-877-1900), which turns 20 this year, has a new chef. Christopher Cubberly was a sous chef at Le Cirque 2000 and a line cook at Alain Ducasse at the Essex House before heading to this Upper West Side neighborhood spot.

He changed about half of the menu and has added a pork trio: Housemade apple and fennel sausages are stuffed into roasted pork and wrapped in bacon.

For his new salmon dish, he sears a fillet and serves it with black truffle-English pea sauce, crispy polenta, and braised leeks. No doubt this spring he will be making use of the herbs from owner Louie Sloves’s beach garden to dream up new items.

CULTURE CROSSING Xing (785 Ninth Ave., between 52nd and 53rd streets, 646-289-3010) has a new chef, too, Lulzim Rexhepi. The Albanian native grew up cooking Italian food in his family’s New York and Westchester County restaurants. He was first exposed to Asian cuisine under Chinese-Canadian chef Brian Young, who currently runs the kitchen at Mainland. Mr. Young was at Citarella (now Josephs) briefly when that restaurant first opened, and Mr. Rexhepi met him there. He opened Kittichai with chef Ian Chalermkittichai in 2004. Following the tsunami that swept Asia at the end of that year, he went to Bangkok to cook for a relief dinner and ended up spending a few months cooking at the Four Seasons hotel there, where Mr. Chalermkittichai himself cut his teeth.

At Xing, Mr. Rexhepi is adding some Southeast Asian and other touches to the Chinese food. Among his new dishes are truffle-and galangal-crusted black cod with wok-fried gailanand lotus chips,guava-poached short ribs with sweet potato puree, and crispy-skin striped bass with Japanese eggplant and cashew chile sauce.

TOTAL TEA Alice’s Tea Cup Chapter II (156 Third Ave. at 64th Street, 212-486-9200), which, unlike Chapter I on the Upper West Side, has a liquor license, has launched a mother-daughter tea on Wednesday afternoons. For $35, mothers get a sandwich, scone, assorted cookies, and a pot of tea. Daughters get a sandwich, scone, chocolate mousse, and a pot of tea or fruit tea-infused Shirley Temple.

If mothers want something stronger than tea, they can buy one of the teahouse’s new cocktails. Those include the Model T(ea) with bai hao tea and Ketel One vodka, and the Man’s Drink of lapsang souchong tea and Johnny Walker Black Label scotch.

Stay tuned for Chapter III (220 E.81st St., between Second and Third avenues), which will be bigger and have more child-oriented programs. It is scheduled to open in a few months.

WINE AND DINE Hearth (403 E. 12th St. at First Avenue, 646-602-1300) is launching a series of weekly wine dinners, starting February 6. For $150, guests get a four-course meal paired with wine of a specific type or from a specific region.

The first dinner features the wines of Italy’s Piedmont region – appropriate since the Winter Olympics are being held there. Smoked trout with radish salad, chestnut and porcini ravioli, and Barolo-braised beef cheeks with roasted rib-eye and winter vegetables will all get their own wine. That will be followed by a Moscato d’Asti sorbet to clear the palate, and then dessert paired with a Brachetto d’Acqui.

Full details for each dinner will be available a week or two in advance at www.restauranthearth.com.

Mr. Thorn is food editor of Nation’s Restaurant News. He can be reached at bthorn@nrn.com.