"The light on this radish is amazing."Photo: iStockphoto Distractions at restaurants are everywhere: cell phones, of course; overly chatty customers at a too-close table; and, increasingly, someone in the restaurant photographing the food at their table. Shutter snaps and flash pops never make a meal taste better. Some restaurants, like Momofuku Ko and Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare, do ban the ... more.

Chelsea:Picholine chef Terrance Brennan is teaming up with Artisanal House, a private event venue that houses changing art exhibitions and installation pieces. Chinatown: Nom Wah Tea Parlor patrons can now drink beer and wine with their gluten-free dim sum. Lower East Side: Eldridge Street will be home to two new restaurants. Local chef Zoe Feigenbaum will be opening a foodie-friendly neighborh... more.

Photo: Courtesy d.b.a. Some sad news to pass along in the story of Ray Deter, the d.b.a. owner who was left in critical condition after a bicycle accident earlier this week: EV Grieve reports that the following update has been added to the d.b.a. Brooklyn Facebook page: "Ray will no longer be with us after this weekend, but we hope our loss will give life to others. Please celebrate Ray as he pas... more.

It's 4 p.m., and that means it's time to play Two for Eight. We just asked ten restaurants the best time they can squeeze a couple in for dinner; you need only make your chosen reservation. (As always, we make the calls but don't guarantee the results.) Today: Splurge. Adour Alain Ducasse (Menu) 212-710-2277 Two for eight? No Best available: 8:30 p.m. Corton (Menu) 212-219-2777 Two for eight? N... more.

Photo: Rogers Marvel Architects A group of Italian-American activists are protesting the planned coffee shop, oyster bar, and two-floor fine-dining restaurant slated to open in the restored Pier A at the Battery. According to a Downtown Express article, the National Italian-American Action Network thinks a museum celebrating the contributions of Italian-Americans is the only appropriate tenant ... more.

Photo: Shanna Ravindra By year’s end, the 2nd Avenue Deli will open a second location (well, a third one, if you include the East Village original). Owner Jeremy Lebewohl isn’t yet announcing an exact address, but he tells Save the Deli that he’s locking down a space on the Upper East Side. “I’m going to try to maximize the space to its fullest,” Jeremy just... more.

Lower East Side: Cooking summer camp starts Monday at Whole Foods Market Bowery. Classes range from $150 to $400 depending on age. To celebrate the Tour de France (now through July 24), Daniel Boulud is holding his own Tour de New York. Receive an official stamp when you order an entree at any of his New York restaurants, and five stamps gets you a free lunch for four at DBGB. Head to Culturef... more.

Mark your calendars: On July 18, City Harvest releases tickets to the Brooklyn Local. The charity's late-summer fund-raiser happens September 17 at Dumbo's Tobacco Warehouse and will feature 75 vendors from Smorgasburg, the Brooklyn Flea, and local restaurants, including Mile End, Vinegar Hill House, and Robicelli's. It's just five bucks to enter the market ($60 to get into the tasting tent with ... more.

Brooklyn Farmacy.Photo: Carolyn Morris The Times chimes in today on the resurgence of soda fountains and the new trend of what amounts to, ahem, craft soda. Over at the Brooklyn Farmacy, Peter Freeman is concocting egg creams with Long Island strawberries and Hudson Valley milk. At Eleven Madison Park, the egg creams are prepared tableside and showily, finished with sea salt and olive oil. Some... more.

It's been a few months since David Ruggiero, owner of Paris Burlesque Club in Red Hook, took his case in front of Community Board 6's Public Safety Committee and emerged victorious. Despite the name, the Paris Burlesque Club, he argued, would feature nary a runway or stripper pole; instead the "dames" would peel down to "bikini bottoms only" and would be backed up by a crew of mimes, jugglers, c... more.

While food trucks are relatively new, midtown has long been home to many thriving food carts. Well, the face of mobile vending might come full circle, if Wafels & Dinges's strategy for coping with food-truck crackdowns is picked up by others: Rather than fight for parking, the stroopwafel purveyor started selling its wares from a cart, as DNA Info reports. The outlay isn't cheap: $15,000 to $20,... more.

Photo: Danny Kim Eater finds out former Spotted Pig chef de cuisine Nate Smith, most recently of Dean Street, will head his own restaurant in Williamsburg. The former Raymund's Place at 124 Bedford Avenue is set to reopen in September as the 40-seat Alls Well. Smith, who hinted to us that he was "looking at Williamsburg" back in February after he was fired from Dean Street over a "tense talk" r... more.

Between underage-drinking crackdowns and Health Department shutdowns, it's already a troubled time for LES bars — but a riot outside of Tammany Hall last night took things to a whole new level. Per the Lo-Down, cops were called owing to a "dispute among patrons" at an album-release party, and that soon led to chaos and mayhem as the officers who arrived on the scene allegedly sprayed mace in... more.

Jay Cheshes praises the Dutch for "bringing real heat to Soho as Balthazar and Blue Ribbon did in the ’90s"; he calls the scene and food both "eclectic" and "electric." "You can confidently pair cool matchstick asparagus … with an all-American rabbit potpie steaming under a showstopping dome of crackerlike crust," he writes, "all of it tastes good — and, somehow, works well togeth... more.

Eater learns via an e-mail sent to friends that George Lang, who presided over Cafe des Artistes from 1975 until it closed in 2009, has passed on. An escapee of Nazi labor camps, Lang worked at the Waldorf Astoria and The Four Seasons before buying his iconic restaurant. A service will be held at 4 p.m. this coming Monday at Riverside Memorial Chapel, and his family requests that in lieu of flowe... more.

Photo: Danny Kim We’ve now had a chance to talk to Nate Smith, the chef who parted ways with Dean Street yesterday, and he says John Longo and Rob Gelardi fired him in large part due to a disagreement about whether or not the television should be played during dinner hours. “There were a lot of people coming to eat food, and it was important to me to protect their experience in a way,... more.

Photo: Bryan Hood Following the reveal a few months back that Italian megastore Eataly was scouting for L.A. locations, the Huffington Post has it that Mario Batali and Joe and Lidia Bastianich are also planning to bring their food emporium to D.C. Eataly in New York is 40,000 square feet, you'll note, so whether L.A. or D.C. opens first really depends on where it's easier to find a comparably hu... more.

Chelsea: Bare Burger is planning to open a new shop on Eighth Avenue between 17th and 18th Streets. Eolo is introducing to-go picnic plates, a $15 special that includes a choice of four Italians dishes, bread, and either iced tea or watermelon juice. East Village: A "bakery-looking business" is in the works at 102 St. Marks Place, near First Avenue. Yankee Pizza is coming soon to 181 Avenue C, ... more.

Is this body built of lies? Hardly a profile of a female celebrity gets penned these days that doesn't extol its subject's hearty appetite, and a story in the Daily Mail has a possible explanation why: People like Gwyneth Paltrow and Cameron Diaz are lying about how much they eat! Dubbed "liarexics" by the paper, these insidious ladies (famous and not) order up while they're out in public, then... more.

Grub Street got Top Chef Dale Talde on the phone today to talk about Talde, the restaurant he's planning to open in Park Slope in early fall. Talde will be a chef-owner in the project, with partners John Bush and David Massoni of Thistle Hill Tavern, and they're designing an "Asian-American" menu for the spot. So what does that mean, exactly? Well, it's kind of all over the place: The chef inten... more.