Cru has been my favorite fancy New York City restaurant since it opened. And now I think it’s about to become my new favorite not-so-fancy place. As Florence Fabricant reported in the New York Times’ Diners Journal blog, Todd Macdonald is Cru’s new chef (once upon a time he was sous chef there). And he’s installing a whole new menu that will be more accessible and less expensive but still wildly compatible with Cru’s extraordinary, and now lower-priced, wine list. Maybe even more so. Macdonald is hugely wine savvy: His parents are the kind of foodies whose vacations in France mean hanging out with Burgundian winemakers and eating at least one three-Michelin-star meal a day. Macdonald has even set his own wine recommendations for the dishes he’s just put on Cru’s menu. Crispy octopus with roasted sunchokes, caraway and celery = Grüner Vetliner; fig-stuffed quail with farro and stewed leeks = Volnay. Can he possibly know more about pairings than Cru’s wine superheros Robert Bohr (partner) and Roy Welland (owner)? I’ll just have to go to Cru to find out.

Drum roll…Daniel Boulud is headed to London and not just for vacation. He's opening a branch of NYC's Bar Boulud in my favorite London hotel, the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park. The menu: bistro, featuring Boulud's terrific terrines and homey French classics. The charcuterie: courtesy of Gilles Verot, who's been called the Pierre Hermé of cured meats. The designer: Adam Tihany, who included a charcuterie bar for Verot's specialties. The design: referencing French winemaking, with vintage oak floors (think wine barrels) and deep-red leather banquettes (think Burgundy red wine). The wine list: focusing on Burgundy and the Rhône Valley, but yes, there will be Old World wines too. The opening date: spring 2010.
 
 

Boy is it exciting to walk past the construction workers and into Maialino, Danny Meyer’s about-to-open Roman trattoria in Manhattan’s Gramercy Park Hotel. First you see the gorgeous burnt-yellow tiled floors (based on a design at the Pantheon). Then you see the long Bar Maialino (in the a.m., it’s for stand-up consumption of espressos and house-baked pastries; the rest of the day, it’s for small plates). Opposite is the marble salumi bar. In the Trattoria, a.k.a. the dining room, tables are topped with blue-and-white-checked cloths and walls are lined with reclaimed wood from the Pantheon (kidding—it's from barns in New Jersey). And let’s note that Rockwell Group reclaimed the wood and designed the place.

In the kitchen, chef Nick Anderer is testing the menu, including stracciatella alla romana (Italian egg drop soup), braised artichokes, divine house-cured salt cod fritters and cacio e pepe ("salt and pepper") made with hand-cut tonnarelli pasta. Me, I loved it. But Anderer and Union Square Cafe’s überchef Michael Romano—who was there in a chef's jacket—thought the pasta could be less chewy, the sauce creamier. So, will Anderer try to recreate the pasta setup at Babbo, where he used to work and where Bill Buford tagged him as "the pasta guy" in his book Heat? “Absolutely not. It’s amazing there, but no.”

I recently came back from Phoenix, where everyone is buzzing about a new restaurant called St. Francis. Chef-owner Aaron Chamberlin (who trained with Michel Richard, Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Nancy Oakes) spent nearly three years searching for the perfect spot, finally buying and renovating a midcentury Harold Ekman building on Camelback Road. With the help of his dad and brother, he’s created a hip, industrial-style space with a two-story, window-faced garage door that opens the bar to the outside. There are homey touches, too; his grandmother's old silver spoons are embedded in the stone walls and chairs from San Francisco's old Rubicon restaurant space. There's also an enormous wood-burning stove. The affordable menu balances healthy dishes, like the sweet-and-spicy Forbidden Rice Bowl, with decadent ones, like a French Onion Burger topped with an onion ring, smoked bacon, Gruyère and homemade French Dip. With Pizzeria Bianco just a few blocks away, uptown Phoenix may be Arizona’s next cool food 'hood.

Even though I live in NYC, I obsessively follow the L.A.-based Kogi Korean taco truck on Twitter (more on that in our "10 Best Restaurant Dishes 2009" story in the upcoming December issue). Now I have to figure out how to also keep track of their newest toy: the bright orange Scion Kogi xD Mobile Kitchen made just for Kogi by Toyota. It’s fully loaded in the back with a grill, sink and special grilling-tools compartment (and don’t forget the Alpine sound system). Kogi co-founder Roy Choi promised I could ride shotgun next time I go to L.A. Meanwhile, I’ll keep watching the YouTube video inside the mobile kitchen, including a demo of Kogi’s newest, killer-sounding dish, Silver Peso Pancakes made with Korean flat chives and sesame oil/leaf/seeds, with their special chile vinaigrette.

In Jonathan Safran Foer’s new book, Eating Animals (Little, Brown and Company), out today, the vegetarian writer ponders the ethics of eating meat. Here, outstanding dishes for the vegan, vegetarian and almost-vegetarian:

• Vegan: 12 great vegan dishes like a vegetable curry that gets its richness from coconut milk (right), an ultrasimple black bean soup with crispy tortillas, and a spicy chickpea salad, a twist on the classic Indian street food called chana chaat
• Vegetarian: 15 excellent vegetarian dishes like a warm spaghetti-squash salad, a cassoulet of slow-cooked leeks with meaty porcini mushrooms and cranberry beans, and a chanterelle and fontina frittata
• Pescatarian: 15 delicious fish dishes like snapper with lime-coriander broth, Provençal fish soup, and salmon sashimi with ginger and hot sesame oil

Scrounging for a last-minute Halloween costume? Get inspiration from some of our favorite chefs’ ensembles in F&W's "Dress Like a Chef" slideshow, like Mario Batali's now-iconic look: red wig pulled in a low ponytail, baggy shorts and his signature orange clogs from Crocs.

 

While my colleague Kate Krader is on a permanent sugar high this week from her pre-Halloween candy binge, I am overloading on carbs in preparation for the New York City Marathon. The race takes place this Sunday, the day after Halloween.  This year’s field of 40,000 runners, the largest in history, includes a number of food and wine world stars who’ve been juggling 20-mile training runs with kitchen duties and late-night pasta binges. Mark Bittman, the New York Times Minimalist columnist, has been swapping cooking tips for training tips with America’s fastest woman marathoner, Deena Kastor (rumor has it she’s shopping around a cookbook while in town for the race). F&W Best New Chef 2005 Daniel Humm of NYC’s Eleven Madison Park has been training with a running coach from Kenya to help him beat his insanely fast time from last year.

I’ve been following winemaker and restaurateur Joe Bastianich’s game plan, fueling myself with the complex-carb-heavy recipes he shared with F&W in our October issue and throwing back an occasional beer (for more carbs).

For more pre-marathon carbo-loading recipe ideas, click here.

John Irving’s latest novel, Last Night at Twisted River (Random House), out this week, revolves around cook Dominic Baciagalupo and his son Danny, who hail from a New Hampshire logging and sawmill settlement. Here, stellar New England dishes like chicken stew with cider and parsnips (pictured), molasses-sweetened baked beans, and cinnamon-and ginger-flavored Indian pudding.

The oatmeals from Bob's Red Mill in Oregon are a longtime staff favorite: Tina Ujlaki swears by their steel-cut oats, and their extra-thick rolled oats are all Grace Parisi uses in her granola. This month, the company beat out competitors from 16 other countries to win Scotland's World Porridge-Making Championship, becoming the first Americans ever to take home the coveted Golden Spurtle (a medieval Scottish oatmeal-stirring tool). Ordinarily the spurtle is stored in the pub of the tiny town that hosts the competition, but it will be in America for the year. Matt Cox and Dennis Gilliam of the winning team stopped by the F&W offices last week to display the trophy and to drop off a bag of their oats. I'm making some this weekend.