Good Old Days: 14th St. Near Union Sq.

Pop diva Rihanna was spotted singing karaoke downstairs at Shanghai Square. End of report.

David Chang’s impressive restaurant empire is a joy to have in the neigborhood. His latest accomplishment is the weird and wonderful Momofuku Milk Bar on 13th near 2nd Ave. Try it out for some wild and tasty takeaway desserts. A little pricey, but it’s one of those “only in New York” things. We’re lucky to have it. Get the crack pie or the compost cookies.

Tisserie, the fancy pastry shop that closed at the northwest corner of Union Square, will be replaced by popular British-based sandwich shop Pret a Manger. They have rather good coffee, by the way.

As Chris Cannon, formerly a partner in Convivio and Alto, prepares to return to Manhattan this fall with a new restaurant called All’onda,  In a market crowded with salumi boards, how will this new venture fit in or stand out? To get some perspective, Eater.com asked Chris:

What’s the difference between All’onda and every other Italian restaurant in New York? I think we’re taking…effectively, what we’re trying to do is take Venetian cuisine that’s always been a cuisine that is a meeting point of a number of different cultures — as most cuisine actually in Italy is — and Venetian cuisine has always been a meeting point with Eastern cuisine and culture.  I think that what we are trying to do is basically take Venetian cuisine and a lot of seafood cuisine in Venice and take a very sophisticated Japanese lens and apply it to traditional Italian cuisine. So, I would say that you take a traditional dish and really not changing the basic components of traditional Italian cuisine, but changing in the sense that you’re taking the same ingredients and treating them a little bit differently and making them more modern, more interesting.

The north end of Union Square Park will soon look a lot better. 21 trees are on the way.