Osso Buco Will Reinvigorate Itself

Mid block between 5th and 6th Aves. will be the local of a new 133-room hotel. It’ll be interesting to see how they squeeze it in. Here are the details.

From The New York Times’ Metropolitan Diary:

Greenwich Village’s Bowlmor Lanes on University Place, open since 1938 and one of the longest continuously running bowling alleys on the East Coast, shut its doors on Monday to make way for new condominiums.

Much more than the disappearance of another landmark is the loss of Mark Braunreuther, Bowlmor’s man at the door for the past 16 years: benevolent minder, gentleman greeter, peacekeeper on the rowdy corner between Bar 13 and Bowlmor, an area labeled by one resident as the intersection between “Bucket” and “Blood.” On weekends, residents regularly awaken to police sirens and find violent traces splattered on early-morning sidewalks. Mark was always deep in the fray. His judiciousness was the reason so many revelers went home unharmed.

Mark B. was the mayor of University Place. He knew most of us, and all of our pets, by name. Last summer he tended corn seeds in the tree bed out front. Just seeing those struggling cornstalks made one glad for summer. This coming season, he was planning some tomatoes.

Mark regularly brought my husband and me cake from his favorite Queens bakery. The box always included biscuits for our dog. We reciprocated with Carolina barbecue sauce.

Mark lost everything in Hurricane Sandy — his entire apartment and his car. His bosses replaced the car so he could get in from Far Rockaway. And when our Bowlmor closed for good, they promised a good position at their Chelsea Piers location. Mark was very grateful but he admitted he’d miss our neighborhood.

Mark died suddenly a few weeks before Bowlmor Lanes closed its doors forever.

Rest in peace, brave knight. I, for one, will miss you long after a bowling alley is a distant memory.

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.

After over six years of delays, Union Square Pavilion is finally open to the public. The main draw of Simon Oren’s sprawling restaurant is the outdoor patio, which overlooks the park (and, on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, the beautiful Greenmarket). Chef Mario Urgiles, formerly of Maison, will cook simple dishes like pappardelle al pesto, wild-mushroom bruschetta, and branzino with vegetable ratatouille. Think of this as Tavern on the Green for the downtown set.

Two new condos will soon be on the rise just across 5th Avenue. The larger of the two will be at 31 West 14th St. (rendering pictured below). The other one is at 5 West 13th St., the former block-through office of Social Services. Residents of the 14th St. side of our building will recall how many people mistook our building, at 12 East, for the office at 12 West. It was annoying.

Go to Gonzo on Monday nights to get two of their fantastic grilled pizzas for the price of one. That’s a $19 savings, and the pizza is so good. Highly recommended.