Photos: Noah Flecks

Michael White, the oft-lauded chef-owner of three-star seafood palace Marea, fine-dining Italian spot Ai Fiori, and SoHo’s Osteria Morini, will open Nicoletta, his first pizzeria, for dinner tomorrow, and the pies will be a touch different from the ones at all those other East Village parlors. (A Midwestern touch, to be exact.)

The crust, formed in a wood-burning brick oven (imported from… Long Island) was inspired by Mr. White’s teenage years slinging dough at Domenicos in Beloit, Wis., and is said to be a bit chewier than the Neapolitan norm. Pies, said to cost an average of $21, will come in 12-inch and 16-inch varieties, and can be topped with bacon lardons, egg yolk, truffled mushrooms, and more. Shown in our slideshow: the Calabrese (fennel sausage, pepperoni, red onions, and Pecorino Romano) and the Patate (mozzarella, crushed potatoes, pann, bacon, and charred scallions). Read more…

Daniel Maurer

The Bean finally opened its outpost at First Avenue and Ninth Street this morning. When The Local stopped in, manager Guy Puglia was busy setting up the WiFi and co-owner Ike Escava was anticipating a shipment of outdoor benches.

Daniel Maurer James Wechsler’s art.

The coffee spot’s third location (and its last one for now, said Mr. Escava) is the same size as the Second Avenue cafe that opened in December, though it has 10 more seats (60 in all). It’s offering the same array of muffins, danishes, espresso drinks, smoothies, and – oh, yes! – frozen hot chocolate, but won’t be in the beer and wine business anytime soon: the owners decided not to go for a license after neighbors voiced opposition.

Despite the lack of that particular competitive edge, Mr. Escava said he wasn’t concerned that a Starbucks is opening just a few blocks up First Avenue. Read more…

Melvin Felix

After opening in September, Krust Pizzeria has reduced the price of its slices from $2.50 to $1 for the next month, and likely for good.

“Pizzerias are getting competitive in New York,” explained Pemba Sherpa, the owner of the pizzeria at 226 East 14th Street, between Second and Third Avenues, just a block from Artichoke. “Even if you have a good pizza it doesn’t guarantee you’re going to do good.”

Mr. Sherpa said that on Monday, he began selling a “little bit of a smaller pizza” with “somewhat modified” ingredients in order to appeal to the N.Y.U. crowd. The new business model, mastered by 2 Bros. on St. Marks Place, has paid off: Mr. Sherpa said he was already doing four times the business as he was before.

Photos: Suzanne Rozdeba

Local nightlife impresario Ravi DeRossi’s latest venture is a Victorian and Steampunk-themed bar, and it’s set to open at 6 p.m. tonight.

“It’s a fusion of sci-fi, fantasy, and Victorian times,” said Mr. DeRossi, who also owns nearby Death & Co. and The Bourgeois Pig. “We wanted to give it a grittier edge.”

Patrons enter the bar through a door decorated with golden wings; inside the dark space, there’s a ceiling mural by artist David Nordine, who also painted the bar’s exterior. A metal cage stands in the middle of the front room, mosaic murals tile the floors, and clocks, museum replica pieces, and clock parts cover the back room’s walls. Around the bar hang handmade sconces by Steampunk artist Art Donovan. Read more…

After asking local food maven Kim Davis to suss out the neighborhood’s tastiest biscuits, porchetta, and smoked meat, we sent him to find out how a pork bun newbie stacks up against a couple of heavyweights.

Noah Fecks Pork buns at Jum Mum

There’s a pork bun bonanza in the East Village this summer, with Baohaus now located on East 14th Street, and newcomer Jum Mum joining the gua bao stakes on St Marks Place. I set out to compare these aspirants with Momofuku’s gold standard product, and ended up satisfied, sticky-fingered, and not too much lighter in the wallet.

Eddie Huang’s Baohaus built a wildly enthusiastic following for Taiwanese pork buns, in a basement space on Rivington, now home to Pok Pok Wing, before opening on 14th Street last year. Baohaus dresses its “Chairman Bao” with traditional Taiwanese garnishes – pickled mustard greens, fresh coriander, crushed peanuts and red sugar. It’s a sweetish snack, and also embraces Taiwanese tradition by preserving the jelly-like cap of fat on each slice of belly.  If you’re averse to pork fat, get the crunchy fried chicken bun instead. $3.50 apiece. Read more…

Nice Guy Eddie’s just announced on Facebook that after 16 years it will close on Sunday. News that the Avenue A sports bar owned by Community Board 3 member David McWater would shut down broke in April when it was revealed that the owner of Ella and Gallery Bar, Darin Rubell was taking over the space. Meanwhile, the staff of the bar popular among football fans tells customers, “We’re throwing a huge party Sunday, so stop by and wish us farewell!” Still no word on whether the Kiss mural by Chico will remain.

The Ex-Villagers: they loved the East Village and left it. Mara Levi closed her East Sixth Street restaurant last year. With the Long Island outpost of Mara’s Homemade now a year old, we checked in to see how she’s doing.

Lauren Carol Smith Mara Levi at the new Mara’s Homemade in
Syosset, N.Y.

When the building that occupied our Union Square coffeehouse, Java N Jazz, was sold and all the tenants were asked to leave we started looking for a new space in the neighborhood, for a new type of restaurant. We found one, but lost out when a celebrity chef also started negotiations for it. The search started again and we found a place in the East Village. We opened there a month after Java N Jazz closed.

The space was not ideal. We were forced out in three months, but were lucky to find another location three doors down. The rent was $5,000 a month for 750 square feet. With the failing of the first location we had changed our focus to the foods of New Orleans. We started out with the basics: jambalaya, shrimp Creole, etouffee, and of course the live crawfish boil.

The customers started coming and requested dishes they had eaten at Jazz Fest. My husband was waiting tables and I was in the kitchen. He would describe dishes and I would prepare them and the customers would tell me if I was on the mark. Then we’d add them to the menu.

My husband has a love for barbecue; he found a smoker that would fit in the kitchen and we started serving Arkansas barbecue. The neighborhood took a liking to what we were doing. Read more…

Nick DeSantis

After nearly losing its liquor license last September, Heathers Bar is up for sale.

Heather Millstone confirmed her eponymous bar was on the market after The Local received a listing from Steven Kamali Hospitality indicating that it’s available for a $150,000 fixture fee plus $6,850 per month in rent.

“It’s been a rough year for me on a lot of different levels, so I’m exploring my options,” she wrote in an e-mail. “I don’t think anyone should rejoice or mourn just yet, Heathers will probably still be around for some time, just not forever.”

Ms. Millstone said her reasons for seeking a new operator were “solely personal” and had nothing to do with her recent experience in front of Community Board 3. In September, neighbors complaining of late-night noise and unlimited drink specials convinced the board to recommend that the State Liquor Authority reject the bar’s application for a liquor license renewal, but the S.L.A. granted it anyway.

At the time, signs on the bar’s door read, “SAVE HEATHERS.”

Melvin Felix Chef Paul Gerard outside his future restaurant, Exchange Alley.

A touch of the bayou is coming to East Ninth Street, in the space that was briefly home to Zi’Pep. Paul Gerard, formerly chef at SoHo House, will open Exchange Alley in September along with investors John Harris, the acclaimed chef-owner of Lilette in New Orleans, and Billy Gilroy, a partner in West Village hotspot Employees Only. (Peter Herrero, who used to own Cafe Central on Columbus Avenue, is also helping out.) The trio has enlisted Sisha Ortuzar, the executive chef at Tom Colicchio’s Riverpark, to help build an herb and vegetable garden resembling a “ramshackle New Orleans courtyard,” said Mr. Gerard.

The restaurant’s name is taken from a picturesque cobbled lane in New Orleans, where Mr. Gerard lived until Katrina ravaged the city in 2005. The menu, said the 42-year-old chef, would be “New York with a New Orleans flair,” with additional influences from other places he had lived and worked, including South America and Puerto Rico. Read more…

Melvin Felix

Less than a week after the opening of Mediterranean Grill and Tapas on First Avenue last Friday, another “Mediterranean grill” is getting ready to welcome customers. The folks at Reyna Turkish Restaurant and Mediterranean Grill are setting up tables and chairs and expect to open for business this weekend at 82 Second Avenue, between Fourth and Fifth Streets, in the old Mission Cafe space. Stay tuned for updates and the restaurant’s menu.

Stephen Rex Brown Outside of the shuttered restaurant.

Tables, chairs and old plates from Kate’s Joint were being tossed in a dumpster at the corner of Avenue B and East Fourth Street this morning. The For Rent signs are still up at the old vegetarian standby, which closed for good in April.

Add Parkside Lounge to the long list of neighborhood mainstays that are soliciting donations to keep afloat. The East Houston Street bar seeks $10,000 to overhaul its performance space to include a new bar and better sound equipment. “With all the stuff that’s going on in the neighborhood right now, sometimes I get nervous. Some places have just completely changed their identities. I don’t want to do that,” operating partner Christopher Lee says in the video, filmed by the local fundraising company Lucky Ant.

The longstanding bar serves up cheap booze and an eclectic array of musical acts, much like Lakeside Lounge did before it shuttered at the end of April. Read more…

Daniel Maurer Nicoletta

Restaurant-construction voyeurs may have noticed a couple of new developments: the plywood that has long obscured Nicoletta, Michael White’s forthcoming pizzeria on the corner of Second Avenue and East 10th Street, came down yesterday. Today, a banquette was awaiting installation; a representative for the restaurant said it’s aiming to open in the next two weeks, pending Department of Buildings inspections and liquor license approval. “The chef wants to get in and make sure he gets to do some work as well,” said the rep.

Daniel Maurer Gin Palace

And over at Gin Palace, the forthcoming cocktail lounge from Ravi DeRossi of Death & Co., Mayahuel, the Bourgeois Pig, and Cienfuegos, antique-style lighting has just been installed over the mural that David Nordine is working on. A worker on the scene told The Local that the Victorian gin joint is aiming to open June 11.

Daniel Maurer Chef Carlos Chusan in the mirror.

Maybe, just maybe you noticed last night that yet another bonkers illuminated sign has joined the flashy Mediterranean Grill and Tapas signage on First Avenue? If not, do watch the color-changing magic in our video above. It’s enough to give the light show at Smokin’ Tattoos a run for its money.

The Turkish takeout joint opens its next-door tapas lounge at sundown tonight, and your first wine is on the house.

Late last night, while Chinese-Ecuadorian chef Carlos Chusan helped decorate the narrow dining room with Turkish and Moroccan trinkets, he told The Local he planned to serve “a little bit of everything for everybody, because the Lower East Side is American, Chinese, Polish, German – so there’s a little bit of everything.” As you can see below, the pan-Mediterranean menu includes nods to Mexico (quesadillas) and Ecuador (ceviche).

The 40-seat tapas lounge will be open from about 5 p.m. till as late as 2 a.m. on weekends. Care to see the menu?

We last called upon Kim Davis, the East Villager who writes At the Sign of the Pink Pig, to judge the new porchetta sandwich at Il Buco Alimentari e Vineria against the classic version at Porchetta. Now that another buzzy sandwich shop has opened in NoHo, we asked him to referee another meat match. Will the Canadian underdog, Mile End, prevail over the reigning champion, Katz’s?

Kim Davis The smoked meat sandwich at Mile End.

The East Village, like it or not, may be gentrifying, but one might have been forgiven for thinking that some things would never change. The supremacy, for example, of the pastrami sandwich at Katz’s as an iconic New York dish, a plated symbol of deli history, and the one thing any visitor to the neighborhood has to eat.

Yet here comes Canadian Noah Bernamoff, with a trimmed down version of his modernist Brooklyn deli Mile End, opening on Bond Street just off the Bowery, no more than a ten-minute walk from the self-proclaimed “Best Deli in New York.” Read more…

A tipster notes that renovations are underway at 98 Avenue B, the future home of the Alphabet City mainstay Gruppo, which has served thin crust pies for the last 11 years. Last week Community Board 3 voted in favor of the transfer of Gruppo’s beer and wine license, provided it agree to several pro forma stipulations related to quality-of-life concerns. An employee said that the restaurant would open in its new location sometime this summer.

Stephen Rex Brown Cook Nicola De Mori behind some of the meats at Porchetta.Hog.

Porchetta may no longer be hogging the spotlight where herbed roast pork sandwiches are concerned. First there was the $16 porchetta sandwich at Il Buco Alimentari & Vineria, and now a new contender by the name of “Porchetta.Hog” has entered the swineosphere.

The takeout spot opened earlier this month at 309 East Fifth Street, just a few blocks away from Porchetta, and it too is serving $10 porchetta sandwiches, as well as $8 hamburgers and a handful of other dishes (the full menu is below). Read more…

Stephen Rex Brown

First, the good news: Just a week after its paint job, Calliope has opened in the former Belcourt space. Grub Street has a look inside, and you can find the menu at Menupages.

Now, the bad. A couple blocks up on Second Avenue, Vandaag has become the latest ex-Villager. Thursday morning, The Local spotted a sign on the window of the darkened Dutch restaurant indicating that it was closed due to plumbing problems. Today, a new sign regretfully informs patrons of a “recent decision to close Vandaag.” The note concludes, “Fortunately, we were able to move most of our team to new digs, in Brooklyn,” meaning Woodland in Park Slope.

Vandaag opened in the former Bounce Deuce space at Second Avenue and Sixth Street and garnered two stars from The Times and then another favorable review from The Local (“Perhaps Vandaag, too, will disappear before long,” worried James Traub back in November of 2010. “I hope not; it’s the only Dutch-Danish restaurant in the neighborhood.”) Unfortunately, it was under-performing even before it lost its chef back in August.

Anyone know where to go now for a nice shot of aquavit?

When we first brought word of Alphabet City Beer Co. in December, it was an empty storefront. Last Thursday, the bar-and-beer-shop hybrid opened its doors and its taps. Helmed by David Hitchner (co-owner of In Vino, Alphabet City Wine Co.) and Zach Mack (a writer who has worked at tech start-ups) it’ll serve far-east guzzlers and gourmands who don’t feel like schlepping over to Good Beer to refill their growlers. In addition to coolers stocked with takeout bottles and cans from around the world, there’s a bar serving about a dozen beers on draft (expect the recently launched Alphabet City Brewing Co. to make appearances) and a grocery section carrying cured meats and cheeses picked out by Martin Johnson, an East Villager who writes the Joy of Cheese blog and also knows a thing or two about jazz.

The new shop expects to host beer tastings on a weekly basis. Sixpoint Brewery recently visited, and Louisiana’s Abita Brewery will follow up with an event next week. Watch The Local’s video for a look inside.

Alphabet City Beer Co., 96 Avenue C, near East Seventh Street; (646) 422-7103