News just in from Food Writer's Diary: AvroKO is planning a restaurant at the gutted Mannahatta space at 316 Bowery (above) and hopes to open it this spring. It's the first AvroKO-owned space since they expanded Public with the Monday Room, so this is one to watch. Here are the details:

"The Avro Ko gang is taking over the space on Bleecker and Bowery that is currently Mannahatta and plan to turn it into, well, they’re not sure what yet. Certainly it will be a restaurant, but the democratic folk at Avro Ko are still hashing out most of the details. Brad knows that he wants to have house-churned butter there, and that the chef de cuisine will be Chris Rendell, whom he knows from the time he spent in London...

'He’s just a rock star,' Brad said...they still hope to open the place sometime this spring. Avro Ko designs lots of places. But this will be the first expansion of the company’s own restaurant empire since The Monday Room opened."