1) West Village: Work has begun on the old Wild Ginger space on Grove Street. The shed is pretty air-tight, see above, so it's unclear what will be going in. [PLYWOOD]
2) East Village: A tipster reports that fresh plywood is up in a former boutique space on the "totally dead block," 13th between 1st and A. A license approval notice is taped in the window regarding a liquor license hearing for a restaurant and sidewalk cafe under the entity "Hung Ry." Stay tuned for updates. [PLYWOOD]
3) Soho: Workers on the scene report that the former unfortunate FROG space is reopening as a restaurant called Beba. It will serve Mediterranean food. [PLYWOOD]
4) Flatiron: Mouthing Off goes inside Jean-Georges Vongerichten's newest business venture: a 150-seat cafe on the ground level of ABC Carpet & Home, due to open in February. Vongerichten promises "dead simple" dishes, with ingredients mostly sourced from no more than 100 miles away (except, of course, the bar made from a Mexican church alter). "We want to do what Alice Waters did in the 1970s," he says. "Handwritten menus, changing daily, seasonal food." The cafe will serve breakfast, lunch, dinner, and fresh juices. [PLYWOOD]
5) Upper West Side: Andrea Strong reports that the team behind Prime Grill will open Prime KO on the Upper West Side at the end of February or beginning of March. It will be a large, moderately priced Japanese steakhouse with a full sushi bar and 2 party rooms for up to 100 people. An interesting extra: Prime KO "will be offering prepaid Shabbat meals every week." [PLYWOOD]
6) Greenwich Village: Susan Piperato of NYInc posted that Broad Street Development, owners of the apartment complex on Bleecker and Thompson St., just signed a lease to open the first East Coast outpost of the eco-friendly, vegetarian, Australian fast food chain Otarian on the ground floor of the complex. [PLYWOOD]
7) Meatpacking District: According to Vanishing New York, it looks like residents of the luxury condominiums at The Caledonia will have to put up with a new place by the owner of Flor de Sol on the empty corner under the High Line. Flor de Sol's current outpost in Tribeca "gets overall good reviews and is described by Yelpers as: 'romantic,' 'noisy' and 'jam-packed,'" and it seems like more mayhem in the streets will be coming to MePa. [PLYWOOD]
8) Williamsburg: Last week, Off The Presses checked in on the delayed St. Anselm, the new, wine-and-food-centric drinkery-diner from Joe Carroll of Fette Sau and Spuyten Duyvil. It's set to open next month, and Carroll says that it will offer "a mix of high-brow, low-brow stuff," and that he plans to "do something similar in wine to what we do at Spuyten Duyvil with beer." [PLYWOOD]
9) Midtown: A new restaurant called Boi Noodles is opening up soon on 40th Street across from the New York Times building. [PLYWOOD]
10) Greenpoint: Roving photog Will Femia stops by the new Paulie Gee's space in the former Paloma home. A worker on the scene stopped him from taking inside shots, but there is a lot of woodwork involved. [PLYWOOD]
—Evan Barbour
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