Burger & Lobster Expands, Market Diner Demolished, and More Intel

— London-based chain Burger & Lobster is opening a new location on the north side of One Bryant Park.  This is the 51-story building that also houses Aureole. Just like the location in the Flatiron, the new Midtown outpost will serve burgers, whole lobsters, and lobster rolls. All three dishes will be served with fries and salad for $20 a pop. Steve Cuozzo reports that the 160-seat restaurant will have a second floor dining room and an entrance in the arcade that stretches from 42nd Street to 43rd Street. If everything goes according to plan, it will open by the end of the year.

— A new restaurant called Graffiti Earth is replacing Mehtaphor in the Duane Street hotel. Tribeca Citizen notes that it's slated to open on May 12.

— The East Village Cheese Shop is now-cash only, and the minimum order is now half a pound instead of a quarter of a pound. The store has been mighty quiet lately, leading several EV Grieve readers to wonder if the shop has fallen on some hard times after moving from Second Avenue to East Seventh Street.

— Retro Hell's Kitchen relic Market Diner is now completely gone. The five-decade-old greasy spoon shut its doors in November to make way for a massive condo building, and now the diner has been razed to the ground. After surveying the empty lot, Jeremiah Moss writes: "It's not far-fetched to say that buildings like the Market Diner, with unusual shapes and inviting facades, don't just make us feel alive, they keep us alive. And yet City Hall continues to encourage developers to kill them off."

— Work is now underway on Torrisi Italian Specialties 3.0 (pictured above). Major Food Group closed the original Torrisi/Carbone restaurant 16 months ago, with plans to convert the space into a 15-seat fine dining restaurant. No word yet on when it will reopen.

— Bjork wore a mask during a recent meal at David Burke Kitchen in Soho. A spy tells Page Six: "It was pink and violet and it stopped at her cheeks. She took it on and off while eating her meal."

— The Robs give four U.G. stars (out of five) to Portuguese-influenced tea shop Té Company in the West Village. The critics also give two stars (out of five) to Paige Lipari's Greenpoint bookstore/cafe Archestratus: "Once a month, the blue-plate specials give way to personal-pizza night, which has become so popular Lipari sets up additional communal tables between the bookshelves. You choose up to ten toppings from a list of 24, which makes anyone who selects plain old tomato and mozzarella a bit of a party pooper. The winning combo at our table the other night was potato, fig, Gorgonzola, honey, and peperoncino."

— Smorgasburg will not be returning to Long Island City this summer. Co-founder Jonathan Butler tells LIC Post: "We had good vendors but it was tough getting traffic over summer."

— Lawrence Persico, the ex-con son of incarcerated Colombo family boss Carmine Persico, was recently spotted delivering pies for Mia’s Pizza Shop in Dyker Heights.

— The Lucky Bee has to wait until June to get its gas hooked-up. For now, the team is using induction burners.

— And finally, here's a look at Marco Canora's "organ burger" at Hearth: