— When the new iteration of Danny Meyer's Union Square Cafe opens on the corner of Park Avenue and East 19th Street this fall, it will have a small next-door shop focusing on carryout. The menu at Daily Provisions will include pastries, breads, and breakfast sandwiches in the morning. Salads, sandwiches, and rotisserie chickens will be served during the middle of the day. And at night, the space will become a 29-seat dining room with a set menu from Carmen Quagliata. Wine, beer, and cocktails will be available at this next-door restaurant. If everything goes according to plan, Union Square Cafe and Daily Provisions will open in October.
— Parisi bakery owner Frank Parisi was arrested last month on drug trafficking charges. The Daily News notes that Parisi was allegedly part of a $15 million marijuana distribution business that could have involved his celebrated Mott Street bakery. Court papers note: "Surveillance of Parisi and of the area around Parisi Bakery revealed what appeared to be (marijuana) trafficking activity." The documents also describe Parisi as a "midlevel member of the (marijuana) trafficking conspiracy." Parisi was caught on a wiretap talking about bulk pot purchases, and prosecutors claim that he had about 20 pounds of pot plus a packaging set-up before the bust. In Manhattan Supreme Court last week, Parisi pleaded not guilty to the charges.
— Steve Cuozzo thinks that Le Coucou, Stephen Starr’s new restaurant with Daniel Rose, is an "instant classic." The Post critic writes: "The chef is just the thing for a city starved for a major new talent. At a time when the creative powers of kitchen lions such as Mario Batali, David Chang and Michael White seem stuck in neutral, Rose stirringly revives the rich, rustic pleasures of great French cooking, refined only slightly through a prism of American raw materials."
— Sugar Cafe on the corner of Houston and Allen is currently closed. A sign in the window indicates that the restaurant is shuttered because of a plumbing issue.
— Earlier this year, Geoffrey Zakarian abandoned plans to open a restaurant in The Trump Hotel in Washington D.C. Now Trump says that the space is going to be filled by a "very large conference room."
— Times critic Pete Wells is distraught over the closing of a certain Times Square margarita mill:
Food media need to cover the end of Señor Frog's the way they covered the Four Seasons.
— Pete Wells (@pete_wells) August 16, 2016
— Christina Izzo of Time out New York gives quirky Greenpoint restaurant Hail Mary three stars out of five: "A crunchy fried Sasso chicken (half $32, whole $58) is served talons on, with the fixins (charred-corn salad, creamy potato salad), and sporting a healthy Szechuan-peppercorn heat. But the slices of house-baked bread underneath that bird are woefully stale, as is the wedge of a six-layer Funfetti cake ($11) that caps a meal, a sugary letdown masked by sprightly rainbow sprinkles."
— The Identità New York series returns on October 4, with three days of classes and events featuring acclaimed chefs from around the world. New for 2016 is a "dine-around" at Eataly, where guests can sample dishes from Massimo Bottura, Franco Pepe, Alex Atala, Niko Romito, and Matthew Kenney. Tickets are available on Eataly’s homepage.
— Sauvage, the subject of Robert Sietsema's review this week, also gets high marks from the Voice’s Zachary Feldman: "Vegetable-focused small plates function like snapshots of the greenmarket, particularly the dramatically presented crudités, their chilled, crisp produce standing straight up in a yellow enamel pot. Sunchokes, meanwhile, are cooked soft, tossed with croutons, and splashed with a vinaigrette that contains 'nduja, Italy's spreadable spicy sausage."
— And finally, here's what to order at El Caribeño in East Harlem: