Bay Area Cult Favorite Burger Will Pop Up at Morgenstern’s This Weekend

Kronnerburger and Morgenstern’s are hosting another pop-up

A renowned Bay Area burger appears in NYC again this week. Chef Chris Kronner is teaming up with Nick Morgenstern for another pop-up at the Morgenstern’s ice cream parlor at 88 West Houston St., this time spreading the collaboration out over three days. Their previous pop-up only lasted a day and quickly sold out. This time, the two chefs will dish out burgers, fries, and more for brunch, lunch, and dinner — including the $20 Kronnerburger, which has 120-day dry-aged beef, lettuce, onion, dill pickles, and white cheddar mayo. A side of bone marrow can be added for $6. Starting Friday, December 14, lunch will run from noon to 3 p.m., and dinner starts at 5 p.m. The dinner menu will be available all day Saturday, while Sunday will be reserved for all-day brunch. See the menus in full below.

Critic finds “fussy” dishes at Jonathan Benno’s new fine-dining restaurant

Skip Jonathan Benno’s namesake fine-dining restaurant Benno — where “fussy” dishes like garganelli with ragu are served on “plates shaped like U.F.O.s” — and go to his casual Leonelli Taberna instead, New Yorker critic Hannah Goldfield says in her latest review. She visits the chef’s three restaurants inside the Evelyn Hotel and walks away with mixed emotions. While she finds “perfectly cooked” seafood in the brodetto at Benno, many of the dishes are too “fussy” — like breadsticks that could easily pass for reed-shaped fragrance diffusers, she says. At Leonelli Taberna, however, she finds “thrillingly spicy” eggplant dip and a menu focused on “unpretentious” Italian cooking. “It’s the sort of food you can imagine Jonathan Benno preparing at the end of a long night, kicking off his shoes and relaxing at home,” she writes.

Bombay Bread Bar’s new brunch

Chef Floyd Cardoz’s colorful Bombay Bread Bar adds a new brunch option this weekend where a mix of dishes are served in the metal tiffins used as lunch boxes in India. There are three meal options on the menu, like the $48 street food tiffin that comes with Dahi Vada, shishito pakoras, samosa chat, and green chickpea chat. Each option feeds two to three diners.

Bombay Bread Bar/Jean Schwarzwalder

Free hot chocolate and a movie, or cupcakes

The recently opened CMX Cinébistro on UES will be giving away free hot chocolate to movie-goers this holiday season. Swing by the fancy dine-in theater on December 24 and 25, as well as New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, for some complimentary cocoa. Movie options include Mary Poppins Returns, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse, Aquaman, Second Act, and Vice. And chain Sprinkles Cupcakes is giving away free cupcakes this weekend. The cupcake shop and bakery will be showing up at “NYC hot spots” to surprise people with the free sugary goods on Saturday, December 15 — in honor of the fake holiday “National Cupcake Day.” The chain says it’ll stop at Brookfield Place, Rockefeller Center, and Times Square.