Global Korean Pop Superstars of BTS Hit Up K-Town Tuesday Night

K-Pop band BTS stops by Kang Ho Dong Baekjong, and other celeb outings

Global phenomenon BTS — the K-Pop band in the area for two sold-out shows in New Jersey at MetLife Stadium — stopped by the Midtown outpost of popular Korean barbecue chain Kang Ho Dong Baekjeong for dinner on Tuesday night. Jungkook is apparently a big fan of Baekjong’s LA sister restaurant Ahgassi Gopchang, which specializes in grilled beef intestine.

Over in Meatpacking District, Adrian Grenier, who’s sporting a cast on his left leg, “pensively” gazed out the window as he dined at Serafina. And in New Jersey, ice scream shop Holsten’s played a role in The Sopranos prequel movie, where James Gandolfini’s son Michael will be portraying a young Tony Soprano.

Some Essex Street Market vendors didn’t make the move, plus a potential closing

The new Essex Market is open and brought over many legacy vendors in addition to adding new spots, but some of the Essex Street Market mainstays didn’t come over. The more-than-four-decades-old fish market Rainbo’s and its sibling juice shop Tra La La Juice Bar — both owned by Ira Stolzenberg — called it quits last month. Stolzenberg started the businesses with his late partner Ron Budinas.

And over on the UWS, the recently opened seafood restaurant the Flying Fisherman appears to be closed, with paper covering the windows and the phone line down. It opened in fall 2018.

Sweetgreen extends parental leave benefits to its workers

In an announcement posted to founder Nicolas Jammet’s Instagram, the salads chain Sweetgreen revealed that it will give five months of fully paid parental leave to mothers, fathers, adoptive parents, and foster parents.

Critic thinks bathrooms should be easier to find in NYC restaurants

Steve Cuozzo’s latest complaint about NYC dining is that the bathrooms are too hard to find. He claims that the bathrooms at Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s new seafood restaurant the Fulton are nearly impossible to locate, and his co-worker likened finding them to Sleep No More. Empellón Al Pastor at the Pod 39 Hotel, Augustine, and Raoul’s all have hard-to-find bathrooms, too, according to the very bothered critic.

Community rallied behind Prospect Heights bar

Ode To Babel, a Prospect Heights bar owned by two black women, became the target of a woman posting on NextDoor calling for neighbors to protest its liquor license renewal. But the community board received 180 letters of support for the bar in a victory against gentrification. As one of the black-owned businesses still in the neighborhood, it attracts a lot of people of color, and as owner Marva Babel-Tucker told Grub Street: “As our erasure happens, we’re trying very hard to protect our spaces — it’s incredibly important that we do.”