Philip Kirschen-Clark, the “secret chef,” is leaving his underground home at Jimmy’s to take over at the Pegu Club. As of last night, Kirschen-Clark was settled in at the cocktail mecca and working on a new menu of his intense, modern, painterly dishes. His food will have a new tone, he says: “Sexier, lighter cocktail cuisine.” Like a peekytoe-crab roll with Kewpie mayonnaise, Korean red-chile flakes, and a medley of citrus zests, rolled up in a raw cucumber; or a diver-scallop-seviche “slider” with grilled corn, fava beans, green tomato, currants, red verjuice, and heirloom sweet peppers, on a tiny grilled brioche roll. There’s also a tentative plan to pair Kirschen-Clark’s dishes with classic Pegu cocktails. We hope that plan comes to delicious fruition.

Related: Jimmy's Secret Chef Performs Culinary Miracles in the East Village

The city has been on a rampage of late, closing down businesses right and left for various building-code violations. Happily, most of those closures are temporary. Jimmy Carbone, the titular owner of Jimmy’s No. 43, says that his two-and-a-half-week nightmare is over: “We’re opening tonight. Everything is squared away: We have the letter from the city, and we did everything we needed to.” Meanwhile, across town, Employees Only partner Jay Kosmas assures us that his place, closed yesterday by the Department of Buildings, will reopen tomorrow night: “There were issues they had that have been completely resolved. We just need to speak to a judge. It’s no problem; we’ll be open by tomorrow.” We hope so: Those judges have a way of making you sit there reading magazines until they’re ready for you. Just ask Jimmy Carbone. He thought he would be closed only a couple of days, too.

It's been a rough week for Jimmy's; customers crowded the East Village gastropub on Monday for a bacon, beer, and cheese festival when a fire marshal chased everybody out. (We were present, pontificating about bacon, but weren't given any explanation for what the problem was.) Jimmy's has been dark since then. As an Eater post today points out, a sign on the door indicates that the restaurant will open on Tuesday, May 20. But Jimmy says it might be as late as Wednesday, depending on the whims of the city's Buildings Department. "We were vacated because the landlord had not maintained a basement-side alley exit; there wasn't a clear way out for either us or the other tenants," he explains. The alley's been cleared out in anticipation of a hearing on Tuesday. We hope Jimmy reopens soon; we'd hate to see his secret chef cooking in a real kitchen at this point.

Jimmy's No. 43 Update: Reopening Tuesday [Eater]
Related: Jimmy's Secret Chef Performs Culinary Miracles in the East Village

Last week’s episode of 30 Rock revolved around “Sandwich Day,” “the most wonderful day of all,” wherein the Teamsters brought back Italian sandwiches with dipping sauce from a secret place in Brooklyn, causing mass sandwichmonium. As sandwich lovers, we were eating this stuff up like it was an uni panini. Which is exactly why we’re envious to discover, via the Jimmy’s No. 43 blog, that we weren’t one of the lucky twelve people invited to Alex Raij of Tía Pol’s sandwich potluck, especially since there’s a chance Jimmy Carbone will serve his place’s grilled ricotta-and-Nutella sammy. Alex? Please? Not even if we bring 42,000 calories of fried peanut butter and bananas? Maybe we're not being imaginative enough here: What, dear readers, would you bring?

Sandwiches [Jimmy Drink Eat]