Down by the Hipster today points out that Beatrice, long known to downtown denizens as “the one place where you can smoke and dance!,” has put up signs asking patrons to kindly refrain from doing either. So where can you dance? Until now a list of Manhattan’s cabaret licenses hasn’t been available online, but we’ve acquired one from the Department of Consumer Affairs so you can do the all-the-rage tektonik without the cops busting your wildly jiggling ass.

The Grub Street bookshelf continues to fill up this season with focused nonfiction books about our favorite subjects. The two latest, both out this month, are Michaele Weissman's God in a Cup, the story of a coffee bean that has taken the world of specialty-coffee dealers by storm, and Susan Bourette's Meat: A Love Story, the latest New Carnivore tome justifying the ways of man to meat. (The Shameless Carnivore and The Compassionate Carnivore were the last two.) Both books are fascinating in the way they focus on coffee and meat, respectively; by the time you’re done, you feel ready to tramp around Panama seeking the rare Hacienda La Esmeralda Special or going to Alaska or Texas for whale hunts and cattle drives. Despite our predilection for meat, we enjoyed God in a Cup a little more. You can eat meat anywhere, but the legendary coffee the latter book describes is unavailable in New York and therefore belongs to the world of aspirational, or rather devotional, appreciation. And that's the plane on which the best food books excel. On the other hand, we've never gnawed on whale blubber.

God in a Cup: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Coffee [Amazon]
Meat: A Love Story [Amazon]
Related: Shameless Carnivore Stands to Be Corrected by Compassionate Carnivore

Beer geeks will walk a mile to get an Elephant, but too often their searches are in vain. Sure, they end up happily soused, but is that really what a true beer connoisseur needs? Where can they find a particular lambic or the hand-pulled cask ale they have heard about? Well, their troubles are over, thanks to Beer Menus, a new site aimed at matching beers with mouths. You can search by beer or by neighborhood and also catch up on all the major beer events going on in the city. It's only a few days old, but already nearly 1,300 beers are in the database, awaiting your search

Beer Menus

In theory, it shouldn't be hard to tell Bar Milano from Milano's Bar. But, somehow, we know that visitors hoping to go to the new Lupa sequel from Jason Denton will eventually end up at the landmark Houston Street dive bar, so we present an easy-to-read side-by-side comparison, just to prevent any possible confusion.

Last week, Best Bets tipped us off to Brooklyn Flea opening in Fort Greene on Sunday. Further investigation by Grub Street reveals that there’s plenty to eat there in between buying home-design goods. Some vendors’ wares have never been available to the public before this weekend, like the scrumptious cookies from Brown Bag Industries, Three Birds Bakery house-made granola, and biscotti and homemade marshmallows by new brand Whimsy & Spice. Favorites will be there, too — look for Belgian waffles from Wafels & Dinges and Salvatore Ricotta’s debut cannoli, created by La Lunetta sous-chef Betsy Devine. There are even unique eats to go, like an edible plant from City Dirt. The food will get better in the coming weeks — Brooklyn Flea organizers have BBQ plates and Cuban empanadas lined up. —Alexandra Vallis

Brooklyn Flea [Official site]
Related: Let’s Get Ready to Jumble [NYM]

From the Dessert Truck’s molten chocolate cake in a foil cup to Momofuku Ko’s fried apple cake, some of the best desserts in town now feature salt as a key component next to traditional flavors like chocolate, apples, and caramel. It seems paradoxical, but somehow salt seems to bring out the sweet. New York's pastry chefs are leaning on it more and more, as the following mouthwatering images in this slideshow attest.

Slideshow: Sweet Salt

FreshDirect, knowing full well that there’s no prepared food we won't taste-test, sent us the latest line of celebrity-chef meals, from Tabla’s Floyd Cardoz. The last time a line of these "four-minute meals" came out, from Picholine’s Terrance Brennan, we taste-tested it, and the Undisputed King of Cheeses came out a little battered by our crack panel of tasters. So we’ve reassembled them to try five FreshDirect entrées: pork-rib vindaloo, tamarind-glazed salmon, chickpea masala, Goan shrimp-and-chile fry, and black-pepper-braised lamb shank. So, at between $10 and $12 each, are they worth it? Here are the results.

Josh Ozersky’s The Hamburger: A History will be released on April 28, but Grub Street readers don’t have to wait so long. The book details the rise of the burger from a grim beef sausage to a cultural icon, and the following excerpt describes its ascendency in the new millennium, after years of critique from environmentalists and anti-establishment thinkers. But, more importantly, it presents a culinary justification for Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. College stoners, this term paper’s for you.

Brooklyn Restaurant Week begins today, and while there are bargains to be had, be on the alert — too often, small restaurants sign on to get business, but then put the weakest things they have on the special menu or make up for the deal by relentlessly upselling bottled water, overpricing wine, and other tricks of the trade. That said, the good thing about Brooklyn Restaurant Week is that it tends to bring Brooklynites out of their neighborhoods. (Getting Manhattanites to come to Brooklyn to eat is patently out of the question, with a few ironclad exceptions like Peter Luger and the River Café.) We’ll skip over the places that, while of undisputed excellence, are basically just Manhattan restaurants that happen to be located in Brooklyn, like Chestnut or La Lunetta, in favor of restaurants such as Korhogo 126, the African restaurant on Union Street, or the always underrated Waterfront Ale House, where chef Ralph Yedinak does some of the city’s ablest barbecue and game cookery. Embers, one of our favorite steakhouses, is so cheap that you don’t even need Restaurant Week to get you out there — though if it helps, so be it. And after what Rob and Robin wrote about Bay Ridge’s magnificent Tanoreen, this week should be the excuse you need.

Brooklyn Restaurant Week [Visit Brooklyn]

As much as we enjoy Peeps (who doesn’t?), New York is a mighty big town, and there’s plenty of room for other, better Easter treats. Submitted for your approval, then: a slideshow of some of the best the city has to offer, from the likes of Jacques Torres, Bouchon Bakery, and One Girl Cookies. We got to eat all the treats after they were photographed, and they tasted every bit as good as they looked. Which is saying something.

Eggcentric Sweets Slideshow: Easter's Ovoid Candies, Cookies, and Cakes