We'll always have Paris, as long as Keith McNally keeps obsessively re-creating his dream French bistro, true to the last faux nicotine stain.

Jack's Fifth, hidden just across from the Plaza hotel, acquits itself well on all counts; also, a Vongerichten alum heats up Lower East Side eats.

When Warner LeRoy bought the Russian Tea Room, loyalists cringed; when he tore it down, they wept; now that it's reopened, they're lining up.

Thalia unleashes some much-needed star power on the theater district.

Atlas successfully shoulders a young chef's grand ambitions.

When Mortimer's closed, the kiss-kiss rich who watered there were cast adrift; but with the opening of Swifty's, their forlorn diaspora is over.

Is there anything Mario Batali won't do with pig jowls and pasta? At the new Lupa, named for the Roman she-wolf, carnality still rules.