Features

Italian Renaissance

Hearty pasta, braised vegetables, grilled calamari—these days, we just can’t get enough nuovo fare. Just in time for summer, the city’s great Italian chefs—including Mario Batali, Scott Conant, and Frank De Carlo—tell us how to do it at home.

They’re the Top

New York’s Italian restaurants have never been better or more popular. Our critics tasted everything from Babbo’s beef-cheek ravioli to Gonzo’s perfect pizzas in search of the ten best spots.

Stick ’Em Up

Jimmy Bradley loves kebabs—curried or olive-drenched—because they’re as easy to grill as they are to devour, especially paired with his showstopping summer salads.

Cold Comfort

These six chefs may be hot, but their sensational desserts are divinely cool.

Highball Heights

The city’s top drink maestros create icy pitchers of cocktails at once familiar and exotic—so you can spend more time with your (very happy) guests.

Night Crawler

Dave Attell spends the wee hours globe-trotting, bar-hopping, and meeting, as he puts it, the ugly people of the world—usually with beer (and shot glass) in hand. The star of one of Comedy Central’s most-watched shows gets down and dirty on New York’s sense of humor.

Whistleblower

Fired from her job as a Customs agent, Diane Kleiman has become for her former employer the most inconvenient of women—a whistleblower. Her allegations of ethnic slurs and sexual harassment are a serious matter. Her allegations of cronyism, corruption, and theft are even more serious. But her allegations of lax and porous security at JFK make her case a matter of national importance.

Departments

Intelligencer

Anna Wintour, Annie Lennox, Ben Affleck, and much more!

Letters

Hal Rubenstein's support of French restaurants, Peter Rainer's reviews of Spellbound and It Runs in the Family, and more.

Marketplace

Best Bets

The latest iPod, leather loafers, and colorful carnelian drop earrings

Sales & Bargains

Sexy one-piece suits for summer

Beauty

Lash-curling mascaras, leg lifters, and summer aromatherapy

Gotham

Ticket Master

Summons for everyone! Is Bloomberg waging an anti-quality-of-life campaign?

Click Clique

Like there aren't enough "friends" in your life already...

Summer Shun

Hamptons rents are being slashed in half—and still there are no takers.

How Unfair

Watch out for flying mesclun! Fairway accuses FreshDirect.com's founder of trading on its name.

Columns

The City Politic

Everyone’s bitching about the budget cuts, the tax hikes, the smoking ban. But there’s a civility to it all that could still save the mayor.

The Bottom Line

There’s a turnaround under way, and tech stocks are, shockingly, the driving force

Strong Medicine

As if managed care weren’t a big enough pain, there’s a scary shortage of anesthesiologists and radiologists, too

Naked City

Gay men looking for love find the market is bottoming out

Critics

Movies

In Together, a violin prodigy considers the price of fame; Capturing the Friedmans reveals one screwed-up family

Architecture

The Cooper-Hewitt’s second triennial design exhibition falls to pieces

Classical Music

The Death of Klinghoffer misses (again); Bach’s unlikely chart topper, Morimur

Pop Music

Richard Thompson hits the right notes on The Old Kit Bag; the Yeah Yeah Yeahs plow along; Japanese and Indian dance music that delivers the goods

TV Notes

John Leonard reviews Soldier's Girl, Berga: Soldiers of Another War, and more.

Dance

Christopher Wheeldon spins a whimsical West Side tale in Carnival; Peter Martins barely grasps the meaning of John Adams’s Guide to Strange Places

Top Five

Places You Can Still Find a Soda Jerk

They don’t wear the white-paper hats of old, and they probably wouldn’t like being called jerks. But the guys behind these counters will pull you a drink straight from the past—and save you from a summer of Frappuccinos.