Restaurant News Resource - New York Times Restaurant Industry News

It's a quarter to five in the morning, and I have a plane to catch in two hours. But why rush out the door if my flight is already delayed?

Here's a piece of advance information from the Michelin guide for New York City 2010: 18 new stars will be awarded to restaurants. Michelin is rigorously tight-lipped about the information in its guides until they arrive in stores, and requires similar discretion from its reviewers, who are anonymous.

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Facebook, the online social grid, could not command loyalty forever. If you ask around, as I did, you'll find quitters. One person shut down her account because she disliked how nosy it made her. Another thought the scene had turned desperate. A third feared stalkers. A fourth believed his privacy was compromised. A fifth disappeared without a word.

Could Tavern on the Green, the landmark restaurant in Central Park, flourish under another name?

Desperate times call for desperate measures. That's why John Halko is offering customers of his hole-in-the-wall organic restaurant here a chance to invest - kind of - in his business through what he calls V.I.P. cards.

For many, summer in New England would not be complete without throwing on a bib and cracking open a freshly boiled lobster. This year, however, fewer people are ordering the region's signature dish, driving down lobster prices and making times harder for lobster fishermen already reeling from the high cost of fuel and bait.

The battle between free and paid wireless Internet access is starting to look like a draw. Or more accurately, a third variation is winning - a combination of the two.

At what point in the chef-diner relationship is it O.K. to offer a backrub?

A traditional ham-and-egg sandwich called a strammer Max costs about $6 or $7 at a local greasy spoon here. But at Juan Amador's restaurant the sandwich - along with a tube to sip a few drops of pork fat and smoked oil, followed by a quail's egg swaddled in paper-thin dough - is part of a multicourse meal that runs about $240.

According to Herodotus, even the mighty armies of the Greek and Persian empires took the winter off from warfare. But not the forces of frozen yogurt.