Bill Devin Benefit at Fairway Steakhouse
Cheese hero Steven Jenkins hosts this culinary happening, featuring high-end foodstuffs, bottomless glasses of wine, and crackling foodie patter. Profits from the sale of tickets ($100 each) will go to the family of the late Bill Devin, pioneer of unsung Catalan wines.
March 10 at 7:30.
Fairway Steakhouse
74th St. and Broadway
To reserve, call 917-862-6996

OLA
Never trust a skinny chef—that’s our motto. But we’ll make an exception for seviche king Douglas Rodriguez. We haven’t seen him in person lately, so we can’t attest to his svelteness, but we hear he’s on a low-carb diet. He’s sharing some of the secrets of his regimen at OLA, his brightly designed new midtown restaurant, in a menu that includes a “pure protein” section and low-carb dishes indicated by asterisks, as well as signature tapas and seviches from his former kitchens at Pipa and Chicama. We’re not giving up starch, but if you’re committed to the Atkins plan, we can’t think of a better way to go than Nuevo Latino meatballs in a spicy foie gras sauce and crispy Cuban pork with oregano-lime mojo.
304 East 48th Street
212-759-0590

Re Sette
Before he became a restaurateur, Yagur Sheinman imported gold jewelry and diamonds, so it makes perfect sense that he’d choose a diamond-district locale for his fine-dining debut. Re Sette’s vaguely Gothic décor features elaborate candelabras and a 26-foot-long “king’s table” on the mezzanine (re sette is Italian for “seven kings”). Chef Alessandro Sacchetti makes optimal use of his wood-burning brick oven with fig-and-Gorgonzola pizzas and Cornish game hens, and reprises his grandmother’s Sunday sauce, a braised-meat gravy. A trio of special-events promoters from the China Club hope to draw a late-night crowd with downtown D.J.’s, but they’ll have to compete with a singing waiter prone to impromptu arias.
7 West 45th Street
212-221-7530

The Green Table
Unless they’re planning your wedding, caterers tend to fly under the culinary radar. One way some of the savvier firms combat anonymity is by opening a restaurant where the public can sample their wares. Great Performances spawned Mae Mae Café, Sage American Kitchen operates Café St. Bart’s, and now the Cleaver Co., famous for its homey potpies and sustainable-agriculture mind-set, has launched a café and wine bar adjacent to its Chelsea Market catering kitchen. The Green Table bills itself as New York’s only wine bar featuring organic food and drinks, including popcorn with ancho chili and orange salt, meat-loaf sandwiches, and Pinkus pilsner from Germany. A dozen wines are served by the elegant Spiegelau glass, and the menu—which quotes high organic priestess Alice Waters’s “Eating is a political act” manifesto—changes seasonally.
75 Ninth Avenue, at 15th Street
212-741-9174

Maria's Mexican Bistro
When it came to naming his new restaurant, Maria’s Mexican Bistro, Nelson Nacipucha played it safe: Both his mother and his mother-in-law happen to be Marias. Along with prolific partner Armando Zumba—who co-owns Park Slope’s popular Los Pollitos rotisserie restaurants as well as Café Mexicana, a charming new four-stool source for excellent tamales and Mexican hot chocolate next door to Maria’s—Nacipucha’s out to refine the Mexican dining experience and lead Brooklynites out of taqueria territory and into Maria’s relatively swank surroundings. The gently priced, not strictly Mexican menu augments the familiar world of guacamole, enchiladas, and fajitas with green mussels steamed in a white-wine-chipotle broth, baked red snapper with roasted red peppers, and three takes on paella. Both moms should be proud.
669 Union Street, Park Slope, Brooklyn
718-638-2344.