Douglas Tirola behind the bar at Employees Only.

By weaving together the stories behind New York City cocktail lair Employees Only and Westport, Connecticut corner bar Dunvilles, director Douglas Tirola takes on the changing world of bartending and the rise of craft mixology in his recently released documentary Hey Bartender And while the film focuses on a pair of tenders with rich back stories, it also features insight from some of the most celebrated people in the industry, including Dale DeGroff, PDT's Jim Meehan, Milk & Honey's Sasha Petraske, and Clover Club's Julie Reiner, who give anecdotal detail on how bartending became a celebrated profession and not just a plan b pursuit.

As the movie heads into wide release, we chatted with Tirola about why he opted to tell the story of this community, what he was trying to capture, and how making a movie about bartending changed the way he drinks.

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via Wikimedia

Celebrate restaurants in Bushwick during Bushwick Restaurant Week.

Bushwick's seen a host of new restaurants move in over the course of the past couple of years, and there are clear signs that the growth will only continue. And so it was very strange when not a single one of the neighborhood's eateries made the roster of spots celebrating Brooklyn Restaurant Week a few months back. Bob Murray and Nick Gilbert, partners in a venture called NFA Catering, stepped in to correct that oversight, creating Bushwick Restaurant Week to bring together the community's spots to offer diners from around the boroughs a week of specials and good reason to check out the area's culinary stylings.

We caught up with Murray, who gave us the details on what to expect and explained why it's worth heading to this northern Brooklyn neighborhood sometime this week.

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New Jersey native Roger Llanes, who externed behind the burners at Eleven Madison Park, then worked at BLT Prime, and spent 18 months running a restaurant out in California before he decided to move back to the East Coast. "I wasn't getting enough out of it," he explains. "It was my restaurant, and it was cool, but didn't work out for me."

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Marco Polo

In an era when insane opening hype damns many restaurants to short lifespans, it's nothing short of miraculous to see spots that have survived decades. One of those old-timers, Marco Polo Ristorante, opened as a Carroll Gardens destination restaurant for classic Italian back in 1983. The restaurant will celebrate its 30th birthday next week, so we chatted with Marco Chirico, who co-owns the place with his father, Joseph (also the founder), about the past, present, and future of his eatery.

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Empellon Cocina and Taqueria chef Alex Stupak just dropped a video for the third installation of Push Project, a quarterly guest chef dinner series that has so far featured collaborations between Stupak and Enrique Olivera of Mexico City's Pujol and Jordan Kahn of L.A.'s Red Medicine. This time, the host chef will share the kitchen with Chris Cosentino, who's flying in from San Francisco's Incanto.

We caught up with Stupak, who weighed in on how the series is going so far and why he picked Cosentino for dinner No. 3.

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Ribalta, a pizzeria located just a couple of blocks off of Union Square, hasn't necessarily been floundering since it opened just over a year ago, but it hasn't exactly been thriving, either. So a month ago, Naples native Rosario Procino--formerly of West Village pizza powerhouse Keste--picked up the front-of-the-house reins and an ownership share, and he quickly enlisted Verace Pizza Napoletana-licensed Pasquale Cozzolino--another Neapolitan, who helped launch Pizza Arte before landing at Dellarocco's in Brooklyn Heights--to helm the kitchen and make some changes to the menu. Cozzolino obliged with a list of Neapolitan-style pizzas built on wood oven-blistered chewy crusts slicked with fresh tomato sauce and mozzarella di Bufala, plus Neapolitan small plates and entrées.

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Before 1200 people filed into Gantry Plaza State Park yesterday to sample dishes and drinks from 60 neighborhood restaurants at the eighth annual Taste of Long Island City, a smaller crowd assembled for a Patron Hour. In addition to easy access to the M. Wells oyster bar and glasses of rose from a local wine shop, these event-goers, who shelled out nearly double the General Admission ticket price for the privilege, were treated to an anecdotal speech from City Council Speaker and Mayoral candidate Christine Quinn, who admitted that her partner Kim wears a tee shirt from The Chocolate Factory--the event's organizer and benefactor--to bed.

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Signe Birck

New York City is having an Evil Twin moment. For proof, check the drinks menu at the trendier of your favorite establishments, where you'll almost certainly find one or two beers from this craft brewer listed. For further proof, head out to Greenpoint and hit Tørst (if you've managed to avoid it thus far) where Evil Twin pours from a number of wood-handled taps into goblets served across a marble bar. You might wonder then why no one has considered making such a classy shrine to ales and lagers before, and you'll probably pat yourself on the back for being part of the craft beer revolution.

All the beer geek love that's been bestowed upon this brand may make it seem like Evil Twin has been quietly building buzz and amassing supporters forever. But two years ago, owner and brewer Jeppe Jarnit-Bjergsø was a full-time school teacher with what was mostly just a fairly serious beer hobby. We caught up with him to chat about how he managed to parlay that into an empire.

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Shunk

Marc Vidal, chef of the growing Boqueria empire that launched in Flatiron in 2006, takes hold of a green shoot, pinches the bottom of the attached white bulb and, as if peeling off long underwear after a cold winter day, slips off the charred skin of what looks like a green onion. He holds up the naked white remains for a second before he dips them in a rust-hued sauce, tips his head back, and lets the vegetable ribbon into his mouth.

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With substantial space carved out for drinkers, newly opened ABC Cocina's bar is likely to get as much play as its dining room, and sure enough, when we stopped by last week for an early taste, the cavernous area was packed to capacity with imbibers sipping fresh, bright cocktails and pitchers of sangria.

We caught up with beverage manager Ann Marie De Bello, who came over from sibling restaurant ABC Kitchen, about her focus, her list, and what's proved most popular so far.

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