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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When much-lauded chef John Fraser isn't tending the pass at Dovetail, the acclaimed Upper West Side restaurant he opened in late 2007, he's living a lifestyle that includes vegetable-forward eating and practicing Muay Thai, a form of Mixed Martial Arts known also as Thai boxing. His personal diet made an impact in his kitchen, where he says he's become more attuned to flavor and inventive with produce. It also inspired his Monday night vegetable menu and garnered his eatery a new following. Now, he's taking his fitness hobby to a new level: This Friday, Victory Combat Sports, the Mixed Martial Arts event production company in which Fraser is an investor, will host its inaugural event at Terminal 5.

We caught up with Fraser, who talked to us about his involvement in the Mixed Martial Arts world, his own training routine and eating philosophy and how his lifestyle choices affect his cooking at Dovetail.

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Last week, crowds spilled out of restaurants on the stretch of Frederick Douglass Boulevard between 112th and 118th Streets as neighbors celebrated the return of warm weather with the second annual Food & Drink Boulevard event, where they savored cocktails and croquettes, danced to live music emanating from a nearby dining room, and eventually made their way to another spot a couple of storefronts down, embracing the restaurant resurgence that has swept this neighborhood over the past decade (and especially over the last two years).

This section of street, just above Central Park West, is occasionally spotlighted as one of the next hot neighborhoods, another strip of Manhattan once deemed undesirable that's now coveted for cheap-ish rents and so is changing as a real estate-hungry crowd snaps up deals and takes over the blocks. But Yvette Leeper-Bueno, who opened the restaurant Vinateria in this area just three weeks ago, remembers when this section of Harlem played host to a different set.

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Courtesy Katie Bell

After securing a finalist spot for several years running, Blue Hill picked up a James Beard Award for Outstanding Restaurant earlier this week, putting it in the company of Eleven Madison Park (2011), Daniel (2010), Jean Georges (2009), and Gramercy Tavern (2008). For those who have followed the restaurant (or, rather, pair of restaurants -- one in the West Village and one upstate at Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills), the accolade may seem a long time coming: Chef and co-owner Dan Barber is one of the defining chefs of this generation. A pioneer in the locavore movement, he championed the virtues of farm-to-table cooking long, long before farm-to-table became so ingrained in requirements for new restaurant openings that calling it out as a mantra seemed cliché (in fact, he was instrumental in that shift in our food culture).

Blue Hill embodies that spirit of forward thinking in all aspects of the restaurant. Case in point: While trumpeted for its wine program for years, over the past year, under the eye of beer buyer Katie Bell, the tiny West Village restaurant has vigilantly created a well-edited and concise beer menu to delight everyone from geeks to novices. When we bellied up to the bar of the subterranean spot recently, she talked about personal favorites and poured an unforgettable lineup while we nibbled vegetables-on-a-fence and other snacks.

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It all started with a phone call.

Shortly after Adam Gold's restaurant -- Syracuse's Funk-N-Waffles, a casual joint that offers exactly what it promises in both music and eats -- was featured on the Food Network's Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, he got a call from the show's host, Guy Fieri.

Fieri was driving down the highway, listening to the album he'd been given just an hour earlier by Gold. It was a record by Gold's band, Sophistafunk, a trio from Syracuse that plays a blend of classic funk and hip-hop. One of the band's songs is about sending someone off into the afterlife on a dragonfly. Coincidentally, Dragonfly was the nickname Fieri had for his sister, who'd recently passed away from cancer. It was an emotional moment.

"He said, 'You guys are blowing my mind. I love this music,' " Gold recalls.

Then Guy Fieri dropped the bomb.

"He said, 'I'd love to have you perform at my birthday party.' "

And so, this past January, Sophistafunk went to California and played Guy Fieri's birthday party. The Village Voice caught up with Gold to chat about his experience working with Fieri, that New York Times review of Guy's American Kitchen and Bar, and, yep, the dude's hair.

Catch Sophistafunk tonight at Stage 48 at 8 p.m. Support their fundraiser to convert their van to run on vegetable oil here.

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Daniel Krieger

Preston Clark of Resto and the Cannibal

Preston Clark is serious about steak. As the chef at Resto and the man behind the butcher's counter at the Cannibal, Clark can take apart a whole sub-primal no problem. But when the Jean Georges vet isn't carving a côte de boeuf, Clark is known to blast Biggie in the kitchen, and would really love for you to order the beef heart schnitzel.

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Lucy Knisley's first autobiographical book, French Milk, told the story of a mother-daughter holiday in Paris with writing, illustration, and photography. Her second, Relish: My Life in the Kitchen is just as personal, recounting Knisley's childhood in Manhattan through her graduation from art school in Chicago, with snack-filled stops along the way in Japan, Mexico, and Rhinebeck (where after suffering a vicious goose attack, the author goes on to delight in foie gras).

Knisley's new book reads like a detailed, colorful food diary, documenting the author's relationships with her chef mother and food-loving father, along with the pivotal, awkward moments of her youth -- from her parents' divorce to her first period. But the bright illustrations and charming writing tend to stay away from food-memoir cliches. Her first cold oysters, for example, which she learns to crack open as a kid, taste the way Knisley imagines "the TI-83 robot from the Terminator would have tasted, but saltier."

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Tim Sullivan

Tim Sullivan is one of the most prolific sake lovers in New York. His blog, Urban Sake, is an encyclopedia of sake knowledge, with tastings notes on hundreds of bottles and a comprehensive glossary of Japanese terms -- Sullivan was named a "Sake Samurai" by Japan's Sake Brewers Association back in 2007 for preaching the gospel of rice juice in the U.S. Since then, he quit his day job to evangelize full time, teaching classes on the finer points of sake culture, organizing themed tastings around town, and consulting for a number of breweries. I asked him what pairs best with ramen, and what to drink right now as we edge closer to spring.

I've been really enjoying Shigure lately; where do you like to drink in the city? My first recommendation is always Sakagura. I tell my students it's the mother ship -- it's been around for 15 years and has the largest list in the city. It can be overwhelming, but for selection, elegance, and broadness of appeal it's my number one choice. And if you just want to dip your toes in the water you can tell them what sort of wines and beers you like, and they'll make a suggestion.

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Lauren Mowery

After winemakers, the most valuable people in the wine business today are passionate retailers. Sommeliers, wine critics, importers and anyone else involved in the world of wine -- they're all important, just not as much. Why? Retailers interact face-to-face with hundreds of thirsty consumers, sometimes on a weekly basis, and thus have the best opportunity to build trust, educate, and inspire people to be curious and drink more adventurously.

Note the distinction between retailer and passionate retailer. The city has loads of drab wine and liquor stores hawking booze to alkies with the same exuberance the trash men have for tossing our garbage into their trucks -- they don't care what it is as long as they move it. The good ones, though, are invaluable to the industry and consumers alike because their fervor for wine is as contagious as singing in a Southern Baptist Church. Last week, we caught up with one of those good guys -- Jean-Luc Le Dû.

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Deborah Madison lives in Galisteo, a tiny adobe village just south of Santa Fe. It was in her backyard there -- an eighth of an acre of beds raised above New Mexico's clay soil -- that she noticed the similarities among vegetable blossoms and fell into studying botany.

Years before we collectively swooned over fine vegetable cookery in New York, Madison was obsessing over it at Greens, a vegetarian restaurant she founded in San Francisco back in 1979. Since then she's worked as a chef and teacher, writing 11 cookbooks along the way. Madison's latest, Vegetable Literacy, is perhaps the most exciting, with its clear guiding recipes and confident storytelling. (With photography by the Canal House Cooking duo, Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton, it may also be the most beautiful.)

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