Clarissa Wei

Pork belly bao from Fun Buns NYC

By 7 p.m. on Friday, the atmosphere outside of the old firehouse on Lafayette was already beginning to look impatient. Bouncers checked for ticket confirmations and a long line of people wrapped around the building. This was TAP-NYC's first annual Taiwanese night market, and the event had been sold out for a solid week already. It was a three-hour festival of food vendors, raffles, and performances. The goal: to bring a part of Taiwan to New York City.

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If you wanted to sample honey jasmine cupcakes, pork-belly baos, and Taiwanese sausages without walking more than a couple of feet, the opportunity is finally here. Taiwanese cultural organization TAP New York is hosting a Taiwanese night market in Tribeca on Friday from 7 to 10 pm.

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Are the fish tacos a go at GO Burger?

​What happens when you get a restaurant that tries to cater to every taste, trend, and diner who may or may not swing through? You get Upper East Side burger joint GO Burger. The Second Avenue spot and it's roaming truck offshoot used to deal in meat patties. However, they've just announced a menu expantion that's taking their concept to another level.

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Lauren Bloomberg

Soon to be filled with the roar of slurping

In the nearly a year that it's been open, Alex Stupak and Lauren Resler's Empellon has really grown into its shoes. The tacos that fly out of the kitchen increasingly come in more interesting combinations -- see: sweetbreads with maitake mushrooms. The stack of warm tortillas that accompany the shishito fundido could easily be mistaken for a Mexican grandmother's. And although Chef Stupak wishes that less people would stuff themselves silly with chips and try the top-notch bunuelos instead, the restaurant remains packed every night, all night, seven days a week. So it comes as no surprise that, in addition to adding another restaurant, Empellon is tacking oysters onto their repertoire.

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Quentin Bacon

Boerum Hill gets a jelly belly.

While potato latkes -- pancakes -- are the most popular of the finger-licking foods consumed during Hanukkah, sufganiyot should be the jewel of the party. The jelly-stuffed doughnuts are über-popular in Israel, but haven't reached their full potential on our shores. Until now.

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Not to be confused with Sandinista

There's been an influx of NYC female-fueled book publishing lately. From Village Voice critic Lauren Shockey's Four Kitchens to Restaurant Girl's (a/k/a Danyelle Freeman) Try This and the soon-to-hit-the-sales-floor book by Grub Street's Alyssa Shelasky, it seems like every skirt-wearing writer is getting publishing deals. Now another femme food writer, Jill Donenfeld, and her chef partner, Josetth Gordon, have hit the scene, this time with a fete-themed cookbook: Party Like a Culinista.

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Lauren Bloomberg

Please cheese. Queens will dairy up like this Stamford locale.

Queens County is growing into a major culinary player. It has its own BBQ house (LIC's John Brown Smokehouse), a lauded fusion restaurant (Sunnyside's Salt & Fat), and now ... it's own Fairway Market.

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Lauren Bloomberg

Your order in the court?

The food-court trend seems to be under way (see: FoodParc, the Plaza Food Hall), and now it's made its way to the Financial District. Enter Earl's Court, which opened Monday, a John Street mess hall with seven branded vendors, including Earl of Sandwich, Billy's Bakery, and the Original SoupMan.

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arnold/inuyaki/Flickr

No baggies for Babbo!

We diners may be acutely aware of the bold new letter grades popping up in the windows of our favorite haunts. But you're unlikely to see a restaurant plastering up the Health Department plans they have to file to keep within code.

As restaurants' report cards are becoming more publicized, one long-standing struggle of kitchens and the health departments remains surprisingly obscure. HACCP plans (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) have been causing chefs and managers acres of paperwork for decades, especially as the Health Department reacts to chefs' new techniques and regulates them.

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David Berkowitz/Flickr

Extra nice with a dribbling lobster roll

The food vendors lucky enough to win a spot on the High Line this summer are still being decided upon. But if the organization that runs the elevated park gets what they asked for in proposals due yesterday, April 14, New Yorkers will have five concessionaires as "thoughtful, creative and innovative as the High Line itself."

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