Today, noodle master Ivan Orkin joined Sun Noodles's Shigetoshi Nakamura for a one-day-only pop-up at the Smorgasburg outdoor prepared-food market on North 6th Street by the Williamsburg waterfront. The event was a benefit for storm victims, with proceeds from the sale of the $10 cups of noodles going to the Brooklyn Recovery Fund.

Sandwiched between Green-Wood Cemetery and the Prospect Expressway, Brooklyn's latest beer garden, Greenwood Park, began life as an auto garage. The building reflects this, with the roll-up doors still intact. Outside, picnic tables are scattered across a courtyard that also boasts three bocce courts -- the acreage is so large, the playing fields take up only a fraction of the space. Raised electric heaters like mushrooms promise seating late into the autumn and beginning in early spring.

Last week's Counter Culture review appeared at an unpropitious time for its subject, Bobwhite Lunch & Supper Counter. The Southern-style eatery is located on Avenue C, which was extensively flooded by the hurricane storm surge, resulting in massive damage to the businesses that line the avenue.

Friday at 4pm Chinatown was a mess. A long line waiting for distribution of disaster relief ran down the east side of Bowery from the Manhattan Bridge, took an abrupt turn at the statue of Confucius, and continued two blocks further up Division Street. Thousands stood patiently on line for hours for MRE-style emergency meals, usually eaten in combat situations. Other than that, New York's oldest Chinatown was a ghost town. Nearly all restaurants, markets, dumpling houses, ginseng shops, curio stores, greengrocers, beauty parlors, and bubble tea parlors were shuttered, and only a few pedestrians scurried through the streets under still-threatening skies. The outlook was bleak, and power would not be restored till the next day.

[See Where to Eat, Donate, and Volunteer for Sandy Relief This Week]

A check of the two dozen or so West Village restaurants still open without electricity and operating by candlelight indicates that very few of them are actually serving food. Nevertheless, most were one-third to one-half full, often with drinkers from other neighborhoods who had traveled by foot, limited subway, and bicycle to experience the blackout conditions in the neighborhood.