Grub Street Grub Street New York

Nolita’s Lovely Day has finally opened its downstairs space, three years in the making (an upstairs fire set back construction, and then the Community Board got nervous about the diminutive cheap-eats favorite gaining another bar). Head downstairs and you’ll see that the restaurant’s former prep kitchen has been converted into a dining room decorated with vintage wallpaper, 23 mismatched chairs, and twelve stools at a backlit deco bar. The space has its own kitchen, and only there will you be able to score menu additions like edamame dip with rice chips and charcoal-barbecued spare ribs. There’s also a burger on the way. Right now, the downstairs is open (and accepting reservations for parties of five or more) from 6 p.m. till midnight, Tuesday through Saturday, and it will soon be open Sundays and Mondays as well.

A new study of school kids by U.C. Berkeley researchers validates what Alice Waters has been preaching for years: Teaching kids about gardening and cooking makes them want to eat more vegetables. The Atlantic reports the news, providing a retort to Caitlin Flanagan's January hit piece in which she scoffed at the reasoning behind Waters's Edible Schoolyard program and encouraged the students involved ("our state’s new child farm laborers") to strike. Among the 238 students tracked in the study who ate from daily menus from Alice's citywide School Lunch Inititiative (SLI), the kids who also grew and cooked their own vegetables were more knowledgeable about nutrition, ate more fruits and vegetables daily ("including a preference for leafy greens like kale, spinach, and chard"), and had "more positive attitudes about the taste and health value of school lunch."

Everyone's favorite homewares purveyor Ikea has just published a collection of baking recipes called Hembakat är Bäst (Homemade Is Best). Sure, knowing how to make Princess Cake is fine and dandy, but the volume is illustrated with some of the most inventive cookbook photography we've ever seen: Styled by Evelina Bratell and photographed by Carl Kleiner, the pristine arrangements of ingredients are so stark and geometric that they verge on the abstract. The good news is that the book is completely free; the bad news is that the only place you can get it is in the kitchen section of Ikea stores — in Sweden. Read on for more of Kleiner's stunning images, and see if you can guess what the recipes are for. (Answers are at the very end of the post.)

When it comes to dining out, the Food Network’s Marc Summers says he has a “charmed existence.” Be it a Stephen Starr, Marc Vetri or a Jose Garces setting, from 25 years of work on and behind the scenes of various TV programs his beaming smile is easily recognizable in any dining room. “I always get treated to extra stuff that I didn’t plan on eating,” he says. “I guess it’s one of the perks of being on the Food Network.” It’s a mixed blessing, though. Raised on a typical Midwestern diet of beef, poultry and potatoes, he admits his palate is rather tame, but he tries to remain open to new tastes and experiences. “Often I have consumed items that in my wildest dreams I never thought I would eat,” he says. “Mario Batali is a dear friend, I love him to death, but when I visit him he always starts cutting up pig ears, pigs feat and like pig everything. And I’m like, ‘Pig shit, I’m not eating that!’ I don’t eat eyeballs, intestines or any tripey kind of stuff.” Find out what Marc had to eat this week in our latest Philadelphia Diet.

"I'm just so sick of talking about the Lambs Club," says chef Geoffrey Zakarian. "It feels great to not have to answer any more questions about when it's going to open, and just get to work." His restaurant, first announced in 2007, opened last month just a handful of years behind schedule. Work these days means the National, the restaurant he's opening next month on the ground floor of the Benjamin hotel. "I've been waiting like twenty years to open a place like this," he says. "It's a midtown neighborhood joint, which should be an oxymoron." Straddling the office-heavy Grand Central area and the more residential neighborhood of Sutton Place, Zakarian sees room for something welcoming. "Where else are you going to go?" he asks. "The only two options you have are Michael Jordan's and Cipriani, and one's terrible and one's a rip-off." Find out what he had to eat this week in our latest New York Diet.