♦ Frank Bruni delivered a crushing review of the new East Village restaurant Kurve yesterday. Today, the owner of the Karim Rashid-designed spot, Andy Yang, is doing damage control: What Bruni calls "unremarkable," Yang says, is actually "purposefully simple." [GS]
♦ Celsius, the pop-up restaurant in Bryant Park, is now open. [Eater]
♦ Michael Dorf's City Winery isn't opening on schedule and the space is still raw, but he hosted a musical preview last night anyway. [GS, Eater]
♦ The space that formerly occupied by Seymour Burton is coming back to life as a surf-and-turf spot called Butcher Bay. [Feedbag]
♦ A preview of At Vermilion, the Midtown offshoot of Rohini Dey's Indian-Latin Chicago restaurant, Vermilion. [GS]
♦ A group of deliverymen protested outside Jonathan Morr's Republic yesterday with "No Justice, No Noodles" signs. [NYP]