• The week in reviews: The Times's temp critic Pete Wells hands out a single star to the Standard Grill (and some controversy follows); NY's Adam Platt has mixed things to say about "pre-recession throwback" SHO Shaun Hergatt; Bloomberg's Ryan Sutton takes a knife to the new Aureole; and TONY's Jay Cheshes bestows four out of five stars on Ryan Skeen and Allen & Delancey.
• The Jane is striking back at its very angry (very noise-averse) neighbors. [P6]
• Coming in 2010 (maybe): Chumley's, the Village landmark that closed a couple of years ago, is hoping to make a return. And Todd English is looking to open a hotel restaurant named Oliver Todd on Great Jones Street. [Eater, GS]
• How did Danny Meyer come up with Shake Shack? Allow him to explain. [BT]
• Wine prices are at all-time lows, in case you haven't heard. [Reuters]
• How are some chain restaurants luring in customers during these tough economic times? By offering up discounts on drinks, naturally. [WSJ]
• Did you know Sunday is International Pickle Day? Now you do! [Decider, BB]

• The rumor that Anderson Cooper showers in his underwear at the gym? Decidedly untrue. Anyway, who does that? That's crazy! The gym men would have been staring at him and pointing! [Towleroad]
  

Turns out rumors of West Village speakeasy Chumley's demise were rather premature. According to today's Times the bar's owners claim it'll be back up and running in a month or two. But what's auspicious for the ghosts of literary Chum-scrubbers Hemingway, Eliot, Fitzgerald, and Steinbeck posed a problem for Times scribbler James Barron: How to pad what amounts to a report on a business putting up a "be back in 5" sign? It's the nineties, silly—turn to AOL:

Chumley's, whose chimney collapsed yesterday and whose demolition we predicted was imminent, has lived to greet the new dawn. The FDNY and the DOB have decided not to demolish the whole building but rather to shore it up and sally forth with renovations 'n' reconstruction. Tragically for bookish alcoholics, Chumley's will for a while remain in a Schiavo state of unresponsiveness. On the bright side, continuing Chumley's literary tradition, the whole affair did give rise to some memorable cuts of occasional prosody. Surely to be remembered is the work of the Times' Trymaine Lee, whose elegiac images and sonorous prose have earned him the appellation the "Carl Sandburg of Chumley's." To wit: "Snowflakes fell upon the old speakeasy as firefighters stood staring into its now dusty guts." Okay!

This one hits close to the hearts and livers of many. Chumley's, the venerable West Village watering hole, is being demolished by the FDNY even as you read this. Good thing that last week's BookForum party got out alive! We recommend Curbed for the blow-by-blow.