• Your mother would approve. UWS Japanese spot Hayashi Ya charges $26.95 for all-you-can-eat, but there’s a 30 three percent surcharge for those who don’t manage to join the Clean Plate Club. [CBS]
• Joe Biden briefly dropped intothe Elephantfor his daughter-in-law’s 40th birthday. [NYP]
• Prospect Heights’Garden Cafecame in first for food and service in Zagat’s 2009 Best of Brooklyn guide. [Zagat]
• Even the worst-named restaurants in New York have a story behind them: Dirt Candy’s owner, for example, was tired of one-word restaurants. [Metromix]
•White StarandRusty Knotare among Citysearch’s top new bars of 2008. Notably, all the bars named are cocktail- (rather than wine- or beer-) focused. [Citysearch]
