With 48,000-square-feet of high-quality Italian goodies, Eataly Flatiron is already a good time as is. But the vibrant Italian marketplace and retail concept at 200 Fifth Avenue is amping the fun up even further with an all-day 18-hour-long celebration of New York on Tuesday, May 21, taking over its counters, cafés and restaurant concepts with food tastings, live DJs, art installations and more. 

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After kicking off this morning with a 6am Daybreaker community dance party and yoga session, the open-to-the-public “Eataly Loves NYC” shindig will stretch until midnight tonight, showing off brand-new renovations and upgrades to the now 14-year-old collection of shopping areas, cafés, and restaurants, including the debut of the space’s new Caffè Vergnano coffee counter and a restyling of Pesce, Flatiron’s seafood restaurant. 

From 11am to 11pm, attendees can explore a storewide tasting with more than 20 local businesses and Italian producers. After that, you can take in the public unveiling of the fresh, new design for the store’s Fifth Avenue, by New York-based artist Jade Purple Brown. And then from 6pm until midnight, the venue’s La Piazza restaurant will be transformed into a dance floor, with a lineup of DJs including Mike D of Beastie Boys fame and DJ Stretch Armstrong. Throughout the night, guests will still be able to enjoy the full Eataly experience, with counters, restaurants, and the marketplace open late to fuel all your moves. 

All events are free and open to the public, but food and drinks are not included and will be available to purchase. 

The Eataly team has been quite busy lately—just last month, the global retail debuted its first ever private-label pasta line, with options like rigatoni and linguine all made with 100% heirloom Italian wheat and mountain spring water. Now available in over 50 Eataly stores worldwide, the new pasta range was, of course, celebrated with pasta-themed events and restaurant activations all month long. What can we say, Italians know how to party!

* This article was originally published here

One of New York’s private clubs just got a little less private: Frog Club, the reservation-only restaurant and self-proclaimed “New Yorkiest Room in New York!” that debuted in Greenwich Village this past February, has now just made it a little bit easier to snag one of those super-exclusive seats inside.

Located at 86 Bedford Street in the former Chumley’s space—they retained that speakeasy spot’s signature unmarked green door—the 68-seat restaurant is run by chef Liz Johnson, ye of the downtown French bistro Mimi and the celebrated Los Angeles spot Horses.

And while a new team taking over the historic room was itself worthy of a few headlines, the concept received exceedingly more attention when it became known that it would take reservations exclusively by email. No phone, no OpenTable, no Resy, nada—you simply had to email knocknock@frogclub.nyc and pray to the reservation gods that someone from the team would reply with an available dinner time. (There was also a long list of rules, including but not limited to: no photos while inside—no, not of the frog murals or the lobster pierogis, and that includes “bathroom selfies,” too—no rude behavior, no theft or vandalization and no “kissing the chef without her consent.”)

All of that faff, though, has thankfully changed three months into the restaurant’s existence—Frog Club is officially now accepting reservations via Resy, which will likely not only make the teams’ lives much easier, but diners, too. After all, it’s already hard enough getting a table at a given restaurant in New York City even when it is hosted on a reservation platform. (And while we’re on the subject, here are great NYC restaurants you can get into without a reservation.) 

As of press time, there are plenty of seats available at Frog Club, both at the bar and in the dining room, so you can snap up a spot to try some of Johnson’s nostalgia-inducing American cooking, with dishes like a bacon-wrapped, bone-in filet mignon; a hamburger served on an English muffin-esque bun, and a banana chiffon pie.

* This article was originally published here