Grub Street

Tony’s Di Napoli, the monstrous Italian restaurant that has pleased (and fattened) Times Square tourists for decades, is reopening on the UES. The new Tony’s Di Napoli, opening this Spring, will take over 9,000 square feet at 1081 3rd Avenue (between 63rd and 64th Street). And it actually wants to replicate the Time Square location.

In the game of musical chairs between Vittorio Assaf and Fabio Granato's Geisha and Serafina, Diner's Journal confirms the Geisha-related opening we noted a while back, bringing news that Geisha Table, a tiny 23-seater outpost of the original Geisha, will open on Wednesday on the Upper West Side, next to the new Serafina. [NYT]

Around this time next week, a slew of sun-kissed chefs, burger-lovers, and food fanatics will be heading down to Miami for the South Beach Wine & Food Festival. At the heart of the long weekend sizzles the 6th Annual Burger Bash Hosted by Rachael Ray, with tickets at $225. The high-intensity cook-off gives a juicy platform to almost every chef on the map, from Guy Fieri and Andrew Carmellini to Husk's Sean Brock. This year's massive menu looks fierce, featuring the dominating Bash Burger (with which Chris Santos just posed), a steak-frites burger, a "porky burger," a Hangover 2 burger, and a whole mess more. Good luck, grillers!!

SoBe Burger Bash 2012 Menu [PDF]

Not sure how it will hold up next to the Marc Forgione label, let alone the Ramona Singer Pinot, but Bethenny Frankel has just launched her own Skinnygirl wines — in "red, blush and white" — to keep us thin and tipsy at all times, no matter how questionable the marketing or compromised the taste. She writes on her blog, "I’m not a wine connoisseur, but I do love a refreshing, great tasting glass of wine and that’s what I’ve created ... each serving is only 100 calories — 15% lower that most other brands." No doubt it's got legs.

In a long, in-depth interview with Toqueland, Hollingsworth, who is midway though the "exchange program" we told you about at Per Se, speaks about the cross-pollination within the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group, an insider a-ha moment revolving around "green tape," and why he's so disenchanted with chefs who cling exclusively to molecular gastronomy, characterizing their thought process as, "I can cook a piece of beef to medium-rare in a bag and sear it and serve it to you and you’re going to think it’s great. But can I go to a barbecue down the street in the park and barbecue a steak? Can I really cook?" [Toqueland]