NYC 2 LONDON

We’ve long believed there is only one simple, undeniable truth in this world:

Bigger is always better.

Just ask Shaq, Dolly Parton or a certain legend by the name of Mr. Smalls.

And if history has taught us anything, it’s that nowhere is this axiom more true than in the realm of hamburgers.

And here, on this dreary, rainy day, we’re pleased to bring you word that history has once again demonstrated that what’s true for Dolly Parton is true for everyone.

Today, we bring you burgers, and today, we bring you… huge.

It comes in the form of a Bill’s Bar & Burger.

You know this name, precisely because it’s the same Bill’s that’s been steadying you to greet the sunrise on many a SNL out for lunch in the neighborhood. Or maybe you just need a spot to bring 400 of your most valued employees out for a night of trust building. (The burgers help.)

The standout menu items: the English-muffined Fat Cat (caramelized onions and cheese), the Bobcat (guac and green chili) and new bar snacks like the oyster-laden Rockefeller Salad. Also, two gigantic bars housing 80 varieties of draft and bottle, including the Triple B, made for this new Bill’s by the brewers at Sixpoint.

Tina Fey is going to be all over this one.

45 Rockefeller Plaza (51st St between 5th and 6th Ave), New York, NY 10111 +1 (212) 705-8510 brguestrestaurants.com

Oktoberfest.

Rarely does a single word conjure so many pleasing images. Braided beer maidens. Giant boot-shaped steins of craft beer. Sausage-induced meat comas.

And while we don’t want to alarm you, Oktoberfest started this past weekend. Okay, you should be alarmed…

Just in time: Brats, a tiny launching pad for Oktoberfest, and new go-to sausage bar, just opened in Chelsea.

Quick warning: Brats looks more like a 1950s soda fountain than a sprawling beer hall—it’s a sliver of a space with bright red stools, a wood bar and some standing room against the wall. Don’t be fooled. This place is all about sausage and booze on tap (but we’ll get to that in a moment).

Let’s talk meats: chef/owner Daniel Angerer (Klee Brasserie) is Austrian and has a potentially dangerous fascination with encased meats (the pizza of Austria, as he calls it). Which means that every wiener, brat and dog is a house recipe, made without preservatives, using exotic meats (Mangalitsa pig, duck, shrimp), left-of-center toppings (the Dragon Wiener is a pork sausage draped in spicy kimchi and sriracha mustard) and a smattering of Austrian sternness.

And sure, you could wash your tube steak down with a tobacco-infused milkshake, but Brats also has wine, sake, grappa and port on tap.

Prepare yourself for the three-port lunch.

362 W 23rd Street (at 9th Ave.), New York, NY 10011 +1 (646) 350-2557

The much-anticipated solo venture from Per Se’s former chef du cuisine, Lincoln’s cavernous space feels like a relaxed museum thanks to undulating ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows, and the centerpiece exhibit of an open kitchen. While the market-based menus change daily, the general vibe’s pan-italian, from foie/rabbit/sweetbread terrine, to bigoli pasta studded with Dungeness crab/sea urchin, to Brodetto di Pesce, where red snapper and shrimp float in a shellfish broth that, being only out for itself, will be reluctant to give up said bounty.

142 W 65th Street (between Broadway and Amsterdam Ave.), New York, NY +1 (212) 359-6500 LincolnRistorante.com

Tropical vacations seem like a great idea, but half way through them your wife always ends up banging a scuba instructor and, worse, turns out you’re Ben Stiller. For a Polynesian getaway safely in the city, there’s Hurricane Club, opening early next week.

This massive (13,000 sqft) newcomer went all out to create a vibe of genteel Colonial tiki-ism (more club than beach), with uniquely-decor’d elevated spaces like the Lagoon Lounge (oversized coral & shell fireplace, 10ft three-tiered barnacle chandelier) and the Cave Rooms (mosquito net curtains & red-glowing fishbowl fixtures) surrounding the architectural main course: the Hurricane Room, resplendent in butternut caning panels and with a golden-bead chandelier looming over the central bar like a shimmering boat, though everyone down below will be hunting for booty. The menu offers smaller pupu tastes before getting impressive with Societe Island Grills proffering simply grilled proteins (tri tip, octopus, etc) w/ 6 house sauces; platters of crispy Peking pig w/ steamed pork buns; and 72-hr-notice whole table Luaus, which run from crispy big island fish to dungeness messy crab, though it’s hard to stay sanitary when you’re stuck in ye olde prison. The cocktails aren’t to be outdone, and come broken into categories from “To Share” punch combos (the #480 w/ Pitu, spiced passion fruit & muddled ginger), to port-of-call-inspired “Voyages” (the Knob Creek/mandarin/bay leaf Tahiti gets toasted rice for a “flavor popular in Bora Bora”), to “In The Shell” options served in melons, red peppers, and coconuts that’re “hand drilled” at the bar, appropriate as that’s the only kind of drilling you’ll be up to afterwards.

And while there’re Pacific Rim wines and suds, the rum list dwarfs them all, with over 150 options including plenty of overproofs and spiced jobs, more than 30 each of dark and gold, and 40+ aged affairs, exactly what you’ll be stuck with when your wife’s off cave diving.

360 Park Ave South (off 26th Street), New York, NY +1 (212) 951-7111 TheHurricaneClub.com

A mound of General Tso’s from Panda Express.
 
A fist-size Cinnabon.
 
The sublime offerings of Sir Orange Julius.

The sacred rituals of the mall food court are forever etched in your superego.
 
And it’s not that we miss the hairnets and the proximity to Brookstone, there’s just something sexy about a food court…
 
Here for your food centralizing pleasure is FoodParc, an upscale, white-tableclothed, futuristic food arena, opening Wednesday at the Eventi hotel in Chelsea for quick and dirty upscale lunching.
 
If the Starship Enterprise had a VIP food court, it might look something like this: you place your order at a computer terminal, get a text message when your food is ready, sip lunchtime Peronis over live DJ sets and sit at a table decked in white linens.
 
You can grab pastries and coffee from the café, flatbread pizza from a brick-oven vendor, or dumplings and noodles from the Asian spot, or just head right to the 3B’s counter for burgers, bacon and beer.

Once you’ve gotten a text and picked up your tray (go dumplings, bacon, strong coffee and a martini), walk back to the aforementioned white-linen dining room, find a corner to settle in, and a cocktail waitress will be along shortly to facilitate the fastest three-martini lunch in town.

And in a month, FoodParc will live up to the “parc” with the opening of a giant outdoor green space for dining, carousing and watching cinema gems on a giant overhead screen.

Mrs. Fields would’ve loved this.

839 6th Avenue (between 29th and 30th St.), New York, NY 10001 +1 (646) 600-7140

Grandma’s pass down all kinds of knowledge, like how to mistrust anyone who isn’t Scotch-Irish. Proving they’re not all racist, and can teach folks how to cook, Hill Country Chicken.

A sister spot to the BBQ behemoth around the corner, the bros behind HCC’re channeling a grandma’s soul (cooking) with this bi-level counter-service joint, designing the upstairs as a 50′s style “grandma’s dream kitchen” awash in soft pastels and the bottom as a grandpa’s basement, with abundant wood paneling, vintage furniture, record jackets, and, oddly, a multi-cade machine, sure to rile old timers upset by the inaccuracies of 1942. Starting with a buttermilk brine bath to maximize juicy tenderness, the fowl’s prepped two different ways: their much-beloved Mama Els’ recipe, in which skinless chicken’s dipped in seasoned flour, coated in egg, and tossed in crushed crackers, and the Hill Country Classic, which’s double coated in seasoned flour, fried, and spiced with a “secret chicken shake” — at least grandma understands privacy. Avail by the piece, boneless early death’s also plopped on a buttered bun w/ sliced sour pickles, wrapped in a tortilla with sweet-hot pepper jelly & creamy coleslaw, and thrown into a fried pimento cheese & jalapeno sandwich that’s described as Monte Cristo-esque, though after eating it you’ll be the one who’s down for the count.

As one grandma’s never enough, their pie-baking one gets repped via 3″, 5”, and 11″ flavors of cheddar-crust’d apple, whiskey buttermilk, and the chocolate/ caramel/ pecan/ marshmallow Texas Billionaire, who grandma would gladly vote for as long as he keeps everyone out.

1123 Broadway (off 25th Street), New York, NY+1 (212) 257-6446 HillCountryChicken.com

Branching out from its UES home base, the bi-valvery’s launching in a similarly beachy-crisp spot downtown, with dune grass and an LED lighthouse scene providing familiar environs for the original’s faves, plus new flavors like Bruschetta (marinated San Marzanos, lobster, and croutons) and the coconut milk/ ginger/ tomato/ cilantro/ citrus Brazilian, which is guaranteed to never have a hair in it.

154 W 13th Street (between 6th and 7th Ave.), New York, NY +1 (212) 229-0222 flexmusselsny.com

Bigger is not always better.

Except when it is.

And when it comes to near-mythical dough bombs slathered in artichoke dip and then passed off in the guise of pizza… well, you can probably guess.

Welcome to the second coming of Artichoke Basilles, the sliver of a pizza shop on 14th Street, where the line can easily reach Shake Shack proportions, now reborn and opening as a sit-down restaurant at the strategic intersection of Avenue and 1Oak, open till the ripe hour of 5am.

If you’ve made a habit of artfully devouring a slice on Artichoke’s 14th Street sidewalk, you’ll be happy to note that the menu here is exactly the same. Not the same: the space. After a casual stroll around the corner from the marauding Meatpacking hordes, you’ll arrive at an exposed-brick, white-tile Italian café that sort of looks like Pastis-Light, complete with actual tables and a real bar.

And it’s here where you’ll sit down, take a moment to contemplate the glory of a life that brought you to this point, grab a house specialty artichoke beer and unwind from an evening of early-fall rampant socializing.

Should you be in a hurry—and you have your reasons—just grab a quick slice from the separate storefront counter on 17th Street.

You wait for no pizza.

114 10th Avenue (at 17th St), New York, NY 10011 +1-212-792-9200 artichokepizza.com

Fried chicken reaches bacon-like proportions here in NYC, with chef-driven restaurants (Locanda Verde, Momofuku, Buttermilk Channel) featuring the dirtiest of birds on their menus.

But nowhere is it as prominent as Hill Country Chicken, a fresh fast food joint opening Wednesday in the Flatiron. All-natural, crispy-fried goodness is the main event (pick breasts, thighs, wings, and drumsticks a la carte), served on a TV dinner tray in a ’50s-era Sears catalog kitchen (canary yellow Formica, Sputnik lamps, chrome).

Prepare for greasy fingers: Most everything can be eaten without utensils — hand-cut fries, oh-so-buttermilky biscuits, miniature pie rounds. Actually, there’s a whole pie program, with three-, five-, and eleven-inch offerings such as bourbon pecan, banana cream, and double cherry, along with happy hour (holy salted margarita slice!) and a separate counter for quick ordering.

Did we mention it’s all from scratch? And an actual genteel Southern lady runs the retrofitted kitchen (the same Elizabeth Karmel who runs Hill Country Barbecue). Downstairs, a vintage rec room is ready for private parties. Book first and be one cool chick.

1123 Broadway (at 25th Street), New York, NY +1-212-257-6446

Although America was the birthplace of Jazz, Asians have arguably become its most avid and sophisticated consumers, digging on everyone from Coltrane to, uh…DJ Jazzy Jeff, he’s jazz right? Bringing all that jazz back to its birthplace: Mono+Mono.

Decking its cavernous carriage house space with thick, offset wooden beam walls and heavy industrial accents (large, grate-covered ceiling fans, a vintage warehouse pull-cart), M+M’s from K-town’s Mad for Chicken mad geniuses, and, thanks to a glass wall housing 30,000 jazz vinyls, is being billed as an “analog music pub”, far better than a digital music pub, as all they serve are summonses on behalf of Metallica. For actual tunes, there’s a functional piano that doubles as a table, but good luck hearing it over the records, which you can pick out and watch get ferried to the DJ — and his antique tube amp-driven system — via a suspended ceiling track, so even if the bill’s low you’ll feel like you got taken to the cleaners. Theatrical noshes include traditional myung bean pancakes that’re ground tableside in a circular stone press and topped w/ everything from pork belly to sea urchin, and also 20+ flavors of steamed rice (lobster, beef short rib, green tea..), but chicken’s the highlight, served ultra-crispy (double-cooked & deep fried) with soy garlic sauce, grilled with a traditional fiery hot sauce, and braised at low temp over night in MJ’s Special Sauce –don’t stop ’til you get enough and they’ll have to tell you to beat it, though that’s just human nature…Thriller!

Beverage options’ll include soju & fruit cocktails elaborately served in beakers embedded in ice, plus local beers delivered by an automatic dispenser specially designed to pour the perfect ratio of body to head, sophisticated consumption that…hey, thats a beer, right?

116 E 4th Street (between 1st and 2nd Ave.), New York, NY +1-212-466-6660 MonoMonoNYC.com