New Yorkers and those visiting the city might want to leave their Tuesdays free for a unique dining opportunity. "Top Chef" star and celebrity chef Tom Colicchio is opening a new small restaurant inside the private dining room of his Craft restaurant at 47 E. 19th St. His TOM: Tuesday Dinner will open on October 14 and will seat just 32 and be open only every other Tuesday. The important part is that Colicchio himself will do the cooking in the open kitchen. He has said that he is doing this for fun and to get himself back in the kitchen. Like many other celebrity chefs he has found himself busy overseeing his chain of restaurants, putting out books and doing a variety of personal appearances. He has cleared his schedule for a year to make sure he will be there to cook. The tasting menu will start at $150 and go as high as $250 per person for a seven to eight course meal. You can call for reservations at 212-400-6495.

I've noticed lately that the trend seems to be for good food made in a style more in tune with today's busy lifestyles. But there is still room for elgant fare. In pursuit of that a great tool is the new Ducasse Made Simple by Sophie, a cookbook which features 100 recipes from master chef Alain Ducasse's encyclopedic Grand Livre de Cuisine. Sophie Dudemaine, the author, adapted 100 of his most famous recipes for the home cook making them simpler but not overly dumbed down. The book includes some classics such as Cream of Pumpkin soup, Lobster Newburg and Crepes Suzette. Each recipe has its own spread with a picture of the food on the right. It's not the most lavish presentation ever, this is a book clearly meant to be used rather than simply flipped through. Which is why I'm hoping that people with a love of kitchen experimentation will take part in today's contest. I'm giving away two copies of this cookbook.

To win, leave a comment telling me what food you most look forward to when the weather gets colder.

To enter, all you need to do is leave a comment below before 5:00PM Eastern, Friday, October 10 2008. We'll randomly choose two winners amongst the eligible entries.

Some other important details:

* To enter, leave a confirmed comment below answering the question above.
* The comment must be left and confirmed before Friday, October 10, 2008 at 5:00PM Eastern Time.
* You may only enter once.
* Two winners will be selected in a random drawing.
* Two winners will receive the Ducasse Made Simple cookbook valued at $35.
* Open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 18 and older.

See complete contest rules here.

Londoner Margaret Carter has been making pâté for over 25 years but has only recently opened operations in the U.S., making use of local ingredients in rural Pennsylvania.

The gourmet spreads include such combinations as Bourbon Blueberry Chicken Liver and Welsh Dragon, which features venison livers and chipotle chilies. Carter insists on organic chicken livers and sautés them in fresh butter from her creamery.

Available at igourmet.com for a very reasonable $8.99 per 8 oz.

English restaurant chain Belgo is serious about their Oktoberfeast and has hired a "beerologist" to go on a beer hunt to find unique Belgian beers for their menu. The beerologist, otherwise known as Sam Hjelm, has tracked down eclectic and delicious beers, which include Trappist brews, still made by monks using traditional medieval recipes. The menu, which will be available throughout October, includes Abbey and lambic beers, a strawberry fruit beer and blonde beer, each matched to specific dishes, including: moules blanches (mussels cooked in brugs witbier with bacon lardons); carbonnade flamande (braised beef cooked in faro beer, nutmeg and brown sugar); and even a leffe beer ice cream, served with syrop de liège and pralines. The menu will cost £27.50 per person for three courses with three glasses of matched beer.

Luxe sushi empire Nobu, backed by Robert De Niro, plans to open an eatery in Doha, Qatar's capital city. Planning is in the early stages and the exact location is unknown, but the odds-on favorite is the landmark Four Seasons Doha in West Bay on the Arabian Gulf, the Qatari Penisula reports. This will be Nobu's second Middle Eastern outpost, following the branch at the newly-opened Atlantis in Dubai's Palm Jumeirah. Qatar, which has the highest per capita income in the world, is also the site of upcoming restaurants from famed chefs Gordon Ramsay and Jean-Georges Vongerichten, part of the country's growing luxeification. Nobu currently has has 21 restaurants in 16 cities around the world.

Dining at Chef Alain Ducasse's bistro Benoit in New York City is an excellent place to go with a group of friends but to make it even more posh you might want to reserve Le Officine, a private dining salon inside the restaurant. The restaurant mirrors the original Benoit in Paris, which opened in 1912 and serves French bistro classics drawn from Benoit's repertoire of 50 to 100 year old recipes.

Le Officine seats just ten people and is a small room covered in walnut paneling. According to the NY Sun's article on this room, it is a reconstruction of a French herbalist's shop, circa 1830. The entire dismantled shop was bought by Ducasse who had it restored and reassembled. The original porcelain nameplates on the cabinets identifying the herbs are still in place and Ducasse has added his own touches including a collection of old salmon poachers and an arrangement of white porcelain apples and garlic plants. The room's ends are anchored by mural sized photographs of Paris.

Feeling out of touch with the finer things in life? Head to the swankiest bar in town--we particularly recommend a hotel bar.

Safety first--tell a friend where you're going. If you're not going to a hotel bar, where it's perfectly normal to be alone, take the friend along.

If you're lucky enough to live in a town with a great hotel, enter the stunning foyer day or night with a good book and head for the bar. You can pretend you're a visiting prince or princess from Morocco, or that you're waiting for your European lover to meet you, whatever you like. Order yourself a club soda with lime. It's likely to be cheap and looks just like a gin and tonic. Who knows, your next drink might be free!

You can people watch or just sink into the lush decor, soft light, and meticulously planned ambiance and be transported.

It's just another easy way to make life more lux for cheap or free.

All phases of Dal Toro, Lamborghini's 20,000-sq.-ft., $30 million megaplex showroom / restaurant / boutique / nightclub / art gallery at the Palazzo Hotel & Resort in Las Vegas, are now open for business. Designed by renowned Italian architect Paolo Cortese, the 300-seat restaurant with its backdrop of supercars features black-and-white marble floors, wall-to-wall black leather paneling, silk fabrics, and glass-enclosed wine cellars with private dining tables.

The venue boasts over $2 million worth of artwork including the Charging Bull - the same as the famous one on Wall Street, and identical to the Lamborghini logo - by renowned Italian artist, Arturo di Modica, and paintings by German contemporary artist Horst Kohlem. There's also a club called the UltraLounge in the lower level, and the world's first Lamborghini fashion boutique carrying everything from polo shirts to iPod cases. And if you really want, they'll even sell you a Ferrari or Bugatti instead.

When sushi first became popular with Western diners it was touted as a guilt-free dinner, high in protein, relatively low in calories and fat, it quickly became wildly popular. Unfortunately all that popularity has led to rampant overfishing and now sushi is not looking quite so guilt free. The Telegraph reports that popular and expensive restaurant chain Nobu will now be highlighting their dishes which include bluefin tuna, a fish which as been listed as critically endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature after decades of overfishing. The items will be marked with an asterisk and let people know that it is endangered.

The move comes after Greenpeace used DNA testing to prove that the Nobu restaurants in London were serving bluefin tuna without letting customers know they were eating the endangered fish. The restaurant has decided not to take the fish off the menu because the restaurant chain's chefs protested losing the chance to create with the delicious delicacy.

The restaurants, which are part-owned by Robert de Niro and sushi chef Nobu Matsuhisa, are popular celebrity haunts in New York, Los Angeles and London as well as other places around the world. Matsuhisa has been looking to switch over to supplying his chain with bluefin tuna farmed from the egg in Australia and Japan rather than fish harvested in the open ocean, a move that is likely to inflate Nobu's already hefty prices.

The first weekend in November in New York is given over to New York Chocolate Show. Bittersweet Escapes has a package that runs from Thursday, Nov 6 - Sunday, Nov 9 2008. The package includes a Gala Chocolate Fashion Show ticket, VIP passes to the Chocolate Show, admission to Tastings NYC: Gourmet Wine & Food Festival, a custom designed dinner featuring chocolate in both sweet & savory dishes, a desert and wine pairing, an expert chocolate tour of New York, a chocolate pedicure spa treatment and a chocolate brunch. A three-night package starts at: $2,025 for 1 person, $2,765 for 2 people, double occupancy.

Two iconic London restaurants are bound overseas opening in 2010 adding to the growing and diverse culinary landscape of Dubai. Both The Ivy and Le Caprice will debut in the emirate clinching their premier status on the international scene, although they are both already popular celebrity haunts in their home country. I haven't had the pleasure of visiting either of these eateries but if they are good enough to transplant to Dubai they must be exceptionally full of culture, cuisine and character.

The name might not be particularly sophisticated but the idea is a fun one: portable espresso whenever and wherever you want it. No need to rough it the next time you go camping! Well, not in the hot beverage department anyway.

The Handpresso works by using your own personal manpower to create the necessary pressure by pumping the handle, after which the machine produces one shot of espresso. And according to our sister site Slashfood's product review, the espresso isn't half bad.

For me part of the fun of camping is drinking something different, like coffee made in a steel pan over the fire, and laughing about how bad it is. But then I can't remember the last time I actually went camping so maybe there's something to bringing a little bit of home out with you to the wilds. $155

Via Shiny Shiny

It's a toaster from Siemens and Porsche and it means serious toasting business. The TT911P2 2-Slice automatically adjusts itself to the thickness of the bread, has an LED display that counts down until the toast is ready, has 11 different degrees of browning, and it can remember which one was used last. The quartz heating element is one of the most efficient available, plus it has cool wall technology, variable browning, and of course a crumb tray. All that plus it's styled like something out of a space ship. £99

Via Switched On

Whether you're looking to make your guests laugh, start an interesting conversation, or perhaps discreetly suggest a sinful area they could be improving upon, these Good China Bad China plates will certainly be unexpected. The set is made of bone china and includes 12 dinner plates and two serving plates, each emblazoned on the center with a sin or virtue in quiet, but very obvious, blue script. The 7 deadly sins and corresponding 7 opposite virtues (i.e. there's one that says Abstinence and one that says Gluttony) are all represented.

I imagine it could be hard to decide what plate to give which guest, unless you leave it up to chance or maybe make a game out of the whole thing. And you can always serve drinks in the 7 deadly glasses to complete the theme! $550

If you have $4.000 to spend on a wine tasting, this might be the one. On September 25, the Ninth Annual benefit "Once-in-a-Lifetime Blockbuster Wine Tasting Dinner" will take place in New York City. It will showcase the 1990 Bordeaux, a year important for its hot, dry weather followed by some thunderstorms and scattered showers in September and October. The stressed grapes which stopped ripening and then quickly started again once the rains came, were a healthy bumper crop that ended up producing one of the best vintages in recent history.

The dinner will include a horizontal tasting of The Vintage of the Century: 1990 Bordeaux with a dozen different wines rated 96 or higher by Robert Parker including five that have been rated a perfect 100. This is a chance to enjoy the type of wines that make even the most experienced tasters go a little week in the knees. Each flight of these offerings from one of the most extraordinary vintages of the 20th century is paired with a matching gourmet dish.

All wines will be donated and the dinner is limited to just 40 participants who will gather in a private townhouse in Greenwich Village. The meal will be prepared by a renowned New York chef, and the wine will be served by members of the Windows on the World sommelier staff. The $4,000 fee will be donated to a "highly respected" 501(c)3 organization and is therefore tax deductible. Participation is by invitation only. More details can be found here.

[Thanks, David]