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Your food sucked, your server's attitude hovered somewhere between dismissive and hostile, and if there was an award for longest time elapsed between courses (delivered by the cockroach you saw skitter across the eatery's bathroom wall) this restaurant would win. Hopefully the grand trifecta of dining disasters does not happen to you. And if so, my condolences, and hopefully a trip to a nice Danny Meyer establishment to make it up is in order.

Sisters Sabina and Lorraine Belkin get on sickeningly well: They live together, have the same friends, even go to the gym together. They also co-own Duo Restaurant & Lounge, New York City eatery. How do they keep their relationship healthy while working together in a notoriously stressful industry

Gwyneth Paltrow wrote on her lifestyle website Goop that she's "kind of in love with Erin McKenna," founder of the popular gluten-free bakery Babycakes. Recently Actress Zooey Deschanel had contestants on Top Chef Masters scrambling to prepare a gluten-free meal for her.

Chef Zac Pelaccio and partner Rick Carmac already have a stable of successful eateries serving tasty, Southeast Asian-influenced fare—three Fatty Crab locations in New York City and the Virgin Islands and two Fatty 'Cue posts in Brooklyn and the West Village. But the pair's most recent venture is considerably smaller: Four Fatty Snack and Fatty 'Cue kiosks in New York City's Financial District, Battery Park, and around Central Park. Carmac tells us about the decision to start smaller outposts

The iconic Philly cheesesteak—thin slices of beef piled onto an Italian bun and topped with grilled onions and Cheez Whiz (sorry Provolone proponents, it ain't a Philly cheesesteak to me without the neon Whiz)—was invented in 1930 when Pat and Harry Olivieri improvised with some leftovers to make a sandwich to sell at their South Philadelphia Italian market stand when they ran out of hot dogs. The happy accident is one of my favorite guilty pleasures, a must-have whenever I'm anywhere near Philly

Is it ageism or common sense to ban rowdy children? A few months ago I wrote about a handful of restaurateurs that discouraged diners from bringing children into their establishments .

It turns out the size of your fork effects how much you eat. Yes, size matters--but not in the ways you might think. Next time you go out to a restaurant, request a big fork.

Walmart might move in down the street and underprice you, but they can't take away your story. The stories of three small businesses might help you outfox your biggest competitors.

With an interior designed by Philip Johnson and Mies van der Rohe, and featuring artwork by the likes of Pablo Picasso, there's no doubt that the The Four Seasons (which opened in 1959) was always meant to accommodate the city's movers and shakers. Madonna, the Dalai Lama, and Martha Stewart are among those who've lunched here, and the expense account-friendly menu is reliably stocked with power broker classics like caviar, lobster, foie gras, and steak. But the true center of power lies with the restaurant's co-owner and maitre d', Julian Niccolini, who rules the lunchtime seating chart with flamboyant aplomb.

The little things a restaurant does to show customers its love can go a long wayespecially at the end of a meal. Of all the aspects of the restaurant experience, paying the bill is probably the least fun. Aside from the whole how-to-split-a-check quandary , there's also a chance for an establishment to be totally obnoxious.

Not long after the demise of Gray Kunz’s Manhattan restaurant Grayz, chef Martin Brock found a new professional home as chef de cuisine at San Francisco’s acclaimed Restaurant Gary Danko. He returns to New York to serve a select few at a one-night class ($95) at De Gustibus Cooking School ...

When a prominent critic slams your restaurant, how do you recover? Last August, New York Times restaurant reviewer Sam Sifton wrote that the food at Plein Sud in Tribeca was "lacking in flavor, texture, temperature or interest: room-service fare that leads to increased loneliness, raiding of the minibar, sleepless hours staring at the television in blue light, thinking about home." Ouch. For an establishment that had opened a few months before the review was published, it was an ominous sign.

As the old joke goes, two people meet at a party. Guest 1 asks Guest 2 what he does for a living. "I'm an actor," he answers.

We all have our chain restaurant guilty pleasures.

LinkedIn, with its database of over a hundred million names, is also an interesting trove of sociological data. Should you give your baby one of the most popular names for CEOs?