Greatest Hits and What You Missed: Best New Restaurants, Beer Week, Beard Awards and Alcoholic Paper Airplanes

First things first: The voting for Best New Restaurant ends soon, so if you’ve got an opinion (and if you’re reading this blog, I know you have an opinion), you need to click on this link and make democracy your bitch.

That done? Good. Then let’s move on with the news of the week, shall we?

“In March, we broke the unfortunate news that the fragile Shola Olunloyo-Bart Blatstein alliance at the Piazza in Northern Liberties had fractured, with Olunloyo locked out of Speck, the restaurant he had been developing for ages and was days away from opening. In the ensuing weeks, we got lots of tips about this chef (Kevin Sbraga) or that chef (Jose Garces, pictured looking at the Speck space) replacing Olunloyo as Blatstein’s tenant. But none those tips checked out. Until today.”

From “And the Speck Replacement At The Piazza Is…“