••• “Two loud blasts—which turned out to be manhole explosions—rattled [FiDi] on Thursday, sending residents into a panic.” —New York Post

••• Grub Street/New York magazine critic Adam Platt was decidedly underwhelmed by Basement, the meat-focused omakase restaurant under Tetsu. where dinner starts at $380 (including tax but not tip), with plenty of upselling. An excerpt:

I counted nine courses in my dinner—ten if you include the ball of sorbet for dessert—but if you want a taste of the kind of sizzled, Kobe-style steak that is standard at most high-end Tokyo robatayaki joints of this kind, you have to fork over an additional $45 for every ounce. “We suggest three ounces,” my waiter said a little sheepishly, as one of the cooks held up a couple of pale-looking cuts on a butcher’s board, just like at a tourist steakhouse in Vegas. When I declined the offer, I sat twiddling my thumbs for several minutes, while my neighbor put down her phone, ate a tiny-size cut of fillet without much evidence of pleasure or emotion, and then picked her phone up again.

Later on, after some mushy, overcooked shrimp and a roasted marrow bone caked pleasingly in white miso, another supplement was offered—a lamb slider with melted taleggio, for the non-slider price of $18—which we both politely declined.

••• Q&A with Manhattan Youth’s Bob Townley. —Broadsheet

••• More thefts in the Tribeca Trib police blotter.

••• “Downtown history buffs are looking for community support to co-name a portion of South William Street after the first synagogue in the United States, which—despite popular myth—was not built in Rhode Island, but right here in Lower Manhattan. […] To honor Downtown’s place in Jewish history, the Lower Manhattan Historical Association, in partnership with the Sons of the Revolution, the American Sephardic Federation, and the Temple of Universal Judaism, have asked members of Community Board 1 to support a request for signage on a lamppost outside the Dubliner restaurant co-naming South William Street as Mill Street Synagogue/Gershom Mendes Seixas Way.” Someone told me that this will likely be controversial when Community Board 1 discusses the topic at its full meeting on March 27, but I don’t understand why. —Downtown Express

••• Pino Luongo’s Coco Pazzo reboot is open in the former Milady’s space at Prince and Thompson. In the restaurant’s words, it’s “Fast-casual by day. Casual-fine by night.” (I grabbed the photo below from Coco Pazzo’s website. I don’t know what it is, but it looks tasty.) —Grub Street