••• A New York magazine article on natural wine includes Racines, Frenchette, and Café Altro Paradiso.

••• Two Hands is featured in a rather belated New York Times trend piece on Australian cafés. I used to wonder how Two Hands could always find Australian servers: “A trade agreement between Australia and the United States, which included a flexible new work visa specifically for Australians, was signed in 2005, after the country’s strong (and still controversial) military support for American operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Several thousand Australians, most of them young adults, have arrived every year since 2005. Sometimes it seems that all of them have just opened cafes, or are waiting tables in one.”

••• More on Nonna Beppa, now open in Hudson Square, in the New York Times: “The lush, meaty cuisine of the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy has relatively little representation on New York’s dining scene, so Nonna Beppa is a welcome addition. The specialty of the house is tortellini, and you can see Martha Salamanca, the head pasta maker, rolling and fashioning it at her station in the front window. […] The chef is Giancarlo Cacciatori, known as Wendy, who owns this restaurant with his wife, Valentina Imbrenda, and another partner. Mr. Cacciatori has two restaurants outside Bologna and another one, Via Emilia 9, in Miami Beach. His New York debut, named for his grandmother, is in a somewhat unfinished industrial space with subdued lighting and tables draped in white napery.” Anyone been yet? P.S. This is the second time in two weeks that the Times has used the word “napery,” which I had never heard before in my life.