Aldea chef-owner George Mendes will shutter his more casual Portuguese restaurant Lupulo come December. Mendes tells Eater in an email that “a new lease structure put in place the past year has made operations financially difficult.”

Though the restaurant, a refuge among the middling chains near Penn Station, will close, Mendes has already started searching for a new location. In the meantime, he’ll focus his full attention on Aldea, his Michelin-starred, more upscale Portuguese restaurant in Flatiron. There, one part of Lupulo will live on through the sale of Portuguese egg custard tarts that Mendes implemented earlier this year.

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Flushing Sichuan restaurant Szechuan Mountain House has opened its East Village location at 23 Saint Mark’s Place, complete with a koi pond and cast-iron tea post. Bedford and Bowery reports that the restaurant is aiming high — owners want the location to win a Michelin star at some point. Dishes like sliced pork belly with chili garlic sauce, Chinese yam, and fish fillet stew with pickled cabbage and chili are on the menu. A grand opening will come later this month.

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As Hurricane Harvey barreled toward Texas, Rebecca Masson, owner of Houston’s Fluff Bake Bar, thought about what was most important to her; what she had to keep safe. She ran to her pantry, grabbed the last 10 quarts of vanilla she had, and sped to shelter. At a time when top vanilla producers are charging $600 to $750 per kilogram for vanilla beans, Masson’s stash of vanilla was nothing short of liquid gold. “I could not risk it being flooded or stolen,” she says. “To lose all my vanilla? That would be no joke.”

Bakers and ice cream makers across the country have been crushed by the price surge for vanilla, which spiked after a cyclone hit Madagascar, the world’s leading producer of vanilla, on March 7. The current $600 per kilogram price is up from around $100 in 2015, and near $500 per gallon for pure vanilla extract, which sold for $70 a gallon in 2015.

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Beginning around 1970, nearly every campus had one: a vegetarian cafe catering to hippies, guys with long hair and handlebar mustaches and gals in tie-dyed dresses with lots of beads. Some operated in church basements, others in bookstores or student unions. They were the pop-ups of yesteryear.

The vegetarian fare provided a stark contrast to the burgers and pizza that students often ate. Steamed vegetables, black beans, nut loaves, leafy salads with bright orange dressing, as well as acre upon acre of brown rice, were presented on steam table serving lines.

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Now open in Murray Hill is Wokuni, a fish-focused restaurant straight from Japan. It’s the first U.S. restaurant from Tokyo Ichiban Foods, a Japanese restaurant group, food distributor, and aquafarm company, which means much of the fish is straight from a fish farm in Hirado City, Nagasaki.

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Food from popular San Francisco Greek mini-chain Souvla — an Eater SF 38 member known for rotisserie meat pitas and salads — will be available in New York for a brief time this week. The restaurant will be offering most of its menu of sandwiches, fries, and salads via delivery on Caviar on Thursday, October 19 and on Friday, October 20. The restaurant’s frozen Greek yogurt and drinks won’t be available, but favorites like its Greek fries and its lamb sandwich with harissa-spiced yogurt will be.

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As expected, 36 years in, the East Village’s Cafe Orlin closed on October 15. Its chalkboard sign out front now simply reads, “Thank you.” The restaurant’s owner also owns the building but was reportedly tired of running a restaurant. Another restaurant may open in its place.

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Times Square: Tao Group is leading the dining charge at the Moxy Hotel near Times Square, and the newest opening is Legasea, a 145-seat seafood restaurant with brasserie style. Executive chef Jason Hall created the menu, full of global seafood preparation inspiration, from a New England clam bake to French moules frites. The full menu is below. 485 7th Avenue at 36th Street

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Runway model-turned-caterer-turned-TV star Carla Hall has become a household name, thanks to a stint on season five of Top Chef and her work on The Chew, the Emmy Award-winning culinary variety show on ABC she hosts alongside Mario Batali, Michael Symon, and Clinton Kelly.

But as Hall found out the hard way, fame doesn’t necessarily lead to success in the restaurant business. “Everyone assumed that my first restaurant’s success was a foregone conclusion,” Hall said recently on stage at Nation’s Restaurant’s News MUFSO conference.

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Takashi Inoue, the chef behind the namesake Japanese grill spot in te West Village, died last Wednesday after a long respiratory illness, according to the restaurant’s Instagram account. He was 40 years old.

“At his passing, he was surrounded by his family and close friends at New York Presbyterian Hospital,” according to the post. The Hudson Street restaurant will remain open, according to Grub Street, which first reported on Takashi’s death.

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