Who: Nearly four hundred restaurants throughout the city
What: Summer Restaurant Week
Where: All five boroughs
When: July 24 – August 18, three-course lunches $29, three-course dinners $42
Why: For a quarter of a century, New York City eateries have been offering special deals during Restaurant Week, with a growing number of participants every year. Reservation lines are now open for the silver anniversary of the immensely popular program, with almost four hundred establishments from across the culinary spectrum offering three-course prix-fixe lunches for $29 and dinners for $42 from July 24 through August 18. (Some restaurants do only lunch or dinner, and others offer the deals only on weekdays.) Most of the prix-fixe menus are available online so you know just what you’re in for. Among the many restaurants are such favorites as ‘21 Club,’ ABC Kitchen, American Cut, Asia de Cuba, Aureole, Bann, Barbetta, Casa Lever, Charlie Palmer Steak, Circo, Darbar, the Clocktower, DB Bistro Moderne, Delmonico’s, Docks Oyster Bar, Dos Caminos, Esca, Estiatorio Milos, Feast, Frankie & Johnnie’s, Gotham Bar & Grill, Haru, Hearth, Inakaya, Indochine, i Trulli, Il Mulino, Le Cirque, Lure Fishbar, Megu, Mercer Kitchen, Mission Chinese, Monkey Bar, Nice Matin, Nobu, the Palm Court, Park Avenue Summer, Red Rooster, Rosa Mexicano, the Russian Tea Room, Scarpetta, Shun Lee Palace, the Stanton Social, the Strip House, Tao, Tribeca Grill, Victor’s Cafe, and the Water Club. As a bonus, if you register your American Express card, you will receive $5 back each time you charge at least $35 at a participating restaurant.
Setting out to make a film about Mexican corn farmers, Aaron Schock was captivated by a traveling circus and instead decided to tell the fascinating story of the Ponce family. For more than a hundred years, seven generations of Ponces have operated a small circus that makes its way through rural Mexico, delivering such old-fashioned spectacles as contortionism, tightrope walkers, clowns, tiger taming, aerial acts, and the Globe of Death, primarily performed by members of the Ponce clan, including five children. They do everything themselves, from hammering in stakes to put the big top up to driving through local villages announcing their arrival, handing out free tickets to youngsters in the hopes that their parents will buy tickets in order to take them to the show. But what Schock reveals is that the Ponces’ Gran Circo Mexico is not a feel-good, DIY tale of a happy family living and working together in harmony; instead, Tino and his wife, Ivonne, are clashing over their very future. Whereas Tino is dedicated to keeping the family tradition alive, Ivonne wants to have a more normal life, with the kids going to school and making friends. While Tino has passed down the tricks of the trade, most of the Ponces cannot read or write and have received no formal education. And when his brother considers leaving the circus to be with a settled woman, Tino feels the strain of his responsibility even further, forced to decide between the family legacy or starting a whole new life. In his debut feature-length documentary, Schock, serving as director, producer, camera operator, cowriter, and sound man, portrays the difficult lives the Ponces lead, with little money and dwindling audiences, allowing the various family members to tell their moving stories while they prepare for the next performance. Just as Schock doesn’t take sides, audiences will understand Tino’s and Ivonne’s conflicting positions and will feel for both of them in this compelling study of a family in flux. Named Best Documentary at the 2010 Hamptons International Film Festival, Circo, which had a limited engagement earlier this year, will be screening on June 19 & 26 as part of Symphony Space’s Thalia Film Sundays series.