The borough of Queens has always been a food destination for the adventurous with its cultural diversity. However it can be a daunting task for the inexperienced to sift through the many options. Enter edible Queens, this fall will see the third edition of edible for New York City, after Brooklyn and Manhattan. It can be your chaperone to the latest and oldest eateries, a guide to cultural traditions, or a recipe book for the times when you just want to dine at home.

When it first opened in 1984, Gotham Bar & Grill was one of New York’s most groundbreaking restaurants, known for its dramatic interior, inventive, seasonal modern American cuisine and gorgeous “vertical” plating. Twenty-five years later, it’s still one of the city’s most beloved and most popular restaurants — a true New York classic. Now you can taste some of the dishes that were on Gotham’s original menu, at the original prices (!). In honor if its 25th anniversary, the restaurant is rolling out a special 80s menu featuring some of its classic dishes, such as goat cheese ravioli, lobster pasta and the Gotham roast chicken, every Sunday night this summer. View the full menu on their site.

In New York City, there are thousands of restaurants and thousands of chefs slaving away in all those kitchens on any given day of the week. But there are lots of other chefs in this city mincing, dicing, sautéing and braising that you’ll never see—they’re cooking in private homes. Personal chefs prepare meals for families, couples and singles on a regular basis, juggling several clients at a time and tailoring their menus to suit their customers’ needs. On a typical day, they can show up at an empty apartment with ingredients, do all the cooking, pack up the meals, clean up and leave, without ever seeing the people who will eventually eat their food. Who are these mysterious chefs and how does it all work? We interviewed a few to get the inside scoop.

It’s grilled cheese for the gourmand: Artisanal (2 Park Ave at 33rd St, 212-275-8585), Terence Brennan’s fromagophile French bistro, is featuring a brand new take on a childhood classic every day in April, pairing each sandwich with a glass of wine sold for half its regular price.

Last night’s Choice Eats wasn’t your usual tasting event. Tickets didn’t cost $100 and upscale restaurants like Gramercy Tavern, Café Boulud and Telepan weren’t present. No, this was the Village Voice’s second annual food tasting, bringing together more than 50 restaurants representing 37 different cuisines – everything from Cuban sandwiches to mac and cheese to Indian street snacks – in the cavernous Lexington Avenue Armory. Rows of tables and endless trays of food were set up, with dozens of chefs doling out delicious bites of international fare as fast as hungry ticketholders were grabbing them. Tickets were a mere $35 – a relief in these cash-strapped times – and bought three hours of unlimited snacks and drinks.

These are tough times for restaurants all over the city; recession menus and deals abound, and every day another restaurant announces it’s shutting down. So it wasn’t a huge surprise when a friend forwarded me an e-mail yesterday from the owner of Shaffer City Oyster Bar and Grill, pleading for the restaurant’s fans to help save his place. “It is with humility that I pen this note and once again request your assistance for the preservation of Shaffer City,” the e-mail opens, and ends with, “You may have forgotten all the fun we’ve had in the past together, you loved us once and we now are reaching out to reconnect, come on back and see what you’ve been missing.”