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Carson House in Beverly Hills is so casual, there's no need to pop the collar. And you won't find fine china, fussy menus, or celebrity chefs that franchise grocery stores. The new restaurant, opening today (Tuesday), is all about no-frills, peeled-back comfort in a massive shiny space with red leather sofas, hardwood floors, and banks of natural light from the floor-to-ceiling windows. It's like the home of your dad’s cultured, swanky home – equipped with den, dining room, bar, and living room. At some point, you won't even remember you're in Beverly Hills.

In the tradition of devouring sushi rolls and downing sake bombs, one lauded Japanese restaurant in NYC is saving you the energy of the two-step motion with their new menu item: Koi Soho's Captain Crunch Roll. No, this is not flecked with the corn and oat cereal of our youth, but rather a heavy dose of  another alcohol: Captain Morgan - that rum you projectile vomited in the bushes by the quad freshman year. But hey, we’re grown up now, which means we can handle the Captain Morgan in a sauce over a bed of California rolls topped with eel and tempura flakes. First stop: sophistication. Second stop: drunk.

WEDNESDAY: French Turns Japanese
Bâoli’s executive chef, Gustavo Vertone, has brought on his sushi counterpart directly from across the street.  Formerly of Nobu, Chef Fnu “Danie” Armandani, is turning out some finger-licking good rolls using lux ingredients like Kobe beef, truffles, and caviar. As if Bâoli’s notorious Wednesday night “My Boyfriend is Out of Town” shindigs weren’t reason enough to drop in on this French debauchery central, we now have a BâoliRoll to keep us salivating.
Bâoli (1906 Collins Ave., South Beach) is now serving sushi. For details, check out the listing in BlackBook Guides.

There’s something sexy about Cherry, the latest venture into Asian cuisine from BONDST’s Jonathan Morr, which opens up in the Dream Downtown hotel this Wednesday. First, the décor by Studio Gaia exudes a pop-culture romance with a cherry-red, cherry-shaped entryway. Once inside, the plush velvet seats, polished wood floors, and merlot-colored wall hangings cry out for ruby-lipped ladies to dine clandestinely with men in snappy suits. Second, with former Le Cirque and Momofuku Ma Peche chef Andy Choi leading the kitchen, they are pumping out modern Japanese cuisine with a French twist. This means you can find sharable treats including foie gras with short rib gyoza, uni-poached eggs, black cod shumai, and tuna spring rolls.

As cinephiles were made aware in the eponymous 2003 Sean Penn vehicle, 21 grams is the purported "weight" of the soul. And if anyone can be trusted to have communed with the more enlightened self, it's one who has taken to a ballet stage. And so the name of former ballerina-turned-philanthropist Mihoko Kiyokawa's debut New York restaurant, Mihoko's 21 Grams, suggests something far from quotidian.

Perhaps no New York restaurant "empire" has been built as quietly at that of Blue Ribbon. McNally and Batali are forever in the headlines, while the Bromberg Brothers and their Blue Ribbon restaurants have carried on with the business of cultivating the most devout following in NYC. But the new Blue Ribbon Sushi Izakaya will be their first foray into the world of fashionable hotel dining--replacing, as it is, the Susur Lee's ambitious Shang at the Thompson LES.