Major Food Group's French bistro at The Ludlow Hotel — Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi's loud, leather-banquetted answer to Parisian brasserie tradition since September 2014, sibling to Carbone, Torrisi, Sadelle's, Lobster Club, and the upstairs Lobby Bar. The kitchen, now under operational chef Sosh Sugiyama, runs French technique through North African and French Creole accents — duck à l'orange dusted with North African spice, steak frites, foie gras, a raw bar that anchors the LES register. Pete Wells gave it two stars at NYT in December 2014 and the room still hits like a Lower East Side hotel restaurant should — brass, wood paneling, mid-century bistro vocabulary, energy. Reservations stay hard at peak. For MFG's downtown French play, where the Lower East Side hotel-restaurant register lives alongside the cocktail program one floor up.