Lots of university students are familiar with the concepts of drinking and getting an education, but usually–we say usually–the two don’t mix all that well. Not so at Corkbuzz, a new wine bar cum classroom that lets you sip while you study.

The wine bar par of the operation (which opens any day now) features 35 different varieties by the glass and another 200 by the bottle so it’s pretty easy to find something that pairs well with chef Hayan Yi’s (formerly of Le Bernardin and Daniel) eclectic menu featuring dishes like hamachi crudo with endive and grapefruit; parpardelle, duck braise and orange gremolata; and lamb chops with spiced chickpeas and yogurt. Curl up in a banquette, sit at the butcher-block bar, or settle in to a floral wingback chair with a book from the library and swish the day away.

If your curiosity gets piqued from your reading, then you might want to consider signing up for one of Corkbuzz’s special classes at one of the two attached classrooms. Topics include such things as Seasonal Pairings; Who’s Who of French Wine; A Tour of Italy; Natural and Organic Wines; and Vegetarian Pairings. Classes start on January 7, but registration is now open on Corkbuzz’s website.

The wine wisdom continues to flow through regular special events like a Cellar Grab when guests pay a set price and “raid the cellar”; Bring Your Own Bottle night when guests share their favorites with other lovers of the vine; and Blind Tasting Happy Hours.

Corkbuzz has been launched by Laura Maniec, the youngest master sommelier in the world, and her enthusiasm, energy and fresh approach to all things “oeno” is evident throughout.

13 E. 13th Street. 646.873.6071.

No, we’re not talking about the copious amounts of hot air that spews from your long-lost uncle’s yapper after he’s had too much cheap wine, we’re talking the air that fills the balloons each year during another American tradition: The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which started right here in New York in 1924. This year marks the parade’s 85^th anniversary; a perfect time, we think, to give you some interesting tidbits about the extravaganza:

The parade was originally known as the Macy’s Christmas Parade and was launched by store employees–four hundred of whom marched along with animals borrowed from the Central Park Zoo. Many of the animals (like lions and bears) scared the kiddies, though, and were replaced with giant balloon characters in 1927.

The first huge balloons to be included in the parade were designed by Tony Sarg, a children’s book illustrator and puppeteer and included Felix the Cat, the Dragon (nothing scary about that, eh?), the Elephant and the Toy Soldier.

Early on in the parade’s history, the balloons were released and rewards were given to anyone who could find them and return them to Macy’s. This tradition was stopped in 1933 after a pilot almost crashed in his effort to grab the cash.

The parade has been held every year since 1924–except from 1942-1944 when the balloons provided 650 pounds of scrap rubber to the war effort. It was almost cancelled again in 1958 due to a helium shortage, but cranes were used to haul the balloons along the parade route.

After the US government, Macy’s is the country’s largest consumer of helium.

Making his sixth appearance in the parade in 2006, Snoopy has become the character most featured in the march.

Today, the parade is attended by an estimated 3 million people on the streets of New York. Since being first broadcast in 1945, it now has another 44 million tuning in to watch on TV.

The trade publication Drinks International has just compiled their list of the Top 50 Bars in the world. Their number one pick–New York’s own PDT (Please Don’t Tell)–is a nod not only to the talent of the mixologists who make magic at the bar beneath the watchful, shade-bedecked eyes of a stuffed jackelope–but to a steadily developing genre of bars that embrace the speakeasy vibe of the 1920s.

Like all speakeasies, you need to be “in the know” to get in. Accessing PDT requires a bit of phone flirtation–you first need to call ahead for reservations, then after you’ve made your way to deep-fried hot dog house Crif Dogs, you need to step into a photo booth in the back and know exactly how to summon the bouncer to open the secret panel that lets you in.

If this seems a bit silly, your first sip of a Mescal Mule, Hemmingway Daiquiri, or Old Fashioned made with bacon-infused bourbon and maple syrup will demonstrate just how deadly serious the bartenders really are. The room is snug (especially once you take into consideration how much space the bowler-hat-wearing bear takes up) but if you can swing it, our advice is to get a seat at the bar as early as you can so that you can watch the cocktail artists do their thing. Don’t worry–if watching all that work makes you hungry, you can chow down on the acclaimed dogs from Crif’s which can be brought in to the bar. The Chang Dog—named after famed Momofuku chef David Chang—is a deep-fried hot dog wrapped in bacon and topped with Momofuku Ssäm Bar’s red kimchee purée. It is to hot dogs what PDT cocktails are to drinks.

PDT can be found (or not) at 113 St. Marks Place. 212.614.0386.

It’s getting kind of late, but if you’re still looking for a place to eat out on Thanksgiving, there might be a few open tables left around town. Certainly worth a try is Saxon and Parole. This recently opened hot spot will be getting mouths watering next Thursday with slow-roasted turkey with cranberry-kumquat sauce and chorizo cornbread stuffing.

If you can’t get in for Thanksgiving, you might want to try getting in whenever you can. Ever since the site of the Asian-themed Double Crown has been converted by its owners and head chef Brad Farmerie to Saxon and Parole, it’s been getting rave reviews. The reborn eatery is named after a couple of racehorses and focusses on cooking what Farmerie has called “food that goes straight for the gut.”

But fear not. If you came to love the razzle dazzle of Double Crown, you’ll still find hints of it here–albeit amidst more straightforward food offerings. For example, the carrot, ginger and lemon soup gets a surprise visit from a chili marshmallow. The short ribs are dressed up in a Guiness and five spice glaze. And the burger–certainly a standout here–is tarted up with Pennsylvania Havarti, maple bacon and a fried egg.

As we mentioned in our last post, speakeasy-style bars are all the rage right now and Saxon & Parole won’t leave you wanting in this department either. After you’ve eaten your fill of comfort food, you can go get even more comfortable at neighboring gin joint Madame Geneva–accessed through a secret panel reserved just for guests of the restaurant. If you do manage to make it in on Thanksgiving, you’ll be entitled to a free eggnog. Give thanks indeed.

Saxon and Parole can be found at 316 Bowery, New York, NY 10012. 212.254.0350.

Like okra, ’80s hair bands and the gross domestic product, electricity isn’t something most of us spend much time pondering. That is, until it stops working–like it did for millions of area residents in the appropriately spooky snowstorm that blanketed our area in the two days leading up to Halloween.

Well, the New York Transit Museum is giving the juice that lights our lives (we like juice here at Lime&Tonic) the respect it deserves through an new exhibit called–fittingly enough–Electricity.

The exhibit showcases the stages involved in getting the New York subway system operating like clockwork (or somewhere close to that): Power Generation; Power Transmission; Coverting Electricity; and Making the Trains Move. That may all sound a little dry, but the exhibit has plenty of interactivity. You can crank a wheel that sends sparks up a Jacob’s Ladder (think Frankenstein movie), test different materials for conductivity, and use hand-cranked generators to power parts of a subway car.

If you’re feeling a bit “charged  up” after that, you can stick around (like a sock imbued with static electricity) and explore the rest of the museum–it is the largest museum dedicated to urban public transport in the US, after all. While wandering be sure to check out the vintage turnstile, a gigantic sewing machine that was used to make the money bags that held subway tokens and cash from fares, and a funky subway car from the early ’30s.

The New York Transit Museum is open Tues–Fri 10am to 4pm and Sat & Sun 11am-5 pm.

For some, the best part of Thanksgiving is cooking. For the rest of us, there’s takeout.

I know, I know. But before you start gobbling on about how sacrilegious it is to get takeout on Thanksgiving, consider the authentic turkey-day feast being served up by the barbecue bosses at Hill Country (30 West 26^th St). For $185 you can get a feast for 5-8 people featuring: a pit-smoked turkey (8-10 pounds), three sides chosen from selections like sweet pototo bourbon mashed, longhorn cheddar mac & cheese, or white shoepeg corn pudding PLUS cornbread and ancho honey butter AND a 10-inch pie (we think the gingersnap pumpkin sounds pretty good). Expecting even more company? Upping your order to the $265 category ensures you’ll have enough to feed 9-12 people.

Want to avoid your company altogether? Hill Country can help out there too. Just settle in at one of the rough-hewn tables, and let the guys with the big silver tongs drop some Texas sausage, roasted chickens or the deservedly famous brisket onto the butcher paper in front of you. Wash it all down with a few house-special Kreuz Margaritas then head downstairs to dance away the calories to the sounds of an authentic honky-tonk band.

Don’t worry, your company back at home will take care of the dishes.

Thanksgiving orders must be placed by Nov 21^st. Pick up is on Wednesday Nov 23^rd from 3-5pm and on Thursday, Nov 24^th from 9-noon.

Ah autumn. A time to put on the sweaters, take brisk walks beneath trees glowing red, gold and orange, and to savor the flavor of food cooked over an open campfire.

Wait. What’s that you say? New York’s not really a cook-your-food-over-the-campfire kind of town? Not so fast …

Thanks to the recent opening of Mas (la grillade) at 28 7th Ave. South (between Leroy and Bedford Streets), that’s changing as quickly as an oak leaf changes from green to yellow in October.

Mas (la grillade) is the sister restaurant of Mas (farmhouse). Both eateries have been brought to town by James-Beard-Award-winning chef Galen Zamarra who places a fantastically fanatical attention to the sourcing of his food. But la grillade has one important distinction from its farmhouse cousin–all of the food here is cooked over wood fires.

Zamara told Lime&Tonic: “Many places have wood fired ovens, but our entire line is made of wood-fired pits and grills, so everything gets cooked that way.” This creates a simple cuisine with flavors brought forward by the various cooking methods. Examples include wood-fired oysters; artichokes with grilled chanterelles and hazelnut mayo; grilled whole fish with a salt and herb rub; and pototoes and beets “baked in the coals.” Even dessert takes its turn in the fire, as evidenced by the smoked cinnamon ice cream that has recently appeared on the menu.

The wood used at the restaurant, much like the food, will be sourced from local farms and vineyards and will include such varieties as apple, quince, oak, grapevines and old wine barrels. They will be used to not only cook, but to smoke and season the dishes as well.

And where is all this wood kept?

Zamarra told us that in creating the restaurant space, they took over the small magazine stand next door and turned it into the woodshed!

As the ingredients are all fresh-sourced, the menu can change quite frequently, so check the website for the latest offerings.

The time of bobbing for them may be over but, aside from pumpkins, autumn is truly the domain of the apple. Among fruits, the apple has indeed achieved superstar fame (think Adam & Eve or Snow White), no doubt helped along by its long association with the sometimes tart, sometimes sweet city know as New York.

But just how did New York come to be known as The Big Apple?

The answer, appropriately enough, seems to be entangled with horses (who love apples, ya know?). Apparently, in the early 1920s, New York had at least four major horse racing tracks within its environs, making it a mecca for the sport and those who liked to wager on it. It also had three racing journals covering the sport and, at one of them (The New York Morning Telegraph), a writer named John J. Fitzgerald entitled his regular column, “Around The Big Apple.” He claims to have heard the term from stable boys working on the racing circuit who saw New York as being so juicy with opportunity that they called it The Big Apple.

The term stuck–at least for awhile–lending its name to a 1930s Harlem nightclub, a short 1938 film, and a jitterbug style dance. It was particularly embraced by jazz musicians, with Fletcher Henderson often getting most of the credit for spreading the term around–although in a late ‘30s book, Cab Calloway referred to New York as The Big Apple and it’s “main stem” as Harlem.

The term had pretty much faded from use by the 1970s until a man named Charles Gillett–the head of the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau–decided to use the vibrant, colorful and healthy image of an apple to revive New York’s image in the eyes of tourists. Since then, the image of a big red fruit linked to New York has meant a lot of green for the city!

Photo Credit: Liza Bear

Halloween and cemeteries go together like Jekyll and Hyde, trick and treat, black and orange, vampires and … well, you get the idea. But in a city as concrete-crammed as New York, finding a suitably atmospheric cemetery in which to honor the day of zombies and the undead can be quite a challenge. Throw in the fact that a ban on constructing new cemeteries in Manhattan was issued in 1851, and it gets harder to locate Big Apple burial grounds than it is to fish an apple out of a barrel with just your teeth. Luckily, Lime&Tonic grabbed some holy water and silver bullets and scouted out some sanctified ground where you can get your ghoul on (or just relax–most of them are quite peaceful places to reflect and escape all that crazy life out on the streets!).

Photo credit: www.marblecemetery.org/

New York Marble Cemetery. This is the oldest non-sectarian cemetery in New York. Burials began here in 1830 and due to fears about the outbreak of yellow fever, bodies were interred in marble vaults the size of small rooms sunk 10 feet deep in the ground (earth graves had been banned). Although there are no headstones, the names of the deceased are on plaques around the perimeter. Check the website for its sporadic opening hours.  East 2^nd Street between Bowery and 1^st Avenue, East Village.

African Burial Ground. In 1991 when excavation was begun for the construction of a federal office building, a startling discovery was made–the remains of hundreds of bodies were buried beneath the ground at 290 Broadway. Further investigation revealed that these were the bodies of both free and enslaved Africans who were buried in a 6.6 acre burial ground here in the 17^thand 18^th centuries. Today, the African Burial Ground National Monument pays homage to their memory and sacrifice. It is located at the corners of Duane and Elk Streets.

Trinity Church Cemetery and Mausoleum. The final resting place of such luminaries as John James Audubon, Clement C. Moore (author of the famous “Night Before Christmas” poem) and Charles Dickens’ son, Tennyson, this is the only cemetery still in operation in Manhattan. If you’re looking to be spooked though, you might be disappointed, as its pretty setting amidst 100- year-old oaks is more suited to contemplation than creepiness (Audubon is buried here, after all!). Located at Broadway and Wall Street.

The Three Cemeteries of Congregation Shearith Israel. Established in 1654, Congregation Shearith Israel is the oldest Jewish congregation in North America and maintained three cemeteries in the city. The first, which contains the remains of the first American-born rabbi as well as the bodies of 22 Revolutionary war veterans, is located at 55 St. James Place, opposite Chatham Square. It is the oldest Jewish Cemetery in North America. The second can be found at 16 W 11^th Street between 6^th and 7^th Avenues. It sits next to an old brick building that once housed The Grapevine Tavern–the spot that gave birth to the phrase “I heard it through the grapevine.” And the third cemetery is located at 21^st Street between 6^th and 7^th Avenues. It operated until 1851 until the New York cemetery ban went into effect.

Aside from “that combination I’ll never put in my body again on a Friday night,” it might not seem like there’s really a good answer to this question. But for those familiar with bar extraordinaire, The Tippler, the answer is easy: The Tippler occupies the basement of the building that used to house Nabisco, and Nabisco makes animal crackers.

The old Nabisco building is now the Chelsea Market, but while the rest of the building has been converted into shops selling chardonay, olives and artisanal cheesecake, the basement–which had been a humble storeroom for the cookie and cracker maker–had long been neglected and sealed off from the public. Not any more. An extensive renovation has exposed its exposed-brick walls to a tipplers of all type who can also enjoy curlicue iron work, vaulted ceilings, thick wooden beams, and unique decorating touches like lights ensconced in baskets used for cleaning old car parts.

Mostly though, they can enjoy drinks like the Dizzy Oaxacan (mezcal, Averna amaro, grapefruit, lemon ginger beer, chile); the Buzzing Black Buck (Blackwell rum, Araku coffee liqueur, espresso, lime and–yes–more ginger beer); or Curly & The Turk (gin, curacao, lemon, hibiscus, chile, Moraccan bitters). Where The Tippler has really made a “splash” in the local cocktail scene though, is with its “Lushies”–frozen creations like the Pearl Harbor Necklace which blends up vodka, house melon syrup, pineapple and tapioca pearls into an unlikely crowd pleaser.

And while there are no animal crackers on the menu, there are some bites to help soak up the booze. A jar of mixed pickles, a few salted soft pretzels, some homemade potato chips and a board of artisan cheeses should do nicely. And that all goes better with vodka anyway, doesn’t it?