Kate and Tom O’Neill

   IT had been far too long since my last visit to the Blue Bottle Café in Hopewell. Opened in March 2006, it achieved instant popularity. Eating there always feels like visiting someone’s home. Entering the boxy blue-shuttered building, diners receive a warm welcome, with the kitchen’s sounds and smells wafting by.

HOW does a good Italian restaurant slip through the cracks? Over two and a half years ago Bellisimo opened in Hillsborough’s Kingsbridge Shopping Center just a short jaunt off Route 206. Still, it is a relatively undiscovered spot for those outside of the immediate Hillsborough area.

   CHANGE comes slowly to the Yankee Doodle Tap Room, where we have been dropping in for more than 40 years. The bar, with its well-known Norman Rockwell mural of Yankee Doodle riding on a pony, was moved to the middle of the room during a renovation several years ago. Last year, five large screen HDTVs were installed near the bar, where they hang incongruously close to the magnificent stone fire place. Another recent and notable addition is the photo of Michelle Obama among the senior pictures of other eminent Princeton graduates — Donald Rumsfeld, Ralph Nader, Bill Bradley — that decorate one wall.