Wednesday Food News: Early Edition

This week in the Times, Bruni goes to Insieme, awards the restaurant two stars. Says, “When Isieme is good, it’s outstanding, and any serious food lover should head here fast…” He hates the atmosphere, though, and the salmon. Insieme is the second restaurant in midtown this year where he’s been “frustrated by the way some dazzling cooking is undercut not only by unevenness across the menu or inconsistency in the kitchen but also by atmospherics that don’t pull their weight and live up to the rest of the production.”

In Dining Briefs, Bruni goes to FR.OG, finds that chef Didier Virot “may be travelling in too many directions at once.” He doesn’t like the décor, either. Nick Fox goes to Dean’s Pizzeria & Restaurant on the Upper West Side where Nick Angelis of Nick’s Pizza is consulting (and the owner’s sister), and where they serve delicious grandma pies—square, thin-crust pizzas baked in a pan. And Marian Burros stops by Rayuela, on the LES, for “freestyle Latino” food in a “striking contemporary setting.”

Steve Cuozzo’s at Suba, where just after its recent reopening in April executive chef Seamus Mullen (previously at Boqueria, same owner) was hit with palindromic syndrome and spent three weeks in the hospital. He’s now back in the kitchen and working on the menu which Cuozzo says, is “too new to judge but shows promise.”

Alan Richman goes to Top Chef winner Harold Dieterle’s Perilla for Bloomberg News, where to call it “fabulous is going too far, but there is little not to like about this pleasant, understated restaurant.” Except the scallops and the chandelier. He likes the wine list, and says “Dieterle can cook.”

And in the NY Sun, Paul Adams Paul Adams visits P*ong, the new restaurant of former Spice Market/Perry Street pastry chef Pichet Ong. Says the chef should stick to desserts: “the same creativity that in the earlier courses gives rise to confusing, unsatisfying combinations is more successful when the unifying power of sugar is involved.”