Wednesday Food News: Early Edition

This week in the Times, Bruni one-stars Wild Salmon. We’re surprised Chodorow let him in the door, after their feud over his review of Kobe Club. “The food runs the gamut,” Bruni says, “by turns excellent, ordinary and puzzling.” He recommends that you stick with the salmon, and try the different varieties offered (except the coho). Finds the service “oppressive” in its exuberance.

In Dining Briefs, Bruni goes to Amalia. Says “Many of [chef Ivy Stark’s] dishes demonstrate real imagination, but they’re undercut by a kitchen that performs more like an assembly line.” Peter Meehan visits Smith & Mills in Tribeca, says “the menu is best suited to nibbling,” but loves the lighting and the laid-back atmosphere. And Nick Fox goes to E-Mo Kim Bab for Korean seaweed rice rolls, finds them “a cruncy, chewy jumble of savory and sweet, spicy and cool, familiar and surprising.”

Ryan Sutton stops by Ian Schrager’s Wakiya, the new restaurant in the Gramercy Park Hotel, for Bloomberg News. Says, “Wakiya is loud, dark and crowded. It’s more scene than cuisine.” Says Chef Wakiya takes simple ingredients and complicates them, and that the food is “glorified takeout, except there’s not enough to bring home.”

And in the NY Observer, Meredith Bryan pays an early visit to Wakiya as well. Says “the food was mostly delicious, unpretentious and generously portioned, exactly what you’d want in the lobby of a hotel when you’re heading back, drunk, to your room.” She’s not sure it’s worth the effort to get a reservation, though.

Paul Adams goes to Stuzzichini for Italian small plates. Says Chef Paul Bari “brings subtlety to simple dishes,” and especially likes the fried small plates: zucchini, cod and meatballs. He also likes the full dinner entrees offered, and loves the mucca marrone, an Italian take on the brown cow ice cream float.