Frank Bruni, the Times’s top restaurant critic, awards the new 2nd Avenue Deli one star today, which isn’t bad considering it is, despite all the history, still a deli. We popped in there for food and photos just before it reopened at its East 33rd Street location and found the sandwiches (pictured) as monumental as ever; a second visit turned up no sign of the free bowl of gribenes (chicken skin fried in chicken fat) that the owner Jeremy Lebewohl had promised free at every table.

Now Bruni says the gratis gribenes promise has been kept: “In the past you had to ask for it. Now you just have to atone for it.” He seems to have as much fun writing the review as eating the food, and leaves most of the criticism to his companions: writer/director Nora Ephron, food writer Laura Shapiro and former mayor Ed Koch. Predictably, they reach consensus on almost nothing, from the matzo ball soup (Koch and Ephron: Good. Shapiro: Soup too salty, the ball too weighty), to the pastrami on rye (Ephron: “Overload. This is veering into Carnegie country.” Koch: “I grew up poor. I like overloading.”). The latke was a uniform bomb though; Bruni deems it “scary: bigger than my foot, with an inside like cold mashed potatoes.” Ephron calls it a “hockey puck” and Shapiro gasps, “Shocking!” (Koch was must have been in the can.)

Reviewing Dovetail, chef John Fraser's (ex-Compass) new Upper West Side restaurant, the New York Sun’s John Adams calls the menu “sophisticated and self-conscious”; his description suggests the Wes Anderson of restaurants, with “busy” appetizers and “clever” entrees like medallions of grilled venison topped with marshmallows. Aww. Restaurant Girl Danyelle Freeman says “everyone looks beautiful at Bar Blanc,” the stylish West Village wine bar with the $72 four course tasting menu. She deems the homemade ravioli “criminally delicious”, but other dishes look better than they taste, like the strip steak that “couldn't be salvaged, even by a rich bone marrow sauce.”

Elsewhere, Bloomberg’s Ryan Sutton is optimistic about the new Central Park South restaurant South Gate, the Voice’s Robert Sietsema finds “touchdown scoring” lamb at Bay Ridge Syrian restaurant First Oasis, and Andrea Strong adores the refined comfort food at the snug SoHo restaurant Shorty's.32, but they don’t take reservations, it’s chaotic and “you may have to do some screaming to communicate.”