Wednesday Food News: Early Edition

Today the Times’s chief food critic Frank Bruni revisits WD-50 (pictured) and elevates the Lower East Side avant-garde restaurant to three stars (a 2003 Times review by another critic had awarded it two). Chef Wylie Dufresne has made WD-50 a destination with his experimental, transgressive menu, and Bruni concedes that in the past “too many of his creations were gratuitously perverse… many visitors understandably feel that what they’ve experienced isn’t so much a meal as a prank.” But now most of the dishes are “knockouts” and Bruni extols “the tidiest Benedict the egg-loving world has ever known.”

The Village Voice’s Robert Sietsema raves about Restaurante Taqueria Guerrero; the chef hails from Guerrero, a largely rural state known as Mexico’s Wild West. He loves how the “mole is different every day, depending on the whim of the talented cook” and says you’d be loco not to order the quesadillas with cecina, “a leathery salted beef that's sun-dried in the clear mountain air.”

Eater has big news about a dessert truck showdown at the Whitney Biennial opening tonight: The Dessert Truck and its nemesis Treats Truck are vowing to roll up outside the museum for five hours. (Rules of the rumble prohibit guns, but there will be knives and forks.) The Times revisits the much-maligned MSG, finding it alive and well and living in a lot of food, from Goldfish crackers to spicy tuna rolls. (Studies have repeatedly shown that in normal concentrations MSG “has no effect on the overwhelming majority of people.”)

And Danny Meyer speaks about his new Shake Shack location while declaring that when it comes to cheese on burgers, Meyer's colors don't run: “I've got three-star Michelin taste but when it comes to burgers, I want American cheese on my burger.”