Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup

This week the Times’s Frank Bruni hands down his verdict on Commerce (pictured), the trendy new inhabitant of 1911 West Village carriage house formerly occupied by Blue Mill Tavern, among others. Overall, he deems the new tenant fussy and cacophonous; chef Harold Moore’s “polyglot menu and intricately wrought dishes let him strut his stuff in a way that a more archetypal bill of fare might not. In doing so he creates a rankling dissonance, his dishes beseeching a closeness of attention that the frenzied atmosphere doesn’t easily permit.”

Bruni’s one star rating will “absolutely mark the end of the restaurant,” Eater darkly prophesies. But New York Mag’s Adam Platt dissents, writing that while the atmosphere is “glitzy, chaotic, and predictable,” most of the food is “improbably good” and “the Visigoths from across the river have yet to invade.” The Times’s outgoing critic Peter Meehan reviews East Village ramen temple Ippudo, which Gothamist’s own Joe DiStefano assessed on opening night. Meehan loves the interior, “which feels like a stage set, maybe for a samurai battle in an evil shogun’s futuristic fun house,” and says “the noodles are always cooked right, and the tonkotsu broth is unwaveringly flavor-packed.”

For the Voice, Robert Sietsema recommends the South Indian vegetarian restaurant Tamil Nadu Bhavan, on lower Lexington. He’s particularly fond of “the ‘5 foot family dosa’ ($19.95), a crisp pancake worthy of P.T. Barnum. It's so big, you could wrap a good-size child up inside.” Also on the South Indian beat, Sarah DiGregorio infiltrates Indian canteens hidden inside Hindu temples in Queens: “surrounded by the hubbub of parents wrangling children and couples bickering about what to order, I found it all oddly comforting—like hanging out with the family without actually having to hang out with the family . . . and with better food." And that's coming from an Italian.

The Sun's Paul Adams endorses the laid back East Village wine bar Terroir, where he's elated to be "reunited" with the sandwich of duck ham, Taleggio cheese, and hen-of-the-woods mushrooms that chef Marco Canora brought in from Craftbar. And Danyelle Freeman at the News goes to Brooklyn for Korhogo 126, the French and West African fusion spot that she deems "gutsy, exotic, and sophisticated."

Photo of Commerce courtesy Ryan Charles.