Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup

This week the Times’s Frank Bruni awards two stars to Eighty One (pictured) in a decidedly mixed review. He thinks the “dizzying” Upper West Side restaurant in the Excelsior Hotel has “attention deficits” and needs Ritalin: “It provides an especially clear example of a kind of culinary preening – call it ego food – that may speak less to the satisfaction of customers than to the self-regard of proprietors.” Nor does Bruni care for the “sprawling dining room with unflattering lighting and oversize red velvet booths that look as if they were carted in from a bordello on some planet where the prostitutes are 12 feet tall.”

Also for the Times, Peter Meehan highlights two of his favorite East Village haunts: Punjab and Polish G. I. Delicatessen. Punjab’s the beloved little hole in the wall on First Street near Avenue A that dishes out some the best cheap vegetarian food around; Meehan correctly asserts that the 24-hour institution is “as good at breakfast as it is after stumbling out of a show at the Mercury Lounge across the street.”

After finding his favorite Bronx Italian restaurant (Roberto’s) closed for the day, the Village Voice’s Robert Sietsema happily discovers La Estrellita III, “which might be the city's most sophisticated purveyor of southern Mexican food.” Sarah DiGregorio also files from the Bronx, as well as Queens, where she covers the best food options near Shea and Ruth’s House.

For the Sun, Paul Adams admires the new iteration of Tribeca’s Duane Park and appreciates how chef Shawn Knight “gives a gentle Louisiana touch to much of what he serves.” But the “unsure” restaurant still has kinks to work out. NY Mag critic Adam Platt gives two stars each to Olana and Mia Dona; he says the former suffers from “a slightly strained stuffiness,” while the latter, from chef Michael Psilakis, is “animated” Mediterranean-style cooking at the right price.

Photo courtesy Ryan Charles.