Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup

Today the Times’s Frank Bruni reviews The Harrison (pictured) in Tribeca; the paper gave it two stars in 2001 and Bruni maintains status quo with two stars today. There’s a different chef in the kitchen, Amanda Freitag, and Bruni digs the restaurant’s “populist bent, its awareness that breaded or fried objects are a sure path to many a diner’s heart.” But don’t get him started on the ambiance: “The Harrison’s visual evocation of a country inn in the big city still strikes me as more stodgy than cozy. And its soundtrack, too heavy on pop rock from 15 to 25 years ago, needs help. It’s neither classic nor cool. Just odd.”

Peter Meehan chimes in on Artichoke, the much-hyped pizza nook on East 14th Street. He agrees it’s “the apogee of a slice place,” even though “the pizzas are as oily as the strategic petroleum reserve,” and “there tends to be a line outside as if there was a Barney’s Warehouse sale just past the ovens.” The Voice’s Robert Sietsema has a rave review for Madangsui, the Korean barbecue place on West 35th Street: “It pelts you with meat, offering portions twice the size of similar establishments.”

Also on the barbecue beat, Sarah DiGregorio slams the southern-style Wildwood, where her ballet dancer/waitress foolishly comments, “I can’t believe how much you ate!” The food is so inconsistent DiGregorio wonders if acclaimed pitmaster "Big Lou" Elrose can handle the 222 seat restaurant, which to her feels “disingenuous and contrived—all the money in the world can't buy the easy, convivial authenticity of a great barbecue joint.”

Barbecue week continues at The Sun, where Paul Adams files his review of chef Anita Lo’s Asian Bar Q: “The kitchen seems hard-pressed to keep up with its chef's creativity. On a busy night, the wait between courses can stretch to uncomfortable lengths, and the food that comes out of the kitchen feels slapped-together, adequate but not as delicious as it should be.” And NY Mag’s Adam Platt weighs in on Bar Milano, the “casually elegant, darkly fashionable” Italian restaurant on lower Third Avenue. “The pastas, at this early stage, are uneven, bordering on downright bad… If you want something approaching true Italian authenticity, however, the dish to get is the tripe.” Mmm, tripe.