Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup

Chef Marco Canora is having a good morning; Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni says “there may not be any dish I’ve enjoyed more in recent months than the pork blade steak” at Terroir (pictured). His column this week looks at how chefs at wine bars like Terroir and Gottino have transcended the “glorified snacks” that used to be de rigueur, to “exemplify a wine-bar evolution so thorough that nomenclature can’t keep up.” Less criticism than trend piece, Bruni finds the chefs “liberated” by the informality and bestows one shiny star upon each.

Julia Moskin has replaced Peter Meehan on the Times’s $25-and-under beat and starts with a baptism by fire at Greenwich Village Thai restaurant Rhong-Tiam. Or is “rhong-tiam” just Thai for sadomasochism? Moskin says their "Pork on Fire" is “not so much a dish as a session: an hour spent suspended exquisitely between pleasure and pain, craving and fear.”

The Village Voice’s Robert Sietsema has kind words for Scott Conant’s Scarpetta, the Italian place that’s taken over what used to be the Village Idiot: “Turn to the braised short ribs, another Conant classic, in which boneless slices of rich meat malinger on a soupy risotto made with the Roman grain faro. Eating it will make you march like a legionnaire.” Danyelle Freeman raves about the place for the News, too: “I have fond memories of The Village Idiot from the days when I was underage. But now that I'm overage, I'm quite content to find myself sitting in front of a bowl of spaghetti at Scarpetta.”

Also for the Voice, Sarah DiGregorio digs all kinds of Vietnamese food in Sunset Park – print this one out and hop on the BMT. And the Sun’s Adam Platt piles on the “ambitious” Bar Milano. Most of the food is disappointing, and “the service is highly polished, but so stilted as to verge on the robotic. Hearing one waitress recite the same rote phrases to every customer — at top volume, because the ambient sound level is overwhelming — gives the meal a Stepfordian vibe that is not conducive to relaxation.”

Photo of Terrior courtesy Ryan Charles.