Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup

This week the Times’s Frank Bruni reminds everyone about Oceana (pictured), that fancy three star “seafood restaurant in Midtown that looks like an ocean liner.” After more than fifteen years in business, he says it’s still “very much worth boarding.” And save room for dessert, which is “splendid.” The frozen banana mousse, “presented with both sticky rice and puffed, caramelized rice, [is] the transmogrification of a bowl of Rice Krispies with bananas into dessert, and it’s killer.”

The Village Voice’s Robert Sietsema visits Cabrito, which means baby goat in Spanish. He notes that it’s a little expensive ($6 a taco) but probably worth it: Cabrito “zealously translates a choice collection of ethnic recipes into the bistro idiom, so that about 80 percent of the dishes are aggressively ‘authentic,’ with some intelligent tweakings here and there.” But the eponymous baby goat ($23) is “sour, stringy, and somewhat skanky.”

Also for the Voice, Sarah Di Gregorio says the best frozen yogurt in town is Oko, “which has an intense yogurty tang, probably because they buy the yogurt base from a Greek family in Queens. The worst? Pinkberry, with its icy, harsh texture.” The Sun’s Paul Adams is let down by upscale Italian restaurant Scarpetta (which Sietsema previously raved about): Chef Scott Conant, “demonstrably capable of tasty things, seems to spend his evenings schmoozing at the bar, while the kitchen's output feels rote and uninspired.”

But New York Magazine’s Adam Platt dissents on Scarpetta, opining that Conant’s “high-minded, almost priestly brand of Italian cooking hasn’t changed very much, but in this more casual downtown setting, the food seems more enjoyable and less precious.” And the Post’s Steve Cuozzo marvels at the increasing prevalance of octupus on the menu at gourmet restaurants: “Traditionally confined to old-school Greek and Italian menus, the lowly cephalopod has recently been promoted to glamourpuss status on tables around town.”