Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup

This week the Times’s Frank Bruni opines on Scarpetta (pictured), the new Meatpacking District Italian restaurant from Scott Conant (L’Impero, Alto) that the Village Voice loved and the Sun disdained. Bruni bestows a big three stars, raving about the unassuming dish of spaghetti, tomato and basil: “However Mr. Conant is choosing and cooking the Roma tomatoes with which he sauces his house-made spaghetti, he’s getting a roundness of flavor and nuance of sweetness that amount to pure Mediterranean bliss.” Also in the Times, Julia Moskin surveys Chinese food in Flushing, where “the dumplings are juicier, the noodles springier, the butter cookies flavored with a bit of salty green seaweed.”

For the Voice, Robert Sietsema voices mixed emotions on Sakae Sushi, one of those conveyor belt sushi places: “While facile items wander the belt like lost refugees, more sophisticated choices are available only by special order. When faced with one of the assortments, which feature as many as 47 pieces ($69.95), you'll find the quality uneven. And why are spring rolls included?” Meanwhile, the Voice’s Sarah DiGregorio advises you to “get all the farmhouse chic you can swallow at Forge and Hundred Acres,” two “haute barnyard” restaurants downtown. “Both serve hard lemonade and a cucumber-gin cooler. Both will change their menus seasonally. Forge is Hundred Acres' more expensive, amped-up, and posh cousin.”

Speaking of Forge, Danyelle Freeman at the Daily News finds that "most dishes seem to be missing one pivotal player. It's a slightly tragic but recurring theme that unfolds over a succession of dinners." And Paul Adams at the Sun says don’t bother trekking to Talay, a Thai-Latin fusion place on the other end of the earth (West 135th St. and Twelfth Avenue). “You're seated under garish multicolored lights and made to wait ages for a cloying peach cocktail by the gushingly eager but barely trained staff. One busser, full of vim, kept snatching away half-finished plates despite our protests, or pilfering our dipping sauces with most of our morsels still undipped.”

Photo of Scarpetta courtesy Daniel Krieger/Scarpetta.