Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup

This week Frank Bruni files two shorter reviews for the Times instead of handing down his usual hefty decision on a single restaurant. He heads east to follow up on Sushi Yashuda on 43rd Street, declaring that from the time it opened "more than eight years ago, when William Grimes awarded it three stars in The New York Times, it has been among the best. And a recent visit suggested that there’s been no slippage, no drift." On the other hand, the expensive new urban rustic restaurant Forge, the premiere of Marc Forgione (son of famous chef Larry Forgione), is stillborn: Like Ziggy Marley or Sofia Coppola, Marc Forgione has chosen to follow in some daunting paternal footsteps... I found the kitchen’s performance inconsistent, and on one visit the wait for food was ridiculously long, especially since the restaurant wasn’t crowded. It has scores of seats to fill, most alluringly in its spacious bar area. There you can enjoy house cocktails mixed with real thought, not just sops to the fashion of the times."

Elsewhere in the Times, Julia Moskin surveys the food at various fancy cocktail lounges around town like Employees Only. For the Village Voice, Robert Sietsema goes way out in Brooklyn for great deals on seafood of "unspeakable freshness and size... The salt breezes that blow off Sheepshead Bay and into the open front of Yiasou ("Cheers") make it an incredibly pleasant place to dine... Unfortunately, it's better to get your vegetables some other way than the salads, which come dressed with a balsamic vinegar that must have gotten as lost as Ulysses on its way from Italy to America." And his colleague Sarah DiGregorio, despite some criticisms, seconds our recommendation of the somewhat overpriced Macondo (pictured), which serves high-concept iterations of Latin street food.

Paul Adams at the Sun likes Socarrat on West 19th Street for not putting on airs with its tapas: "Nothing at the restaurant is startling or gimmicky: Every dish is straightforward and calculated to please rather than to impress." And Danyelle Freeman at the Daily News is beguiled by the desserts at Parlor Steakhouse: "Each dessert is really two desserts in one. The sour-cream cheesecake is the tart offspring of cheesecake and panna cotta, crowned with curls of candied lemon. (It's also served with honey ice cream.) The chocolate ganache cake is a collision between fudge and a flourless souffle, which is the best kind of collision you could hope for."