James (pictured), in Prospect Heights, specializes in farm-fresh French-American cuisine. It's said that chef James Calvert once catered a nightmarish photo shoot for the demanding Britney Spears, who dismissed his buffet and demanded BLTs. She then sent those back, insisting upon BLTs sans mayo. Irrevocably scarred, Calvert went on to open what Frank Bruni at the Times describes as "the kind of modest, warm refuge produced by a chef who wants to simplify things, to personalize things, to work on a scale that doesn’t require or invite the meddling of too many outsiders...It’s also an example of how quietly sophisticated the food at restaurants fashioned as affordable neighborhood bistros has become. No bigger, brasher restaurant around town served me an heirloom tomato salad this summer that I enjoyed any more than one at James."

Also in the Times, the "$25 and Under" column reviews "the only two Cambodian restaurants in New York City: a relocated Cambodian Cuisine and a revived Kampuchea." In the Village Voice, Robert Sietsema declares the Indian-Chinese restaurant Deli Heights to be all the reason you need to visit Jackson Heights—and not just because they serve "Punjabi stuff you won't find elsewhere." He rhapsodizes about "the spaceship-size chandeliers, undulant orange banquettes, and Spam-colored granite bar that actually serves cocktails, making the place more like Vegas than Varanasi. Clad in white shirts and black ties, the waiters float among the diners like ghosts of Indian restaurants past."

Paul Adams at the Sun reviews Sheridan Square, which has been taken over by chef Franklin Becker. He loves the wood-burning oven that dominates the room, but "its plain banquettes and black-and-white photos could as easily decorate a restaurant in Atlanta or Lincoln, Neb." Becker's food is "exceptional," but the service is "hapless...I watched a drink I had ordered emerge from the bar and make the rounds of the restaurant, stopping at various wrong tables and being turned away, before it was eventually — almost correctly — set down in front of my companion."

And Danyelle Freeman at the Daily News bestows three stars on upscale French restaurant Allegretti, which is "named after its chef, Alain Allegretti, who trained under Alain Ducasse and Jacques Maximin. Allegretti is Niçois himself. Translation: He's from Nice and has a flair for fish."