Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup

Buzz has been building for Socarrat Paella Bar (pictured), the casual tapas and paella joint that has fans waiting 20-30 minutes for a seat at a long communal table. And after today's review by Frank Bruni in the Times, you may as well take that wait time and double it: "They’re better than the paellas at many other Spanish restaurants in New York, where paella doesn’t always fare so well...The broad, shallow, black cast iron pans in which they’re cooked are put on pedestals in the center of the table, and at the height of the dinner hour, they form a line stretching deep into the restaurant. It’s a glorious sight."

Robert Sietsema at the Village voice says the charcoal-grilled kebabs at Sim-Sim, an Azerbaijani café in "sleepy" south Kensington are "spectacular." It's also a fun place to bro out with his buddies: "The highlight of the next grouping was a greasy stir fry of potatoes and loamy veal organs called (I'm not kidding!) 'jiz biz.' The semen jokes began to fly. To extend our organ binge, we'd also requested a stew of lamb testes. ('We're all out of balls!' the proprietor had shouted into the phone.)" Also for the Voice, Sarah DiGregorio swings through Red Hook with impressions of newish places like La Bouillabaisse and fancy cocktail den Botanica, where, "this being Red Hook, the cocktails are $10 each instead of $12—thank goodness for small mercies."

NY Mag has a rave review for Porchetta, the newish East Village pork sandwich nook: "Porchetta’s porchetta is drop-dead delicious...it fills the shop with a lovely aroma that wafts its way down the block, causing startled passersby to lift their noses and sniff the air like cartoon hoboes on the trail of a windowsill pie." The Post's Steve Cuozzo approves of Le Cirque's cozy wine bar, but it still sounds like tool central: "A young woman watching the Sarah Palin-Joe Biden debate last week was fed up with Girls-in-Groups yakking and politely asked one table to pipe down. She was put in her place: 'Hey, it's a free country!'" And the Daily News says "nobody makes better pesto sauce than Bar Pitti...Every New Yorker should eat it at least once."