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This week the Times's Frank Bruni reviews Kurve (pictured), the Thai-centric space-age restaurant in the East Village, which has had a long, rocky road to opening. (After Sarah DiGregorio at the Voice ate there in September, she was informed it "was not yet open.") Bruni awards it zero stars and has fun with his disgruntled companions along the way:
"Kurve struts. Until recently it outfitted its servers in proper hats, which prompted associations that changed depending on how far our meal had progressed, how thoroughly our patience had been taxed and how sinister our outlook on the restaurant had become.At the Village Voice, the peripatetic Robert Sietsema visits Ravenswood, Queens to review Philippu Lounge Y Restaurante, "a name oddly incorporating Spanish, English, and Greek; paradoxically, the name betokened a new Philippine restaurant." Verdict? "Consistently excellent." His colleague DiGregorio reviews Char No. 4, the new whiskey and smoked meat place in Carroll Gardens: "The kitchen's devotion to bacon turns a bit maniacal. The clam chowder would have been very respectable, except that it featured exactly one clam and was entirely overrun with confetti of bacon...It should have been called bacon chowder, but that doesn't sound so good, does it?"'A Tommy Tune musical,' a companion said merrily at the start.
'That apple-for-a-face Magritte painting,' someone else said mischievously at the 25-minute mark.
'Liza in Cabaret,' I snarled after another 20 minutes.
'Malcolm in A Clockwork Orange,’ someone else declaimed as we breached our second hour...How do restaurateurs pour this much money and this much vanity into a project and bungle it to the extent that the Kurve brigade does?"
NY Mag's Adam Platt has bestowed four of his five available stars on Corton, the fancy new partnership between restaurateur Drew Nieporent (Montrachet, Nobu) and chef Paul Liebrandt, "a tempestuous diva of the old school." Here, he shines: "The avalanche of seasonal ingredients...appears to have tempered Liebrandt’s flamboyance and focused his creativity. The showy pyrotechnics have disappeared, replaced by food that’s technically complex without being exhibitionist, highly refined without being effete."
The entire New Yorker is devoted to food this week, so peruse articles on the global food crises and slurping carrot soup with Prince at your leisure. Nick Paumgarten gets around to Convivio, chef Michael White's Tudor City reformation of the stuffy L’Impero: "An attentive but laid-back waitress who looks a bit like Jennifer Connelly dispenses unassailable recommendations, and before long you are eating exotic animal parts and exquisite pastas that live up to all the avid things your dinner companions have heard about them, and about their maker, the chef Michael White."
At the Daily News, Danyelle Freeman loves Cipolla Rossa, which serves delicacies like wild boar meatloaf up on East 91st Street: "Chef Pierluigi Sacchetti has a way of taming the robustness of game, encouraging its delicacy, its subtlety...Cipolla Rossa is a good place to break in a game - shy friend." And the Post's Steve Cuozzo says, "The name of David Bouley's new 'French-Italian brasserie' is Secession, not 'Recession' as foodie jokes have had it. But you'd never know that from a succulent veal chop priced at $28 when the damn things run to $40 anywhere else, and luscious, inch-thick halibut for $23 in an age of scrawny, $30 cuts."
Photo of Kurve courtesy Tejal Rao.
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Kurve is located in what once was the original Cooper Square Diner. I miss that place. I remember Quentin Crisp used to eat there every morning when I was a kid...
I walk by there and I see this clumsy attempt at mod design and I feel sad.
Excellent use of the word "peripatetic" there.