Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup

This week Frank Bruni at the Times criticizes Corton, the new Tribeca restaurant helmed by enfant terrible chef Paul Liebrandt. Others at Time Out and NY Mag have raved, and Bruni's praise isn't exactly muted either: "At Corton [Liebrandt] calms down and wises up, accepting that an evening in a restaurant shouldn’t be like a visit to a fringe art gallery: geared to the intellect, reliant on provocation. It needn’t demand raptness. And it must, in the course of whatever else it means to accomplish, leave a person eager for the next bite and intent on the one after that." Makes sense, three stars.

The Village Voice's Robert Sietsema says the Roosevelt Food Court is well worth a ride on the 7 to Flushing because it "represents our best chance to sample cutting-edge regional specialties recently arrived from China." And his colleague Sarah DiGregorio spies a "delicious new restaurant" in Ditmast Park: Top Café Tibet. She advises you to "bring a beer from next door (it's BYOB) and then order from the Tibetan part of the menu. The food is, by any standard, excellent, and it's a happy reminder that New York is still, sometimes, a place where on-a-shoestring, from-scratch family restaurants can thrive."

NY Mag checks in on Brooklyn newcomer Vinegar Hill House, deeming it "an unlikely destination on the culinary map...The 40-seat space is the embodiment of warm and cozy, quirky but not off-puttingly so. It’s Little House on the Prairie crossed with Freemans, the relentlessly hip Lower East Side restaurant where the couple who owns Vinegar Hill House first met on the job."

Danyelle Freeman at the Daily News is unimpressed with Braeburn in the West Village, dissing it as "fussy and tiny." Also, confused: "The other day, I called Braeburn. The general manager answered, 'Thank you for calling The Harrison.' Then he hung up, embarrassed. It was a natural mistake. Almost half the staff comes from The Harrison...In fact, some dishes make you feel like you're at The Harrison and some dishes make you wish you were at The Harrison." And over at The New Yorker, Lauren Collins finds Secession, David Bouley’s new French-Italian bistro, pretty but lacking: "Bouley’s execution is all over the place: a salad of gizzards and red-wine-poached egg is a musky pleasure, while the one with foie gras and Jerez dressing is overly citrusy and almost oxymoronically bland."

Photo of Corton courtesy Michael Harlan Turkell.