Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup

This week Robert Sietsema at the Village Voice reviews Motorino, the wood-oven pizza place in Williamsburg named after a Vespa-like scooter. He says the prices are reasonable and the pies first rate: "Stippled with char, smoky, and slightly doughy, the marguerita ($10) stands up to any other I've tasted...Even more amazing is the Pugliese pie, name-checking the southern Italian region where many Brooklynites came from. This pizza deploys broccolini and sweet sausage, and who'd imagine bitter greens would make such a fab topping? These pies might be called 'back constructions' by a linguist: They re-import the true pies of Naples to New York 120 years after they first arrived, and then slap Italian-American ingredients on them."

Also at the Voice, Sarah DiGregorio raves about Txikito (pronounced "chic-kee-toe"), the cozy Basque-style tapas spot on Ninth Avenue: "Here, you'll find bakailoa: a house-cured salt cod sliced very thin, topped with dice-sized nuggets of breaded, fried headcheese that crunches and then gushes pork fat and gelatin under your teeth. The richness of the headcheese plays nicely with the salty, lean cod." The Daily News's Danyelle Freeman has a mixed review of 10 Downing in the Village: "Here's the first thing you need to know you about 10 Downing. Order the charcuterie, especially the duck liver mousse and the duck prosciutto...Here's the second thing you need to know. Wear earplugs."

Also wandering the Village, Frank Bruni at the Times opines on Braeburn, yet another farm-to-table restaurant: "Many servers dress in checked or plaid shirts: corn-pone chic. And what defines the otherwise plain main dining room is a painting of a white house with a red barn and fleecy sheep, the livestock color-coordinated with the domicile. Apparently all of us who make ruinous housing payments to be a part of Warhol’s city really dream of Wyeth’s world, at least when dinnertime rolls around. We want not only farm-fresh ingredients but also farm-evocative décor...But for almost every successful dish there was a modest disappointment: something that missed its mark or simply didn’t seem to be taking aim at anything worth sweating over."

Photo courtesy Paulie Gee.