Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup

This week the Times's Frank Bruni forgoes his weekly restaurant critique in favor of a look back at 2008, culminating in his top ten new restaurant list. David Chang's Momofuku Ko (pictured) is unsurprisingly #1 (Bruni's extreme reservation hassles all but forgotten), with Paul Liebrandt's Corton a close second, and Michael Psilakis's Mia Dona rounding out the list at number ten. Bruni declares '08 to be "the best year for new restaurants in this city since 2004, when New York welcomed two four-star restaurants, Per Se and Masa, in one month." But it's a shame nobody has the money to eat at them anymore: "I shudder to think about this time in 2009 — about the kind of reflection on the New York restaurant scene that might be in order then. The next 12 months promise to be a grueling survival test for all but the most intensely beloved or flat-out utilitarian restaurants."

Also in the Times, Matt Gross finds edible bliss in Bay Ridge for under $25, rhapsodizing about Fifth Avenue's heterogeneous, unpretentious dining scene. In for particular praise is Al Safa, "an unassuming Lebanese restaurant...with staggeringly fresh tabbouleh." This week also finds Village Voice critic Robert Sietsema in Brooklyn, where he extols the meat-centric menu at Italian-American restaurant Colandrea New Corner in Dyker Heights: "You won't be disappointed by the size of the meatballs."

The New Yorker's Leo Carey reviews Irving Mill on the occasion of its newish chef Ryan Skeen, "an up-and-comer whose reputation rests on his apparent obsession with pork in its many forms, expressed in such dishes as pig’s-ear salad and a thing called pork toast, mashed-up pork jowls breaded and deep-fried—a kind of croquette. The good news is that pork toast probably has fewer carbohydrates than regular toast, but, in every other conceivable way, it surely has a claim to being New York’s most unhealthful dish."

At the Post, Steve Cuozzo has a year end "prayer" for the city's restaurant business in 2009, but what he really wants is a better fowl: "Let's really pray - no more overcooked, dried-out chicken! While TV is full of chefs competing to get their pictures on magazine covers, New York restaurants are full of cooks who can't properly roast a simple bird. Modern chickens taste of almost nothing to start with." And last but not least, this week's NY Mag is dominated by dining critic Adam Platt and his year-end roundup.