Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup

Frank Bruni at the Times really wants to love the newly renovated Oak Room (photos), but the food is so erratic that dining there amounts to a very costly coin toss. His review is nothing like Steve Cuozzo's recent excoriation, but in this economy, it's not what the Oak Room needed: "It has been meticulously and gorgeously restored. An acclaimed French-born chef was recruited to supervise the kitchen. And those developments combined, on the best of the nights when I dined there, to produce a lovely experience of a rarefied sort.

"My fork sank into tender venison in a classically dark, rich, winy sauce as my eyes traveled up, up, up the sculptured oak walls toward a ceiling more than two stories high. That ceiling was framed by yard upon yard of gold molding and trim. If heaven is wood-paneled, it probably looks something like this. But on other nights I had meals stippled with disappointment. More than a few dishes were clumsily executed or vacuously luxurious. Seldom have I had so many black truffle shavings thrown at me to so little effect."

The Village Voice's Robert Sietsema recommends Salumeria Rosi Parmacotto, the salami store/cramped cafe which one precocious young Upper West Sider recently reviewed in his diary, charming the New York Times and Hollywood. Does Sietsema concur with his 12-year-old colleague's prediction "that soon enough this would be one of the most ‘hip’ places in the city"? Hipness isn't his concern, but he does declare that "much of the cooking is stunning." And Sarah DiGregorio has a slam-dunk, rave review of Dirt Candy in the East Village, which begins, "In a room that looks like a Pinkberry crossed with a submarine, we are crunching on what may be the best hush puppies in the city," and only gets better from there.

Speaking of East Village submarines, The New Yorker finally gets around to Jehangir Mehta's shoebox restaurant Graffiti: "The menu’s standout is the Graffiti burger—two tiny, kebab-spiced patties that ought to rank among the city’s best, in spite of their size...At the end of the meal, checks arrive inside envelopes graffitied by prior guests, palimpsests of dinners past. 'I’m looking for a thoroughbred,' reads one message. 'Must be: fast, appreciate poetry, sensitive, susceptible to fits of art appreciation, willing to move to Canada, can’t make me cook meat products.'"