Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup

This week Frank Bruni at the Times bestows two precious stars on Greenwich Village restaurant 10 Downing. It's a big deal for chef Jason Neroni, who, as Bruni observes right at the top, has had his troubles. But that was then, this is now: "I seldom had the sense that Mr. Neroni was showing off, which he’s been known to do. What was strongest about the best dishes wasn’t some fanciful conceit or adornment, but rather the quality and preparation of the centerpiece ingredient." Still, bring your hearing aid, for the "din can be excruciating."

The New Yorker's Mike Peed, however, has a mixed opinion about the food, and finds the atmosphere suitable for Al Qaeda recruitment: "10 Downing has quickly attracted a glossy clientele—nightly throngs of big bags, skinny jeans, and suspicious looks up and down. Whitney Port’s 'The City' has filmed there. It’s reservation hell... So many guests choose to endure 10 Downing’s sizable wait times that the restaurant’s sliver of a bar area often becomes a kind of holding paddock."

Robert Sietsema at the Village Voice keeps it real at Thakali Kitchen in Jackson Heights, which specializes in cuisine from Nepal's northern border: "I paid a visit with the Organ Meat Society in tow. The membership proclaimed bhutuwa ($5.50)—a spice-rubbed appetizer of goat liver, stomach, and intestine—delectable, and also loved pangram fry, a chicken-gizzard sauté. Sadly, the stir-fried lungs, called phokso, were unavailable." His colleague Sarah DiGregorio reviews midtown's La Fonda del Sol (photos) and dissents from the Daily News's assessment that the dining room experience beats the "lively" bar: "The main courses served in the dining room are well-executed, but something about them feels impersonal... The optimal experience at La Fonda del Sol is a tableful of tapas in the bar area. The smaller dishes range from $4 to $12, and many are perfect—playful, but never overly complicated."

Steve Cuozzo at the Post, always a fun read, has a lengthy monograph about the best grilled cheese sandwiches in town, entitled "Cheesy Does It": "In its most insipid form, grilled cheese is essentially baby food made solid... The tension between crisp top and bottom and gooey insides must hark back to a mysterious, post-natal dream memory, if not to the womb. But we can all do with some babying these days. I spent the past two weeks wallowing in a blur of culinary infantilism." Can diapers go on the expense account?