Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup

This week Frank Bruni at the Times keeps his stars to himself and goes trendspotting, opining on four haute restaurants doing alternative, recession-minded menus. He raves about a couple dishes at Anthos Upstairs, located in "the second-floor room previously dedicated to large private parties — you know, those suddenly anachronistic events at which corporate generals larded their bonus-primed lieutenants," but has "better luck and a better time" at DFF, the re-appropriation of the private-party room adjacent to Craft, in the Flatiron district. "Semantically cuter but otherwise less appealing than DFF" is Halfsteak, where Bruni "got half service." And the à la carte Per Se lounge is "superb — and yet utterly ridiculous." GQ's Alan Richman also visits Per Se lounge twice, spending $454 on dinner for two, and is "unimpressed."

The Village Voice's Robert Sietsema enjoys a "meat fusillade" at Astoria's Balkh Shish Kabab House, "one of the city's top Afghani restaurants... Demonstrating the primacy of meat in the Afghani diet, a refrigerated case just inside the front door features meat sticks marshaled like retreating Soviet troops (and, soon enough, American troops, too)." His colleague Sarah DiGregorio is the latest critic to weigh in on the festive new Japanese grill Inakaya, where, "if you can be persuaded to check your bitchy New York attitude at the door, there is actual fun to be had. What's more, if you order thoughtfully—tip: Don't order the $65 fish—you can have a good meal for what almost passes as a fair price."

Lauren Collins at the New Yorker has a witty review of Brooklyn's Vinegar Hill House (photos), which she says "would merit a place in the American Museum of Natural History if it had a Hall of Cool New Yorkers Under Forty: with a faded flag, needlepoint, and potted cacti, it’s a mint example of the pre-industrial, handmade sensibility that has become prevalent in a certain kind of restaurant, circa 2009... The restaurant is situated in the middle of a semi-deserted cobblestoned block in Vinegar Hill, down which one can picture scamps in suspenders rolling wooden hoops...The vintage act can get to be a bit much, but Vinegar Hill’s prices—nine dollars for an appetizer of mussels, eleven for a ravioli entrée—redeem its pretensions. They also, along with the small kitchen, limit its ambitions."