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Union Square Cafe
Harbour, the sustainable seafood restaurant with the yacht-like interior, has received generally positive reviews since opening in far west Soho in March. But Steve Cuozzo at the Post says the ship is sinking, and he's not throwing anyone a rope: "Species depletion is an important issue that responsible chefs take seriously—but must we read 'seafood watch' fliers from the Environmental Defense Fund with our meal? A waiter's spiel about how Harbour shuns fish prone to mercury poisoning prompted one diner to crack, 'But I'm on a high-mercury diet.'... Striped bass was so dull, I'd have sent it back at any neighborhood bistro where bass you can actually taste can be had for less. Guys, we all want to 'sustain' the sea's bounty—but first, let's learn to cook it."
The Village Voice's Robert Sietsema finds "some of the freshest seafood in Brooklyn" at Liman in Sheepshead Bay, and Sarah DiGregorio profiles Piattini, a Sicilian-inflected restaurant in Bay Ridge where Gino Cammarata "serves his now-famous gelato." Lila Byock at the New Yorker is the latest critic to file on DBGB, Daniel Boulud's beer and sausage restaurant on the Bowery: "After dinner one recent evening, a well-heeled patron emerged onto the sidewalk with a golf club propped jauntily on his shoulder, while a chauffeur-driven S.U.V. idled at the curb. If you scrub the grit from the Bowery, after all, it’s just the East Side."
New York's Underground Gourmet raves about Mimi’s Hummus in Ditmas Park: "Credit goes to Israeli chef-owner Mimi Kitani, who mines her Iraqi and Moroccan heritage for unusual specials and puts her own expertly spiced spin on the cuisine’s classics. Her hummuses (hummi?) are thick and rich, glossed with oil, scattered with parsley, and served with a basket of hot, puffy pitas. You can’t go wrong, whether you choose the one crowned with a scoop of favas or the cumin-scented mushroom version, or the even more substantial meat hummus, distinguished by a layer of cinnamon-scented ground beef flecked with pine nuts."
Danyelle Freeman at the Daily News files a mixed review on Hotel Griffou, a speakeasy-style Greenwich Village restaurant where the cocktails "are phenomenal. There's one called the Trophy Wife. I wanted to dislike it based on its name alone, but it's excellent—a vibrant mix of cachaca, Champagne and passionfruit puree... It's a shame the rest of the menu isn't very good. I ordered steak tartare. What I got were dainty brioche rounds topped with a meek steak tartare and a cold, quail egg. Either I have a bigger appetite than most of their guests or the portions are way too tiny. How can the kitchen consider three shrimp an "appetizer"—and what if I'm sharing? Am I supposed to play rock, paper, scissors for the third shrimp?
And Time Out's Jay Cheshes gives the gorgeous new Financial District restaurant Sho Shaun Hergatt three out of five stars, calling it "your ticket to memory lane. The awkward mouthful of a restaurant, named for its Australian chef, harks back to the gilded age of junk bonds, Miami Vice fashions and late nights at Nell’s. A hermetic haven of retro luxury on the second floor of the unfinished Setai condo near Wall Street, it would make a convincing backdrop for a period flick set in the heyday of high-finance machismo and Pan-Asian chic. On a recent night the dining room hosted a confab of Gordon Gekkos. Just beyond them, the actor Don Johnson (I do not jest) hobnobbed with the chef. Even without a big star from the ’80s on hand, the setting, service and food will make you nostalgic. "
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Glad to see that one of Frank Bruni's last acts as the Times' restaurant critic was a just correction upon reputation. I made a pilgrimage to Union Square Cafe a couple years ago: the service and the ambience at Union Square is absolutely impeccable, but the food -- the oysters excepted -- was above-average but unmemorable. I never went back. Since then, I've had five times the gustatory pleasure at a quarter of the cost at several restaurants in Manhattan.