Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup

GQ's Alan Richman visits Umi Nom on DeKalb Avenue: "Two specials were particularly appealing. The first was an inventive arrangement of a crispy shrimp spring roll wrapped inside a veggie-based summer roll, hot inside cold, Filipino yin-and-yang. (One of my dining companions uncharitably compared it to Taco Bell’s double-decker taco.) The second was sweet and crispy pork belly, first braised, then grilled, even more appealing than Kuma Inn’s deep-fried pork belly."

"Hotel Griffou appeared to be in the Daily Candy stage of early renown, a destination for new-restaurant scalp-collectors and spotters of personages whose names in print may tip between Roman and bold," declares Nick Paumgarten of the New Yorker. While some entrees miss (like a gloppy lobster thermidor), it "has been open just two months, so it deserves some slack. Simpler stuff—such as the bacon-Gruyère burger—bears up better."

Even without a liquor license (yet), the Daily News' Danyelle Friedman enjoys The Mott, a new Nolita restaurant: The space is wonderfully quaint — a 38-seat nook furnished with romantic lighting, tin ceilings, whitewashed brick walls and a padded brown leather bar. There's a small, well-edited menu of American dishes like pan-seared cod, chilled summer tomato soup and roasted chicken with haricots vert and fingerling potatoes"—and a "perfectly cooked" ricotta gnocchi.

Time Out New York visits Veloce Pizza in the East Village, from the Bar Veloce folks—"The heavy, oily pizzas with a fine chewy crust sit like a brick, but taste great going down"—and the Meatpacking District's Standard Grill—there's a "waitstaff who turn heads at dinner—the place seems to have been staffed by a modeling agency" and two dishes that could "easily feed a family of four," a chicken ("whole golden bird in a cast-iron pot") with "thick hunks of toast shamelessly slathered in schmaltz" and a "richly marbled steak from cult butcher Pat LaFrieda is delivered in thick slices around a brontosaurus bone with a steakhouse-caliber char."

New York Magazine's critics are getting ready for the fall restaurant season, offering up a list of the openings they are looking forward to savoring. Plus, NY Magazine has a calendar of openings.