Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup

The Brooklyn Star

Times dining critic Frank Bruni has finally left the building in a fusillade of publicity, and his replacement Sam Sifton didn't file this week. But in the "Dining Briefs" section, Betsy Andrews reviews the Brooklyn Star, a cozy Southern comfort restaurant in Williamsburg run by Joaquin Baca, a former partner in the Momofuku empire. She says Baca "excels at making veggies fattening, and good. His casseroles ($8) — garlicky summer squash and mushroom-rich green bean with slivered almonds — are toasted to gooey goodness in his open kitchen’s 100-year-old brick oven. Creamed corn with smoked trout ($4) and earthy black-eyed peas and rice ($4) are spoonful-by-spoonful delicious. Surprisingly for the former Momofuku partner, meats are a mixed bag."

Meanwhile, the Times's Julia Moskin files a Dining Brief on Kajitsu in the East Village, which she deems "an elegantly sobering reminder of Japan’s ascetic traditions. On entry, only gleaming wood surfaces and a naked slab of counter for the chef, Masato Nishihara, are visible. 'Vegan' is the closest term, though an inadequate one, for his shojin ryori, or 'devotion cuisine,' derived from Buddhist temples near Kyoto." Not so ascetic is Ligaya Mishan's inspection of 87 different flavors at 17 frozen dessert locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn; she finds "the holy grail of ice cream" at Greene Ice Cream at the General Greene: "salted caramel pretzel and bitter chocolate mint. It’s a dream team that achieves the mystic balance of salt, sweet and crunch."

Robert Sietsema at the Village Voice says East Harbor Seafood Palace in Sunset Park excels at Dim Sum. "And the chicken feet! Usually, they're tough as nails, and you have to gnaw them like a rat to drag annulated skin from bone. At East Harbor, the pepper-braised skin is so tender that it sloughs off as you raise the chopsticks to your mouth—pleasing both neophyte and old-time chicken-appendage fanciers alike."

The Voice's Sarah DiGregorio files a thorough review of the sexy Standard Grill (photos), which seems to have become quite the obnoxious hotspot: "You have to stand your ground in front of the maître'd station, in the crush of people—kind of like when getting a pie at DiFara's, except that everyone is freakishly tall and wearing clothes worth more money than I make in a year. But once you do get a table, the reward is unexpectedly generous: A bowl of small, pink-and-white baby radishes with fleur de sel, a large pile of bite-size hunks of Parmesan, and good bread and butter. Plus, each table receives a complimentary bowl of fried potato hunks with smoked paprika aioli—basically, really good patatas bravas. When in doubt, order the fish."

The New Yorker's Mike Peed reviews Marea, the upscale seafood restaurant from chef Michael White, whose "colossal menu presents, with help from the guys at FedEx, freshly caught pagello and branzino from Italy, as well as lobster from Nova Scotia and sea scallops from Rhode Island. Recently, a server hawked the day’s catch by rolling a large fish cart between tables—suddenly, the raw creatures were staring at you beseechingly from their bed of ice. Later, a twirl of the fork in a langoustine-studded spinosini resulted in a surprise impalement of one of the crustacean’s eyeballs. You may feel as though you have returned to biology class."

Steve Cuozzo at the Post conducts a sad search for decent restaurants in Ocean Hill, "the upper salient of Ocean Hill-Brownsville. Among the least known of the city's low-income communities it never recovered from the 1977 blackout, when looting and arson destroyed its commercial core... I lived there until I was nearly 6...There isn't a single restaurant with waiter service north of Atlantic Avenue; a few takeout spots have tables where you may eat what you order in-house. Shuttered venues outnumber open ones: signs for Roclantic, Scaddie's and the tantalizingly named Chocolate Ice adorn permanently gated facades."

And at Time Out New York, Jay Cheshes reviews five spots that blur the line between restaurant and club: Hotel Griffou, LevantEast, The Gates, Ward III and The Mott. He's got harsh words for all of them, but The Mott bombs biggest, in part because it doesn't even have its liquor license yet: "But that’s not the worst of it: Despite hiring a chef who last worked for David Bouley—Upstairs alum Brian Bieler—the food was a snooze. A meal in the votive-lit room felt like the worst kind of dinner party, with half of the menu already sold out by 8pm, and available dishes just palatable enough to get through without offending the cook."

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By John Del Signore in Food on September 2, 2009 9:17 AM

Comments [rss]

famdoc

Re: Sietsema and Dim Sum in Sunset Park.

You won't find better dim sum than that at Pacificana, so don't even try.

Rocknrope

I wish there was a place that served chicken feet off the bone. I was able to have that in China, and it was so much better than having to spit out those little knuckley bones - makes me feel like I'm eating an elf's fingers.