This week Sam Sifton at the Times tosses one measly star to SD26, the big glitzy Flatiron district reboot of San Domenico, which used to operate on Central Park South. Given the restaurant's lofty ambitions, one star is certainly a disappointment for gregarious owner Tony May, who used to run what many agreed to be "Manhattan’s best classically Italian restaurant. Some elements of that excellence remain in the cooking at SD26 and in the wine list put together by the affable Jason Ferris, the restaurant’s wine director. Others have been buried beneath attempts to modernize the kind of dining that Mr. May says has gone out of fashion: the elegant Italian cuisine he helped bring to New York.

"Then there’s the long walk back through the bar to the street, past slightly stunned old regulars from San Domenico and gastro-tourists wondering what all the fuss was about. Emerging onto 26th Street, the overwhelming feeling a diner is left with is one of exhaustion, the sense that at SD26 we are a long, long way from the kind of restaurant Mr. May has stood for in New York City. It’s a restaurant to make anyone feel old." Meanwhile, Sifton's colleague Dave Cook enthusiastically reports that Charles’ Country Pan Fried Chicken is "back in the game after being sidelined for nearly a year."

The Village Voice's Robert Sietsema finds "curious, if messy, sandwiches" at Saltie, "a serious new restaurant masquerading as a sandwich shop" in Williamsburg. "We're on the frontiers of sandwich technology here, so how you eat one from Saltie is entirely up to you," reports Sietsema. "The bottom soaks up more of the sloppy juices, so one way to eat the thing is to flip the top over and pile most of the ingredients thereon, making an open-face sandwich; the bottom then functions as a soggy chaser. Trying to eat one of Saltie's sandwiches like a sandwich is usually futile." Also in the neighborhood, colleague Sarah DiGregorio is pleased to find that Catalan food "makes a rare appearance" at Mercat Negre, "the sort of place you root for."

Andrea Thompson at the New Yorker files a mixed review on Prospect Heights restaurant The Vanderbilt, from widely-respected Brooklyn chef Saul Bolton: "Bolton and his partner, Ben Daitz, who also runs the Cambodian sandwich shop Num Pang, have given the menu an Asian inflection, and the best dish might be the roasted Brussels sprouts, dressed with sriracha, lime, and honey, each bite a perfect combination of sweet, spicy, and tart. Eating the blistered shishito peppers, on the other hand, was like playing Russian roulette—some were mildly flavorful, others nearly took your tongue off."