The New Yorker's Nick Paumgarten says Parisian import Le Relais de Venise L’Entrecôte 590 "brings to mind a bare-bones bistro next door to a train station." It's not just the decor, but the menu that heralds the comparison, where "you can order but one thing: steak frites, with a green salad. Prix fixe: an anachronistic twenty-four dollars." A bottle of wine goes for about the same price, and there are not many on the menu.

New York's Robin Raisfeld & Rob Patronite take a trip to Eat, the Greenpoint cafe dedicated to local, seasonal fare. The menu "is not philosophically vegan or a health-food restaurant, it can come off that way," with seasonal often meaning no meat. February means "beans, greens, grains, and roots adorned with an egg here, a scoop of yogurt there, the politically correct output of contented free-range birds and grass-fed cows," and they "had such a hard time discerning any actual cheese, where advertised, as an ingredient, that we decided that the kitchen must approach its application the way some dry-martini drinkers approach vermouth—by waving a hunk over the plate and whispering “fromage.” No one ever said being a Mid-Atlantic winter locavore was easy.

Alan Richman of GQ went to the "frontier community" of Bushwick to eat at Roberta's pizzeria this week. "The food isn’t highbrow, nor is it unsophisticated," though the marrow bones "saw no sign of the promised sel gris, which is flashy French sea salt." Quel dommage. The pizza is "very light, somewhat puffy, and a bit charred, but it isn’t ultra-thin and soggy in the center, the way most Neopolitan pizzas end up. At dinner I ordered the specken wolf, prepared with grilled speck (beautifully crisped), boring button mushrooms, not enough oregano, nondescript onions, and ordinary mozzarella—I thought, speck aside, it needed more spices and better ingredients." Maybe February is equally cruel for Roberta's rooftop garden.

And Time Out's Jay Cheshes gives Roman's—the Italian reboot of what was Bonita's in Fort Greene—three out of five stars. "Roman’s looks to the old country mostly for the conviviality of its food culture, with offerings set up to encourage passed plates and multiple courses," writes Cheshes. "The abbreviated selection and modest portions mean that a table of four can order every dish... Still, the self-consciously austere tack—we were offered nothing more than sorbet for dessert—doesn’t add up to a meal worth making a trip for. If you live next door, however, the daily seasonal surprises are an outstanding alternative to your own CSA delivery box."