The Village Tart falls under the approving gaze of The New Yorker's Andrea Thompson, who writes, "In a neighborhood often known for being image-conscious, Village Tart is remarkably unassuming; it may be the only place within a mile radius that amiably deploys Jack Johnson as background music. The other night, the mellow decorum of a crowded dining room was disturbed only by a boisterous conversation that touched on, among other things, the iPad, the relative beauty of two sisters, and female anatomy. 'Let’s be honest,' asserted one voice. 'I’m a really smart guy who knows a lot about a lot of things, but that’s one thing I’ve never figured out.'"

New York's Adam Platt visits The Highlands, "a self-consciously styled “Scottish gastropub” in the West Village... The real reason to visit this antic, aggressively themed gastropub (even the busboys wear tartan ties) are the whiskeys. The comprehensive list runs to eleven pages, covers all the geographical points on the great whiskey compass (from the northern islands to Speyside to the bogs of Islay), and includes flowery tasting notes on all the whiskeys."

Jay Cheshes gives the Mark from Jean-Georges Vongerichten four out of five stars. "His latest, in the beautifully rebranded Mark Hotel on Madison Avenue, doesn’t look—or taste—like it’s the eighth or ninth branch of a chain, but that is, in fact, pretty much what it is," writes Cheshes. "The Mark is based on a concept called Market—with outlets in Atlanta, Boston, Vancouver, Paris, Istanbul and Doha, Qatar—that’s an upscale hybrid of a bistro and a diner, featuring a high-low mishmash of the sort of food Vongerichten’s been serving for years at Mercer Kitchen, Perry Street, JoJo and Vong."

And the Post's resident dining curmudgeon Steve Cuozzo is in his element today with an article headlined, "The Grapes of Wrath." We love how this guy hates everything, like "THE E-WORD. Worse than untrained waiters are those trained badly. Instead of letting you eat in peace, they torture you with the E-word at diabolically timed intervals. As in, 'Are you enjoying your tripe?' 'Are you still enjoying?' 'Did you enjoy your pig’s foot?” Some up the asinine ante with, 'Is it to your liking?'

"Does anybody talk that way in real life? They’ve tried bringing sense to David Chang’s new Ma Peche — the training manual advises employees, 'Do not say ‘enjoy’ after everything. Also, never say, ‘Are you done enjoying that?’ It’s a start. Every place should try it. But how about a free meal for every customer who turns the e-ffender in to management, with the tab coming out of the waiter’s tips?"