The Voice's Sarah DiGregorio agrees with the critical consensus about the pizza crust at Pulino's, which is "cracker-like and spotted with char, almost insubstantial. We know from interviews with [chef Nate] Appleman and Beth Ann Simpkins, head of the pizza program, that this is by design. It's not unpleasant, but not the most delicious choice, either... A friend nailed it when she noted that the crust has no textural variation. Almost any style of pizza, whether New York coal oven or Neapolitan, has a crust that's crisp in spots; chewy, soppy, airy, or brittle in others. Pulino's, she said, reminded her of the matzo pizzas her mother used to make." That said, DiGregorio loves a lot of the menu, and argues that "Pulino's is best thought of as a good trattoria rather than an OK pizzeria."

Time Out's Jay Cheshes also files on Pulino's, so that's just about everybody, right? He too slams the crust, declaring that Appleman’s "wildly inconsistent individual pizzas are much thinner and crispier than the new Neapolitan stars at Motorino and Keste. At their worst, they’re as brittle as crackers with meat, cheese and sauce sparsely sprinkled on top... The chef, who convinced his new boss to build him a butchering room in the basement, is transforming scraps from whole beasts into meaty toppings for pizza. Though the rustic house-made pepperoni he tosses onto one pie—and the thick-cut bacon and piquant sausage he piles onto another with custardy sunny-side eggs at breakfast—is certainly top-notch, it’s hard to forgive the unfortunate crust underneath it."

Charming Russian restaurant and vodka bar Mari Vanna is like something out of "a fairy tale" according to Lauren Collins at the New Yorker. "The portions are huge. A fork leaves furrows in carrot cakes like the tracks of a plow. A geyser of butter shoots from the chicken Kiev. Smoked fatback, served on a cutting board in the shape of a cow, looks almost like sushi, pale and immaculate. If snow maidens ate bacon, this would be it." And New York's Underground Gourmet digs the Smile, "a hybrid general store and café a few steps below street level on one of Noho’s newly glitzy blocks. No one goes to the Smile, though, to shop. They go to sip espresso and nibble croissants. They go to eat and hobnob. And they do so in an artfully rustic atmosphere that must have been painstakingly cultivated but, to its credit, doesn’t come off that way."