Prime Meats This week Sam Sifton at the Times bestows two precious stars on Carroll Gardens charmer Prime Meats, and you get the sense he would have tossed in an exceedingly rare third star if it weren't for a couple of annoying policies at the restaurant: they don't take reservations or plastic. Meals are "executed with a rare degree of excellence, from the salad with its silky nap of dressing and perfect, peppery greens to the complementary textures and deep flavors of the chicken," writes Sifton. "Cash only, though? At a restaurant where a dinner for four might run a considerate host more than $400?... Forget to line your pockets in the manner of a Biggie Smalls impersonator and you’re going to need to leave your guests before the end of it all, and walk to a bodega A.T.M. to rustle up enough cash to pay your bill. This is a grim feeling for a grown person to experience, right up there with walking around all day with a large knot of $20 bills in your pocket only because you’re going to dinner someplace that doesn’t take credit cards." Sifton also says Bobby Flay's Bar Americain "is still quite on top of its game."
The Village Voice's Robert Sietsema visits Montreal style "Smoked Meat" deli Mile End. Opining on their poutine, a specialty of the working-class French part of Montreal, Sietsema says, "You won't find a bigger or more satisfying heap of grease, salt, protein, and starch anywhere in Boerum Hill." His Voice colleague Sarah DiGregorio declares that "Queens now tastes a little more like fermented shrimp paste" ever since Indonesian restaurant Bromo Satay House opened in Elmhurst. "It's impossible to resist the restaurant's namesake satay, if only because food on a stick is so universally appealing."
Pizzacone finally gets The New Yorker treatment! "Though pizza cones facilitate the merger of eating and, say, hailing a cab, they impede book-reading—you can’t put the cone down. Such mechanical defects nettle," writes Mike Peed. "As you work your way down, you realize that the bottom of the cone retains all the heat, and worries persist that the sizzling gloop will leak onto your lap. The dough, perhaps by structural necessity, nears cardboard heavy. That every bite tastes like run-of-the-mill pizza isn’t the most upsetting drawback. Paying a premium to eat a cone of pizza in the nucleus of touristdom makes even the most confident native feel like a chump."
Quattro Gastronomia Italiana Despite an inconsistent menu, the Post's Steve Couzzo has fun at the new Trump Soho restaurant Quattro Gastronomia Italiana, where, "on my way back from the men’s room... three flirty babes on the lobby stairway asked me to take their picture. I took numerous shots before I popped the question to which I’d guessed the answer: 'So where are you guys from?' 'Rrrrrrrusshia,' the prettiest proudly stated. I didn’t mention it to my table-mates. There’s a point to that, but first, you will have to read about Quattro Gastronomia Italiana, the new restaurant off the lobby." So off you go.
New York's Adam Platt is the latest critic to turn his nose up at scenester paradise Kenmare, from the Beatrice Inn's Paul Sevigny and Little Owl chef Joey Campanaro. "Is this kind of competent, somewhat rudimentary cooking enough to lift the curse of 98 Kenmare Street?" asks Platt. "Who knows. On the evenings I was there, no one in the crowd of dark-suited lounge lizards and animated bridge-and-tunnel party girls clustered around the bar seemed to care. They sipped chilled flutes of Prosecco, and bright, sugared-infused $12 cocktails concocted by the fashionable London mixologist Charlotte Voisey."
And the menu at midtown's giant new Asian-Mex fusion restaurant Zengo "is so enormous you could wear it as a sandwich board," writes Time Out's Jay Cheshes. "One overly enthusiastic waiter urged us to surrender to the sprawl, ordering a few dishes at a time until we were sated. One overly enthusiastic waiter urged us to surrender to the sprawl, ordering a few dishes at a time until we were sated... Even if the food were more inspired, the location’s all wrong for such a clubby, high-concept restaurant. Airlift Zengo down to the Meatpacking District, however, and you might have a hit. This type of cooking is tailor-made for party snacking, the banquettes perfectly suited to bottle-service silliness."
$250 VIP GoogaMooga Tickets: You Would've Gotten More Full Eating The Money
Your Summer 2012 Top 10 Blockbuster Movie Guide!
Photos: Experience "NASA's" Amazing Mission To Mars Inside The Park Ave Armory
7 Best Rooftop Bars In NYC, For Your High-Altitude Drinking Pleasure
White Fence's Tim Presley Talks Recording With Ty Segall, Brooklyn's Blandness, & Peeing With His Cat
24 Magnificent Photos Of Manhattan Peacocks To Take The Edge Off Today
Mike Birbiglia Ate In An Airplane Bathroom, And Other Stories From The Moth Ball
John Hodgman Talks Nick Nolte, His Deranged Mustache, & How Money Buys Happiness
Videos: Mourning And Celebrating Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch
Photos: Police And Protesters Clash By Wall Street After Euphoric May Day March
