Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup

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This week Sam Sifton at the Times files a two star rave on Torrisi Italian Specialties, a little $50 prix fixe Italian-American joint that recently received a rave from New York, as well. "During the day, Torrisi is a sandwich shop modeled on those of the neighborhood old school," writes Sifton. "You can get a good chicken parm or an excellent turkey hero there, some flavorful contorni, a can of beer, a small bottle of Coke. The dishes are all smart upgrades on classics, beautifully cooked, humble Italian-American lunch fare for an era that respects the form. At night, though, the room is transformed into a restaurant of around 20 seats, in which artists make work and customers consume it."

The Village Voice's Robert Sietsema stumbles into unassuming Peruvian restaurant Coney Island Taste and is pleasantly surprised. "As the patient proprietor took our complicated order, we realized that—despite its dodgy disguise as a forgettable deli—the place was a very serious Peruvian restaurant," says Sietsema. "The menu was extensive, and as we ticked off dishes, the guy never once said, 'We're out of that,' which is the trademark of overextended cafés."

Leo Carey at the New Yorker is the latest critic to conditionally love Pies 'n' Thighs (exceptional fried chicken, "unexceptional" beef brisket) and his review also includes some interesting trivia, by way of journalistic disclosure: "[Co-owner] Sarah Buck is said to make her own graham crackers to pound to smithereens. (Buck, who is married to the New Yorker staff writer Kelefa Sanneh, is a co-owner of the restaurant, as well as its pastry chef.)" And as you no doubt know, "the place is generally full of youngish Williamsburg types with beards and assertive eyewear, and enough plaid shirts to make you think you’ve ended up in the Appalachians."

Ma Peche (Katie Sokoler/Gothamist)

New York's Adam Platt drops just two out of five stars for David Chang's midtown debut, Má Pêche. "If anyone thought the chef would adapt his game for this new, more sedate audience, they were wrong," writes Platt. But: "Removed as it is from its native territory, there’s something stilted and slightly off-key about the proceedings at Chang’s new restaurant. Maybe it’s the tall, windowless, subterranean dining room, which looks less like a restaurant than a starkly impersonal underground cafeteria ('I feel like I’m having dinner in Dick Cheney’s bunker,' one wag at my table remarked)." Time Out's Jay Cheshes is also underwhelmed, and says, "It's not just the decor that’s verging on bland."

And The Post's Steve Cuozzo also comes to bury Chang, with some faint praise thrown in like so many halfhearted handfuls of dirt. "X marks the spot where David Chang fell to earth," poo poos the Cuozz. "Ma Peche ('mother peach') is a soft landing for him — far from a fiasco — but a definite comedown for the city’s most insufferably hyped, over-awarded, self-dramatizing young chef. You’ve been waiting for that, right? The X is Ma Peche’s giant, cruciform communal table, the centerpiece of its dining room. For the past two months, it’s hosted some marvelous meals courtesy of executive chef Tien Ho — but they might not be enough for some of Chang’s fanatical true-believers." GAME CHANGER?!

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