The Post's Steve Cuozzo says, "It pays to yell yourself hoarse at The Lion, the latest hot-because-it’s-hot spot where clubby design and/or media-money backing ensure months of chatter online and a crush at the door. Otherwise no one will hear you — certainly not the waiters, who negotiate aisles narrower than the pipes in this entertainingly decorated 19th-century brownstone... The Lion is no Hotel Griffou or Kenmare, downtown “scenes” in vain search of cuisine — it’s a real restaurant with decent food. But neither is it another Waverly Inn, where Lion chef/owner John DeLucie ran the kitchen."

Time Out's Jay Cheshes is let down by Fornino's Park Slope debut. "There’s a good reason why grilled pizza—dough stretched thin and blackened over an open flame—has yet to become a national phenomenon," writes Cheshes. "Even at its best, it remains an acquired regional taste (particular to Providence), neither as nuanced as Neapolitan style nor as irresistibly gooey as the thin-crust New York or deep-dish Chicago pies. The grilled pizzas at the new Fornino Park Slope—slim and crisp as crackers—aren’t likely to win many converts."

And GQ's Alan Richman files on Adour Alain Ducasse at The St. Regis New York hotel, which opened two years ago but has a new executive chef, Didier Elena. "His food is more explicitly French than that of Daniel Boulud at Restaurant Daniel and more rustic than that of Daniel Humm at Eleven Madison Park," writes Richman. "It is so appealing, so absolutely convincing, that if Adour doesn't thrive under him it might be that classic French food is doomed. Of course, there is an alternate scenario that has nothing to do with my theory: If Adour does not succeed, it might be because it is too pricey for the times. The restaurant, which one of my guests described as 'a jewelry box,' might partly feel that way because appetizers approach $30 and main courses $50. I kept telling myself how cheap that was compared to equivalent restaurants in France."