Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup

Aquavit

Aquavit, the 23-year-old Scandinavian restaurant in midtown, has replaced the absent name-brand chef Marcus Samuelsson with his 28-year-old second in command, Marcus Jernmark. This occasions a fourth review from the NY Times, and current chief critic Sam Sifton keeps the status quo, letting the underpopulated restaurant keep the two stars left behind by a previous critic. "Aquavit’s dining room can be somewhat lonely these days, only a little more than half full at peak hours," writes Sifton. "There is a sour scent to some of the passageways, the sort that flowers cannot battle... But Mr. Jernmark has moved the menu toward a quiet, seasonal intensity that is well worth investigating. Mr. Samuelsson’s cooking used international flair to introduce Scandinavian flavors to Americans who knew only of Midwestern smorgasbords. Mr. Jernmark’s take is at once more modest and difficult, the taste of a Sweden proud of its traditions, its larder and the bounty of its sea, fields and lakes."

The Village Voice's Robert Sietsema says you'll be "pleasantly surprised" by A-Wah, a Hong Kong restaurant in Chinatown. "As you eagerly scan the extensive, fold-out menu—while Chinese karaoke videos flicker soundlessly overhead—you'll detect several themes," promises Sietsema. "One of the most arresting is the borrowings from Japanese cuisine. Thus, a bowl of bright green edamame is the spitting image of one you might get in the East Village, except the price ($1.50) is a fraction of what you'd expect to pay. Steamed and glossed with sesame oil, a haystack of iceberg lettuce comes splattered with a chunky fermented miso called fu yu ($3.95). Though it sounds dodgy, the dish is mind-bogglingly good." (Dave Cook also checks out A-Wah for the Times.)

This Little Piggy Had Roast Beef, the self-explanatory East Village hole in the wall from the folks who brought you Artichoke Pizza and Led Zeppole, gets The New Yorker treatment. "The That Way, dripping and spongy, with cheese like a dream, is the kind of thing you gobble down in a fever," says Lauren Collins. "Five minutes later, you’re slightly wheezy and surrounded, cartoonlike, by a mountain of balled-up Bounty sheets. You can’t do it every day, but you can’t not do it, either, one of these nights."

Time Out's Jay Cheshes gives The Plaza Food Hall by Todd English two out of five stars. "The Food Hall that opened this spring in the Plaza Hotel pays small-scale homage to these gourmet haunts—at Harrods in London and Galeries Lafayette in Paris, to name the most famous," writes Cheshes. "Instead of a real high-end food shop, the fresh and packaged goods on display here are mostly props: conventional fruits and vegetables mixed in with the Bonne Maman jams and Xochitl tortilla chips stocked by every Whole Foods in America. While you’d be much better off foraging for take-home treats elsewhere, the place was really designed as a lunch destination."

And Alan Richman at GQ declares, "The best restaurant in New York with the fewest number of critic's stars is almost certainly Milos, a gloriously upscale taverna on 55th Street in Manhattan... To me, Milos in New York is one of the best Greek restaurants in the world, rivaled only by Milos in Montreal and Milos in Athens. Actually, Milos in Athens, which has a more extensive menu and a more lavish venue, might be the most distinctive of the three for those reasons alone.

"A friend of mine, eating at Milos for the first time, told me after our dinner that the restaurant had come into his life precisely when he desperately needed it. He said, 'I'm weary of restaurant snobbery. I don't need to eat crispy pig's trotter or pickled ramps at every bloody meal, not to mention mindlessly overrated pizza.'"

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By John Del Signore in Food on July 21, 2010 9:06 AM

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Sommelier

"a fourth review from the NY Times" Fifth, actually. Ruth Reichl reviewed Aquavit twice, the first review lowering the rating to one star, and about a year later raising it to three. The chatter at the time questioned why that was done. The second review was done before Marcus Samuelsson was the chef. He took over immediately after the second review came out, following the sudden death of the chef.