Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup
The NY Times' Sam Sifton bestows two stars on TriBeCa's Il Matto, possibly a first for a restaurant that has teacup banquettes and a painting of the chef as an octopus. Sifton loves chef and owner Matteo Boglione's eccentric cooking and style, "Il Matto is an outlier in what sometimes seems to be an increasingly codified Manhattan restaurant scene... You cannot order a plate of finishing-school fried chicken, nor a black-truffle pizza. There is no dish of foraged mushrooms sitting beneath a poached organic egg from a chicken with a yoga teacher and a place upstate. No Caesar salad. No peekytoe crab or paddlefish caviar."
What there is a "weird, fantastic, a fun-house treat" of a savory creme brulee appetizer, a "a braised pork belly, melting and rich, served atop a stroke of honey infused with black olives...served with head-on shrimp and a purée of chickpeas," and "a brilliant dish of saffron-hued pappardelle, with an osso buco ragout and a smear, across the bowl, of bone-marrow sabayon. This latter substance may hold psychedelic properties."
The Village Voice's Robert Sietsema goes to the wilds of Long Island City for the new Roman restaurant Testaccio. While there's a "bad '80s rock" soundtrack in a dining room that's a "Roman-mood killer," he enjoys the "trippa in umido ($14), a crock of flayed bovine stomach braised in tomato sauce and mantled with Pecorino cheese," which also has mint which is "surprisingly good at masking the faint tang of digestive juices that always accompanies a bowl of tripe," "bucatini all' amatriciana, a magnificent pile of thick spaghetti," and carciofi alla giudia.
The New Yorker's Leo Carey visits the latest in David Chang's empire, the midtown Má Pêche. Chef Tien "Ho has a nice way with fish, juxtaposing voluptuous twists of raw fluke with pistachio and strawberry, but the restaurant is basically a temple to meat. Tripe and jowl are thrown into a frisée salad; gooey chunks of pig’s head are stuffed into a breaded parcel; steak and lamb loin are cooked sous-vide, the former also seared and aggressively salted, the latter accompanied by a breaded baton of lamb shoulder." Carey laments, "There isn’t a dud on the menu, but there’s no real triumph, either—no signature dish to seal the place’s identity, and nothing as arresting as Momofuku Noodle Bar’s simple, ingenious soy egg."
The Voice's Sarah DiGregorio checks out Olio Pizza e Piu in the West Village and Campo de' Fiori in Park Slope. At Olio Pizza e Piu, aside from pizza, there's an "unwieldy list of antipasti, primi, secondi, and insalate," and the non-pizza items disappointed. Which means the pizza are better, but there's "too much cheese" (is there such a thing?!) on many of them: "I loved the sweet-salty-smokiness of the Vesuvio, topped with grilled pumpkins, paper-thin speck, and smoked mozzarella, but the thick paving of cheese was overwhelming." She does recommend the "Campagnola ... a relatively restrained combination of creamy burrata, thin Parma ham, arugula, and Parmesan. The bitterness of the arugula balances things out nicely, making it easy to enjoy the char-stippled crust."
Campo de' Fiori is "a better restaurant," with pizzas that are "sturdy and crunchy, soft on the top and crisp on the bottom... We particularly liked the 'Matriciana, a take on the common Roman pasta dish. Here, it's a pie slathered with a thick, oniony tomato sauce, bits of crisp bacon, and Pecorino shavings. The Vignarola sounded like a mistake, but turned out to be oddly tasty—covered in a vibrant green-pea purée, plus dressed arugula, green beans, and artichokes, seasoned with Parmesan and lemon juice. It tastes verdant, the elements in unlikely harmony."
