Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup

"Fornino Park Slope is a throwback, the sort of restaurant that will appeal mostly to those who still think of Manhattan as 'the city,' and who rarely cross a river to get to work," says Sam Sifton in his one star review of chef Michael Ayoub's return to Park Slope. Despite its expansive menu, most critics have focused (unfavorably) on Fornino's grilled pizza. Sifton doesn't dissent, loving pretty much everything until he comes to that controversial item, which "may be the restaurant’s weakest suit. The pies at Fornino Park Slope have thin crusts, in some cases almost shatteringly so, and they can lack the purity of flavor that characterizes the wood-oven versions at the Williamsburg location. Sometimes they don’t work at all. A plain margherita pie, for instance, sits flat and crackly on its plate, devoid of yeasty flavor; it felt in the mouth a little like a pizza made with saltines."

Lu Xiang Yuan is the latest restaurant to open in South Flushing with a focus on cuisine from China's northeast region. The Village Voice's Robert Sietsema is all over it, of course. "In addition to the food we've come to expect from this fascinating region (lots of lamb and beef, virtually no rice, unusual seafood, and plenty of yams and pumpkins), there are some dazzling oddities on Lu Xiang Yuan's menu," raves Sietsema. "The dumplings, for example. They're not the familiar purse-shaped pot-stickers, but something called 'open dumplings' ($6). Lying side-by-side like sausages in a can, the 10 are rolled like crepes. 'This tastes like Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage,' one of my friends blurted out, 'could it possibly contain sage?' "

Sietsema's Voice colleague Sarah DiGregorio digs South Park Slope's Thistle Hill Tavern, which she deems "more ambitious than you might imagine, offering the occasional whimsy, like an oddball pairing of pork belly with cantaloupe. Maybe it's time for a new term: CSA-experimental? Moosewood-Brooklyn? Diet for a small planet, but with big burgers?" And the Times's Ligaya Mishan files a "$25 and Under" column on Thai restaurant Ayada in Elmburst, raving, "I knew Ayada was a serious Thai restaurant when I started weeping at my table."