Eataly, the sprawling Italian shopping and dining megacomplex in Chelsea, gets the Times treatment today. "It is giant and amazing, on its face, a circus maximus," writes critic Sam Sifton. "But what are we really to make of it? Is Eataly a menace (so big and corporate) or an answered prayer (OMG, they sell Barilla bucatini)?... Does Eataly strike a chord for those desirous of food made close to home, with its house-made bread and mozzarella, its fresh pasta and local bass? Or does it display carbon footprints to rival those of an airline, with its dry pastas shipped in from Naples, its prosciutto from Friuli, its October-grown organic strawberries from Central and Southern California, from Florida, Central Mexico or Baja? Is Eataly good for us? Or is it the opposite?

"The short answer is: yes. Yes to all those questions in different ways, to different degrees...The crowds have been insane... This has in turn brought more crowds. And it has, alternately, repelled them. As any New Yorker will tell you, there is no point in waiting in a sidewalk line for 30 minutes on a weekend day simply to enter a store. It’s not water from the fountain of youth they’re selling in there. It’s groceries. To be fair, though: those groceries are pretty good." Time Out also has a user's guide to Eataly.

Oh yay, NY Post curmudgeon Steve Cuozzo has filed one of his infamous takedowns. In the cross-hairs today is the massive new tiki lounge The Hurricane Club, where "most pu pu items were grimmer than Tom Hanks’ rations in Cast Away—e.g, tea sandwiches filled with leather 'Peking duck' yielding to neither teeth nor knife... Of radioactive-looking 'golden chicken,' the waiter assured us, 'The gold leaf is edible.' Maybe, but the meat wasn’t—bricks tasting vaguely of cocoa powder... Yes, folks: Although it’s hard to stay mad at a place that looks so good, the menu here really is quite terrible."

The Village Voice has published their Best of NYC filler issue, and the dining editors name their favorite dishes. Mile End tops critic Robert Sietsema's list: "This doesn't mean I'm forsaking my first love, Katz's pastrami, but the smoked-meat sandwich at Mile End is denser, redder, and offered in a sandwich that's just the right size for one person to eat, which means I don't have to go around looking for someone to share it with me. Spread mustard on it and add a sour pickle, and I'm in culinary nirvana."

Fort Greene Italian restaurant Roman's, which used to be Boinita, gets three stars from New York's Underground Gourmet: "The room buzzes at night, with low lights glinting off white subway tile, and local celebrities (a pie baker of some repute; a few Greenmarket farmers; the author Jonathan Ames in customary motoring cap) perch at the marble bar or one of the mismatched dining tables. If the Underground Gourmet lived in the neighborhood, we’d linger there, too, popping in for a bowl of pasta or the ingenious house cocktails—a daily 'bitter' and 'sour,' flexible categories that incorporate ingredients like amaro or quince syrup in whimsical combinations." Meanwhile, at Lot 2 in Greenwood Heights, you'll find "an idealized version of homey Americana won’t convey you as far away as Roman’s Italy, but it’s equally transporting."

And Ryan Sutton at Bloomberg News has filed a counterpoint to Sam Sifton's four star rave about Del Posto. "Mario Batali’s Del Posto could be the most expensive Italian restaurant in Manhattan, if not the U.S," writes Sutton. "That’s the most impressive superlative I could muster after eating my way through what looks like a 24,000 square foot tribute to The Venetian hotel and casino in Vegas... Del Posto bills itself as 'the ultimate expression of what an Italian restaurant should be.' But rarely have my dining companions and I looked at each other so often in awkward silence and wondered, 'Haven’t we had a better, cheaper version of this elsewhere?' We had."