At the Lambs Club, an atavistic upscale hotel restaurant recalling the old days of clubby Broadway celebrity, you'll find "men and women of letters and soft fabric drinking strawberry gimlets and celebrating lives that allow such pleasures," writes Sam Sifton in his one star review. "The scene at the Lambs can recall those days, the room filled with editors and artists, writers, models and hangers-on, along with Broadway actors and in-town rock stars and friends of Sant Singh Chatwal, who with Vikram Chatwal, his glamorous son, owns the hotel. They gather in contentment and good clothes first to drink old-school cocktails from Sasha Petraske, and then to eat Mr. Zakarian’s carefully prepared, wealth-friendly, vaguely internationalized comfort food, just as if it were 1989 all over again."

The Village Voice's Robert Sietsema files from Floral Park, Queens, where he is pleasantly surprised by Punjabi restaurant Sohna Punjab Indian Restaurant & Bar. "I brought a friend who has knocked back lots of Punjabi food, both in the States and in India," writes Sietsema. "I asked him what the restaurant's signature should be. His unhesitating answer: 'chicken tikka.' I blanched, because it's one of the worst things you can get in the steam-table places—desiccated knobs of boneless breast dyed an alarming shade of red. Similar color notwithstanding, Sohna's version ($11.99) is the exact opposite—plump and flavorful tidbits, still moist from their yogurt marinade, jumping up and down on the cast-iron platter like a cat on a hot skillet. Indeed, anything that emerges sizzling from the tandoor is special at Sohna."

Sietsema's outgoing coworker Sarah DiGregorio has a mixed review of trendy East Village restaurant Peels, from the owner of Freemans. It sounds like a clusterfuck (no reservations for parties under six, "crowded as a house party after finals") and our two attempts to cover the place in person were met with such snobby disdain that we stopped caring. DiGregorio waits almost an hour for a table, and says "the trout spread is excellent, rich and briny, but it comes with only a few austere crudités and no bread—how are you meant to eat a heap of spread with only a few tiny radishes? We asked for bread, and received exactly five small scraps for a table of four. Maybe they're used to everyone being secret Atkins devotees?" New York's Adam Platt is also dismissive, writing, "I never enjoyed anything close to that clubby, clannish sense of occasion that makes Freemans such a unique place to eat." He's not crazy about the Lambs Club either!

Time Out's Jay Cheshes isn't fond of FoodParc, the new upscale food court designed by the guy who designed Blade Runner. "Jeffrey Chodorow’s latest entry, FoodParc, targets a harried lunch crowd with multiple stations, offering Asian food (RedFarm Stand), Italian (Fornetti), burgers (3Bs) and coffee (the Press)," writes Cheshes. "With its high-tech ordering system and mod white interior, FoodParc just might be a prototype for the food court of the future—if only the cooking weren’t so uneven and the user experience so fundamentally flawed."

Bloomberg's Ryan Sutton raves about the new resident chef, Didier Elena, at the luxurious Adour Alain Ducasse at the St. Regis Hotel. "Adour is one of the city’s more expensive a la carte restaurants, with no first courses under $21 and no entrees under $42. That’s less pricey than Daniel and Per Se, but Adour was never quite as good as them. Elena is changing that." And the Times also has a $25-and-Under review of the Southern-inspired restaurant Lowcountry, which replaced Bar Blanc in the West Village. "But despite the name, it hasn’t exactly gone South," writes Betsy Andrews. "The candlelighted room’s nods are discreet: a cupboard of bourbon, pages from Faulkner plastering the restroom." She walks away "completely happy."