This week Sam Sifton at the Times takes a paddle to the low-hanging frat fruit at Lavo, a flashy midtown east clusterfuck inspired by the big Lavo in Las Vegas. He describes the sound level thus: "And Duke beats Notre Dame in overtime to win the N.C.A.A. lacrosse title!" The atmosphere is: "The E-Trade baby gets a Balthazar all his own." And the clientele is summed up by the satiric opening paragraphs, penned by one "A. Broheim": "I need you to recommend a restaurant. I’m a 35-year-old professional in Manhattan, and I am looking for a place where I can take my boys from the office to meet this smoking-hot girl I hooked up with at Lily Pond in the Hamptons this summer... Me and my team, we’re big into that whole meatpacking district thing. We like steak, veal. Maybe Italian food? There’s one dude from Mexico City who eats only fish, which is weird. Maybe this girl would eat fish, too. I don’t know. We’ve been to something like 10 restaurants now, and I think her favorite foods are truffle fries and ketchup. But she drinks Champagne. So maybe bottle service?"

"When was the last time you looked up from the plate and proclaimed to your friends, 'This food is amazing!' " Robert Sietsema at the Village Voice wants to know. "I had the pleasure recently at Henan Feng Wei ('Henan Flavors'), a newish northern Chinese restaurant hidden on a side street in downtown Flushing... The place seems like a clubhouse, and many of the patrons are middle-aged men, who drop by for an evening meal and then sit for hours discussing business affairs and reminiscing about the past over a beer or two. Printed on a series of loose pastel pages, the bill of fare is simple and incredibly cheap, with most dishes costing $6. The priciest thing on the menu is 'Big Tray of Chicken' ($12). What arrives is not a tray, but a wok filled with dozens upon dozens of small bony chicken fragments flavored with cumin, deposited in more of that red chile oil—reservoirs of it must be concealed beneath the floorboards. Fishing around for the bird parts is like bobbing for apples at a birthday party."

New York's Adam Platt files a timely review on Brooklyn Fare's Chef's Table, which was in the news recently because of a spat between a local writer and the restaurant's allegedly fussy chef. Things start predictably enough: " 'I'm sorry, but you’re not on the list,' said the woman at the door, when I showed up (under the name 'Mr. Pincus') for my eagerly awaited, impossible-to-obtain 6:30 reservation at César Ramirez’s eighteen-seat tasting restaurant, Brooklyn Fare. Mr. Pincus’s reservation was for 9:30, I was told; they regretted the mix-up... Mr. Pincus was welcome to cool his heels for a few hours ('There’s a good bar around the corner') or book at a later date. Since the next available date was in December, I wandered off for a drink. When I returned, woozily, at 9:35, people were lined up outside the door for the second seating. When we finally sat down, at a few minutes after ten, I asked the gentleman next to me about the wine list. 'We’re in Brooklyn, dude,' he said brightly. 'This place is BYOB.' "

Bloomberg's Ryan Sutton says the best place in town to try white truffles is Thomas Keller’s "extravagant" Per Se. "That’s my best advice after a series of mostly mediocre encounters with this earthy, expensive delicacy," writes Sutton. "Keller’s Time Warner Center temple, one of the city’s most expensive venues at $275 per person for a nine-course menu, offers a fantastic 'spiked' risotto as a $175 supplement (service included). That’s less than the Four Seasons, which charges up to $250, or Mario Batali’s Babbo, which charges $300 for its over- the-top truffle tasting menu. (Good luck getting a second date if you go Dutch.)"

And Julia Moskin at the Times dissents from Sietsema's diss of Hill Country Chicken. She says the fast food-style joint is "turning out some top-level food that’s hard to find around here: fried chicken that is a contender for the best in the city, plus pimiento cheese ($3 with celery and carrot sticks), banana cream pie ($3), exemplary French fries ($2.50) and craggy, tangy buttermilk biscuits ($1). "