Results tagged “critic”

This week the new chief dining critic at the NY Times, Sam Sifton, debuts with a rave for DBGB, Daniel Boulud's casual sausage/beer/etc. joint on the Bowery. The first review from the former NY Press reporter boasts references to The Ramones, Talking Heads, and a declaration that "[Boulud's] food game, as they say in rap precincts, is tight... one bite of the crispy lamb ribs that were served in the bar area when the place first opened — sweetly glazed, grassy meat, with a dab of creamy mint-flecked yogurt sauce — ended all snark: Boulud has opened a very good restaurant. The lamb was sublime, earthy and spicy and rich, evidence of superb technique, the sort of snack that separates his empire from others in the celebrity firmament."

Developer Bruce Ratner must be relieved this morning to see that big bad Nicholas Ouroussoff at Times does not revile the latest renderings for the Nets arena planned for Brooklyn. You'll recall that Ouroussoff dissed the last designs as "a monstrosity" and "a shameful betrayal of the public trust, one that should enrage all those who care about this city." But bringing young New York firm SHoP on board may be just the lipstick on the boondoggle Ratner needs; Ouroussoff, who had embraced Gehry's vision for the project, calls this new look "somewhat more promising."

Big news in the dining world today; the Times announced that the city's most influential restaurant critic, Frank Bruni, will move to the Sunday magazine section after five years on the beat. In an email to the staff, Executive Editor Bill Keller revealed that Bruni "will have license to follow his appetites — his journalistic appetites — wherever they lead him [at the magazine]... In his spare time, between aerobic eating and the requisite gym time to burn it all off, he has managed to produce a memoir of his lifelong, complicated relationship with food. Recognizing that the book is certain to seriously compromise his ability to be a spy in the land of food, Frank picked this as a natural time to move on. He will be turning in his restaurant-critic credentials when his memoir, Born Round: the Secret History of a Full-Time Eater, is published in late August." Besides his generally impeccable taste and incisiveness, Bruni brought a fun, casual, and creative tone to the Times's dining coverage. Dining editor Pete Wells is currently searching for a successor to fill those big Italian shoes, and you can bet the mother of 12-year-old foodie David Fishman is already on the horn.

While accepting the best supporting actor prize from the New York Film Critics Circle on Monday night for his riveting performance in Milk, Josh Brolin lashed out at the Times's chief theater critic Ben Brantley, who negatively reviewed Brolin in True West on Broadway. Sure, that was over eight years ago, but Jo Bro does not forget a slight: "As much as actors like to say they don't read reviews, I do. Ben Brantley—honestly I hate that motherfucker! And I don't think he's a good writer." (We do.) Then Brolin turned to his Milk co-star: "Quite an actor Sean Penn...Amazing. Not an asshole like Russell Crowe."

Widely-respected critic Clive Barnes lost his battle with cancer yesterday at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. He was 81.

Maybe you saw yesterday's Times article about the precocious Upper West Side foodie who took himself to Salumeria Rosi one night last week after his parents called to say they wouldn't make it home for dinner? And when David Fishman, age 12, got home, he wrote a little Zagat-esque review in his "leather-bound notebook"? His verdict: "As I left, I knew that soon enough this would be one of the most ‘hip’ places in the city."

This week Frank Bruni double-fists it with a review of two sushi places: Kanoyama, in the East Village, and Sushi Azabu (pictured), in TriBeCa, that both "stand out in part because they’re navigable in ways that aren’t too financially wounding." Kanoyama’s "brimming, glistening combination platter...is first-rate, and doesn’t give you the sense you sometimes get at other restaurants that what you’re saving in money you’re sacrificing in freshness." The clandestine Sushi Azabu, accessed via a secret staircase in the meh Greenwich Grill, is "erratic. Get the scallop sushi or the spicy tuna roll, lavished with sesame and a chili-spiked mayonnaise, and you’re in heaven. Get the crispy fried squid and you’re in a strip-mall sports bar."

Frank Bruni, the senior restaurant critic at the most influential paper in America, has submitted to a loooong Q&A from Times readers. Some fun revelations: His biggest tab was probably at Per Se, somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,300 for a party of four. He says there was "a Jeopardy answer/question thingie that said something like, 'Frank Bruni spends $325,000 annually on his beat.'" Not true; it's way less than that. He eats out at least six nights a week, and on the rare occasion he eats at home, Bruni orders a "messy, sloppy, undistinguished Chinese delivery. There's nothing as thrilling as refined, accomplished, superbly prepared food. But there's also fun in uneventful food." Also, "some restaurants are so ludicrously loud that no more than 15 percent of their customers could possibly want it that way, and the servers must be in aural and vocal and psychic agony by night’s end."

It's a common observation, but are New Yorkers really more rude than residents of other cities? In Smithsonian magazine, New Yorker dance critic Joan Acocella thinks we’re just misunderstood. After years of life in the city, she’s made a thorough argument that what outsiders perceive as rudeness is just a side-effect of life in New York, where the boundaries between public and private life are less pronounced.

To bring the Momofuku Ko Craigslist reservation controversy full circle, Insatiable Critic Gael Greene (pictured incognito) has finally published her side of the story.

That Momofuku Ko "resi" that hit Craigslist recently, where the poster was looking for a culinary companion, was not only filled -- but the story gets juicier than kimchi consommé with pork belly.

Since 1993, Robert Sietsema has been eating his way through New York on behalf of the Village Voice; his specialty is shedding light on restaurants and cuisines that may have gone otherwise undetected by a broader audience. Sietsema's approach to the city's sprawling restaurant scene can perhaps best be summed up the titles of two of his books, Secret New York and Good and Cheap Ethnic Eats (now in its third edition). Tonight the Voice will be celebrating Sietsema's adventures in gastronomy with its first ever Choice Eats tasting event at The Puck Building, which will feature over 30 New York City restaurants and cuisines from around the world. Advance tickets for Choice Eats are sold out, but a limited number of $35 tickets will be sold at the door tonight, beginning at 5:30pm. Details here.

, hit shelves late last year. The tome delves into the cultural history of music since 1900, and even has Björk touting: "Alex Ross's incredibly nourishing book will rekindle anyone's fire for music." Tonight he'll step away from the printed word and you can catch him chatting with Stephen on The Colbert Report.