Is Anthony Bourdain going soft? A week after he made his usual waves by ranting about Paula Deen's lowbrow, highly-processed comfort food schtick, the 'Dainiac is backpedaling on his earlier characterization of Deen as "the worst, most dangerous person to America is clearly Paula Deen. She revels in unholy connections with evil corporations and she's proud of the fact that her food is f--king bad for you [...] plus, her food sucks." Now, after taking heat from a populist Deen and former Times dining critic Frank Bruni for alleged "culinary aristocracy," Bourdain is overwhelmed with regret. more ›

Like any good New Yorker, Frank Bruni can't drive. Well, he could, but after a long residence in the city he let his license expire. However, after he was pick-pocketed in May, the former Times food critic needed to take the driver's test again, and was terrified. He chronicles the red tape he had to slice through just to take the test, which culminated in his test with the dreaded "Examiner X": more ›

In his farewell from restaurant critic duties, the New York Times' Frank Bruni offers answers to reader question questions: For instance, in answering, "What's the best sushi place? Masa is the "absolute best" but acknowledging the $400/person price is steep, he offers Sushi Yasuda where you can have "a wonderfully intimate, pampering omakase experience...for under $100 a person... Still a major treat, but much, much more manageable." Steakhouses: For "a certain corny, musky ambience," go with Sparks for its strip; for a contemporary ambience, go with Porter House New York or BLT Prime; Keens has a great mutton chop; and while Peter Luger's has an "outstanding porterhouse, but the lights are always too bright and the service usually too gruff." more ›

Today Frank Bruni ends his five year gig at the Times with a review of the Redhead, an East Village bar that gradually evolved into a casual restaurant with, some say, the best fried chicken in town. Quoth the Bruni: "It isn’t exactly like any other downtown restaurant I know—its semi-polished, Southern-inflected pub grub is all its own—but it sharply reflects a few of the most prominent and rewarding developments in Manhattan dining over the years during which I’ve had the privilege of serving as The Times’s restaurant critic. more ›

In his penultimate review before abdicating his NY Times throne, Frank Bruni bestows four stars on Danny Meyer's Eleven Madison Park, just one week after giving Meyer's Union Square Cafe a tough-love demotion. A four star ranking from the Times is still a big deal, at least from the Times's point of view: only five other restaurants in NYC currently hold that status. more ›

Confirming rumors that the new New York Times restaurant critic—and Frank Bruni's replacement—will be a longtime Times writer promoted from within, the newspaper has just announced that food and culture writer Sam Sifton will take over the job starting in October. Executive editor Bill Keller sent a memo to staff members announcing the change of guard, writing, "We narrowed the list, and then narrowed it some more. We had some really impressive candidates, writers who know their food and have interesting things to say about the way we eat. Then we threw out the list and drafted Sam Sifton." Restaurants, fire up the Google Image cache now: Sifton, who lives in Red Hook, was most recently Culture Editor at the Times, but is also known for his writing about cooking at home as well as finding unusual food stories in the outer boroughs. He has also served as Deputy Food Editor for the newspaper. For the Magazine section, Sifton was last seen making meatloaf for Nora Ephron. more ›

This week the Times revisits Danny Meyer's groundbreaking restaurant, Union Square Cafe. Critic William Grimes gave it three stars in 1999, and now Frank Bruni, on his way out the door, takes one of those stars away. But it's only because he cares: "I can’t think of another New York restaurant that enjoys such acclaim, basks in such adoration and yet exhibits such humility... The courtesies explain something else, too: the blind eye many Union Square regulars seem to turn to its slippage; their silence about its drift. In my occasional trips to Union Square over recent years and in a more concentrated series of visits over recent months, I never had an experience whose caliber was consonant with the restaurant’s enduringly lofty reputation. I had a few flatly mediocre meals." The Times also has a glowing review for Bed-Stuy trattoria Saraghina. more ›

This week outgoing Times dining critic Frank Bruni files on Table 8, the new venture from California chef Govind Armstrong located in the controversial new Cooper Square Hotel, where disgruntled neighbors have hung soiled underwear on their clotheslines to undermine the cachet. "I spotted only one sad, fluttering garment on the evening when I ate on Table 8’s street-level patio," reports Bruni. "And it did less to ruffle my serenity — the patio is a pretty, breezy treat — than the door that crashed into the back of my chair when someone decided to step outside. Placing a table for diners smack in the door’s way exemplifies the curious planning at which Table 8 excels." more ›

This week Frank Bruni at the Times weighs in on Locanda Verdi, the reboot of Robert De Niro's failed Ago, which the critic had such fun eviscerating last summer. His two star review radiates adoration for new chef Andrew Carmellini, whose "talent demands a bigger stage, and luckily for both him and us, Locanda Verde came along in the nick of time to give him that. It opened two months ago in the TriBeCa space inhabited briefly — and disastrously — by Ago, may it rest in peace... But it doesn’t amount to the exactly right situation or perfect fit for him. It’s not the Carmellini restaurant that many of us have been waiting and hoping for, though it has plenty to recommend it. Hit the menu’s strong spots and you’ll have a terrific meal at a reasonable price." more ›

This week Frank Bruni at the Times files a one star review of Monkey Bar, "a big-city big-game reserve for the lions, gazelles and jackals of the urban veldt.... They’ve come because Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair and one of the principal architects of this experience, summoned them. On top of everything else the Monkey Bar is his social pulpit, affirming his ordination as the high priest of a certain fame-focused, power-obsessed sect of Manhattan society... And he fashions a fantasy New York where arrivistes bask in mutual recognition and reciprocal adoration, each mirroring the others’ sense of triumph, the unruly city edited down to one preposterously romantic room for the most unromantic of pursuits: back scratching and social climbing." more ›

The Feedbag reports that former New York Times restaurant critic William Grimes will temporarily replace current critic Frank Bruni when he retires at the end of the summer. According to The Feedbag, Grimes "is said to be lined up to hold down the fort until the new critic comes aboard in January." This fall, Frank Bruni will make his first public, post critic debut at the Food Network Wine & Food Festival, appearing on a panel with Anthony Bourdain and promoting his new memoir Born Round. more ›

This week Frank Bruni at the Times, approaching his last month with the Gray Lady, goes gaga for Aldea (photos), where "the cooking is precious, lusty, ultramodern, rustic and a host of other adjectives that don’t normally squeeze together but find themselves in a tight, mostly happy clutch here. Although Aldea has a clean, sleek and relatively spare look, it has a much more complex taste. One minute you’re nibbling on crisp pig’s ears. The next you’re carefully maneuvering your spoon under a translucent, quivering orb of concentrated mushroom broth—one of those liquid ravioli that the Spanish alchemist Ferran Adrià made famous—in an avant-garde consommé." Bruni also takes a look at artisanal pizza parlors this week. more ›

This week the Times's outgoing dining critic Frank Bruni files on Bar Artisanal, the Tribeca restaurant that opened in February as Trigo, then closed three months later and reopened under new ownership with a different menu. Quoth the Bruni: "Cheese animates and dominates Bar Artisanal — and helps give it what modest appeal it has. Take away the cheese and what’s left is a calculating, somewhat cynical operation, connected to the Hilton Garden Inn... Bar Artisanal pillages and repackages current trends with astonishing thoroughness, commanding attention for that alone. If restaurants could be preserved in amber and tucked away for future students of gustatory anthropology, this might be the one to save and label, 'New York City, circa 2010.'" more ›

This week Frank Bruni at the Times reviews Meatpacking District hotspot Spice Market, where chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten's menu is inspired by Asian street food. Interim dining critic Amanda Hesser gave it three out of four stars in 2004, but the paper was forced to issue a statement acknowledging that Hesser should have disclosed the glowing jacket blurb Vongerichten wrote for her book. more ›

After tut-tutting the pat predictability of the Obamas' choice to dine at "locavore" restaurant Blue Hill last week, Frank Bruni at the Times has taken the opportunity to revisit Soho's Savoy, where chef/owner Peter Hoffman "began exalting all things organic, sustainable and humanely raised... a full decade before Dan Barber did likewise at Blue Hill." Bruni's two star-review, evocative of a comment-thread "FIRST!", declares that Savoy's still got it after almost two decades: "Raise a glass of wine (from an appealing, varied list) to Mr. Hoffman, an evangelist outpaced by younger adherents but not out of the picture. Not even close." more ›

The Village Voice's Robert Sietsema discovers South Indian restaurant Southern Spice in Flushing, and files a rave review that begins, "Sometimes a restaurant makes such an impression that it changes your way of thinking about an entire cuisine...Dish after dish was astonishing in the power and immediacy of its flavors." His colleague Sarah DiGregorio checks out two East Village cured-meat "specialists," Cure and Ballaro. The former "looks like a boudoir—a boudoir stocked with meat and cheese...Stick with the meat for best results. Even the most successful salad is made mostly of meat—a mess of a half-dozen kinds of chopped charcuterie, rendered even less healthy by the addition of sliced fresh mozzarella, all on top of a portion of mixed greens. The quiches, unfortunately, are heated to sogginess in a microwave." And over at Ballaro, "the proprietors are more serious about their food." more ›

Today Frank Bruni at the Times gets around to reviewing Ippudo, the first American outpost of a popular Japanese ramen chain that opened in the East Village last year. After frequent ramen consumption at Momofuku Noodle Bar and Minca, he decides that "Ippudo’s ramen dishes—most of them, anyway—were my favorites. I appreciated Ippudo’s slender, springy house-made noodles, which manage the trick of having presence and delicacy at the same time... As the ramen slowly reveals itself, you submit completely to its spell." Bruni also compares the concessions available to the masses at Citi Field and Yankee Stadium, declaring the Mets champions of his mouth. more ›

If you follow along with this sort of thing, you'll know how earth shattering it is that outgoing Times dining critic Frank Bruni has bestowed three out of four precious stars on Keith McNally's casual-yet-elitist reboot of Minetta Tavern. That's a lot of stars for a place like this, especially considering Bruni's past ambivalence to the restaurateur, who famously accused Bruni of sexism after the critic gave his restaurant Morandi (which had a female chef) a tough review. Anyway, Bruni hearts McNally's Minetta, which he declares "the best steakhouse in the city." Meanwhile, the Post's Steve Cuozzo has some thoughts on Bruni's depature. (The take away's basically, Who cares, the Times is now a paper tiger.) more ›

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. more ›

Today Frank Bruni at the Times bestows two out of four stars on the Upper West Side Fatty Crab (photos/menu), an impressive rating for a casual restaurant. But Bruni just can't get enough of "the Fatty spirit, the culinary equivalent of a stoner’s foggy contentment...Are its flavors in fact too big, too unrelenting? What qualifies as a bold deployment of chilies and aiolis, and what’s just indiscriminate overkill? Many a meal at Fatty Crab raises those questions and walks a fine line, but pretty much every time I began to doubt the kitchen’s care and skill, something came along to restore my belief." more ›

This week Frank Bruni at the Times bestows one star upon David Burke's Fishtail on the Upper East Side. He finds it both "exasperating" and "amusing...While several lines of type on the restaurant’s elaborately segmented, deeply fatiguing menu trumpet its commitment to sustainable seafood, there’s at least as high a premium on silliness, and exuberance is everything. With Mr. Burke, the trailblazing inventor of the cheesecake lollipop, that’s often the case... He’s as much showman as chef, though he’s a particular kind of showman, happy to act the clown, eager to play the prankster. You get the sense that if, at some pivotal juncture in his past, he had been handed a microphone instead of a spatula, he’d be doing stand-up now." more ›

This week Frank Bruni at the Times bestows two precious stars on Greenwich Village restaurant 10 Downing. It's a big deal for chef Jason Neroni, who, as Bruni observes right at the top, has had his troubles. But that was then, this is now: "I seldom had the sense that Mr. Neroni was showing off, which he’s been known to do. What was strongest about the best dishes wasn’t some fanciful conceit or adornment, but rather the quality and preparation of the centerpiece ingredient." Still, bring your hearing aid, for the "din can be excruciating." more ›

Over at Fork in the Road, journeyman Robert Sietsema has done a bang up job surveying the city’s burgeoning landscape of tip jars, which are no longer only found at cafes with counter service. They’re everywhere, Sietsema reports— from the coffee shop receptacle that implores “Karma is a boomerang,” to the mamma-said “Take a penny, leave a dollar.” It would seem that the current Thunderdome-style match-up of recession vs. New Yorkers has resulted in a new economy of tip jars that simultaneously allow business owners to broadcast their quirks as well as their woes, such as the “Tip $, because $4 a gallon is killing us!” price-of-milk themed message Sietsema found at a bakery. And Frank Bruni of Times puts in his two cents, imploring everyone to tip at restaurants, no matter how bad the service was: “It’s not some bold stand against fat-cat restaurant operators lining their pockets,” he writes, not to tip. more ›

This week Frank Bruni at the Times takes his turn with L'Artusi (photos), the plus-size Greenwich Village twin to the dainty, crowded dell'Anima. Bruni doesn't hate it like NY Mag's Adam Platt, but it's definitely a mixed review: "They have gone not only bigger—with nearly 115 seats, L’Artusi is more than twice the size of dell’Anima—but also bolder, and the uneven results are a lesson in overextension. If they turned a more skeptical eye to some of Mr. Thompson’s inventions, edited the menu to about two-thirds its current length and focused harder on the execution of what remained, they’d have an excellent restaurant. As it is, they have a fitfully enjoyable one." The New Yorker's review is also mixed, and notes that "the décor has an identity crisis." more ›

This week the Times's Frank Bruni gives some love to Buttermilk Channel (photos) in Carroll Gardens, where, "although one in three dishes widely misses its mark and the restaurant’s reach frequently exceeds its grasp, there’s the possibility of a terrific meal. There’s the probability of a pleasant one... Buttermilk Channel is a restaurant of real standards, noteworthy ambition and uncommon slavishness to trends. It’s laudable and predictable in equal measures. And it was packed every time I went." The bulk of the review is dedicated to Bruni's lust for their pecan pie sundae. more ›

This week the Times's Frank Bruni piles on Shang, a restaurant in the Thompson LES Hotel helmed by the acclaimed, formerly Toronto-based chef Susur Lee, whose first mistake is making Bruni exercise: "The staircase was the first befuddlement and miscalculation I encountered — and a clue that the evening and restaurant might not be all I’d hope for. It’s a long, drab, foreboding rise of steps from the sidewalk to the host station, an entrance less inviting than aerobic. I’ve gone on runs that didn’t leave me as winded." As for the menu, some dishes are "intensely pleasurable," but overall it's "inconsistent and uneventful. The magic that Mr. Lee reputedly made in Toronto hasn’t followed him here." more ›

This week Frank Bruni at the Times bestows two stars on chef April Bloomfield and Ken Friedman (The Spotted Pig) for their new high-end seafood pub The John Dory (pictured), in the Meatpacking District: "In what is clearly a labor of not just love but also vivid (sometimes too vivid) imagination and real guts, [they] have fashioned a place that doesn’t look like any other and that doesn’t taste like any other, either...But experienced in aggregate, too many dishes are too blunt. The overall flavor spectrum is too narrow, a wallow in buttery, creamy and salty effects. I sometimes left feeling overwhelmed — maybe I should say capsized — in a way I seldom do." Still, Bloomfield's menu is full of "nervy surprises." more ›

Missy Robbins took over as executive chef at A Voce last September with her style of cooking that's both neatly composed and rustic Italian. In one appetizer, for example, huge rectangular planks of seared trumpet royal mushrooms are gently set on a cloudlike hazelnut fonduta and simply garnished with greens and truffles. It may look like a salad on the plate, but served with a glass of red wine, it eats like a steak dinner. At her last chef gig—Spiaggia in Chicago—Robbins attracted the attention of Barack and Michelle Obama, who were regulars. And in today's New York Times, Frank Bruni does a little hail-to-the-chef thing: “As we all wonder whether our new president has the requisite judgment to steer us away from economic catastrophe,” he writes, “we can take some comfort from this: he has the requisite judgment to appreciate Missy Robbins.” more ›