Results tagged “hundredacres”

This week the Times’s Frank Bruni opines on Scarpetta (pictured), the new Meatpacking District Italian restaurant from Scott Conant (L’Impero, Alto) that the Village Voice loved and the Sun disdained. Bruni bestows a big three stars, raving about the unassuming dish of spaghetti, tomato and basil: “However Mr. Conant is choosing and cooking the Roma tomatoes with which he sauces his house-made spaghetti, he’s getting a roundness of flavor and nuance of sweetness that amount to pure Mediterranean bliss.” Also in the Times, Julia Moskin surveys Chinese food in Flushing, where “the dumplings are juicier, the noodles springier, the butter cookies flavored with a bit of salty green seaweed.”

The Sun’s Paul Adams is the latest critic to get around to Hundred Acres (pictured), the meticulously-sourced, farm-to-table restaurant which used to be Provence. While the Daily News was haunted by the ghosts of the old restaurant, Adams says “the transformation is a delightful blast of fresh air. A sultry Southern accent marks the restaurant's menu… where "seasonal" isn't just a buzzword, but where you actually look forward to returning season after season to see what new ideas are blossoming.”

Adam Platt panned star chef Alain Ducasse’s Benoit (pictured), declaring it an “ersatz” brasserie and concluding that “French cuisine, as we used to know it, is deader than we think.” Now the Times’s Frank Bruni takes his turn, and while he disagrees that it’s “a throwaway restaurant,” he does concur that “Benoit is selling a dining experience so familiar it’s almost a cliché… And what of the ‘Parisian salad’? The city it’s referring to must be Paris, Tex. That’s a more likely cradle of this humdrum, deli-caliber mix of chicken, ham, cheese and lettuce.” But the veal appetizer (poached tongue and foie gras) “is worth the trip.”

Hundred Acres: Marc Meyer and Vicki Freeman were fed up with the way their Macdougal Street restaurant Provence had become just “a special-occasion restaurant.” According to Eater they “want a place that people would be happy coming to all the time” – not a bad goal for a restaurateur. So they gutted the space and have reopened as Hundred Acres, a more casual iteration of the stuffier predecessor. Two back rooms filled with wooden tables and herb planters are meant to evoke a contemporary farmhouse; up front the classic white subway tiles by the bar suggest an old-timey butcher shop. Currently open for dinner only, the rustic American menu features modestly-priced entrees (the most expensive is $22, most cost much less) like walnut pesto pasta or the corned beef tongue with multigrain bread, mache and ramp relish. 38 Macdougal Street, (212) 475-7500.