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 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 ›

In 1960, big shot restaurateur Joe Baum opened La Fonda del Sol, making a huge splash with what was then a novel concept: the "theme" restaurant. Though the chef was Swiss, the cuisine was South American, served in a kitschy setting replete with an adobe hut for a bar. Fast forward to '09, and a new restaurant with the same name is opening in the MetLife Building, with Colombian-born chef Josh DeChellis at the helm. more ›