Sam Sifton is really done with restaurant reviewing for The New York Times, but his predecessor Frank Bruni isn't. Because, really, where better for a restaurant review than the Op-Ed pages of the Paper of Record? Luckily Bruni's take on the bizarre Meatpacking "neuro-gastronomy" restaurant Romera is an excellent takedown of a restaurant that is as expensive as Per Se and far less honest about it (just ask Bloomberg's Ryan Sutton). As Bruni puts it, Romera is the "craziest example I’ve encountered of the way our culture’s food madness tips into food psychosis." more ›

The Times' lame duck critic Sam Sifton sticks to Brooklyn this week for a one-star review of St. Anslem in Williamsburg (he calls it "Keens for the millennial set, a Bar Americain for the riders of fixed-gear bikes."). The place has its problems ("St. Anselm is, finally and most of all, a Williamsburg restaurant, with all that this entails") but nothing a solid saddle chop won't cure. So, if you prefer your restaurant reviews to be straight up slams, well, look no further than Bloomberg, where Ryan Sutton rips the Gossip Girl-loving restaurant Gilt a new one. more ›

Sam Sifton may be stepping down as the Times' food critic but he's still got a few more reports to file first. So today we get a pleasant one-star review of the Pilsner Urquell-friendly Czech restaurant Hospoda that lives beneath the Consulate General of the Czech Republic. The food is good, the beer is remarkable considering there is only one type and "everything is prepared delicately, stylishly, the big flavors made demure by featherweight sizes, emphasizing modern presentation over traditional ones." more ›

In the past weeks Sam Sifton's positive reviews have killed Bushwick for the rest of us and in theory made trips to a "dumpling heaven" in Manhattan's Chinatown a bit more hellish. So at least this week he revisits a restaurant where we already expected both good food and large celebrity chef-worshiping crowds: Tom Colicchio's flagship Craft, which for the second time in its ten year history has earned three stars from the Gray Lady. "The philosophy of Craft is craft," says Sifton and "Craft at 10 is a restaurant in full." more ›

After bemoaning the lack of good midtown restaurants the Post's Steve Cuozzo tries one this week and walks out with the best nasty review of the week. The whole Casa Nonna review is a classic take down (the porny lede in particular is magic) so we'll just cut to a few of the goodies: "Tedium, not sex, reigns after dark at Casa Nonna, the alarming new face of Midtown dining." "Crafted to feed Times Square’s tourist masses and guests of the West 30s’ budget-traveler hotels, it is People’s Exhibit No. 1 that the city’s great interpretive-Italian tide has ebbed." "Gloomy dark wood and endless pleated banquettes suggest a chain steakhouse invaded by a blazing pizza oven." Also? The joint's "remote, dark corners are 'a great place to fire someone.'" more ›

It is August and with so few big new openings of late can you blame restaurant critics for not having much to criticize? Still, they aren't all off loafing. The Times's Sam Sifton, for instance, is on this week, bringing the world his two-star take on Daniel Boulud's latest, Boulud Sud. more ›

Last week New York's Adam Platt pointed out all the rich white people (Woody Allen! Lloyd Blankfein!) happily dining on Italian fare at The Leopard at des Artistes and today it is Sam Sifton's turn. In his two-star Times review the critic makes a real effort to point out the important people he saw (Jon Corzine, the directors of the Whitney and MoMA, a VP at the Met). But beyond Manhattan society, Sifton is also charmed by the restaurant's renovation since Cafe des Artistes closed (you really can't top Howard Chandler Christy's cavorting nypmh murals) not to mention the restaurant's "simple food, apparently simply prepared." The fare isn't cheap but chef Vio Gnazzo's dishes are deceptively easy, and reportedly worth it. The dishes "taste not so much cooked as composed." more ›

The Times's Sam Sifton is back on the beat this week, and rather than look at a new restaurant he's gone and revisited an old one. A very old one. But even after 85 years, the Palm doesn't disappoint... assuming you don't look at the menu (which has calorie counts) and just order the steak or the lobster. Avoid those rules and you are on your own. In the end Sifton gives the restaurant and its sibling, Palm Too across the street, one-star (which is what it got in 1992). "Palm may be a chain restaurant," he says. "But not on Second Avenue, no matter where you sit." more ›

No Sam Sifton review in the Times this week, but that doesn't mean that most of New York's food critics aren't still on duty, which means we've got some restaurant reviews to parse! Over at the Post Steve Cuozzo dines at Daniel Boulud's latest biggie, Boulud Sud, and leaves the Mediterranean restaurant with a two-and-a-half star review. "There are more flubs than you expect after three months, such as sloppy, sticky baby goat orecchiette," but over all the restaurant is a pleasing, grown-up experience. The decor is "sheer Manhattan-modern" and makes "all look young" and the food? Well "Forget 'Mediterranean'—this is modern-American cookery at its chameleon best, the fish serving as a platform for uncompromised seasoning that doesn't nullify the main event." more ›

Bloomberg's critic Ryan Sutton has seen Top Chef's Sam Talbot's restaurant Imperial No. Nine and he is not impressed. He calls it "a pretty restaurant filled with pretty people eating pretty lousy seafood." Also, the help sucks, Talbot's fish is "spongy, mushy, as if fetched from the same back corner of a refrigerator where the dodgy milk sits," the beef culotte has "the tang of liver or kidneys gone bad," the rhubarb pie "contains no pie," the place makes five kinds of gin and tonic (with flat tonic), and so on and so forth. It is safe to say that Ryan Sutton will not be getting a Christmas card from Sam Talbot this year. more ›

Andrew Carmellini's SoHo insta-hotspot The Dutch gets not one, not two, but three major reviews this week and—though faults can be found with the service, the noise and the cramped seating—the "American cuisine" there is reportedly worth writing home about. "So here is where you want to be right now, all of you who care about good food and the theater of eating it," The Times's Sam Sifton purrs in his glowing two-star review. The restaurant has the atmosphere of "A Balthazar for Generations X and Y, a “21” Club for post-Reagan youth," and even the "clunkers" in the food department soar to "better than decent" heights. It is a scene, but "it is exciting." more ›

Alex Stupak's West Village Mexican restaurant Empellon "needs sound-dampening fabric or ceiling panels in much the same way Greece needs cash," says The Times's Sam Sifton in his one-star review of the joint. Luckily the "The restaurant’s food and drink are a balm for nerves scraped raw by its din." Just "Spoon melted Jack cheese topped with morels and garlicky guaje seeds into a warm tortilla from the Nixtamal shop out in Queens. Eat that pillow of intense and vaguely sweet earthiness: swoon." So basically go for the food but bring earplugs. Or, as Sifton does, "Hope this place makes it"—at least long enough for Stupak to better sound proof the Counter space when he takes it over for another Empellon this fall. For what it is worth, the restaurant says the deafening noise problem should be "fixed in the next few weeks." more ›

"Fish sticks for the sophisticated" is how Sam Sifton describes the Dover sole at Desmond's, but it also seems to sum up his take on the one-starred Upper East Sider. Think of the restaurant as "a Caprice where you might actually wish to eat dinner," a place where "the mandate to comfort the comfortable while avoiding the afflicted entirely" is taken quite seriously. The food ("pensioner food for those who run pension funds") is consistent, the art is boring, the service is good but the prices are high and the restaurant "is not for everyone." more ›

This week the Times reviews the uber-expensive sushi restaurant in the Time Warner Center and declares that "Masa is the city’s greatest sushi restaurant." What it isn't, however, is the four-star restaurant Frank Bruni reviewed seven years ago. Though its food remains transporting (if not necessarily environmentally sustainable) "New York City now demands of its four-star restaurants an understanding that culture at its highest must never feel transactional, whatever its cost." So Sifton this time gives it only three stars. Maybe Masa should let diners without their whole party wait inside? Still, the sushi there "astonished." more ›

Professional eater Sam Sifton at the New York Times is not a fan of Rogan-loving Top Chef alum Sam Talbot's SoHo fish restaurant Imperial No. 9. So much so that today he refrains from giving the restaurant any stars whatsoever. The problem, you see, is consistency. Even when a dish appears at one visit to be "a cairn stacked high in the middle of a vast moor of culinary mediocrity," on another visit, well, at least it's "not rancid!" When a restaurant priding itself on fresh ocean fare serves fish like that, there's a problem. "Not that anyone eating at Imperial No. Nine really appears to care," since "The vibe of its ficus-filled, chandelier-bedecked, glass-sculpture-bisected greenhouse dining room is more social than cultural or gastronomic." more ›

After Ryan Sutton gushed over it last week, Timesman Sam Sifton heads to the unattractive restaurant Tenpenny in the Gotham hotel and comes out with the same opinion. While it "is not the prettiest restaurant, nor does it offer diners a compelling reason to visit beyond the promise of good food in a weird environment," you want to go and and eat there so you can "imagine yourself telling friends how you used to eat the chef Chris Cipollone’s food back when he was cooking in that grim hotel space in Midtown." If Tenpenny were "in Brooklyn or on Avenue A, you might have already heard about it from your coolest friend, and you would probably have to wait in a long line to get in and pay for your meal in cash. Here in dead-at-night Midtown, at the heart of the city’s grid, you can simply call for a reservation." more ›

With Sam Sifton in London, Adam Platt off this week and Steve Cuozzo choosing not to deign us with a rant (uh, never mind), there are fewer restaurant write-ups to digest this week. But that doesn't mean there aren't restaurants to be praised and critiqued. First up is the French bistro in the West Village Lyon which charmed Time Out's Jay Cheshes so much he awarded it four out of five stars. "This dream version of a bouchon" he rhapsodizes "feels conjured from Time-Life cookbooks, Jacques Tati films and flea-market finds." It is "the best kind of neighborhood restaurant," where pop-ins are embraced and the food—from the unconventional French onion soup to the pike quenelles in lobster sauce that are "fluffy as meringues" to the surprising braised tripe—is worth writing home about. more ›

The Times this week sends Sam Sifton to review Alfred Portale's 27-year-old classic Gotham Bar and Grill and, for the fourth time, the restaurant walks away with a very solid three-star review. The restaurant "celebrates stability and excellence, perhaps even opulence," yet it continues to offer up surprising new twists while keeping the old standards up to snuff. For instance the seafood salad, which has been getting raves for decades, "still tastes terrific." And despite being "very expensive, almost aggressively so," the restaurant thankfully does not care to tell you the provenance of the wild arugula on your plate: "A meal at Gotham is about you and your interests, not of those who made it." more ›

New York City's restaurant critics hit the outer boroughs hard this week. To start, Sam Sifton took his Times expense account to Brooklyn Heights to sample Alex Sorenson's cooking at Colonie and liked it well enough to award it one star. While Sorenson's cooking is praised (he "does well by the forest floor," especially with mushrooms, and the food has a "brightness to it, a clever happiness that comes through on the plate.") and much is made of the neighborhood's need for more quality restaurants, Sifton has a bone to pick with the management. When they are they on the floor things are great "but absent the bosses the service can take on a mediocre, almost perfunctory feel." All in all Sifton approves, he just seems to wish they made more effort when it comes to feeding folks promptly. more ›

This week Sam Sifton takes his Times expense account to Cesar Ramirez's Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare and gives it three stars. "What Mr. Ramirez is doing at the Chef’s Table is entirely his own production, a kind of sui generis exercise in personal expression," and though at $165-bucks-a-pop it can be expensive "it is worth the money" to see what Ramirez and his crew are doing. As a regular told Sifton regarding the 18-seat restaurant's meals, “It’s best if you let it just happen to you.” more ›

Jesús Núñez's Upper West Side Spanish-modernist restaurant Graffit gets the Times treatment today and walks away with one-star from Sam Sifton. At the restaurant "Núñez deconstructs ideas, melts them, renders food surreal," but that isn't always a good thing. Crazy dishes like a poached egg whose whites have been replaced with cauliflower puree and a dessert that features "an astringent gelatinized film" of Moscatel "spread across a plate, with bits of dried fruit and vegetable suspended within it—sweet to one side and savory to the other," may be pretty but they are ultimately failures. Luckily the restaurant still has some successful dishes with big flavors (Sifton loves the pear salad and the salt cod) and great service. more ›

This week the Times's food man Sam Sifton treks down to SoHo to try the sushi at Niko and finds a restaurant worthy of a one-star review. The food is fine (the sushi, from former Sushi Yasuda man Hiro Sawatari is "estimable," the starters are "particularly good," and some of the hot dishes are "great") and the room "feels like homage to the SoHo that once was." But the important thing here is "the scene" and Cobi Levy, who is in charge of it, seems to have moved past the "exclusive to the point of silliness" problem that plagued his last restaurant, Charles. more ›

The Quebeco-American diner M. Wells is the subject of Sam Sifton's Times review today and the Hugue Dufour and Sarah Obraitis LIC spot walks away with a rave of a two-star review. The gist is that this is the kind of restaurant that—like Starbucks, apparently—you don't leave just because of a little heavy smoke pouring out of the kitchen. "It would be terrible to miss eating the food there for anything less than a catastrophe." Though the service is still working out its kinks "Those who recall the thrill of eating at the Momofuku restaurants for the first time would do well to book passage on the No. 7 train, bound for Hunters Point." more ›

Well didn't Sam Sifton have a good time on assignment this week! Writing up La Petite Maison the Times critic can barely contain his glee in his one-star review at the absurdity of the restaurant from Nice. Here the men have "tanned faces," the women have "colorists," the chef (Alain Allegretti) is "handsome" and the "extremely beautiful" staff speaks with French accents (“Get the bottle, monsieur! You must: It is so delicious! Oui, then? Oui? D’accord!”). The food is competent, if nothing to write home about (but "about the desserts, the less said the better."). Maison has its charms, sure, but "the whole place can be overwhelming and, indeed, absurd, a kind of pantomime vacation on the Riviera, here in Midtown." more ›

Twelve years after it opened, and a year after a refurbishment, The Times' revisits Veritas today and gives the spot lately "chiefly known for being expensive" three stars. The chef Sam Hazen "has introduced to the restaurant a tightly focused, extremely flavorful and somewhat less expensive à la carte menu of aggressively American cooking." The menu apparently is littered with the same flavor notes "at once sweet and salty, crisp and slick," and Sifton likes it! The wine list remains immense though the cocktails shouldn't be ignored (they recommend the Dark and Stormy) but really "There is little about the place to knock save the cacophony that develops in the dining room when it is crowded, the traffic jam at the door and the occasional line at the restroom." more ›

Sam Sifton really liked Marcus Samuelsson’s new Harlem eatery Red Rooster. Though "the food is just fine" the Times critic gives it two stars, partially because the scene is so good. "The glory of the Red Rooster is that everyone really is there, actually making the scene: black and white, Asian and Latino, straight and gay, young and old." Though the waiters are still a bit "raw" the overall effect matches the "energy and excitement you can find in the best of Keith McNally’s restaurants." As for the grub, described as "good," there are a number of tasty options to choose from including the fried yard bird (the pieces "bear the sweet taste of youth") and the dirty rice and shrimp. The gist of the review, however, is that one simply must go to Harlem. more ›

The critics continue to be divided on Michael Psilakis's latest, Fish Tag, and today the Times' Sam Sifton comes out solidly in the negative corner with a zero-star review. Not that the restaurant isn't "occasionally marvelous," it just also often "recalls what happens when children get into Mom’s closet and play at fashion. The food shows up in the dining room overdressed and shrieking in three shades of lipstick and mismatched slingbacks, with flavors that clash or do something rather worse than that." In the end Sifton finds things to praise (the grilled sardines "are fine," the lamb burger tastes "fantastic") but the crowded dining room, odd menus, and "critic bait" dishes like grilled branzino stuffed with headcheese are, in the end, too much for our critic: "Mr. Psilakis has shown us—first at Onera, more recently at his Kefi, on Columbus Avenue—that he can do better. Here he should start by doing less." more ›