“Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup”

Midweek Special: NYC Restaurant Review Roundup

Posted: 15 Sep 2010 06:27 AM PDT

"Nuela is a large and garish new pan-Latin restaurant on West 24th Street that seems at first blush about as welcoming as a Miami nightclub," writes Sam Sifton in today's Times. "People with shiny hair and incredible heels predominate, followed by people in Prada suits and Kanye West-style sneakers, followed by a lot of people wearing sunglasses and carrying fashion-label bags the size of sofa cushions. In the minority: the unbeautiful." And yet, despite a "rambling menu... there is good eating at Nuela, if only you can allow yourself to revel in, or ignore, the scene."

The Village Voice's Robert Sietsema swoons for Bab al Yemen, a new Yemeni restaurant in Bay Ridge where "the patronage is still mainly male. But whatever your sex, you'll receive a warm welcome from the proprietor, who works the room wearing a mawaz, a long, narrow skirt with a curved dagger at its belt. Don't worry, he's not going to stab you with it—unless, of course, you don't finish your dinner. If you like simple roasted meats at bargain prices, Bab al Yemen is your destination."

Also at the Voice, Sarah DiGregorio says that with all the new places peddling Asian "street food," we are living "in the age of a chicken spring roll in every pot." The latest addition, Hawkers on East 14th, offers easily accessible pleasures—bean curd drenched in spicy peanut sauce, say, or wiggly noodles stir-fried with plenty of oil or tamarind-glazed pork ribs, sweet and sticky. Call it drunk food if you want, but not in a derogatory way—it's just simple, decent stuff with lots of flavor."

Eataly, the mammoth new "food experience" from Mario Batali & Co., gets an early negative appraisal from Bloomberg critic Ryan Sutton. He finds intolerable lines and an "ambience that takes a back seat to cuisine. Men in double-breasted suits quaff rose near the bottled chocolate milk station and I chewed through a $75 beef tasting menu while overlooking the olive oil department... The longer lines at Eataly are not for the take-away but for the restaurants. I waited 10 minutes just to speak with a host at a pizzeria that refused to serve me pizza—they were booked for the night."

For kicks, Steve Cuozzo at the Post reviews the 13-year-old Nougatine, the casual eatery adjoining four-star Jean Georges in the Trump International Hotel. Here, according to Cuozzo, you will find "not only a wonderful restaurant, it's one that is stealthily of-the-moment. Some places wear you down with tiresome claims of their organic, sustainable and 'locavore' ways. But for my money, Nougatine's profusion of vegetables, fruit, greens and herbs in the waning weeks of this fecund season is the bounty to behold. Forget 'farm to table' — here is paradise come to Columbus Circle, if your idea of heaven is merely the purest edibles fresh out of the earth."

And the Times's Ligaya Mishan files a review on Park Slope's Campo de' Fiori, where the pizza dough "has a dramatic back story: it is a result of 15 years of experiments by an engineer specializing in the molecular properties of flour. Made in Italy, it is flash frozen, flown to Brooklyn and baked in an electric oven on a ceramic hearth. Slices hit the sweet spot between spring and crackle. They're sturdy enough to eat with one hand, even on a Vespa. But you can have a beguiling meal here and never taste a pie."

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