Today's review roundup includes: Azalea, La Palapa Rockola, La Marmite, Chestnut, Asiate
NYTimes Restaurants William Grimes gives Azalea one star (224 West 51st Street; (212) 262-0105):
. . .The kitchen really hits its stride with pastas, which are convincing across the board. Wild boar braised in Barolo wine may be the richest, most deeply flavored meat sauce I've come across at an Italian restaurant. It's served with broad, flat pappardelle, and cherry tomatoes have been deployed strategically to give off intense bursts of fruity acidity. Stubby rigatoni stuffed with seasoned ground veal, topped with crushed roasted walnuts and covered with an oozy white-truffle cream are downright dangerous. Each sublime bite gives rise to uneasy thoughts about the entree to follow. Most appetites will stop dead in their tracks with this one. A somewhat lighter alternative, equally appealing, is ravioli stuffed with veal and red cabbage in a concentrated veal sauce, but even the fish pastas tend to be rich, especially the ravioli stuffed with lobster and buffalo ricotta in a Prosecco and lobster broth.
The pastas can make the main courses seem anticlimactic, satisfying for the most part but not nearly as impassioned, or as complex. Jumbo shrimp sautéed with fresh herbs is what it says it is, and no more. A sizable tuna fillet, rolled in sesame seeds, is plain, served in a light tomato sauce with cannellini beans and fried onions. It was ordered medium-rare and came out on the far side of medium, but under no circumstances was it ever going to be an exciting dish. Pork fillet sautéed with apple purée sounds dull but isn't, thanks in part to tender, flavorful pork, and a nice-sized potato cake on the side. Baby lamb chops get the royal treatment. They're cooked in a potent reduction sauce of Amarone wine, then served with a heap of spinach sprinkled with pine nuts and raisins.
. . . The waiters are a colorful bunch. They seem to be working from a playbook not yet available in English-speaking countries, in which diners are regarded as hopeful applicants rather than customers with the power of the dollar behind them.
RECOMMENDED DISHES Duck sausage with barlotti beans; fennel and shrimp in Parmesan crust; pappardelle with boar; veal-stuffed rigatoni; lamb chops with Amarone sauce; veal in white wine and truffle cream; chocolate-banana cake; fruit tart.
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Today's review roundup includes: Public, Kasadela, Django, Shore, Pearson's Texas Barbecue
NYTimes Restaurants William Grimes gives Public one star (210 Elizabeth St., between Prince and Spring; (212) 343-7011):
. . . The muted aesthetic makes the food seem even wilder than it is, no easy feat. Consider a recent special, grilled foie gras. It's daubed with ginger-lemon cream, then placed on a cookie-shaped "scone" flavored with cardamom and coffee. There are things to like about this dish — its daring, for one. The scone, spicy and aromatic, is wonderful, and the lemon-ginger cream has a thrilling zing to it. Put it all together, and it makes a mess. The scone is too sweet to let the ginger-lemon combination do its main job, which is to cut the fatty richness of the foie gras. This may be the world's first meat dessert.
. . . Seared striped bass, surrounded by a seemingly random assortment of foods, like boiled edamame, roast parsnips and curried lentils, sports an odd topknot of labne, or semidried yogurt, rolled into a ball with shredded coconut. There are many ways to decorate a fish, but this one breaks new ground. It's a little like finding a small holiday cheese ball in the last place you'd expect it.
. . . Public is a high-risk, high-reward dining proposition. I have a feeling that the owners want it that way. They did not come thousands of miles to bore New York. Understatement is not in the plan. Sometimes you have to slap people in the face to get their attention.
RECOMMENDED DISHES Grilled ox tongue with eggplant relish; grilled kangaroo on coriander falafel; roast lamb chump with goat-cheese polenta; pecan-maple cake with roasted pear.
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Today's review roundup includes: Matsuri, Schiller's Liquor Bar, Tiny's Giant Sandwich Shop, Alta.
NYTimes Restaurants William Grimes gives Matsuri two stars (369 West 16th St., in Maritime Hotel; (212) 243-6400):
. . . Youthful and exuberant, and stylish as all get-out, it pulls off the neat trick of presenting both traditional and modernized Japanese food in a warehouse-size basement that feels as much like a club as it does a restaurant.
. . . Into this operatic setting steps Tadashi Ono, no stranger to the idea of cuisine as theater. Formerly the chef at La Caravelle, he created a serene temple of avant-garde Japanese cuisine at Sono, where he made not only the food but the plates and bowls as well. The mission at the high-energy Matsuri is different. Most of the menu is dedicated to perfectly traditional sushi and sashimi, with fairly standard hand rolls added on. Matsuri offers nearly 30 species of fish, with a couple of less commonly encountered selections, shad and pink snapper. On a Manhattan scale of sushi excellence, I would put Matsuri in the upper third for quality and freshness, with a special commendation for the sweet egg custard sushi.
RECOMMENDED DISHES Lotus root braised in soy sake; sea-eel tempura; sake black cod; deep-fried sea bass with ponzu sauce; lobster red miso soup; coconut-milk tofu with strawberry water; Japanese pumpkin pie.
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