This week's Review Roundup includes: Lunchbox Food Co., Pampano, Snackbar, Mooncake Foods, Penelope, Cripplebush Road, Bread Tribeca, Gotham Bar & Grill, and Nar
NYMetro reviews Lunchbox Food Co.:
. . . Lunchbox offers enough enticements to merit year-round patronage. Like any self-respecting diner, this one serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but it’s a rare diner that bakes its own doughnuts and idiosyncratically flavored bagels (the Parmesan harmonizes surprisingly well with the house-cured salmon at brunch). At night, bowls of Lunchbox’s house-made potato chips line the candle-strewn counter. And the restaurant sells its own line of chocolate candies, brownies, and sumptuous dessert toppings from a retail counter up front.
NYMetro Openings & Buzz - Penelope, Cripplebush Road, Bread Tribeca, Gotham Bar & Grill, and Nar:
Part bar, part café, part bakery, Penelope draws from all the places co-owner Jenny Potenza has worked since she was 17. It’s also a very welcome addition to café-starved Curry Hill, where it’s easier to come by masala dosa than Nutella French toast and a decent egg-salad sandwich.
NYTimes Restaurant, William Grimes reviews Pampano:
Against this clean backdrop, Mr. Sandoval and his chef de cuisine, Josefina Santacruz, deliver inventive, sharply executed seafood dishes that keep the taste buds busy. Bright squiggles, specks and blobs put a lot of drama on the plate, and the cast of characters tends to be extensive. Every dish seems to have at least eight or nine ingredients.
Somehow all the actors find their places, and the chilies, in particular, perform brilliantly. Mr. Sandoval uses all of them, from anchos, anaheims and chipotles to the fiery habaneros and jalapeños. They italicize flavors, infiltrate them, sway them this way and that, without ever making the primary impression.
A smoky chipotle and lobster sauce, for example, brings out the sweetness of sautéed shrimp in a rich, mouth-filling tamale stuffed with steamed cornmeal, mushrooms and zucchini blossoms. Chiles de árbol apply mild heat to an understated salsa that blends effortlessly with black-bean purée and buttery slices of avocado in what may be Pampano's signature dish, an appetizer of three miniature lobster tacos on soft tortillas.
Big anaheim chilies, mild and slightly sweet, make the ideal wrapper for sharp goat cheese and a welcome accompaniment to huge grilled shrimp in a spicy bell pepper and tomato sauce. Fruity ancho chilies, with their overtones of licorice, make a complex, beguiling glaze for baby octopus, served with roasted corn and crunchy chayote dice.
NYTimes $25 and Under, Eric Asimov reviews Snackbar:
. . . . Taking cues from more expensive restaurants, like Craft and Amuse, the menu is stripped down and à la carte. You construct your own main course, selecting a centerpiece ingredient, adding a sauce and sides. The menu also offers the option of putting together a meal of smaller bites.
The quality of the ingredients is superb, and seafood makes up a significant part of the menu. Thin fillets of neatly sautéed rouget ($14.50) are so seductive, especially with a chunky olive gremolata, that I wondered why so few restaurants in this country serve this Mediterranean gem. Scallops ($15.50), which I ordered with a citrus-soy marinade, actually taste deeply like scallops, a rare thing nowadays. Mahi-mahi ($15) with rosemary cream is moist and delicate, while big-eye tuna ($17.50) has so much flavor it doesn't need one of the sauces.
Village Voice's Robert Sietsema reviews Mooncake Foods:
For all the recent attempts to reinvent the American diner, none has more appeal than Mooncake Foods. Obscurely located near the Holland Tunnel on Watts Street, the snug space is outfitted with a reasonable facsimile of diner furniture. Stools swivel along a counter, stick chairs flank rudimentary tables, and a pew stands in for the usual Naugahyde banquette. More important, the food's plainness evokes the kind of Greek-owned diner that has become a dwindling feature of the city's landscape.
In line with contemporary tastes, however, the menu is light and vegetable-driven instead of greasy and starch-heavy. Instead of looking to European meat and potatoes for inspiration, Mooncake's menu is grounded in Asian cuisines. Standing in for chef's salad is a collection of meal-size Thai yums ($7-$8). The immense bowls brim with an idiosyncratic collection of greens and miniature plum tomatoes topped with a choice of grilled beef (good), seared tuna one step away from sashimi (better), hefty lemongrass shrimp (too sweet), grilled chicken breast (yawn), or broiled salmon (see below). Dry, these assemblages would be less than thrilling. But the piquant dressings, different for each salad, put the combinations across. Writhing and gyrating behind the counter, the cooks at Mooncake demonstrate no fear of fish sauce, chile paste, and other serious Asian flourishes eschewed by the nominally Thai places materializing in Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Review Roundup is updated every Wednesday and Friday