Today's review roundup includes: 'Cesca, Sueños, Belleville, Cafe Kashkar
NYMetro reviews 'Cesca (164 West 75th Street):
Variety, on a grandiose, even compulsive scale, seems to be the fashion in new Italian restaurants these days, and ’Cesca is no different. There are twenty dishes on the antipasti “per la tavola” (for the table) section alone. The one you should probably order first is the Parmesan fritters, which are served in a simple bowl and cupped in wax paper. They have the smoothness of a beignet, the heft of a hush puppy, and they’re spiced with cayenne pepper and little shreds of Italian ham.
. . . If all of this sounds delicious, that’s because it more or less is, although Valenti’s dogged pursuit of big, extravagant flavors sometimes lands him in trouble. A dish of mushrooms and butter-soaked polenta (with sheep’s-milk cheese folded in) was so cloyingly rich that, to my wife’s astonishment, I pushed it aside. Ditto the pasta al forno, a colossal, creamy mass of noodles and beef ragù, cooked, like shepherd’s pie, in an earthenware crock. The potato gnocchi (also served in a crock, with braised duck, slivers of crisped garlic, and ricotta cheese) was a more successful dish, and so was the formidable, peppery bucatini all’amatriciana, piled with crumblings of boiled egg and pancetta. If you can’t handle all this heft, there’s a superior version of vitello tonnato (cut in razor-thin slices and garnished with capers and subtle tuna sauce), a nice linguini laced with tuna, black olives, and tomato, and golden little raviolini plated with a collection of sweet grape tomatoes and filled with soft, yolklike deposits of shrimp mousse.
NY Newsday reviews Sueños (311 W. 17th Street):
To kick off the meal, our waiter brought a plate of warm fried cornbread triangles with a corn and bean dip. Everything on that plate disappeared within seconds. Also quick to vanish was a delightful appetizer of smoked duck breast mini tacos served with fingerling potatoes and an ancho vinaigrette. Oven- smoked pork picadillo empanadas with a refreshing jicama salad made for a satisfying start. I was somewhat let down by the lobster and corn fritters, which came with a smoked jalapeño cream sauce and citrus salad. Yes, it was good, but with Torres, you expect a certain spark, which was lacking.
That spark was present and accounted for in an entree of tamarind-glazed sirloin, the meat juicy and succulent, accompanied by a marvelous plantain-goat cheese pancake and nopales (cactus leaves). And there was plenty of verve in the chorizo and potato quesadilla, accompanied by a Macintosh apple salad, cool and spicy-hot. Coriander-crusted tuna was rare, as ordered, sliced into large squares arranged around a salad of organic greens, a mound of black beans and avocado alongside. And I loved the tortilla-crusted Chilean sea bass served with a chile rajas tamale, Mexican comfort food with a jolt.
NY Daily News reviews Belleville (330 Fifth Street (at Fifth Ave.), Park Slope):
Belleville is a popular blue-collar neighborhood in Paris (Edith Piaf was born at 72 Rue de Belleville), and Joseph Elorriaga's menu reads like a traditional Parisian bistro's - with a few Provencal and Italian curve balls thrown in, such as fazzoletti with braised beef cheeks.
Of course, you'll find a cheese-capped onion soup among the four daily soup options. This time of year, the vegetable soup is rife with cabbage, carrots, turnips, onions and squash in a clear, charismatic broth. It's exactly what you wish would appear at your bedside at the first sign of the sniffles.
Other classic starters include a lovely assiette de charcuterie featuring spicy saucisson sec (dried sausage), ruby folds of Serrano ham and a slab of pork terrine. The paté wasn't as firm as it should be and, though tasty, had a Gerard Depardieu-slovenliness that was a little off-putting; the surprise white-bean salad, however, was snappily dressed.
There's a long list of main courses, and standout among them is the generous pork tenderloin cooked so that it lives up to its name. The loin, served in a cream reduction lined with Cognac, sits surrounded by a sweet hodgepodge of dried apricots, wild mushrooms and caramelized Bosc pear.
NY Daily News reviews Cafe Kashkar (1141 Brighton Beach Ave., at 14th St.):
Carrot salad? Chickpeas? Skewers of ground beef? Funny, it didn't taste Chinese. That's because Cafe Kashkar is the only restaurant in the city (maybe the country) that serves the food of Xinjiang, a region of China near Tibet and Mongolia that's the home of the Uigur people, whose food will make you think more of Turkey than of China.
. . .What did we have? Endless pots of tea that we drank from Chinese-style cups. Gently pickled cherry tomatoes, turnips, carrots, celery and brussels sprouts ($3). Warm hand-cut noodles tossed with onions, cabbage, scallions and chunks of chewy lamb ($4) and thinner noodles, also hand-cut but served cold with oil, garlic, onions and bitter seeds that were either cumin or caraway ($5).
Two soups, both in super-salted stock. One held tender wontons stuffed with chopped lamb ($3.50) and the other - "ordinary soup" our waitress called it - had carrots, celery and a chunk of meat, stewed for hours in the broth ($3.50.)
Finally, there were grill-seared chicken, lamb and ground-beef kebabs ($2 each) and one tough lamb chop ($6), all on flat metal skewers. We ate them with what the menu called "fried rice," an unctuous pilaf sweet with carrots, onions and chickpeas ($6). Two hours after arriving, we staggered out, five of us having eaten our fill for $40.