Today's review roundup includes: Kittichai, Li Hua, Trinity, Hummus Place, Dumpling Man.
NYTimes Frank Bruni gives Kittichai two stars (60 Thompson Street; 212-219-2000):
Protein as diorama, dessert as décor: Kittichai, in SoHo, is staking its claim on the same turf that other new restaurants — Megu in TriBeCa and Spice Market and Matsuri in the meatpacking district — inhabit. In that surreal and sexy place, which is more often than not downtown, upscale dining meets assiduously eccentric theater. The tantalizing seasonings of a distant land encounter the cheeky attitude of our own. The Manhattan economy may have its discontents, but an ebbing of pose-striking, scene-stealing Manhattan restaurants is not among them. That is very lucky for us, because the gustatory pleasures of Kittichai (pronounced kitty-chai) rise almost to the level of the visual ones.
The restaurant's Thai soul asserts itself through the recurrence, in dish after dish, of kaffir lime and lemon grass, Thai basil and Thai chili peppers, coriander and coconut. Its Thai chef, Ian Chalermkittichai, for whom the restaurant is named, grew up in Bangkok. But he worked and cooked in London and Sydney, Australia, and then, as the executive chef at the Four Seasons hotel in Bangkok, supervised not just a Thai restaurant but also Italian and Japanese ones. Small wonder, then, that boundaries blur in his kitchen and he readily makes concessions to the habits of New Yorkers and the culinary fads of the moment.
. . . Mr. Chalermkittichai also makes concessions to the whims of his own imagination. He uses cocoa powder, apple butter and A1 steak sauce for a glaze on baby back ribs, which he unabashedly advertises as "chocolate back ribs." Do not cringe: when I had them, they were delightful, because the meat really did fall from the bones and the hint of chocolate was just that, a hint, not an emphatic statement.
In fact, some of the best dishes on this broad menu, which emphasizes small plates by having both tapas and appetizer categories, reflect the chef's determination to find a balance of sweet, sour, salty and hotly spicy. Although he occasionally overemphasizes sweetness, he often hits his mark. Those curries are an example. So is this restaurant's exalted version of the chicken, lemon grass and coconut soup that almost every Thai takeout place offers. Here it is a gorgeous pale red, reflecting the inclusion of roasted red chili paste among other ingredients like galangal and kaffir lime.
RECOMMENDED DISHES Marinated monkfish in pandan leaves; galangal and coconut soup with chicken; crispy rock shrimp; steamed mussels; banana blossom salad; chocolate ribs; Chilean sea bass; loin of lamb; Cornish hen; short ribs in green curry; monkfish in yellow curry; kaffir lime tart; Champagne mango with sticky rice.