The Sun Will Come Out The Marrow

After winning the first season of Top Chef, Harold Dieterle set his sights on New York, where he opened Perilla with Alicia Nosenzo in May 2007. The food there, according to the restaurant's website, is "seasonal American." Kin Shop came next, and for that menu Dieterle looked to Thailand. The team opened The Marrow in the last weeks of 2012, and this time, Dieterle let his roots inspire the cooking. In his review of Dieterle's third restaurant today, Pete Wells explains, "Half his menu is inspired by his father’s German roots. The other half draws from the Italian cuisine of his mother and her relatives."

Wells finds a riff "between dishes that are completely sure of their purpose and the ones so overembellished it’s unclear what the idea was meant to be." The restaurant's namesake dish, served with sea urchin, is "a pun on textures, a delicious joke that you got with your tongue. Some dishes, though," he continues, "made me wonder whether I’d missed the punch line."

Wells is enamered with Jill Roberts' wine list and pastry chef Ginger Fisher's desserts. The ginger stout cake, for example, "really is worth jumping up and down about." But, because of inconsistencies Wells finds throughout the menu, he awards The Marrow just one star. [NYTimes]