Three Stars for Three Stars and Carbone

It was no holds barred for Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi when they were developing the concept for Carbone. As Italian Americans, they wanted their third restaurant to pay homage to their heritage and the food they grew up with. In an interview for Serious Eats, Torrisi and Carbone defined the concept to the website's founder Ed Levine thusly: "We [Torrisi, Carbone, and business partner Jeff Zalaznick] say updating Italian American fine dining. If you think about it, it's hard to find fine dining that's truly Italian American, you know? And it's perplexing that in this city of all cities, with such a huge Italian American influence, there's not one bastion of that cuisine."

The early word on Carbone was a mixed bag. Some diners loved the new dining experience while others filed complaints on the food and the price they paid for it. Now that the restaurant has been open for three months, Pete Wells has filed on the mid century-inspired, Italian-American bastion.

"Carbone has a technical prowess that can make you giddy;" Wells writes, "a lust for excess that can, at times, make you a little queasy; and an instinct for sheer entertainment that makes a lot of other restaurants seem like earnest, unimaginative drones." The critic notes the over-the-top, Hollywoodesque experience. He writes, "Like Tarantino’s love letters to pulpy exploitation films, Carbone affectionately picks up the clichés of its genre, twirls them, then hurls them at your head."

At Carbone, Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi have taken a classic cuisine and made it their own, an approach to cooking they used to wow the city at Torrisi on Mulberry Street. On Thompson Street, they've done it with dishes like country ham from Kentucky and spicy chili ribs that merely wave in the general direction of the Italian pantry.

There are classic dishes on the menu whose recipes were born out of the influx of Italian immigrants to the states. Of the shrimp scampi, Wells notes, "No shrimp scampi has been handled as gently or luxuriously as Carbone’s chorus line of langoustines." There's the "$50 veal parm" too. "Served with a fried shaft of bone," writes Wells, "it’s a shock-and-awe dish, and the most shocking thing about it is that there is no real revisionism here; it is a veal parm, the way you always hoped it would be." Wells praises the efforts of Carbone, Torrisi, and Zalaznick, and awards their hot new Italian-American lovechild three stars. [NYTimes]

Dos Lugares de Tacos para Pete Wells

[yana paskova for the nytimes]Before the current barbecue craze (BrisketTown, Mighty Quinn's, Fletcher's, and Dinosaur Barbecue next month), Mexican cuisine took New York by storm. You might say it started with Alex Stupak, who opened Empellón Taqueria and Empellón Cocina less than a year apart from one another. DUMBO later welcomed Gran Electrica. John McDonald and Josh Capon (Lure Fishbar and B&B) came along and opened El Toro Blanco, and Roberto Santibañez took Fonda, his beloved Park Slope template, across the river to LES. Santibañez was also a consulting chef on the menu at Salvation Taco, April Bloomfield and Ken Friedman's latest project and another member of the new wave of Mexican restaurants to open in the past few months.

Though the joint effort at Salvation Taco wasn't enough to earn the eatery any stars from Pete Wells, who filed on that restaurant and Taqueria Tlaxcalli in the Bronx this week. Of the latter, Wells enjoys the story that's told through the food. "Mauricio Gómez founded Taqueria Tlaxcalli seven years ago," he writes, "because he was homesick for the food he had grown up with in Mexico City." That means dishes like sopes, gorditas, cactus salad, and tacos - each executed with authentic precision and a sense of pride. Wells awards one star.

Salvation Taco rings in different results. The critic is none-too-pleased with the portions, writing, "The tortillas were a little bigger than an English muffin." And he notes "those tiny portions cooled quickly." "But the things you’d hope any taqueria would nail could be dispiriting," he writes later, citing mishaps with guacamole, margaritas, and an al pastor quesadilla. Though the effort found in Bloomfield's Mexican-inspired, albeit more adventurous dishes, i.e. kimchi, pork, and hominy soup, pigs ears, and beef chili (made with various dried Mexican chilies), helped balance the missteps. But not enough for the critic to award any stars. He gives Salvation Taco the "Satisfactory" stamp.

Mexican food is a soulful cuisine. It's heart warming, rustic, flavorful, often spicy, and perhaps most importantly (or the reason it's so popular) cheap. New Yorker's can be senstive to over-priced fare of any kind, and when there are better, cheaper options to be found elsewhere in the city, as Wells finds at Taqueria Tlaxcalli in Parkchester, it makes steep price tags that much harder to swallow. [NYTimes]

The Only Stars for Beatrice Inn are Charlie Rose and Candice Bergen

[michael nagle for the times]Pete Wells files on six-month-old Beatrice Inn this week. Graydon Carter, the long-standing editor of Vanity Fair, opened the restaurant on West 12th Street in November. Carter's is also one of the minds behind Waverly Inn and Monkey Bar, restaurants Beatrice Inn borrows from in it's "stagy, raffishly exclusive neo-speakeasy" vibe (as Adam Platt refered to it in his review of Beatrice last month) and star-studded clientele (Charlie Rose and Candice Bergen were present during one of Wells' visits).

Despite its youth, the West Village eatery is on its third chef. Brian Nasworthy was there first, but he left at the end of January to work at Picholine. Calliope's Eric Korsch filled in for a few weeks, then Hillary Sterling signed on as executive chef. Sterling has Mesa Grill, Lupa, and A Voce on her resume, so the number of missteps Wells encounters are surprising.

On Sterling's menu, Wells finds goat cheese gnudi "that were bursting with the flavor of warm New York City tap water." And a strip steak that "had a chewy band of fat at its edge." There were "desperately undercooked sunchokes" and a "grainy, salty sauce of dried black olives." The critic much prefers Nasworthy's early efforts, which yielded "a horseradish-chile gastrique that had the lively hot-sweet-sour-salty tension of a Southeast Asian sauce," and mushrooms, salsify, and spinach "under a textbook hollandaise for a clever take on oysters Rockefeller." Wells awards no stars and gives Beatrice Inn the "satisfactory" stamp. [NYTimes]

Four Brothers and One Star for Caravaggio

[benjamin petit for the times]Pete Wells heads uptown for his review in the Times today and files on four-year-old Caravaggio. The Upper East Side restaurant is owned by the four Bruno brothers. It opened in 2009 and throws back to the era of white tablecloths and dress codes. "Caravaggio," writes Wells, "is defiantly elegant in an age that sees white tablecloths as a medieval relic whose sadistic power to stand in the way of a good time is second only to that of the chastity belt."

In the dining room, elegance takes the guise of fresh flowers and a selection of well-curated art. There's "a signed Matisse lithograph," "a pair of Ellsworth Kelly prints," and "a pair of Frank Stella paintings." "Donald Baechler has covered the entire back wall with a crowd of the eeriest children in the world," the critic writes. "The mural is unsettling," Wells notes, "but it has the hovering, electric presence of real art."

Of Caravaggio, "It is one of the most civilized Italian restaurants to turn up anywhere in the city in the last few years," Wells writes. But he also cites ample inconsistencies in the kitchen, and with the all-too-common, steep Upper East Side prices, the critic awards just one star. "First-time travelers should be warned: no matter what the euro is trading at, the exchange rate on the Italian Upper East Side is always awful." [NYTimes]

On the Road Again; Wells Visits Saison in San Francisco

[jim wilson for the times]On Apritl 9th, Pete Wells filed a review on two restaurants in Houston: Oxheart and Underbelly, marking the start of a new series for the Times called "Critic on the Road." Today, Wells visits San Francisco, where chef Joshua Skenes and sommelier Mark Bright serve a $298 tasting menu at their restaurant Saison.

Wells ate at the San Francisco restaurant twice, with a year between visits. "During my earlier meal," he writes, "I would have given anything to speed things up." On the food, the critic noted, "A few dishes had a rough, unfinished quality, and some felt repetitive, but others were like nothing I’d seen before." On the service the first time around, Wells "was less thrilled by the attitude of the servers," and writes, "I know nobody asked if I was having a good time, because there were two long stretches when I wanted the whole thing to stop."

One year and a venue change seemed to be the breath of fresh air Skenes and co. needed to hit their stride. Wells found the staff "kinder and less cocky" the second time around, with Bright's wine pairings and desserts from pastry chef Shawn Gawle sharing an elegance that mimics the price tag.

"Saison brings together some of the best and the worst things about tasting menus, but now, I believe, the good has the upper hand. Facing down more than 15 courses, I wasn’t bored once," Wells writes, "and several times I was on the edge of my seat."

In a separate piece written for Diner's Journal, Wells sheds some light on what to expect with the new "Critic on the Road" column. "I think it’s time for the restaurant critic of The Times to cast a wider net," he writes. "The Times has been a national paper for years now, and its Web site is seen all around the world." There are no stars in place for the COTR template, "at least for now" Wells writes. "I don’t intend to skip out on New York City every three weeks," he adds, and explains, "This critic will be on the road regularly, but not that regularly." [NYTimes] [DJ]

Randazzo's Clam Bar is Starboard

[krieger for the nytimes]The sauce. That's what got Pete Wells to Randazzo's Clam Bar in Sheepshead Bay. He breaks from filing on the city's hot new restaurants with a review of the 50-year-old Brooklyn seafood shack today.

"Randazzo’s makes any number of tomato sauces," writes Wells, "but only one Sauce. It has two speeds, spicy and medium, but the dark, intense, concentrated, oregano-accented essence is the same," he continues. "A pure distillation of Italian-American cuisine, the Sauce tastes as if a chemical analysis would reveal the blueprint for every great dish in every red-sauce joint in the country."

The restaurant closed after Hurricane Sandy, but was able to reopen just before Christmas. Much of the interior is new, but Helen Randazzo's recipes there are still the same. And with the exception of a stuffed lobster dish, lobster bisque, and corn-and-crab chowder, Wells is pleased by much of what the restaurant has to offer. He gives it one star.

[NYTimes]

Houston, We Have a New York Times Restaurant Review

[photos: michael stravato for the nytimes] clockwise from top left: oxheart, justin yu, underbelly, chris shepherdPete Wells files on two restaurants in Houston, Texas this week in Oxheart and Underbelly, and it looks like we can expect more cross-country reviews from the Times critic. "[Oxheart] is also an example of the growing ambition of the Houston dining scene, and one of two places that lured me here to kick off this occasional series of reviews of restaurants outside New York City." At Oxheart, Justin Yu serves three menus on a nightly basis. Two are four courses ($49), one is seven ($79). But each highlights much of what Yu learned in Northern European kitchens, "he creates plates that take their visual cues from the colors and shapes of nature," Wells writes.

"Some things about Oxheart reminded me of other new restaurants that emphasize the personal and the handmade. The naturalistic look of Mr. Yu’s dishes, too, is familiar. But every course of my meal," Wells continues, "showed an instinct for the delicious that is rare in any city."

A few miles to the southwest of Oxheart on Westheimer Road is Underbelly. There, Wells explains, chef/owner Chris Shepherd tells "a story of many cultures and cuisines meeting in a place that has become the most ethnically diverse metropolitan region in the United States." For one dish, "Mr. Shepherd tosses chewy rice cakes with butter and gojuchang, the Korean chile paste," Wells explains, "which together make something like what you would get if you fermented Buffalo wing sauce and aged it in a barrel."

The star-system isn't in place for the new "Critic on the Road" series, but Wells is a clearly a big fan of both Oxheart and Underbelly. He writes that the restaurants "share Houston, the city that they are both helping to make into one of the country’s most exciting places to eat." [NYTimes]

My Hooni Said Shine Two Stars on the World

[sasah maslov for the nytimes]Sam Sifton gave Hooni Kim's "wee little restaurant on 52nd Street" one star in August 2011. That restaurant was Danji, Kim's first in New York. About a year and a half later, Kim opened Hanjan in Flatiron on the same stretch of West 26th Street that's home to Hill Country and Maysville. At Hanjan, Kim turns out Korean fare using the casual, whimsical, and small-plate template borrowed from the izakayas of Japan, where eating and drinking are regarded with the same ferver. Today, Pete Wells awards the newcomer two stars.

"Like Mr. Kim’s slightly older restaurant, Danji," Wells writes, "Hanjan has a menu divided between traditional Korean dishes (the pajeon) and new ideas (slices of raw wild salmon that you wrap around salad greens in a spicy sesame dressing). And once again, the cover versions and the original compositions are so much in touch with the spirit of Korean cooking that it can be hard to tell which is which."

"Mr. Kim may be more confident in his cooking this time around," Wells notes, "or more certain that New Yorkers will get it." He finds ingredients and menu items that suggest "Mr. Kim trusts his audience, and vice versa." Hooni Kim has built a relationhip with New Yorkers via the Korean pantry, and the two-star review reinforces the claim others have already made about Kim: he's the city's king of Korean. [NYTmes]