Posts Tagged: restaurant reviews
Criticism
20

Sam Sifton Is Sambivalent

| November 3rd, 2010

"The restaurant’s steaks are taken off grass-fed cattle, and butchered to the thickness of a Frisbee. This is a grim combination, leading to giant flaps of crust-free, overly chewy meat the flavor of nickels. Most people cut bits off, then push the rest around the plate as if it were a pile of napkins. At $45 for a rib-eye, this is a nasty business." —Sam Sifton gives the very attractive new East Village restaurant Peels a nice kiss at the start of his review in today'sTimes. But then he slaps it across the face! But then he gives it a kiss again at the end, saying of their breakfasts, [...]

2

Fancy Restaurant Chooses Questionable Decor

| December 2nd, 2009

Times dining critic Sam Sifton has mixed feelings about SD26, Tony May's downtown 21st century version of the venerable San Domenico. On the one hand, the candele with cauliflower, saffron, pine nuts and anchovy oil evokes "the very essence of great Italian cooking." On the other, the octopus carpaccio with sun-dried tomatoes, "to the good, looked like a Chuck Close painting," but, to the bad, also "tasted like one." (And, in a nice touch: "SD26 is the restaurant equivalent of a second wife: younger, considerably more nervous, dressed in a way that might raise eyebrows in the social circles the original restaurant was opened to serve.") Either way, I [...]