“Pulino’s is not really a pizzeria, nor a bar,” says Sam Sifton. “It is a restaurant, a good one.” Nate Appleman’s cooking is “simple and brash, as American as it is inflected with Italian flavor.” [NYT]
Earlier: Pulino’s Has Opened for Breakfast and Lunch
ABC Kitchen is “one of the best new restaurants to open this year,” declares Alan Richman. “The food is imaginative, creative, varied, and, for the most part, beautifully prepared, with more than a few hints of Vongerichten at his intuitive best.” [Forked & Corked/GQ]
Related: Adam Platt on ABC Kitchen
“Fatty ’Cue isn’t the easiest restaurant to figure out,” admits Jay Cheshes. “The Malay cooking here is mostly an adjunct to the real reason the restaurant is packed: [pitmaster] Robbie Richter’s winning ’cue.” [TONY]
Related: A Closer Look at Fatty ‘Cue
After being initially put off by Wylie Dufresne’s molecular-gastronomy menu, Ryan Sutton now feels that “WD-50 is worthy not just of once-a-year curiosity but of everyday eating.” [Bloomberg]
Chef-owner Michael Huynh does triple duty as Gael Greene’s waiter on her visit to DOB 111, and she finds that “there’s something hasty about this menu, as if the chef threw it together without much thought, other than upping his usual prices for entrees.” [Insatiable Critic]
“The spiciest thing at Casa Lever may be the breadsticks,” says Nick Baumgartener. After its recent overhaul and change of management, “the atmosphere is more subdued than it was, and so is the food, although it would be misleading to call either recessionized.” [NYer]
Robert Sietsema heads to Queens to visit Maima’s, quite possibly the only Liberian restaurant in New York. “Cradled in an oblong bowl at Maima’s, find a dozen magnificent prawns, shell-on, swimming in a gritty red sauce. It’s one of the hottest things I’ve tasted all year, and you should eat everything — head, shell, and all.” [VV]
