Szechuan Gourmet is hot, hot, hot, says Frank Bruni, and he likes it that way — so much so that he gave the place two stars. “It’s fickle, tricky, fierce. It can light a match to your tongue, numb your lips, snap you to attention and do a job on your stomach that lasts a good long while.” [NYT]

Paul Adams gives one of his most enthusiastic reviews in a long time to Haute Barnyard newcomer Hundred Acres. Listen to this! “Hundred Acres is impressive, the kind of place where ‘seasonal’ isn't just a buzzword, but where you actually look forward to returning season after season to see what new ideas are blossoming.” [NYS]

Jay Cheshes, on the other hand, wasn't as impressed by the place. He's skeptical of the whole approach, and the food he found “pretty as a picture and mostly boring as heck.” [TONY]

Benoit misses the mark on one note after the other, but a few dishes pleased Frank Bruni enough for the place to earn a single star. Bruni suspects that Alain Ducasse's heart just isn't in the place, and he's not the only one. [NYT]
Related: Faux French [NYM]

Steve Cuozzo goes hog wild for the quirky, two-week-old Alloro, which served him five of the best pastas he's had all year. [NYP]

Sarah DiGregoiro paints the East Village's Persimmon as a cheaper, more accessible alternative to Ko. And who wouldn't want that? While admitting the place lacks Ko's “experimental edge,” her review of Persimmon's food verges on rapture. [VV]
Related: Kimchic [NYM]

Bad pasta, deafening noise … it's a two-star review for Bar Milano from Frank Bruni, the latest critic to forgive the place for what would ordinarily be fatal flaws in an Italian restaurant. Oh, and the desserts were weak too. But between the room, the entrées, and the drink program, the place somehow scratched out a second star. [NYT]

Lauren Collins is the latest (but probably not the last) critic to put the hurt on Ago, and hits all the points which we've become accustomed to hearing about – the bad food, the snotty service, the preposterous vibe. Can Ago really be that much worse than Bar Milano? Apparently so. [NYer]

Meanwhile, over at the Post, Steve Cuozzo hits Brasserie 44 at the Royalton hard, not for the food (which he really liked) but for the “losers lounge” that is the hotel lobby. Cuozzo seems to take the design deficiencies in the place almost personally: You would think that they had built over his childhood home. [NYP]

In giving both Gottino and Terroir single-star reviews, Frank Bruni probably just set the fuse to a gourmet-wine-bar explosion — which, based on this review, is a good thing indeed. We only wish it had occurred to us to call Paul Grieco “evangelistic” in his wine madness. [NYT]

Danyelle Freeman finds it hard to believe that Scarpetta used to be the Village Idiot, and also difficult to express how much she loved the food there. A whopping four-star review for Scarpetta. [NYDN]

And how about this? Robert Sietsema, who joys in decrying the failings of trendy restaurants, writes an unabashed love letter to Scarpetta as well, without ever even mentioning the spaghetti with tomato sauce, the place's crowning achievement. [VV]

Despite mostly hating the barbecue parts of the Bar Q menu, Frank Bruni found enough to like at Anita Lo's new restaurant to justify giving it two stars, thanks to dishes “eclipsing my frustrations and lifting Bar Q well above its unevenness.” [NYT]

Ryan Sutton lays a merciless beat-down on Scarpetta, even going as far as to call chef Scott Conant's famous spaghetti overcooked! In fact, Sutton did like a few things — a fish here, a pea soup there — but he's not buying into Scarpetta, and puts down his flag with the first vehemently negative review. [Bloomberg]

Steve Cuozzo drops the hammer on Benoit, and from what we're hearing, he won't be the last. “Boring,” “irredeemably dull,” “unseasoned enough for convalescents…” Welcome back to the critical shit list, Mr. Alain Ducasse! Your brief honeymoon with Adour is now officially over. [NYP]

Note to restaurateurs: It's generally a good policy, when Frank Bruni comes into your place, not to pour wine all over the table, make him wait an hour, stick his friend behind a column, and send him waiters who don't know what's on the menu. Because that's how Ago earned a zero-star review from him. [NYT]

Alan Richman is the first major critic to file on Scarpetta and has only the most glowing things to say about Scott Conant's “refined, clean-cut, extraordinarily poised, modern Italian-American cuisine.” A big win for Scarpetta, even though Richman does call out the restaurant for being noisy. [GQ]

Restaurant Girl hits Benoit and, after paying the requisite tribute to its provenance, gets around to saying that the food there is completely unexceptional in every way. Its two stars seem like a gift. [NYDN]

The room looks great and (some) of chef Akthar Nawab's food was great, says Frank Bruni in his one-star review of Elettaria. But both falter for Bruni, who has problems with the way the space flows, and who finds the dishes ranging wildly from brilliant to total letdowns. [NYT]
Related: Restaurant Tour: Elettaria

Restaurant Girl lays three stars on Bar Milano, despite the fact that the pastas are mostly lousy, and the noise is “unbearable.” Except for that, it's great! [NYDN]

Randall Lane didn't even order any pasta but still thought the place worthy of only three stars out of six, with pushy servers and underwhelming meat dishes. [TONY]

It's hard to convey non-disappointment as the tonic note of a restaurant review, but Frank Bruni pulls it off in a strong, two-star endorsement of the Harrison. The only fault is Jimmy Bradley's retro soundtrack which is “neither classic, nor cool. Just odd.” But we liked that! [NYT]

Peter Meehan makes his way over to Artichoke Pizza, but you can tell he's not really impressed by the slice, which he describes as having “a bready, almost tough, crust, generously and greasily topped.” He likes the guys and all their unreliable shtick but won't say it's great pizza. [NYT]

Pomme de Terre, the tiny bistro on Newkirk Avenue in Ditmas Park, got its first major review and it was a bombshell: three stars from Restaurant Girl for perfectly executed French standards. [NYDN]

Randall Lane made it in to Momofuku Ko and gives the place five stars, gushing, “dish after dish dazzles with class, innovation and balance.” The behind-the-counter action, with David Chang berating a girl cook for the way she wrings a dishrag, maybe isn't “great theater” though. [TONY]

Bar Q “thrilled” Steve Cuozzo “on all visits but one,” when chef Anita Lo wasn't around, which is too bad, since his dishes on the off night mar what might have been a rave review. [NYP]

Robert Sietsema, on the other hand, hits bar Q hard: Lo's BBQ sauce “tastes like it's been dumped out of a white carton from the local Chinese carry-out,” and her “pork wings” “remain flightless because they're heavily coated with cloying Korean ketchup.” Ouch! [VV]

Frank Bruni finds Eighty One to be busy, a little vain, but on the whole very good — although he wishes they would ease up with the duos and trios already. Great Bruni line of the week: “[The] oversize red velvet booths that look as if they were carted in from a bordello on some planet where the prostitutes are 12 feet tall.” [NYT]

Amanda Freitag's move from Gusto to the Harrison is now officially a success, as her first major review is a five-star job from Jay Cheshes. Cheshes loves the room and makes a point of praising the “ought-to-be-legendary duck-fat fries with lemony mayo.” [TONY]
Related: Psilakis, Freitag Simultaneously Reinvent Vinegar-Flavored French Fries

Dinner was okay in the early going for Restaurant Girl at Ago, with the pizzas and appetizers doing their job. But then the pastas and proteins came, and with them a string of adjectives — “gamey,” “salty,” “sloppy,” “oily,” and “overcooked” — that reduced the place to a single star. [NYDN]

Momofuku Ko has hard stools, no atmosphere, no liquor, no service, and the food is not surefire on every course. But the food Frank Bruni did get, along with the $85 bill, was enough to get the place its inevitable three stars. [NYT]

“[Chef Daniel] Humm's foams, reductions and drizzles have huge payoffs.” Indeed they do! Restaurant Girl is flabbergasted by Eleven Madison Park's flashy, precise cooking and awards them her first five-star review. [NYDN]

Ryan Sutton also hits Ko and produces more or less the same review, minus the deathless Bruni prose. The verdict: “[W]hile Ko might be one of America's great restaurants, it's not quite a four-star restaurant.” [Bloomberg]

The first less-than-stellar Ko review is in and suggests that reality is creeping in. Yes, the food was terrific, but you’ve already heard all about it, and the staff isn’t particularly friendly. Plus, “[s]itting on backless, uncushioned wooden stools for more than two hours can be a challenge for the best of us.” [WSJ]

It’s one-star time for Commerce; Frank Bruni admires chef Harold Moore’s as “ambitious and unpredictable,” but not necessarily in a good way. And the place is LOUD. [NYT]
Related: Commercial Appeal

A surprise two-star review for the mostly unnoticed Korhogo 126 in Brooklyn; Restaurant Girl loves the African spices. But did she really have to say that it had “soul”? [NYDN]
Related: Embattled Bistro Now Serving ‘Nouveau African’ at Korhogo 126

Frank Bruni gives Merkato 55 a single star, thanks to “laughable” service and a menu that only registers as intermittently African. Still, it's not a takedown — the review is good-naturedly amused throughout. [NYT]

It's three big Restaurant Girl stars for Elettaria, as the diminutive critic swoons over the dishes and “dinner theater” aspects of the place. She has reservations on a few dishes and says a banquette is key, but this is pretty much a rave. [NYDN]

Paul Adams likewise admires Elettaria and sees Akthar Nawab's career coming to its fruition at last. A good week for Elettaria. [NYS]

Mas, tucked away into an odd corner of the West Village, has been off the city’s radar for a while, but has been plugging away, and now been rewarded by a very appreciative two-star rereview by Frank Bruni. [NYT]

Steve Cuozzo goes wild for Mia Dona: “The impossibly inexpensive, all-Italian sequel to prematurely shuttered Dona is also almost impossibly good — and not just in relation to the prices.” Alrighty then! [NYP]

Paul Adams, though noting some early lapses, likes Mia Dona too, but says that it falls into the uncanny valley between the refined (Anthos) and the rustic (Kefi). [NYS]

Randall Lane bestows three stars of six on Merkato 55 in a decidedly middling review. The place covers too much ground, he says, “an African greatest-hits tour that works only because there are so few top-shelf regional African restaurants here in the first place.” [TONY]

It's not that Steve Cuozzo doesn't get Merkato 55 or like Marcus Samuelsson. It's just that the food was pretty uneven when he went there and the chef was seldom around. Quoth the Cuozz: "But Samuelsson is too great a talent to let Merkato 55 slide into another Meatpacking District party venue. I hope he finds the time to make his labor of love worthy of our love, too." [NYP]

Alan Richman is back at what he does best, applying his critical pen to the efforts of high-toned tablecloth restaurants, in this case South Gate. He likes the food, but finds the place a little soulless and the staff entirely too service-y. (Though since he’s not anonymous; that’s bound to be a problem in any new restaurant he dines in.) [GQ]

“It's a new era, and Bar Boulud belongs to it.” That's why, even though the hot items are mostly “snoozers,” the restaurant deserves two stars. Another Zeitgeist review from Frank Bruni. [NYT]

Steve Cuozzo doesn't give out stars, but if he did, he wouldn't be giving three to Dovetail, whose stellar critical reception he recapitulates in a forceful, acerbic review. “The Times' Frank Bruni, who found 'drab' décor at Anthos a reason to deny that truly original, forward-Greek place three stars, overlooked Dovetail's butt-ugly brown palette to exult over the likes of — holy cow! — monkfish and lobster on the same plate.” [NYP]

Writing on his GQ blog, Alan Richman obliterates Brasserie Les Halles, but why? Who was thinking about it, anyway? And who thought it was good? The review seems conceived as a blow against Tony Bourdain, but it does him no harm. [GQ]

In a landmark for molecular gastronomy in America, the movement’s top proponent, Wylie Dufresne, gets his third star for wd-50. A historic review, especially as Frank Bruni expresses the usual reservations about overly cerebral cooking. [NYT]

Bar Boulud finally gets some respect from Alan Richman, who praises its blue-ribbon charcuterie and says of its much-maligned mains, “The worst that can be said…is that the recipes are relentlessly conventional — lamb stew, roasted chicken, boudin blanc. The best is that such a style of cooking is terribly missed.” [GQ]

Restaurant Girl seems to have been distinctly unimpressed with about half of the dishes she tried at Adour, resulting in a lukewarm, two-and-a-half-star review. Ducasse’s latest is not getting off to a great start. [NYDN]

Frank Bruni finds Bar Blanc fussy, mannered, overly fastidious — and very, very good. The two stars should take the sting out of his review for the place's owners. [NYT]
Related: Raising the Bar

Restaurant Girl hits Williamsburg’s Zenkichi and, between the room, the food, and the sake selection, seems to have a real find on her hands. [NYDN]

Randall Lane joins in the general enthusiasm for Dovetail , but now he seems unwilling to go back to his five-star-granting ways and so ends up giving them only four — the equivalent, in traditional star terms, to a two-star review, which is not what this reads as. [TONY]

Citing cleverness, finesse and his own “hugely positive” experiences eating there, Frank Bruni gives Dovetail three stars to go along with Adam Platt’s. [NYT]
Related: This Dove Flies

Poor Bar Boulud, on the other hand, continues to get pilloried. Randall Lane gives it only three stars (of six), and no doubt it would be a lot worse if not for the world-class charcuterie. [TONY]
Related: Daniel Disappoints

Restaurant Girl, too, got her licks in on BB, giving it two stars (of four) for Syrah-heavy sauces, unreliable service, and mishandled snails and tartare. This has got to be killing Boulud. [NYDN]

Frank Bruni can't help but make a one-act play out of his one-star 2nd Avenue Deli review: Sholom Aleichem by way of Oscar Wilde. A classic review, even if you don't come out of it knowing much about the food at 2nd Avenue Deli. [NYT]

Reviewing on his blog, Alan Richman delivers a less colorful, but more accurate and knowing account, of the place, which is even more admiring. [GQ]

Ryan Sutton isn't impressed one bit by Southgate — he thinks it's expensive and uninspired, broadly speaking. Not a whit of enthusiasm here. [Bloomberg]