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]

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

Alain Ducasse's war to win New York seems to be working: Frank Bruni gives Adour three stars, calling it a “qualified victory. It’s not through-and-through rapturous, but it’s first-rate.” [NYT]
Related: L'Obsession [NYM]

Maze by Gordon Ramsay comes in for a thoroughgoing appreciation by Bloomberg's Richard Vines, a Brit who knows Ramsay's restaurants the way New Yorkers know Mario Batali's. [Bloomberg]

Jay Cheshes sees in Elettaria a checklist of downtown tropes — mustachioed bartenders, swank design, of-the-moment ingredients — but it's lacking somewhat in the way the food is conceived and executed, in a three- (of six) star review. [TONY]

Frank Bruni rewards Michael Psilakis for his practical efforts to create, in Mia Dona, an affordable restaurant with two stars. (And possibly to make up the third star Anthos should have gotten.) [NYT]

Overall, Restaurant Girl cottons to Merkato 55, though she reserves her fullest praise on account of a few “flubs” and boring desserts. She likes the energy and audacity of the place, though. [NYDN]

Paul Adams has more or less the same sentiments: He likes the place, but it “doesn't dazzle.” Then there are these words, which no doubt the restaurant dreads reading: “not as flavorful as the version I get for half the price uptown.” [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]

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]

Who says Frank Bruni has no heart? After demoting Le Cirque last year, Bruni restores the third star, courtesy largely to new chef Christophe Bellanca’s masterly handling of ultraluxe ingredients and, of course, the Maccioni family’s trademark feudal service. [NYT]

Maybe you don’t consider the salmon at Dovetail “a religious experience,” the way Restaurant Girl does, but everyone seems to agree with Adam Platt that it’s a very fine restaurant and outrageously good for the Upper West Side. [NYDN]
Related: This Dove Flies

Ryan Sutton has filed the first review of Adour, and he makes it sound, at least to anachronistically minded readers, truly awesome. Did you know Adour is serving lobster thermidor? Lobster thermidor! In this day and age! Sutton is also impressed by the virtual wine list, as most other visitors have been. [Bloomberg]

Mesa Grill loses a star, but this is one of the worst one-star reviews you'll ever read, even going so far as to compare it to gulag gourmet: “During one dinner the three slivers of chicken in the appetizer tacos were among the most shriveled, desiccated pieces of meat I’ve seen outside a bodega buffet at 3 a.m.” [NYT]
Related: Salute the Gulag Gourmet Movement

Now this is something cheering: Alan Richman found a tablecloth restaurant that got him genuinely excited. Dovetail's food, he says approvingly, is “exuberant and shocking” — in a good way. [Bloomberg]

Paul Adams hits Cooper Tavern, a not particularly ambitious hotel restaurant recently given a "meh" review by Frank Bruni, and likes it a little better, although the fries are “pathetically poor” and the pork chop is “hardly going to be the talk of the city's pork chop grapevine.” We can testify that that part is true. [NYS]

The latest Blue Ribbon Sushi gets a whopping two stars from Frank Bruni, despite its titular sushi being not that great. No, it’s the souped-up fried chicken that added a star, making this two weeks in a row that poultry has saved the day. [NYT]

Paul Adams hits new East Village comfort-food zone the Smith with one of his rare bad reviews — generally, he finds the food clumsy and gross: “A main course of lamb schnitzel ($17) shows what the kitchen can do at its best: not particularly much.” Ouch! [NYS]

Nor was Danyelle Freeman especially enthralled with Brasserie 44, which got one and a half stars out of four. Her recollections of its food seem highly detailed, suggesting that she didn’t leave her notebook behind. [NYDN]
Related: So the Critic Left Her (?) Notes. So What?

The wildly uneven Barbuto earns a single star from Frank Bruni, almost entirely on the strength of a well-roasted Bell & Evans chicken. To quote Winston Churchill, “Some chicken!” [NYT]

Alan Richman was appalled by how small the portions were at Grayz, how much they cost, and how shady most of them were, except for the magnificent, world-beating short rib: “In complexity and satisfaction, this dish reminded me most of the Gray Kunz of Lespinasse, the chef we miss so much.” [Bloomberg]

Randall Lane gets that Fiamma’s Fabio Trachocchi is cooking in a grand, Continental style and doesn’t hold that against him, but the food is too rich and the service too sloppy to give him the five or six stars the place would have liked And so they have to settle for four. [TONY]

The story on Irving Mill was written before Frank Bruni delivered the coup de grâce — an ambivalent one-star review that pointed out the restaurant's odd inconsistencies. At this point, a one star was probably a best-case scenario for the place. [NYT]

Speaking of best-case scenarios, we bet that Gordon Ramsay had higher hopes for Bruni's rereview of his big restaurant than the one that runs in Dining Briefs. Bruni finds Gordon Ramsay at the London still excellent but boring, and Peter Meehan isn't too crazy about Bun. [NYT]

We heard that Ilili was a disaster, with bad service and worse food. So did Paul Adams, who was surprised to find that the word on the street was dead wrong. Adams even calls the food was “far, far better than it needs to be.” [NYS]

The best steaks at Primehouse NY are good enough to earn a single star from Frank Bruni — which is saying something, given that he had problems with service, didn't like the other entrées, and even found the rib eyes to be less than they ought to be. But the Creekstone strips carried the day, as they always do. [NYT]

The small, porky tapas at Jason Neroni's Cantina seem to impress Robert Sietsema, but his review leaves you with the sense that, croquettes aside, the place is still a work-in-progress. [VV]

Paul Adams dines at Smith's and praises the rich, possibly too rich, appetizers, while frowning over some of the mains. But on the whole he likes the place: “Some dishes are excessive by design, others poorly executed in the heat of the dinner rush, and a few, like the pasta, remarkably good and worthy of a return visit — perhaps after the first wave of crowds has moved on.” [NYS]

In spite of lousy desserts and a misstep in the fish department there, Frank Bruni couldn't avoid giving Allen and Delancey's complex, accomplished food two stars. [NYT]

Alan Richman, no pushover, was also very impressed by Allen & Delancey, though he noted that the chef's strength clearly lies in the realm of turf, rather than surf. Still, the respect is there: “The visceral satisfaction is high. He piles on flavors, and he does so with assurance.” [Bloomberg]

Irving Mill: tired concept, spotty execution. Restaurant Girl joins the chorus. [NYDN]

Though the food sounded pretty good at Ilili, the place treated Steve Cuozzo so badly that the Cuozz was forced to pay them back with an atomic review — one that sounds richly deserved. [NYP]

In one of his silliest reviews, Frank Bruni goes on for half the article complaining that restaurants don't always fit in neat categories, then punishes Grayz for it with a blistering one-star review. Odd. [NYT]

Bruni's mini-review in Dining Briefs is much more logical and succinct: “That’s Belcourt: the predictable made surprising; comfort with a wink.” Meanwhile, on the undercard, Peter Meehan was mostly pleased with Graffiti, despite its minute size, and Marian Burros not so happy with Lucy of Gramercy. [NYT]

Fiamma hits the three-star jackpot, tickling Frank Bruni in his sweet spot and earning itself the critical credibility Steve Hanson wanted when he hired Fabio Trabocchi. Bruni admits the place isn't Italian, but he is in love with the ultrarich, ultracomposed food. [NYT]

Market Table took over the space that was Shopsin's, and this gave the Randall Lane the good idea of reviewing both restaurants at the same time. Market Table earns four stars (out of six, mind you) for its solid food and gracious service. Kenny, in his new digs at Essex Street Market, gets three for his still terrific food and his not-so-gracious service. [TONY]

The Fiamma review should wash away any melancholy caused by Alan Richman's lukewarm number on Primehouse, Fiamma's sister. Richman likes the steaks pretty well and singles out crab cake for enthusiastic praise, but he casts a skeptical eye on pretty much everything else, from its resident bull-god to the Himalayan salt aging room. [Bloomberg]