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]

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]

The view at Chop Suey is worth a star in itself to Frank Bruni, which is a good thing, because the food is “an uneven mash of inspiration and clumsiness.” [NYT]

Restaurant Girl is happy to have Eighty One on the Upper West Side; if only they did a better job with seafood, she would have been able to give it more than two stars. [NYDN]

Randall Lane is done messing around. This week, South Gate feels his wrath for “mediocre” food such as “gravy sporting the kind of congealed film I associate with bad TV dinners.” Two stars (out of six)! [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]

“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]