1) Frank Bruni dusts off the goose-egger, fires it up and slaps Lonesome Dove with a zero star: satisfactory. It's not Ninja-bad, but it ain't pretty either:
Lonesome Dove imagines and executes what might be called contemporary cowpoke cuisine. It’s a mash-up of the Southwest, the Wild West, the Outback and maybe even Brokeback, with a menu of meaty chops, peppery rubs, crunchy starches, slick beans and a Noah’s ark of birdies and beasties including kangaroo.Overall, quite a beating, indeed. (Also, no explanation for the Brokeback reference, really.) Love's got quite a bit of his own money in the restaurant, so chapter two, "Compromising for NY," should prove a good read. [NYT]The kangaroo — it tasted somewhat like lean beef — appeared as slivers of reddish meat on blue corn chips with avocado and corn scattered about. These were marsupial nachos for trailblazing diners, but they were more interesting in theory than in reality.
At various times Lonesome Dove has also served quail quesadillas and rabbit empanadas, but in each case chicken would have worked as well.
2) Paul Adams is the first of the majors to file on Goblin Market and if his take is a leading indicator, Goblin Market is going to feel right at home on the Deathwatch:
At Goblin Market, a new American bistro in SoHo, the routine is much more streamlined. When a friend and I showed up for dinner at 7 on a weeknight, the restaurant was two-thirds empty, but still the host warned us sternly that we'd have to vacate our table by 8:15. When the cutoff time came, many tables were still empty, and nary a free drink had been offered, but we were hustled out just the same. A week later, astoundingly, an optimistic second visit was met with the exact same bum's-rush treatment: Unsmilingly, unapologetically, we were given a tight deadline to choke down our dinner and then shooed out of the decidedly uncrowded restaurant.'Decidedly uncrowded' not exactly the perfect phrase match for 'new restaurant.' [NY Sun]
Ahead, Adam Platt at Michael Lomonaco's Porter House and Elsewhere like you don't even know.
3) Adam Platt is again at a steakhouse (last time it was STK/Lonesome Dove), this time of the name Porter House. It's a Plat two-star story:
Compared with that of many of the designer steakhouses of today, the beef on the menu at Porter House is, for the most part, refreshingly straightforward. There are no notations on the menu denoting what your cow was fed (for the record, Mr. Lomonaco prefers corn to grass) or how long the beef was aged. And you won’t find waiters pushing outrageously priced cuts of Kobe or Wagyu beef (although on Wednesdays there’s an excellent Kobe-hanger-steak special). The restaurant’s one gimmick is the profusion of porterhouse cuts on the menu, and it actually sort of works.That third star is proving to be a hard one to get from Platt, though this review is mostly positive. Lomonaco should do fine here. [NYM]
Elsewhere, Peter Meehan at Sheep Station, Sietsema at Sheng Wang, Randall Lane one-stars Hawaiian Tropic Zone, Bob Lape at 7Square, Tables at Zucco, Ryan Sutton files the early word on Cluny and Waverly Inn, Strong at Cafe Cluny, Nosh at iCi and the Feisty Foodie at Delmonaco's.
