One Star for Geoffrey Zakarian's The Lambs Club

This week, Sam Sifton files on The Lambs Club, the clubby Midtown newcomer from veteran chef Geoffrey Zakarian. He awards it one star. The food is good, except when it isn't. Ditto for the service. What sounds most attractive about the restaurant is the vibe and the scene:

The scene at the Lambs can recall those days, the room filled with editors and artists, writers, models and hangers-on, along with Broadway actors and in-town rock stars and friends of Sant Singh Chatwal, who with Vikram Chatwal, his glamorous son, owns the hotel. They gather in contentment and good clothes first to drink old-school cocktails from Sasha Petraske, and then to eat Mr. Zakarian’s carefully prepared, wealth-friendly, vaguely internationalized comfort food, just as if it were 1989 all over again.

Ryan Sutton reports that new chef Didier Elena is finally making Adour worth the cost: "the new resident chef, Didier Elena, cooks vegetables as well as Blue Hill and cote de boeuf as expertly as Minetta Tavern...And contrary to the culinary zeitgeist, there are no food- friendly cocktail lists, no small plates and no suggested 'middle courses,' unless one counts the caviar section of the menu." [Bloomberg]

Sarah DiGregorio finds some good food but mostly service hiccups and a major scene at Peels. She says of the T-bone: "It was a remarkable dish in a restaurant that serves lots of solid, pleasant stuff, but little that's truly memorable. Whether or not you want to wait 30 or 40 minutes to eat this food depends on how enamored you are with the shining scene of it. Otherwise, go for lunch..." [VV]

Jay Cheshes on Jeffrey Chodorow's FoodParc: "With its high-tech ordering system and mod white interior, FoodParc just might be a prototype for the food court of the future—if only the cooking weren’t so uneven and the user experience so fundamentally flawed." [TONY]

This week Adam Platt awards one star each to Peels and The Lambs Club. He seems to enjoy the food at the latter, not so much the former: "Not that the food is really the point at a restaurant like this. Having a good time is the point. And although I never had a really bad dinner at Peels, I never enjoyed anything close to that clubby, clannish sense of occasion that makes Freemans such a unique place to eat." [NYM]

THE ELSEWHERE: Gael Greene stuffs herself at Michael Huynh's Baorrito, Robert Sietsema is mostly impressed with the new City Sandwich, Steve Cuozzo sizes up the four food trucks in the Tavern on the Green's parking lot while mourning the loss of the restaurant, Sietsema also recommends anything out of the tandoor at Floral Park's Sohna Punjab Indian Restaurant & Bar, Ligaya Mishan finds Japanese home cooking at Kappa Sake House in Park Slope, and Betsy Andrews likes most of the food and thinks Lowcountry could become a franchise.

THE BLOGS: The Food Doc swings by Kin Shop and straight loves the place, NY Journal has "Chodorrofic" (not good) service at El Chod's new Bar Basque, A Tiger in the Kitchen finds spotty execution at The Fat Radish, eateryROW likes the complimentary coleslaw and pickles at Rego Park's Ben's Best, The Pink Pig isn't wholly impressed with Momofuku Milk Bar's pastrami croissant, Law and Food finds a weak steak burger (and laments not ordering the regular burger) at Marc Forgione's brunch, The Girl Who Ate Everything has a big roundup covering Diner, Blue Bottle, Shake Shack, Madeleine Patisserie, Eataly and Pho Grand, Serious Eats gives an A- to Osteria Morini, and ScoBoCo (now writing at GlenwoodNYC) has a blast at Jeffrey's.