The Dining Room at The Modern Nabs Three Stars

For this week's review, Pete Wells files on The Dining Room at The Modern, which is the fine-dining experience at Danny Meyer and Gabriel Kreuther's eight-year-old Midtown restaurant. It has held two stars since Frank Bruni reviewed it in 2005 (he gave the Bar Room three in 2007), but now Wells upgrades the restaurant to a three star rating. The critic likes the look of the food and the dining room:

The white walls and tablecloths, and the grid of steel and glass facing the museum's sculpture garden, suggest a contemporary gallery. This graceful, understated room stands back so the artistry can happen on the plate. Mr. Kreuther follows through. He is bold with color, painting salmon crimson with a marinade of beet juice, or drawing a dark green stripe of powdered Kaffir lime down the center of a monkfish fillet resting in a gorgeous sauce of blood orange and mustard.

He is intrepid with flavor as well. Roasted lobster tail seemed complete with a smoky pimento broth that I would have happily drunk from a teacup, but then a server brought something extra, a tiny portion of tender claw meat under a wheel of burned sugar that went beyond caramel by several degrees of bitterness. It was daring and wonderful.