Reviews for Betony, River Styx, Corvo Bianco, and More

Many of the big critics took the week off. But Pete Wells is still at it, with a review of Bryce Shuman and Eamon Rockey's Midtown restaurant, Betony. The Times critic gives the restaurant three big stars: "The greatest appetizer, and this is a hard call, is a slice of seared foie gras under a crisp kale leaf. Plugged into the middle of the foie gras like a pink bullet is a circle of smoked pork hocks. A server pours a consommé made from the hocks over the top. That's it: liver, kale, ham broth, ham and some pickled black garlic. It is the most soulful foie gras I've ever tasted." [NYT]

Stan Sagner gives three stars out of five to River Styx in Greenpoint: "Kick off with corn and shrimp fritters ($10), a pair of pillowy, football-shaped hush puppies fried golden then slathered in glossy shrimp mayo. The first one is delicious. The second just decadent. A bit more oddball, but no less appealing, is the awkwardly named 'Anchovies that have been sitting by the fire' ($7). This punch-line-sounding title is actually pretty descriptive: The tiny fillets are slowly melted hearthside until they collapse into a concentrated pile of silver mush. For a fishy head rush, try them straight." [NYDN]

Alan Richman files on the various vendors at Smorgasburg. He finds a particularly delicious schnitzel at one stand: "The purveyor was Schnitz, and the sandwich I selected, called Mrs. Child, turned out to be the dish of the day, a breaded chicken cutlet that was juicy within and crunchy on the outside. Such perfect texture is virtually impossible to achieve with veal, the preferred meat of German and Austrian schnitzel eaters. Fortunately, there were none around to complain." [GQ]

[Krieger]
Amelia Lester of Tables for Two has a spotty meal at Corvo Bianco on the Upper West Side: "As with those cocktails, the food sometimes suffers from an excess of ambition. Burrata, which is so inherently delightful that any amount of fuss seems too much, came scattered with crunchy crumbs resembling savory granola; these turned out to be 'black garlic pan grattato.' A fava-and-corn bruschetta was overwhelmed by pepper, and the squid-ink trenette, only sparsely populated with sea urchin, had all of the gluiness you'd expect, without any of the mysterious funkiness." [New Yorker]

Ligaya Mishan loves the tasting menu at Take Root, a three-night-a-week restaurant that's run out of a Carroll Gardens yoga studio: "[T]here are genuine surprises, like the juxtaposition of olive purée and coconut milk in a plate of cod, puzzling at first and then convincing; linguine cooked in corn milk and finished with a Parmesan-leek broth; and the somewhat macabre configuration of Japanese eggplant, cut like tree stumps, on a loose black garlic pudding looped with garlic scapes and stems of purslane." [NYT]

[Daniel Krieger]

Carey Jones of Serious Eats finds a lot to like at Estela on Houston Street: "I could've eaten three orders of the blood sausage croquettes ($10), its characteristic flavor neither masked nor overplayed. And I was a little too possessive of the mussels escabeche ($12) that my table had intended as a shared plate. Each mussel is showcased as a plump, perfect thing, atop toast soaked in aioli from above, oil and vinegar from below." [SENY]

[Sweetgreen by Krieger]

THE BLOGS: Gael Greene does not quite make a connection with Sweetgreen, Chris Stang of Immaculate Infatuation gives an 8.1 rating to Sushi Dojo in the East Village, The Food Doc loves the Vietnamese fare at Bunker in Ridgewood, Joe DiStefano visits Taipei Hong and Two Peck Chicken in Flushing, NYC Foodie has a terrific first meal at Piora in the West Village, Cheakmark Eats has a fun time at Schiller's on the Lower East Side, and NY Journal likes most (but not all) of the dishes he samples at Alder in the East Village.
· All Coverage of Week in Reviews [~ENY~]

[Top Photo: River Styx by Krieger]