Reviews for El Rey, One World Trade, Four Horsemen, Safari, and More

This week, both Eater critics drop three stars: Robert Sietsema is a fan of the out of the box approach taken at Bushwick's Farro, and Ryan Sutton declares Stephen Starr and British-import Jason Atherton's The Clocktower one of New York's best new restaurants. Here's a roundup reviews from other critics around town.

Pete Wells, like many before him, finds that he is pleasantly surprised by how much he digs the vegan chicharrones at El Rey: "The dish turns a Mexican street snack, chicharrones de harina, into a salad, and turns salad into an event. These mock pork skins are tossed with mint and sticks of raw jicama in a bowl....They are dusted with smoldering Aleppo pepper and lemony ground sumac, strafed by a terrific hot sauce of chiles and pickled pineapple and mellowed with a nondairy cashew cream." One star.

Steve Cuozzo (like Ryan Sutton) truly hated his experience at the One World Trade Center's dining spots. Here's The Cuozz on One Dine: "The feast included flavor-free ‘tuna crudo' that would be indistinguishable in a blind tasting from mammal, fish or Jell-O. A few hours earlier, in bar/cafe One Mix, I had ‘Brooklyn sliders' apparently made from the Manhattan schist displayed in a ground-floor entrance maze."

Michael Kaminer has a wretched time at Caffe Dante's replacement Dante: "In memory of Caffe Dante, you'd think those behind Dante would at least ace Italian. No such luck. Creamy, plump burrata ($15) cheese deserves better company than a sad, saggy slow-roasted tomato that's depressingly close to its canned cousins." One star.

Tejal Rao really enjoys the wine, food, ambient volume level, and just about everything else at the Four Horsemen, James Murphy's new wine bar: "Although the beef tartare with sesame crackers looks somewhat lean and Scandinavian, it's actually nice and fatty, full of flavor and texture. This style of food suits the vibe of the room. It's better than good but without showing off—a little bit freestyle." Two stars.

Zachary Feldman takes a culinary trip to Somalia at Safari in Harlem: "[One night] the kitchen had run out of rice for the goat. In the kitchen, chef Munira Musse...substituted a massive pile of noodles coated in a rich basil-rosemary butter sauce, a seeming aberration that makes perfect sense once you consider that Italy controlled a sizable chunk of Somalia from the late nineteenth century through the early days of World War II."

Virginia's Credit: Daniel Krieger

The Elsewhere: Tables for Two is into the Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, and Malaysian influenced food at L.E.S. restaurant Chomp Chomp. Christina Izzo is impressed with the pedigree of the team at Virginia's, but less so with their food, giving the place three out of five stars. And, Ligaya Mishan is smitten with the Hungarian summer treat langos (think: fried bread with toppings) from the roving Langos Truck.

Oleanders Credit: Nick Solares

The Blogs: The Food Doc is happy to find a toned down version of wd~50 on Alder's tasting menu. In Williamsburg, Restaurant Girl can't wait for fall at Oleanders, when diners won't have to run into pool goers in the shared restrooms. Meanwhile, The Pink Pig enjoys the Flintstones-sized beef ribs at new Bushwick barbecue spot The Shop. And, Joe DiStefano cools down with the "simultaneously sour, spicy, and crunchy" liang fen, or cold noodles with toppings, at Gui Zhou.