Restaurant review, Kaia: Please Boer Me.

For nearly two decades, New York diners have been regaled with the fascinating and varied cuisines of West Africa, most notably Senegalese, Guinean, Nigerian, Ghanaian, and Liberian. We've nearly had our fill of East African, too—though, annoyingly, every Ethiopian menu is nearly the same. Food from the southern reaches of the continent has proved a harder coconut to crack, but we've gradually developed a small collection of restaurants with culinary origins in the Republic of South Africa, featuring a crazy combination of African, English, Dutch, Malaysian, Portuguese, and Indian influences. First to arrive 13 years ago was Fort Greene's Madiba, an eye-opening spot decorated like a Quonset hut, emphasizing the Voortrekker cuisine of the Dutch settlers known as Boers, who migrated northward in the 19th century, fleeing drought, the English, and militant African tribes. Then, around four years ago, a wine bar named Xai Xai appeared, and soon thereafter a barbecue, Braai, on the same block of West 51st Street. And now we have another South African establishment: Kaia, a wine bar on the Upper East Side with an ambitious menu.

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Restaurant review, John Brown Smokehouse: Long Island City Gets a Great Barbecue.

It's something of an urban miracle how quickly NYC has gone from being a barbecue wasteland to a national 'cue capital. The phenomenon began 20 years ago with the founding of Stick to Your Ribs by Brit hairdresser Robert Pearson in a haunted corner of Queens and proceeded through the establishment of Blue Smoke, Hill Country, Fette Sau, and Mable's Smokehouse, among a dozen others not quite as good but no less enthusiastic. Danny Meyer's annual Barbecue Block Party stoked the flames. Although generally tilting at Texas barbecue, our pits have also dabbled in styles as diverse as those of Memphis, Oklahoma, and the Carolinas. But never before has a place focused on Kansas City. Until now.

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Restaurant review, Brooklyn Wok Shop Strikes Up the Bland.

Let's say you craved Chinese food of the kind snagged from carryouts when you were a kid. But, somewhat absurdly, you wanted to enjoy it in a bistro setting complete with slightly upscale decor, wine and beer, comfortable seating, and ingredients that were sustainably sourced. Don't mind paying two to three times the normal price? Brooklyn Wok Shop is your place. Located in a condo-sprouting section of Williamsburg long since cleansed of its actual Chinese carryouts, the Wok Shop seems like a safe formula for a restaurant. In a decorative touch filched from Ippudo, one wall is covered with 200 perfectly aligned bowls. There are low tables and high tables, recessed lighting, and a general austerity and serenity about the space—no red dragons or crawling babies or guys bursting from the kitchen running with plastic bags to their motorized bikes. Place your order at a counter in the rear from a list of mainly Cantonese dishes—though the choice is limited to a small fraction of the 100 to 200 selections normally offered on Chinese menus. In a novel touch, you're given a number on a stick to be placed on the table of your choice.

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Restaurant review, Zero Otto Nove: Rabbit, Run!

Twelve years ago, when Roberto Restaurant first appeared in Belmont—the Bronx's Little Italy—there weren't as many good dining spots as there are today. Back then, proto-foodies trekked to Arthur Avenue for the purpose of purchasing fresh raw bunny, perfect cannoli, Calabrian cheeses made in Pennsylvania, and to visit a wine store that offered two dozen Brunellos. But they dined as an afterthought. It wasn't that Roberto was so different in focus from the other restaurants there. Like the others, it still served a southern Italian menu. Roberto's, though, originated in the recent past rather than more than a century ago. In addition to furnishing amazing food, the place provided a fascinating glimpse of what Italian-American cuisine might have been had the full range of raw materials been readily available to immigrants 100 years ago.

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Restaurant review, Florencia 13: Gangsters Get Their Burritos.

You can't imagine how many complaints I've fielded from Angelenos who can't stand NYC's Mexican food. Invariably, the tortillas are all wrong, the tacos filled with funny meats, the burritos never quite the right size or shape and loaded with random extraneous crap. (They ponder: Why can't Gothamites put the rice on the outside?) I never quite know how to address these laments, since our city has perfectly fine Mexican fare, including authentic Pueblan and Guerreran, Tex-Mex, bistro-Mex, haute-cuisine-Mex, taco-truck-Mex, celebrity-chef-Mex, chain-Mex, and margarita mills serving awful-Mex as a sideline. We're simply deficient in Cal-Mex.

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Restaurant review, Benares: Howdy, Squishy Goat Foot!

Perhaps the world's oldest city, Varanasi is also Hinduism's holiest site. It lies on the banks of the Ganges River in Uttar Pradesh, a state in northeastern India that borders Nepal. The city is home to the famous burning ghats—steps that descend to the water where religious ablutions are performed, and dead bodies are committed to fire on makeshift wooden biers, after which the remains are tossed into the river. It is said that if you die in Varanasi, you'll achieve instant enlightenment. Although I hoped for an epiphany, I had no intention of dying for it as I stepped into the new restaurant on 56th Street called Benares—the Anglicized name of Varanasi. Somewhat disappointingly, the decor does little to evoke the city itself. (What did I expect? A crematorium?) Sure, there are little framed examples of indigenous needlework, but these are barely noticeable compared with the faux Tiffany chandelier, tall and stately yellow banquettes, and generic upscale feel of the place.

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Restaurant review, Genting Palace: We Wager You'll Like It.

When Malaysia's Genting Group opened its casino in—of all places—Ozone Park's Aqueduct Racetrack, it followed the same formula it had used at glitzier locations in Singapore and Manila, launching luxury restaurants right on the premises to satisfy the culinary needs of its high-rolling patrons. At Aqueduct, where wealthy gamblers might be harder to come by, there's a ritzy steak house called RW Prime and an upscale Cantonese restaurant proudly named Genting Palace, clearly aimed at Asian gamblers. The limited menu focuses on southern Chinese fare with Southeast Asian and Taiwanese twists, showcasing premium ingredients like abalone, shark's fin, bird's nests, and live seafood pulled from the cleanest tanks you've ever seen.

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Restaurant review, Swallow Some Nettles at Parish Hall!

When Williamsburg's Egg cracked open seven years ago, it was at an auspicious time. The local and sustainable movement was in full swing, comfort food as a dining ideal loomed large, and the immediate neighborhood had nothing like a conventional diner where you could get an eggs-and-bacon breakfast—mandates the new restaurant handily fulfilled. Formerly considered low-end, eggs (like hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizza) were ripe for glamorization. Science chefs were turning them into wiggly blobs, and news had recently arrived that the free-range product was virtually salmonella-free and lower in cholesterol. Egg couldn't lose.

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Restaurant review, Pastry Chef Elwyn Boyles Conjures Desserts in the Sky.

Know this: Every time you wave away the dessert menu without even looking at it, a cook's heart shatters like a pane of burnt sugar. Every pastry chef dreams of hitting us with their bill of fare while we've got an edge of hunger and dignity, and the light in our eyes hasn't died, but instead he has to deal with us at the end of the evening. If he's to woo us, he must do it when we're full, perhaps a little drunk, willing (maybe) to split a slice of cake among ourselves but often preferring to skip it altogether for just a coffee and the check, please.

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Restaurant review, Little Pepper: Eat Heat.

Seven years ago, when Little Pepper opened on Roosevelt Avenue across from the Bland housing projects, it was hard to get diners to go there. Located on the subterranean level of a fading strip mall, it was surrounded by massage parlors, and the stairwell leading to the entrance was often heaped with litter. The place also seemed like a front for a gambling operation, because poker players with cigarettes dangling from their lips would emerge from a hidden rear room during your meal, look furtively around, and dash out. Yet the restaurant delivered the most spice-intensive Sichuan food the city had yet seen.

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Restaurant review, La Vara: Thanks, Spanish Inquisition.

There was a time in Spain when pork was the law. The Spanish Inquisition ramped up in the 1400s to brutally enforce a Christian culture. So while Spain's Jewish and Muslim communities did not eat pork, they began cooking it as an angry gesture of assimilation, a fat middle finger to the Grand Inquisitor, who inspected even their kitchens for signs of deviance. With time, the gesture became a part of their culinary traditions. That's why you'll find a shining quarter of a piglet, its thin skin shattering under your fork, its sweet, buttery meat sliding off the shank bone, at a new Sephardi-Moorish spot in Cobble Hill. Alexandra Raij and her husband, Eder Montero, run two Manhattan tapas bars, Txikito and El Quinto Pino. But La Vara, which opened in late March, plays with the older, irresistible flavors established by Spain's forgotten cooks.

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Restaurant review, Is Sao Mai Our Best Vietnamese Restaurant?

No cuisine is as obsessed with fresh herbs as Vietnamese. Take the papaya salad ($8.50) at Sao Mai. In the moist toss of pale green fruit and bright orange carrots—both shredded into shoelaces—darker flecks catch the eye, like exotic birds flitting through foliage. And when you take your first bite, these pungent herbs assail the tongue in wonderful ways. Holy basil, better than a licorice Twizzler. Peppermint, reminding you to brush your teeth. And Vietnamese mint, flinging off a smoky and spicy scent—you've never tasted anything like it before. Garnished with crushed goobers and laved in a mild vinaigrette, the salad will leave you wanting more, much more.

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Restaurant review, Boukiés: Greek Unorthodox.

The previous tenant in the sprawling corner space at Second Avenue and 2nd Street was Heartbreak. True to its name, the place closed two days before receiving its coveted Michelin star. The fare was Germanic—including a gravy-drenched beef rib the size of a cudgel—but the interior, paved in poured concrete and flaunting red accents, felt like a Swiss bus station. Now Heartbreak owner Christos Valtzoglou has debuted Boukiés, a Greek spot in the reconfigured premises. Although the food can be remarkable, the space remains badly laid out, a challenging labyrinth of wicker chairs and tiny tables that force you to tack back and forth like Odysseus's galley to visit the bathrooms. Watch out for the Minotaur!

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Restaurant review, Landbrot: Bread Lines in West Village!

It's an unsettling start to the summer when the phrase "zombie apocalypse" is tossed about so often, followed by nervous laughter. But there's nothing like "herring with sour cream and boiled vegetables" to strike fear into my heart. Will the flesh of that poor, innocent fish be pulped by acid, the cream fizzing with age, or the vegetables waterlogged? At Landbrot, the German all-day café and bakery in the West Village, the herring salad ($11.50) is styled like a holiday platter from the 1950s, everything piled symmetrically on an oval platter of lettuce, but the horrors end there. The pieces of gentle, wine-soused herring are in a fresh sour cream dressing. It might not be splendid, but it is pleasant.

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Restaurant review, Pete Zaaz: The Spud's No Dud, Bud.

For the first century of its existence as an iconic New York food, pizza was easy to define: crust, tomato sauce, cheese. Sure, there were variations that sprung up from time to time. The ziti slice surprised us, and so did the white pizza, the tomato sauce having gone AWOL. Imitations of the original Naples pie diverted our attention, but like other innovations, this one remained reverently within the canon of pizza as we know it—only smaller. Eventually, someone had to throw baby and bathwater out the window at the same time, and it has finally happened at a small pizzeria in an obscure corner of Crown Heights.

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Restaurant review, Reynards: The Wythe Man's Burden.

Brooklyn at dusk. The sky stretched out like a neon T-shirt. Beautiful women in red lips and men in vintage eyeglasses lounge in a converted waterfront factory and nibble on pastured meat. They drink artisanal liquor until they fall into bunk beds built from the guts of an old barrel yard. The Wythe Hotel, which opened in April, might have been conceived by a writer, setting up a parody of Williamsburg circa 2012. But it's the latest project from Andrew Tarlow, the Brooklyn restaurateur, and it rises quite earnestly from the expensive, postindustrial shores of the East River. It was more than a decade ago that Tarlow rehabbed an old diner in Williamsburg that charmed the city with scrappy, effortless locavorism. Tarlow followed Diner with Marlow & Sons, Marlow & Daughters, and Roman's. Of course, the new hotel has put a lot of thought into the food. It has even done away with room service in favor of a farm-to-table restaurant, named for an anthropomorphic fox, no less: Reynards.

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Restaurant review, Bay Ridge Joins the Arab Peninsula.

In the 1890s, Atlantic Avenue south of Brooklyn Heights became the center of the city's burgeoning Arab population. The original residents were Lebanese and Syrians, but in the ensuing decades, they were joined by Jordanians, Egyptians, and Palestinians. The latter half of the 20th century saw a divided Yemen, and in the 1970s, many immigrants arrived from the southern People's Democratic Republic of Yemen. In the East Village, they ran newsstands and candy stores; at the corner of Atlantic and Court, they established a miniature real estate empire that came to include retail stores, apartment buildings, and four restaurants. Gradually, much of Brooklyn's Arab population has migrated southward to Bay Ridge. Two years ago, Bab al Yemen became the first restaurant of its type to be situated within sight of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Just recently, rival Yemen Café; claimed its own South Brooklyn beachhead. The new place is located along a bustling stretch of Fifth Avenue that feels like a Middle Eastern souk: Filigreed brass cookware dangles in glinting displays, bakeries mount racks of baklava in their front windows, and groceries flaunt barrels of olives in shades ranging from deep green to purple to midnight black.

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Restaurant review, Foragers City Table: Something's in Store for You.

A little girl is standing at the entrance to Foragers City Table and reading the menu to her father as he taps away on his BlackBerry. "Hey, Daddy, what's crépinettes? What's yuzu? What's prickly ash?" He doesn't know the answers, and he isn't in the mood to look them up, so eventually they go elsewhere for dinner. It's a shame, because the new Chelsea restaurant could have fed them well. The consulting chef, Douglas Monsalud, runs a catering company in San Francisco and uses Asian ingredients in that easygoing Californian way. He employs only a touch of heat, and the menu appears to have been edited for a G rating. Those crépinettes, for example, would have been ideal to keep two small hands busy: a couple of sausage patties cooked in a lacy petticoat of caul fat that arrive with spears of raw cucumber, crushed peanuts, lettuce cups, and a nuoc cham sauce made soft with Meyer lemon juice ($12).

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Restaurant review, Mission Chinese Food: Red Hot in a Pink Glow.

The advent of Mission Chinese Food on Orchard Street in May was one of the prime events of the season and ushered in an era of good feeling that saw the city's food celebrities in an ebullient mood and in total agreement. They trooped through the restaurant's narrow subterranean passageways, past an open kitchen, and thronged three deep by the bar in the remote dining room—wildly decorated with chairs dangling from the ceiling, red Chinese lanterns that cast a pink glow, and a snarling dragon, mouth agape. The scrum included critics, bloggers, editors of glossy food mags, and French superchef Daniel Boulud, who was seen, rather absurdly, teaching the kitchen staff how to make an omelet.

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Restaurant review, Foragers City Table: Something's in Store for You.

A little girl is standing at the entrance to Foragers City Table and reading the menu to her father as he taps away on his BlackBerry. "Hey, Daddy, what's crépinettes? What's yuzu? What's prickly ash?" He doesn't know the answers, and he isn't in the mood to look them up, so eventually they go elsewhere for dinner. It's a shame, because the new Chelsea restaurant could have fed them well. The consulting chef, Douglas Monsalud, runs a catering company in San Francisco and uses Asian ingredients in that easygoing Californian way. He employs only a touch of heat, and the menu appears to have been edited for a G rating. Those crépinettes, for example, would have been ideal to keep two small hands busy: a couple of sausage patties cooked in a lacy petticoat of caul fat that arrive with spears of raw cucumber, crushed peanuts, lettuce cups, and a nuoc cham sauce made soft with Meyer lemon juice ($12).

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Restaurant review, Lick Some Balls at Yunnan Kitchen.

Yunnan Kitchen is yet another reimagined Chinese restaurant located on the Lower East Side, and you can be sure there will be more. It somewhat resembles Mission Chinese Food in outlook—meaning that questions of authenticity, though they must be asked, are partly beside the point. The place evokes the cuisine of Yunnan, a People's Republic province situated in the southwest, bordering Burma, Laos, and Vietnam. Most of the population is not ethnic Chinese, but a combination of hill tribes that originated in Southeast Asia, who are often treated as second-class citizens by the Chinese government.

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Restaurant review, Food Gallery 32: Getting Chigae With It.

"Mmm, this gravy is delicious," my Taiwanese-Canadian friend exclaimed as she spooned up giant bites of rice swamped with a savory brown sauce. In between, she took stabs at heaps of pickled mustard greens and steamed bok choi. Indeed, she polished off the polished grain and foliage before she even appraised the formidable pair of pork chops that sprawled across her plate. When she finally got to them, the chops alternated chewy parts with tender and were way porky. She finished by sucking the marrow from the bones.
We were dining on a massive $8 platter from Bian Dang (No. 5), the only Taiwanese stall in Food Gallery 32, a gleaming one-year-old food court in Koreatown. The ground floor is devoted to seven counters—predominantly purveying Korean, Korean-Japanese, and Korean-Chinese food—plus a beverage seller and a Red Mango yogurt concession. The ground floor offers a cluster of tables, and there's mezzanine seating above, presenting dramatic views of the food seekers below.

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Restaurant review, Arthur on Smith: Mama's Duck-Fat Popcorn.

The neighborhood might be more new Manhattan than old Italian these days, but if you're looking for a chocolate pudding that has been flustered by pig's blood, airy sandwiches of fried panelle with ricotta, or hot loaves of pork-studded lard bread, you can still find them on a few delicious strips of Carroll Gardens. This makes the locale an ideal landing place for Arthur on Smith, Joe Isidori's new spot on Smith Street that pays its respects to the Bronx-Italian heritage of his food-loving family while keeping South Brooklyn's newer, trendier tastes in mind.

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Restaurant review, El Mio Cid: The Sardines of Bushwick.

Although modern tapas bars have achieved wildfire popularity—inspiring all sorts of other pricey small-plate places—old-guard Spanish restaurants are largely a thing of the past. Many of Gotham's best examples originated in the wake of the Spanish Civil War and provided a dark, romantic dining experience for couples who tucked into broad paelleras of seafood-studded rice, greenish pools of garlic shrimp, and chorizos dramatically set aflame in brandy, served by waiters in starched waistcoats and red cummerbunds. Though a few places remain open in Manhattan and still limp along, gone are the days when James Baldwin famously dined at El Faro, and Greenwich Village, Chelsea, and midtown were thronged with Iberian establishments.

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Restaurant review, Hillside: Just the Two of Us.

"You're waiting for a table next door?" the waitress presumes before even seating you, as if poor Hillside were a frumpy Crawley, called on to politely entertain guests until her more beautiful sister was ready.
It's true—Hillside is plainer than Vinegar Hill House, the romantic charmer on Hudson Avenue. Jean Adamson and Sam Buffa's newest spot doesn't have much of a kitchen, only a stone-paneled counter beside the bar that turns out a handful of dishes. Brian Leth is the chef of both places—though at Hillside you won't find that chicken-liver mousse cobbled with pistachios, or the pork chops flushed pink as a slapped buttock. But after a few minutes spent chatting with the staff about sour Spanish ciders, and dipping crunchy snap peas into a teeny ramekin of lemon vinaigrette, you may just want to pass the whole evening in Hillside's not-so-dowdy-after-all arms.

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Restaurant review, Rosemary's Has a Roof Party.

Forty years ago, an Italian-born chef named Alfredo Viazzi turned his back on the vast vat of tomato sauce that the city's Italian restaurants had long depended on, and the fad for so-called Tuscan cooking was born. At Trattoria da Alfredo, a small place just off Abingdon Square, he charmed the likes of James Beard, who excitedly dug into beef carpaccio, chicken-liver crostini, acorn squash tortelloni, green beans with pesto, and steaming plates of pasta that were gloriously un-red, flying in the face of a century of Italian-American cooking.

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Restaurant review, Hazar: The City's Best Falafel.

It's a perennial problem in certain social circles: Where can you dine with a mixed group of vegetarians and carnivores? The meat eaters demand big hunks of flesh, or they remain insatiate, while the vegetarians worry they'll be marginalized by a menu that restricts them to one or two choices per course. The solution: a Turkish restaurant like Hazar. This recent arrival is located right in the middle of Bay Ridge's Arab quarter, a colorful, souk-like stretch of Fifth Avenue mainly populated by Lebanese, Syrian, Egyptian, and Yemeni establishments. A Turkish restaurant is something of a rarity in these parts, but not so different menu-wise.

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Restaurant review, Bring An Umbrella—But Not Your Appetite—to Ken & Cook.

Saturday night in Nolita and the elderflower wine spritzers go down like spa water after a massage—hydrating the body, curbing the appetite. Women sing greetings of "Oh, my God, you look sooo good," and bros impress the knickers off their dates with $100 platters of seafood from the raw bar. The host is all smiles but knows to keep the comfy booths against the wall empty all evening, just in case someone important shows up with an entourage.
Ken & Cook's decor is faux brasserie: light tiles, dark banquettes, the windows open to Kenmare Street. On hot days like this one, the HVAC system that snakes its way along the ceiling dribbles sweat like the last guy standing on the dancefloor, and it's someone's job to reach up with a rag on a stick and catch the droplets before they fall.

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Restaurant review, Ootoya: Yo, Tokyo!

"There are supposed to be 100 of these in Tokyo alone," I mentioned to my Japanese friend as we stood in front of Ootoya, a restaurant on the southern edge of the Flatiron district that debuted earlier this year. "Yes," she said, smirking. "It's sometimes called the Denny's of Japan."

But as we entered the intimate lobby, it didn't seem much like Denny's. We traipsed through two dining areas—a barroom with an impressive display of sakes in orderly rows, and a quieter middle room with a mural of ancient Japanese diners sitting around a low table—before arriving at the main one, an elegant space with a soaring ceiling. A yakitori grill thrusts into the room, overhung by a humongous latticed light fixture that gives the space an almost Gothic air. Looking down from a dizzying height, the most requested tables are along a narrow balcony that flanks the room on two sides. An army of white-clad cooks shouts a loud greeting as each party enters.

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Restaurant review, Potlikker: The Queen of Quirk Comes to Williamsburg.

Liza Queen is something of a stunt pilot among chefs, a real risk taker. Eight years ago, when she opened Queen's Hideaway on Greenpoint's Franklin Avenue, she was squarely in the local and seasonal camp, serving a vegetable-heavy menu that leaned toward the American South. But her reverence for the niceties of consistency and predictability proved minimal, and a meal at her restaurant was often a bumpy ride. Some dishes thrilled you, while others clearly didn't work. You might have admired the quirky deviled ham pie and the verbena-chile dressing, but wondered at the adamantine-skin barbecued bunny. The place shuttered in 2008, just as the avenue that Queen pioneered began hopping with boutiques, restaurants, and bars.

Restaurant review, http://www.villagevoice.com/

Restaurant review, Chiapas, NYC at Casa Enrique.

For two decades, New Yorkers have been digging the regional cooking of Puebla and Guerrero. Sadly, we're missing the food of nearly every other southern Mexican state, with the exception of a stray dish or two at upscale places like Rosa Mexicano. We've never had a real Oaxacan restaurant—slinging seven legendary moles—or one devoted to Yucatán, a cuisine famous for its sour-orange pork smoked in a pit.
Which is why I was delighted to hear about Casa Enrique ("Henry's House"), an offshoot of the Village's now-defunct Bar Henry that handily extends the city's southern Mexican menu. The restaurant is located just off Vernon Boulevard in Long Island City, and the chef is Cosme Aguilar. Lucky for us, he was raised in Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas, sandwiched between Oaxaca and Guatemala.

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Restaurant review, Dive Your Pita into Balkanika's Hell's Kitchen Treats.

Like dips? A friend of mine loves them, and she's never happier than when plunging pitas into a bowl of smoky baba ghanoush or spooning some garlicky tzatziki over a side of oiled rice. Usually, a menu might list two or three of these quaking, multipurpose concoctions. But imagine her excitement when I conducted her to the glass case at Balkanika, where 18 dips are neatly displayed in tubs, glowing in a palette of colors that range from deep yellow to scarlet to teal to purest white. You'll find yourself wanting to mix them like a painter just to see what hues emerge.

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Restaurant review, Badgering the Pizza at Nicoletta.

For three years, chef and Wisconsin native Michael White was the restaurant industry's golden boy. Using Convivio as a springboard, he opened a string of celebrated Italian restaurants that included Marea, Osteria Morini, and Ai Fiori. Then, earlier this year, he hit a brick wall when premiering Nicoletta, a pizzeria in the East Village. It was a predictable move, coming on the heels of Pulino's and other chef-driven pie places. What better way to harvest money than leverage your name with cheap-to-make pizzas paired with a pricey wine list?

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Restaurant review, Chao Thai Too: Blood Jell-O, Anyone?

Uglier and much bigger than the piranha, the snakehead is a fierce predatory fish native to the rivers of Southeast Asia. Not only does it inhabit the water, but the creature can also breathe air through a pair of rudimentary lungs, allowing it clamor up on the muddy shore. Elsewhere in the world, it's an aggressive, invasive species with no natural predators, and, scarily, specimens have been caught on this continent in Chesapeake Bay, Southern California, and a freshwater lake in Wisconsin.

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Restaurant review, Bobwhite Gives You the Bird.

According to the Sibley Field Guide to Birds, the bobwhite is a short, squat member of the quail family, native to the Southeastern United States. With feathers in muted shades of red, brown, and rufous, this understated creature's most prominent feature is the male's talent for endless self-promotion, incessantly chirping, "Bob white, bob white, bob white."
And Bobwhite is also the moniker of the city's latest attempt to re-create a real Southern-style diner, the kind you still find in places like Edisto, South Carolina, and McDonough, Georgia, where the so-called New Southern Cooking—unfrying the cuisine's standards and piling on nouvelle ingredients—has had little impact. Bobwhite Lunch and Supper Counter is the full name, an attempt to completely describe a rather unusual operation.

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Restaurant review, The Return of M. Wells.

Shin bones filled with snails and hot marrow. Slabs of blood pudding. Cast-iron buckets of beef broth and onion. Here are the dishes that have seen us through the darkest days of winter. The comfort food of another time and place, gut-warming and animal-rich, with a weight that can anesthetize the aching body and lullaby the racing mind. Sure, there are pills to pop for this, but it's more fun to settle in for a long lunch at M. Wells Dinette in Long Island City.

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Restaurant review, How Good Are Brooklyn's Japanese Noodle Spots?

In times of stress, the appetite turns to ramen for comfort. By flickering candlelight in a West Village restaurant during the hurricane's aftermath, a friend and I sat talking noodles. "Why do all the ramen places in Brooklyn suck?" lamented the Fort Greene resident. "Not sure they totally suck, but I know what you mean," I replied. "The soups often seem too compulsively creative, when you want something more predictable."
It was then I decided to embark on a whirlwind tour of Brooklyn ramen restaurants, visiting the most talked-about spots, sometimes more than once. My first stop, riding across the Williamsburg Bridge on my bike with the L still down, was the recently opened Ramen Yebisu (126 North 6th Street, 718-782-1444). It was founded by Akira Hiratsuka, who grew up on Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido and has some very northern ideas about noodles. Many ramen enthusiasts idolize tonkotsu, the opaque pig-foot broth from far-southern Japan, but Hiratsuka doesn't make it. Instead, the flagship of his fleet is ramen Yebisu ($17), a shellfish bowl featuring mussels, a king crab leg, one completely intact shrimp—legs still thrashing, though quite dead—and a massive round crustacean with a curious ruffled anatomy. What the hell was it?

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Restaurant review, It's Bollywood for Your Tongue at Chote Nawab.

My friend Bobby is an Indian food expert. So when I dragged him to Chote Nawab for the first time, he ran his practiced eye over the menu till it stopped at tunde ke kebab ($9). "This dish from Lucknow, in northeast India, was invented long ago for a toothless old royal family member who still craved lamb kebabs," Bobby told me. He went on: "And nowadays, the best restaurants in that part of India hire a special cook to make it. That's all he does."
About the size of a half-pound burger, the macerated lamb patty sizzles in a cast-iron skillet on a bed of purple onions, charred on both sides and crowned with cilantro. It has the damp slipperiness of a tartare, and a heavenly smell rises up as the app is delivered to the table. You'll never taste anything more tender.

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Restaurant review, Uzbek, You Bet, at Nargis Cafe.

Let's face it: The city's Uzbek restaurants are often a pain in the ass. They're invariably banquet-oriented. That makes getting a reservation for your small party difficult, and it also means, if you try just walking in, you might find the dining room jammed with noisy special-occasion celebrants seated 30 to a table and already tipsy from the vodka bottles that are the center of attention. Serving banquets sometimes also generates a depraved indifference to the quality of the food on the part of the management: Groaning tables of fish, pickles, salads, and potted meats can be set out hours before, and, if you manage to score a table, your apps might be no fresher.

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Restaurant review, Fast-Food Japan Is All Yours on One Midtown Block.

For nearly a decade, a Japanese bodega named Yagura operated near the corner of Madison Avenue and 41st Street, on a block that runs directly east from the New York Public Library's stone lions. In addition to groceries, a prepared-food operation in front with a raised seating area—like a cattle pen—became a lunchtime favorite of librarians and office workers. The menu extended to donburi, seaweed salads, ramen, broiled mackerel, homely yam dishes, and wonderful cream-squirting pastries baked by a crisply uniformed attendant. Well, Yagura eventually inspired three newer and shinier Nipponese places, making the block christened Library Way into the city's best Japanese fast-food strip. Most recently opened, Sunrise Mart (12 East 41st Street, 646-380-9280) is a branch of the long-running East Village favorite, boasting a substantial grocery display in the rear. Entering, you'll see a small seating area; on the right, find a food-prep counter lively with the sound of sizzling fat. Small photocopied color placards hint at the vast range of dishes, most in an over-rice or hero-sandwich vein.

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Restaurant review, Don't Stop Smoking at BrisketTown.

It was a cold autumn evening, around 5:45 p.m., and the stretch of Bedford Avenue just north of the Williamsburg Bridge was calm and nearly pitch black, save for the occasional J or M train whizzing by overhead, ablaze with light. A ragged line of people extended from the door of a place with minimum signage—it seemed anonymous in the darkness. As the minutes wore on, the line grew. At precisely 6 p.m., ghostly arms could be seen flailing out the door, and an excited murmur rose from the crowd, who pocketed their cell phones and became animated as they began inching toward the entrance.

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Restaurant review, Swine: Farewell, Dear Lesbians...

For nearly two decades, the whitewash-and-timber Tudor house near the corner of Hudson and Charles was a bi-level bar named Rubyfruit, after Rita Mae Brown's landmark novel Rubyfruit Jungle, said to be revolutionary in its explicit portrayal of erotic love between women. But just as Brown herself turned from books of political import to writing about cat detectives, the bar lost its way in the past few years, as potential patrons moved to Park Slope and the management installed a series of failed restaurants in the lower quarters, while keeping the upstairs tavern intact. Eventually, the lesbians left, to be replaced by Swine.

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Restaurant review, Waiter, Bring Us Our Bill's.

The runner climbs a flight of stairs with a heavy load of aged rib eyes and chickens held high above his head, avoiding a disaster a second. In the dining room, there are angry waiters on his back and hostesses cutting through without a feel for the squashed space's rhythm. A fallen cloth napkin is as dangerous here as a cartoon banana peel. But with a straight back and a steady pace, he glides through the scrum to deliver the dishes to the middle-aged double date.

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Restaurant review, Le Midi Bistro: Adieu, Karaoke!

The pear was the topper on what had been a nearly flawless meal at Le Midi Bistro. When it first hit the table, the fruit stood statuesquely next to a glistening scoop of coconut ice cream, its purplish shape a splash of bright color against the grayness of the restaurant's poured-concrete interior. The space had recently been a Korean tapas bar and karaoke spot. "I can remember singing 'Stairway to Heaven' downstairs at a Christmas office party," my fellow diner blushed.

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Restaurant review, Heaven for Eggheads at Chennai Flavors.

Well, they're also the star at Chennai Flavors, which debuted recently in Jersey City just north of Journal Square. Although you might have previously encountered a lonely boiled egg plunged in chicken curry at a Pakistani or Punjabi spot, ova are everywhere at this South Indian café. From the menu section Egg Classic, check out podimas ($4.99), a cilantro-laced yellow scramble modified with a mild masala. Scrumptious and comforting. Elsewhere on the menu, find kottu paratha, a toss of shredded flatbreads and fried egg tidbits—it's the South Asian answer to Mexican chilaquiles. There's a rubbery omelet, too, flat as a 100-rupee banknote. Chennai Flavors even plasters a fried egg on its logo, flames shooting out the top.

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Restaurant review, Gimme Five at Chez Sardine.

Chez Sardine is the most recent addition to the restaurant empire known as Little Wisco. Created by Madison, Wisconsin, native Gabe Stulman, the chain fans out from Sheridan Square, where it was partly inspired by Kettle of Fish, a rickety subterranean bar favored by Packer fans and other Badger State beer drinkers. With his plaid shirt, bushy black beard, and stocking cap, Stulman can often be seen crisscrossing the square, looking like a North woodsman checking his traps for muskrats. Previously, Stulman was front-of-the-house director at Little Owl and Market Table, another restaurant group a half-mile to the southeast. After leaving those places three years ago, he launched Little Wisco, which has come to include Joseph Leonard, Jeffrey's Grocery, Fedora, Perla, and now Chez Sardine.

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Restaurant review, BBQ NYC: New 'cue, from the East Village to Gowanus.

It was 21 years ago that former London hairdresser Robert Pearson opened Stick to Your Ribs in Long Island City, changing the face of New York barbecue forever. Previously, barbecue here had meant oven-roasted short ribs or pork shoulder coated with gooey red sauce. Restaurateurs claimed clean-air laws prevented them from using real hardwood smoke. Well, by installing a "scrubber" to neutralize the exhaust from his barbecue pit, Pearson proved them wrong. He went on to smoke beef briskets, kielbasas, and pork ribs for eight to 12 hours, Texas-style, with a coating of kosher salt and crushed peppercorns. Sauce—if you felt like you needed it—could be applied afterward.

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Restaurant review, Noho's Le Philosophe Flourishes in Ambiguity.

Nothing feels quite as good as stumbling on a sleeper, a restaurant that opens without much fanfare, fails to publicize itself adequately, and is content to persevere in obscurity until that inevitable day when the public discovers it's a wonderful place.
That's the case with Noho's Le Philosophe, a three-month-old French bistro hidden in plain sight next to Mile End Sandwich on Bond Street. The obscurity is partly cultivated: A temporary winter entrance in dull gray conceals the front door, and you can barely discern the name of the restaurant in florid script high up on the facade. Once inside, the interior—lit by flickering votives—proves almost mournfully dark. There are plenty of nicely spaced tables and a small bar, acting as a barrier between you and the open kitchen, which shines brightly and hums with well-regimented activity.

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Restaurant review, Nordic Express at Aamanns-Copenhagen.

It was two Octobers ago that Crown Prince Frederik and Princess Mary of Denmark swept into New York City. Amid much hoopla, they were feted at the newly built Aamanns-Copenhagen, the first offspring of a celebrated Danish restaurant. The party for the prince and princess attracted press correspondents and bloggers, all pie-eyed at the sight of royalty. Via e-mail, the invitees had been schooled in a protocol that included curtsying for the women and hand-shaking for the men, not photographing royals while they're eating, and proper forms of address. The next day, Aamanns-Copenhagen promptly closed.

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Restaurant review, Sweet Yummy House Serves Up Sichuan, Taiwanese-Style.

Who could resist a restaurant called Sweet Yummy House? If you're a kid, that is. For me, the name conjures up gingerbread dwellings deep in the woods made by witches. Step inside, and you're the entrée. But Sweet Yummy doesn't try to lure you with desserts—in fact, it doesn't have any. Rather, it's one of the city's newer Sichuan restaurants, which have been multiplying lately in neighborhoods like Flushing, Midtown, and the Upper East Side. This one lies halfway out to Flushing along a bucolic stretch of Broadway, just south of the weed-choked LIRR overpass—Elmhurst's version of the Enchanted Forest.

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