Restaurant review, Hello, Moto.

I have written before in this space about the curious, creeping gigantism of Japanese restaurants in New York City. It used to be these restaurants were much like they are in Japan, which is to say small, neighborly, and terminally quaint. Not anymore. Now they are grand Godzilla-size dining palaces filled with dripping Buddha ice sculptures (Megu), paper lanterns as big as blimps (Matsuri), and multiple, garishly appointed cocktail bars (Ono, Matsuri, Nobu 57). The rooms are as big as your local Costco and cost ten times as much to build. The menus run for pages and hinge on gimmicks like “robata-style” grilling (Ono), artisanally made tofu (EN Japanese Brasserie), or ridiculously expensive Kobe-beef recipes from the kitchens of imperial Japan (Megu). You would think these monsters would eat each other alive after a while, but the opposite seems to be true. They keep coming, one after another, turning Manhattan’s restaurant landscape into a great Japanese battleground, with each new venue straining to be more garishly entertaining, more massively glitzy than the next.

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Restaurant review, Hello, Columbus.

At last, a return to proper eating,” declared the Weary Omnivore at my table, as we sat down to dinner at A Voce Columbus, which opened not long ago in that extravagant midtown food court known as the Time Warner Center. I’d been dragging the Weary Omnivore all over town recently on my increasingly grim gastronomic rounds. He’d covered his ears in clamorous basement speakeasies, wandered the empty streets of Bushwick in search of the perfect pizza crust, and nibbled pieces of overhyped fried chicken in countless obsessively underdecorated rooms. But here, overlooking Columbus Circle, there was a tentative, ineffable sense of order being restored. The room was elegant without being showy, and intimate without feeling too small. The menu was moderately priced (only two entrées over $30), but filled with interesting-sounding things to eat. “I don’t see any cheeseburgers,” whispered the Weary Omnivore, as he scanned the document in quiet amazement.

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