Soon after Diner’s Journal announced its new “Ask the Critic” column, Eater paid tribute to Sir Sifton by offering up some Sifton “Mad Libs.” Greg Morabito’s parody is very good. In fact, it may be the best Sifton parody operating in this city, at this time. The only thing we’d add is a nod to the critic’s verbal tic of incorporating the words “very good” into his two-star reviews. Here’s what we’re talking about:
• “Prime Meats, the very good and very beautiful Germanish restaurant in Carroll Gardens … It’s very good meat, though, from Creekstone Farms, with a nice mineral tang and served with plenty of crust.”
• “But Recette is a very good restaurant.”
• “Past them, though, down a dark corridor that doubles as a modernist wine cellar, a very good restaurant [the Mark] blooms.”
• Sho Shaun Hergatt? “It’s very good.”
• The pig’s foot at the Breslin “is very good: meat that is fat; fat that is meat.”
• “Maialino is a very good restaurant.”
• “And Novita is a very good restaurant.”
• “Mr. Boulud has opened a very good restaurant.” (DBGB)
• At Pulino’s, “sweet rock shrimp and speck make one very good topping, in a garlicky, oregano-heavy tomato sauce the color of a gleaming fire truck.”
• Faustina is “an Italian place, serving mostly small, shareable plates of very good food, in a setting that is hotel-ish in the extreme.”
• But “the food is not very good” at Nello.
