Dueling Views on Morandi; Varietal Taken to TaskMorandi gets absolutely slaughtered by Steve Cuozzo. Keith McNally has hardly received a bad review yet. [NYP]
Meanwhile, Moira Hodgson loves the place: “You’ll want to taste everything on this menu.” She seems to have liked all of it, with the possible exception of an overpriced veal chop. Did these two even go to the same restaurant? [NYO]
Bruni one-stars Varietal, calling the food creative but uneven and lambasting avant-garde dessert chef Jordan Kahn, who has enjoyed a lot of critical love. The desserts “don’t so much eschew convention as pummel and shatter it — literally, and often pointlessly.” [NYT]
Back of the House
Time to Fill Out Our James Beard BracketsThe nominations for the James Beard Foundation Awards, the Oscars of the restaurant industry, will be announced Monday morning. We’ll report on that as it happens, but for now, here are picks for the main categories from Adam Platt, Rob Patronite and Robin Raisfeld, and Josh Ozersky. Our choices are admittedly New York–centric (the awards go to restaurants across the country), but the ceremony is held here, and the city always looms large in the proceedings.
Openings
Psilakis, Pretty Much a Greek God, Has Another OpeningMichael Psilakis’s ambitious new restaurant, Anthos, opens Monday in the old Acqua Pazza space. It’s been a busy, up-and-down year for the chef: His critically praised Dona closed, unexpectedly, one week into 2007. Just a couple of weeks later, he converted his high Greek eatery Onera into the more casual Kefi, which went on, in this week’s issue, to win four stars from the Underground Gourmet. The wheel in the sky keeps on turning, as they say. Looks like it’s lifting Psilakis back up. We went inside Anthos and got all the evidence.
Beef
The Controversy That’s Tearing the Restaurant World Apart
Chefs, especially the better ones, don’t usually pass judgment on one another publicly. So we were shocked recently when we heard one successful chef blasting another one for having handled a fish with tongs. “I wouldn’t even stand in the same kitchen if I saw that!” he thundered. The first one was classically trained; the second, self-taught. It just went to show that if there’s anything that divides the world of chefs, it’s how they learned to cook — and how invested they are in the way that they came up. We staged a cage match between one of the city’s proud grads and a couple eminent autodidacts in order to find out who has it right.
In the Magazine
The Robs Heart Kefi; Gael Greene Hits the Hawaiian Tropic ZoneIt’s an odd food section this week: Gael Greene goes to a restaurant most critics wouldn’t go near; four restaurants open all at once, and not one of them in a familiar genre; a chef describes a dangerous encounter with Adam Platt’s ravenous actor brother; and in the review, Rob and Robin bestow a rare four-star review on the Upper West Side’s Kefi.
Back of the House
Casual Is the New Snooty — But Chefs Are Still Better Than YouChefs are imperious demigods who impose endless indignities on diners, Bruni says; also admits the possibility that critics may be partially to blame. [NYT]
What’s life like for big-shot chefs, anyway? How much money do they make, and where does it come from? Flay, Batali, and a number of lesser beings spill the beans. [NYT]
According to annonymous sources, Rachel Ray apparently had a few racially insensitive words to say about her new patron Oprah Winfrey two years ago. [TMZ]
NewsFeed
Psilakis Casting Aside Intellect and Technique
In the wake of Dona’s demise, Michael Psilakis is a man with a major challenge. He has two restaurants that currently only exist on a theoretical plane, and one actual restaurant, the Upper West Side’s Onera, that is underperforming. So as part of a grand retrenching and expansion effort, Psilakis has reconceived Onera as Kefi, a family-style neighborhood eatery. It’s a good idea. The neighborhood’s residents weren’t primed for Psilakis’s challenging food (his most memorable effort there was a multicourse offal tasting menu); nor, to be fair, was the room worthy. Psilakis, though, claims that Kefi’s more casual cooking has other benefits as well.
User’s Guide
Dona Is Dead, Long Live the Haute GreeksThe news that Dona is closing Saturday has us in a dismal mood. Who knows how long it will be until chef Michael Psilakis is back behind his stove? In the meantime — or if you can’t score a reservation at Dona in the next couple of days — we suggest you sample the following dishes at these five remaining temples of Aegean cookery.
NewsFeed
Dona Closing Saturday!
Dona should be riding high this week — Adam Platt just named the Greek-Italian fusion eatery one of the best new restaurants of 2006, and chef Michael Psilakis also topped our critic’s list of the best up-and-coming chefs. But if we’ve inspired you to visit the place, you’d better act fast: Owner Donatella Arpaia has given up her lease (under duress — a developer is installing a hotel in the building), and Saturday will be the last night the restaurant is open for dinner. She tells us that she’s searching for a new location in the neighborhood but has no idea when it might reopen. In the meantime, the haute Greek restaurant she has been planning with Psilakis (and which we announced in November) will be installed in the space currently occupied by Acqua Pazza. Small comfort, that.
What to Eat Tonight
Nantucket Bay Scallops, Ripe for the Shucking
Rob and Robin recently described, in mouthwatering detail, the nuances of Peconic Bay scallops. Our thoughts quickly turned to their Nantucket Bay cousins, which are currently appearing on some of the best tables in the city.
NewsFeed
Michael Psilakis Aims for the A-List With Midtown Opening
Here we thought that Michael Psilakis was on top of the world, with a critically acclaimed restaurant on the Upper West Side in Onera, an even more critically acclaimed restaurant with Donatella Arpaia on the East Side in Dona, and a jump on A-list celebrity-chef status. (Psilakis is going to Yale to speak on Greek food Wednesday.) But his biggest plan, apparently, is still in the works.
