Bruni shares Platt’s horror over Lonesome Dove’s “hairy and scary” welcome mat and agrees the “mistakes don’t end at the front door.” For one, the quail quesadillas and rabbit empanadas taste like, well, chicken. Still, it’s not all bluster: “Mr. Love seems dedicated to getting first-rate cuts of meat, and if the rub-happy kitchen goes overboard in seasoning them, especially with salt and pepper, it certainly knows how to cook many of them.” [NYT]
Forget the two-hour rule at Ramsay at the London: Paul Adams fumes over getting bum-rushed at Goblin Market: “When a place goes to such lengths to make it clear that they don’t want customers, I for one am glad to oblige.” [NYS]
At David Burke’s Hawaiian Tropic Zone, the dishes taste “like they came from a war zone, not a tropic zone.” But then again “at a human zoo like this, the quality of the food just doesn’t matter.” [TONY]
Meehan helps gentrify Park Slope’s Fourth Avenue and, at Aussie pub Sheep Station, has the best meat pie ever. The “burger in drag”? Less impressive. [NYT]
Ryan Sutton hits two West Village newcomers: “If Waverly Inn likes to suggest the starving-artist, bohemian side of old Greenwich Village, the 70-seat Cafe Cluny displays the consumerist and high-design impulse of this tree-lined townhouse neighborhood.” [Bloomberg]
Cluny is Andrea Strong’s new BFF: “I will return because I liked the food. But most of all I will return to Café Cluny for the lighting … I fell in love with myself.” [Strong Buzz]
Like Gael, Time Out is “giddy,” to a point, over Port Authority brasserie Metro Marché. [TONY]
Nicole Davis gets free ride at Devin Tavern, doesn’t exactly oblige with a rave. [New York Press]
At Fujianese noodle house Sheng Wang, Sietsema rides a “fish-ball tsunami,” uncovering a pork-stuffed variety that must be “one of the strangest culinary juxtapositions on the planet.” [VV]
