The Other Critics

‘Accuracy and Relevance’ Are the Keys to Koo Zee Doo’s Success; Standard Tap Was a ‘Fine Experience All Around’

• Brian Freedman writes that the food at NoLibs Koo Zee Doo “finds its success on two fronts: accuracy and relevance to the audience,” with “its monkfish and blood sausage skewers, its braised chicken gizzards.” Similarly, Han Dynasty’s menu puts forth a “new authenticity in Philadelphia dining.” [PW]

• With his hopes for “kung pao Kermit” dashed at Chinatown’s Red Kings, Adam Erace settles for “crispy and greasy in all the right places” pork belly and host of other dishes from the restaurant’s “encyclopedia of Cantonese, Shanghainese, Sichuan and Thai recipes.” Double-cooked pork “tangled with tender wok-fried greens,” and thin-skinned soup buns “wobbled like water beds, each cradling a tablespoon or so of heady pork broth” “proved to be “worth the risk” of trying something new in Chinatown. [Citypaper]

• Phyllis Stein-Novack is “pleased to report” that everything “from the grilled octopus to sausage and kraut” at Standard Tap “was a fine experience all around.” A “hefty duck leg” was “crisp and the meat was so juicy and tender it just about fell off the bone.” The bratwurst and kraut’s “plump, not fatty” sausages were the “stars of the dish,” but the housemade sauerkraut “were the perfect tasty foils to this fall classic.” [South Philly Review]

‘Accuracy and Relevance’ Are the Keys to Koo Zee Doo’s