Restaurant review extravaganza 33 page 2

The Perch

It has become a hallmark of the recent economy for restaurateurs to specialize in niche foods and deliver them extremely well. It’s a low-overhead strategy that has introduced an array of exciting new flavors and fare to the local landscape–from cupcakes and snowballs to artisanal cocktails and mobile Mexican food. More >>

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New York

Quinto Quarto

I haven’t had such killer bucatini amatriciana ($11) since the last time I was in Rome. The pasta–like thick spaghetti, but bored up the middle to facilitate boiling–came gobbed with a tomato sauce whose richness derived from guanciale, the cured jowl of pigs. Like snow on an Apennine peak, grated pecorino blanketed the top. Though the recipe originated in the small Lazio town of Amatrice, the Roman populace has clasped it to its bosom, and now there are dozens of variations–and the plate that sat before me was a particularly delicious and aggressive one. More >>

Orange County

Pascal Olhats

Ask any OC restaurateur or foodie to name the county’s most iconic French chef, and they’ll likely say, “Pascal Olhats.” Olhats is the closest thing in OC to a benevolent French-food emperor. If you’ve eaten the cuisine within the OC border in the past 20 years, chances are it was at one of his eateries. More >>

Phoenix

Nine 05

The first dish I ate at Nine 05 pissed me off, and the second one depressed me.

But it pretty much went uphill from there, and now I’m looking forward to returning. When you’re a restaurant critic, first impressions aren’t always everything. More >>

San Francisco

Starbelly

The first meal I had at Starbelly — a delightful lunch during which two of us shared seven dishes and wished we had room for more — colored every other restaurant visit for weeks afterward. It was a singularly memorable meal: We loved the setting, the service, and especially the food. If a place we subsequently tried was mediocre, so much the worse, but even the interesting and ambitious places paled a little in comparison. More >>

Jen Siska

Starbelly’s spicy gazpacho made from heirloom tomatoes

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Seattle

Delancey

I received a postcard from two San Francisco friends this week. One filled up the card’s main panel with a nice thinking-of-you note; another found just enough room in the bottom corner to scribble, “Have you been to Delancey yet?” And that wasn’t the first out-of-town query I’d received. More >>

St. Louis

Fond

I don’t eat scallops. Even though I’ve convinced myself that my allergy is psychosomatic, the collateral damage of a childhood afternoon spent at the swimming pool with a box of Keebler E.L. Fudge cookies — don’t ask — even though I’ve eaten a few mussels without any adverse effect, I’m not willing to risk it with the food that put me off mollusks for a quarter of a century. I would eat a raw oyster first. Hell, I’d eat a raw clam. But I don’t eat scallops. (Or E.L. Fudge cookies.) More >>