Restaurant review extravaganza 61 page 2

The Boxcar / Schumacher’s Grill 212

A Monday night in Prescott, Wisconsin, means that the kid manning the register at Price Rite is apologizing. Without its typical maze of stacked bottles, cans, and cases, the supposed liquor store looks more like an urban loft–it’s nearly wiped out of inventory. If we’re looking to buy beer, the kid says, we’ll have to try the gas station. More >>

New York

Talent Thai Kitchen

“This place doesn’t look very good,” exclaimed a veteran member of my dining posse as we crawled into Talent Thai after a hard day’s night of gallery hopping across town in Chelsea. Indeed, even the location on the lower slopes of Murray Hill was all wrong for one of the city’s best Thais, which usually pop up in places like Elmhurst and Hell’s Kitchen. Talent Thai is part of a formidable new restaurant row that has developed on East 34th Street between Second and Third avenues in the past few years, a stretch that also includes a superb Turkish café (Ali Baba) and a crowd-pleasing Peruvian chain rotisserie (Pio Pio). More >>

Amelia Beamish

“Chef Busrin Bhapharapongbhanu loves him some coconut milk.”

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Orange County

Nick’s Pizza Ristorante

Nick’s occupies the middle echelon of Orange County’s Italian restaurants: not the magisterial dining experiences offered by Pizzeria Ortica or Canaletto or the Jersey Shore simulacra of Mangia Mangia and Rufino’s, but something in between–overwrought Roman interior design, with the Four Seasons and the Shirelles on the soundtrack, massive subs and pizzas alongside pasta dishes crafted with care and enough heft to satisfy the most ornery goombah. More >>

Phoenix

The Grind

Thousand-degree coal-fired ovens — supposedly the only ones of their kind in the U.S. — are a unique kitchen feature at The Grind, a new gourmet burger spot/watering hole at 40th Street and Camelback.

But you know what would really set this place apart from the pack?

Consistency. More >>

San Francisco

Frances

At Frances, her five-month-old Castro restaurant, chef-owner Melissa Perello’s food is a Danish modern table: serene, beautifully designed, populist, simple. There are no flourishes, only the best materials. The craftsmanship is exquisite, the intentions pure. Frances is that rare restaurant that achieves everything it sets out to be. More >>

Seattle

El Mestizo

The best Mexican meal I ever had was at a restaurant whose name I can’t even remember. Other than the chips that arrived as soon as my wife and I sat down, and the small cup of red salsa that was sweet and sharp, like licking honey off a razor, I can’t recall anything I ate. I don’t know the day of the week or the time of day, other than that it was late. I can’t remember the street the restaurant was on, only that it was in Albuquerque. More >>

Peter Mumford

“The Mex-addicted mantra: Find tacos, then breathe.”

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St. Louis

Yagu Asian Fusion

Our server at Yagu Asian Fusion carried a plate on which a piece of food was balanced at a 45-degree angle against a flashing light. Not only did the light flash, but it cycled through eight different colors as it did so. Dance party, Chesterfield Airport Road style! More >>