Robert Sietsema at Allswell; Lauren Shockey at Calyer

This week in the Voice, Robert Sietsema finds that dinner always ends well at Bedford Avenue newcomer Allswell. He especially relishes the porcine plates: “Instead of the usual rubbery strips, one starter featured an entire fried pig ear facing upward — as if pleading for you to repeat something you’ve just mumbled. That same evening, one of the four entrées was a pair of wild boar chops ($23), done to a rosy pink and propped up on the plate like some monumental sculpture. Man, were they good.”

Lauren Shockey taste-tests Greenpoint’s Calyer. She likes the under-the-radar resto’s small plates: “As I’ve griped before, tapas-style places often leave you with an empty wallet and grumbling belly, but that doesn’t happen here. A selection of five dishes — representing about a third of the menu — will easily satisfy two diners.”

Eric Asimov wants more of Mas (la grillade). He says that chef Galen Zamarra “manages to kiss food with smoke or flame, coaxing out delicate flavors and juicy textures that could be quashed by a more overbearing hand.”
[New York Times]

Ryan Sutton likes RedFarm’s soup dumplings, but doesn’t dig the more experiental plates, describing it as “a Chinese restaurant that fries up shrimp jalapeno poppers and pastrami egg rolls, making you wonder whether it’s really a TGI Friday’s. Those fusion follies taste like accidents from a shopping mall food court.”
[Bloomberg]

Tables for Two breaks bread at Boulud Sud, and finds that the Upper West Side restaurant is not a good place for a date: “The room, big, bright, and open, is hard to figure: its modern elegance is so muted you might mistake it for an airport business-class lounge. Legions of employees buzz around your table or watch you coolly, during lulls, from their stations in the open kitchen.”
[New Yorker]