Robert Sietsema at Yunnan Kitchen; Tejal Rao at WD-50

See what NYC’s restaurant critics have been up to this week:

Robert Sietsema pays a visit to Yunnan Kitchen and says that although the food can be quite good, some dishes are “mind-numbingly” bland: “That’s the case with a small plate of scrambled eggs with dull-tasting jasmine flowers, which only seem to have been included to make the dish sound more poetic.”

Tejal Rao takes a look at the new tasting menu at WD-50 and calls it delicious and “fun as hell.”: “Some dishes, like the tiny nest of wide hot-pink noodles made from lobster roe, cradling halved grapes, reveal a particularly sexy collusion of technique and flavor. They are gone too soon.”

Pete Wells for the New York Times is not impressed with Almayass and gives the restaurant only one star: “The bulk of the cooking, though, is Lebanese, ranging from terrific dips to less terrific kebabs. Meats and seafood at Almayass tended to be overcooked; grilled prawns one night were so tough that I sliced them with effort and swallowed them with regret.”

Stan Sagner for the Daily News gives three stars to Back Forty West: “While many dishes receive minimal presentation, the Spring Market Vegetables were a gorgeously composed still-life of Crayola-colored beets, heirloom carrots and garlic scapes encrusted in a lusty schmear of whipped goat cheese.”