Redefining Vietnamese on the upper West Side.
100 W. 82nd St.,                        
(212) 501-0776.
Mon.-Wed., 6 p.m.-1 a.m.;
Thurs.-Fri., 6 p.m.-2 a.m.;
Sat., 5 p.m.-2 a.m.; Sun., 5-10 p.m.
CUISINE Vietnamese
VIBE Cozy meets cool upper West Sider.
OCCASION First date, group dinner, neighborhood outing.
DON'T-MISS DISH Daikon duck hash, cuttlefish with salsa verde, duck fried rice.
AVERAGE PRICE Appetizers $11, entrées $20, desserts $8.
RESERVATIONS Recommended

When I was just an eater and not a writer, I used to dine at a number of Bao restaurants - Bao Noodles, Bao 111, and also Mai House, where Bao was in the kitchen.

It was like a chain of Bao restaurants, a chain in time, not space. Now there's Bar Bao on 82nd Street.

If you order one way at Bar Bao, it's like eating at an old Bao restaurant. Order a different way and it's like eating at an entirely new place.

Even Michael Bao Huynh acknowledges he's really working with two menus here. "People would be disappointed if they didn't find their favorites," he told me.

And here's the odd part: the only disappointments about Bar Bao are the old favorites - the iron pot chicken, the beef pho noodles, short ribs on lemongrass skewers, and the crab spring rolls. Those have all seen better days, they're all a little worn out.

This is a fundamental misconception among some chefs. They think their identity is tied up in certain dishes, when the mark of a great chef is actually his broader approach to almost anything he or she touches.

So let's talk about my new favorites - the dishes that will bring Upper West Siders back to a restaurant time and again. It all comes down to duck. Duck hash, duck fried rice, duck summer rolls and roasted duck with street-style kernels. The one thing they all have in common - splendidly ungreasy duck. I wish there were more duck dishes on the menu. In fact, if I were Michael Bao, my next restaurant would be Bao Duck.

Everybody loves breakfast for dinner....

For full review on NY Daily News

10 Downing St., at Sixth Ave.
(212) 255-0300
Tue.-Wed. 6 p.m.- 12 a.m.;
Thu.-Sat. 6 p.m.-1 a.m.;
Sun. 6 p.m.- 12 a.m.; closed Mon.
CUISINE
French-inflected American
VIBE
Bustling downtown eatery
OCCASION
Casual date, neighborhood bites, family or group dinner
DON'T MISS DISH
Trout tartare, squid ink agnolotti, coffee-scented semi freddo
AVERAGE PRICE
Appetizers $10; entrees $24; desserts $8
RESERVATIONS
Recommended

Here's the first thing you need to know you about 10 Downing. Order the charcuterie, especially the duck liver mousse and the duck prosciutto.

There's a lot of charcuterie in this town, even housemade charcuterie, a lot of it obligatory, a lot of it ordinary. I overlooked the 10 Downing charcuterie on my first two visits. When it comes to the table, pay attention because the chef is paying attention.

Here's the second thing you need to know. Wear earplugs. And the third thing? This is one tough restaurant to get into. I mean literally — shouldering your way through the crowd, past the waiters carrying hot plates, around the coat check mob, and beyond the hostess stand. Good luck with that.

And this is one of the few restaurants that quotes Miss Piggy on the menu. "Never eat more than you can lift." Not that the girls at 10 Downing — a sea of young girls — is ever likely to over-order.

For some reason, there are two chefs — a consulting chef and a regular chef. But it's much more Jason Neroni in the kitchen, much less Katy Sparks.

The foundation of the menu is traditional French cuisine. But Neroni adds dishes from other neighboring cuisines. His approach is to simplify a classic, take it apart, isolate it. By doing so, he gives it a new clarity. His duck meatball cassoulet isn't an epic cassoulet — the kind that's made with seven meats or cooks for three days. It's all about the flageolet beans and meatballs instead. I was surprised to find aligot puree. You may not even know what aligot means. It's French for really cheesy mashed potatoes.

One of the best dishes on the menu is the squid ink agnolotti. A lot of times "squid ink" pasta tastes like white pasta dyed black. This tastes as though the squid inked the agnolotti. It tastes like the sea. And so the does the peekytoe crab on top. I also loved the ocean trout tartar, a dish with no specific nationality.

Neroni gives trout the kind of treatment you would give steak tartar. He glosses it with chorizo oil. He mixes the trout with pickled mustard, chives, pine nuts, and then tops the whole thing with a quail egg.

But there's an over-and-under problem at 10 Downing. For example, the Arctic char. The char was killed before it came to market, so why poach it to a second death? I've never seen a man recoil from a steak. But when the hanger steak arrived — black and blue and bleeding — my friend sent it hastening back to the kitchen.

This was, no fooling, raw. As for the gnocchi, the server said they would melt in my mouth, which implies that they were actually cooked.

Neroni also makes the desserts at 10 Downing and he does a great job of it. I'd order the chocolate cake souffle just for the malted milk ice cream. Just when I thought I couldn't stomach another cheeky riff on peanut butter & jelly, Neroni convinced me otherwise. Who could turn their nose up at peanut butter gelato, concord grape jam and challah?

One last thing about 10 Downing, they also take their wines very seriously. Seven whites by the glass, seven reds, four sparkling, and one rose

Vesta Trattoria
21-02 30th Ave., Astoria; (718) 545-5550

Lunch, Mon.-Fri., noon-4 p.m.;

Dinner, Sun.-Mon., 5-10 p.m.; Tue.-Thur., 5-11 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 5 p.m.-12 a.m.

CUISINE: Italian
VIBE: Warm nabe spot
OCCASION: Casual date, neighborhood bites, family or group dinner
DON'T-MISS DISH: Three-meat lasagna, lamb shank, baby Jesus cake
PRICES: Appetizers, $8; entrees, $14; desserts, $5.50
RESERVATIONS: Accepted

Have you ever had wine by the shot? I hadn't either, until a few weeks ago.

I don't mean shot, as in a one-ounce shot of whiskey. I mean a port glass of Primitivo - a spicy, medium-bodied red from Puglia - for $2.50. This is a wine you could drink all through dinner.

But why bother? If you can drink wine by the shot, you can try many more wines and pair them more closely with each course you order. And still walk out of the restaurant without weaving.

Where did I run across this clever idea? At the corner of 30th Avenue & 21st Street in Astoria, Queens - a little place called Vesta. Queens may sound like a long ways away, but this trattoria is closer from midtown than most of downtown. Here's how I think of it - the lamb shank I had the other night is just over the 59th Street bridge.

Giuseppe Falco is the co-owner of Vesta and the host. In the kitchen is Michelle Vido. Between them, they've worked at Monkey Bar, Sapa, The River Cafe, Little Giant, Trattoria Del Arte and Bond 45 - big-deal Manhattan restaurants. And they're serving big-deal food on 30th Avenue, right across from the 99 cent store. The menu isn't complicated: three types of pizza, lasagna, linguine, gnocchi, calamari, chicken, steak, some simple sides and a few nightly specials. With only a couple of exceptions, these are all wonderful.

It's not so much that Vido reinvents these dishes. She doesn't overdesign them, she doesn't overpresent them, she's not trying to be a culinary architect, and she doesn't crowd them with unwanted ingredients. In fact, there's no fashion to this food whatsoever - only flavor.

What you're left with after a meal at Vesta is a series of vivid impressions. Some are impressions of taste - the preserved lemons in the charred green beans, bits of toasted hazelnut in the cous cous, sweet shreds of pork in the three-meat lasagna, the cracker-like crust of the pizza, the cipollini onions that pop up and here there on the menu.

But some impressions are more complicated. You order the braised lamb shank. Out comes something fit for Fred Flintstone. Where is the electric knife, you wonder? But with one touch of the fork, the shank comes undone. It falls into pieces, as if insisting you have a little cous cous with each bite or a little caramelized onion. And of course, you eat the perfectly-crumbed exterior pieces first.

Vesta's a pretty plain place - as warm as it is simple. The diner feels at home here and the food feels at home here. The portions are huge and very well-priced. Even if the portions were tiny, they'd still be worth coming to Queens for.

In every dish there's a dash of sophistication - the prune reduction under the roast salmon, the way Vido sears the gnocchi, the spiced sausage on the pizza, the clementine and Grand Marnier sauce on the panna cotta.

And now a few words about the baby Jesus cake - La Torta del Piccolo Bambino Jesu Christo. It looks so humble, so unassuming - a square mass of cafeteria cake without frosting, only dense with dates and drenched in a caramel sauce. As for how it tastes, I leave that one up to you.

Vesta is a genuine step forward for neighborhood cooking - the idea that every neighborhood deserves a really good restaurant.

Bistrong overdirects his menu at Braeburn.

117 Perry St. between Hudson and Greenwich,                 
(212) 255-0696 Open seven days; lunch, noon- 4 p.m.; dinner, 5:30-10:30 p.m.
CUISINE: American
VIBE: Cozy corner spot
OCCASION: First date, group dinner
DON'T-MISS DISH: Smoked brook trout, breast of duck, pumpkin cheescake
PRICE: Appetizers, $12; entrées, $26; desserts, $6
RESERVATIONS: Accepted

The other day, I called Braeburn. The general manager answered, "Thank you for calling The Harrison."

Then he hung up, embarrassed.

It was a natural mistake. Almost half the staff comes from The Harrison, a Tribeca restaurant that embodies the idea of American bistro cooking. In fact, some dishes make you feel like you're at The Harrison and some dishes make you wish you were at The Harrison.

What The Harrison does in a relaxed way, Braeburn does in a way that's both fussy and tiny.

After an appetizer, you feel like Oliver Twist, or maybe Steve Martin in "L.A. Story." Perhaps the thing to do is order two of everything. For some dishes, that's a good idea. Like the smoked trout, which is wonderful and would be really, really wonderful if it was twice as big. The chef gets his brook trout from the Catskills, then gently smokes it in house over cherry and applewood.

Underneath the trout is a horseradish cream purée and a combination of crushed pecans, apples, Asian pear and chives. I'd order the horseradish cream purée itself. It makes you wonder why we name every dish after a protein. Everyone wants a bite, but there's only three bites in the whole thing. Sometimes, you can forget about size.

When I think of sausage, I don't think of quail. When I think of quail, I don't think of sausage. But Brian Bistrong disassembles an entire quail and packs it into a single sausage, which he serves over quinoa, yogurt, warm figs and quail jus. What you end up with is quail gravy on your yogurt, which tastes much better than you would expect.

Too often, Braeburn gives the impression that Bistrong's trying too hard, as if he doesn't trust his ingredients or the ­discrimination of the diner, who knows that simple combinations work the best.

There are times when Bistrong doesn't let the ingredients do the work. Which of these items don't belong in the same dish? (Think of this as a culinary SAT question.) Peekytoe crab, mayonnaise, avocado, grapefruit segments, grapefruit juice, pickled mustard seeds, ketchup, Cognac or canola oil? Bistrong uses all of these.

That poor, poor peekytoe crab. That was one of several dishes killed by complexity, including the scallops — which are perfectly seared — soiled by a gritty, watery walnut purée and braised endive with butter, vanilla bean, orange juice, beer and powdered sugar.

Braeburn has a lot going for it — a great corner location in the West Village, a rustic feel, an experienced chef, and yet somehow it ends up feeling like high-end middle-of-the-road. Maybe it's an occupational hazard. Every cook wants to direct. The trouble is, sometimes they overdirect. Braeburn's new, but with luck it will last.

And what would help it last are a few basic thoughts: Keep it simple, put more on the plate, think about the customers, and don't worry so much about affirming whether you're a good chef. Just feed us, and we'll get the picture. And take a cue from the pumpkin cheesecake. Simple and satisfying — just the way every dinner should end.

By the way, Braeburn's an apple.

10 E. 60th St., between Fifth and Madison;
(212) 237-8977;
Open seven days, noon-4:30 p.m., 5:30-10:30 p.m.;
CUISINE: Modern American;
VIBE: Glossy culinary spa;
OCCASION Midtown lunch, business dinner, detox dining;
DON'T MISS DISH: Arctic char, yellowjack crudo, rabbit with chestnut pasta;
PRICE: Appetizers $10, entrees $20, desserts $10;
RESERVATIONS Accepted in downstairs dining room. Different menu in upstairs cafe; both equally good.

There are 393 calories in the rabbit Fleischnacke at Rouge Tomate. The nutritionist counted. How many restaurants do you know that have a nutritionist?

Fleischnacke is German for minced meat rolled in pasta and cooked in a stock. At Rouge Tomate, this means farm-raised, braised rabbit rolled up in chestnut pasta and sautéed in rabbit jus. None of the ingredients requires quotation marks.

There's not a mock anything anywhere in this dish. Those 393 calories also include a celery root purée, roasted celery root, roasted chestnuts, chestnut foam and a salad of apples, celery leaves and tarragon.

And that's one of the more caloric dishes on the menu.

My favorite appetizer - the celery root and almond panna cotta - is only 155 calories. The panna cotta is made with unhomogenized whole milk and topped with lots of peekytoe crab, grapefruit segments and fresh tarragon. The calories matter, but only because the food is so exceptional.

Usually the thought of self-consciously healthy food makes me depressed - so depressed I get the urge to curl up with a jar of peanut butter and a spoon.

But I don't feel that way at Rouge Tomate, even though they've replaced most of the fats we associate with haute cuisine. Take butter, cheese and cream away from most chefs and they would throw their hands up in despair. But Jeremy Bearman, chef at Rouge Tomate, has had a few good mentors, including Joel Robuchon and Daniel Boulud.

Here's how it works: Take the lobster à la plancha with green fennel risotto. Usually, what binds a risotto together is butter and cheese. Instead, Bearman uses fennel stock, fennel purée, fennel juice and fennel-fronds purée - the quintessence of fennel. He finishes the dish with sauce Americaine, a brandy-spiked lobster stock with a splash of Pernod. These are robust flavors and you never pine for the absent fats.

Rouge Tomate adheres to an 85-page S.P.E. charter - Latin for Sanitas Per Escam. That means health through food, a phrase that comes from Emmanuel Verstraeten, the founder of the original Rouge Tomate in Brussels. What this really means is sourcing, preparation and enhancement. It's the cult of culinary balance - the balance of taste and nutrition - not a bad cult to be in. But it's bigger than that.

Rouge Tomate may be a prototype for a restaurant of the future - a new way of thinking, a new way of eating, a new way of dining out.

Let me just point out some of the highlights of this wonderful menu: squab and slow-roasted faro salad; Arctic char with smoked sea salt and Asian pear sorbet; and yellowtail amberjack crudo with vanilla salt, a mung bean salad, crispy ginger, kaffir lime and fresh tropical fruit.

There's also dessert, which is where you would really mourn the missing calories. Except you don't here. The chocolate and banana tasting is 272 calories - a chocolate and caramelized banana napoleon, roasted baby banana split and a teacup of rich hot cocoa. James Distefano, the pastry chef, makes a terrific parfait with yogurt, fresh huckleberries, candied lemon and a chamomile crisp. In fact, the only dessert that doesn't work is the Hudson Valley apple soup.

I hope Rouge Tomate is going to be here for a long, long time. Especially if Jeremy Bearman stays in the kitchen.