Robert Sietsema at Tertulia; Lauren Shockey at Hot Kitchen

Flex your mussels.

Lauren Shockey samples the spice of dining life with Hot Kitchen, an East Village Chinese resto. The only not-so-hot plates: Americanized dishes like General Tso's.

Eric Asimov thinks that Isa is weird, but good overall. The frequency of cod on the small-plates menu strikes him as a bit fishy, though: "While Isa can be idiosyncratic in the best sense, of going its own way, it's occasionally strange for no apparent reason."
[NY Times]

Ryan Sutton swings into the revamped Monkey Bar: "It's no longer just a watering hole for the preening set. The Midtown power spot, famous for serving mediocre fare to the famous, is now dispensing very good American food and extraordinary cocktails to celebs and hoi polloi alike."
[Bloomberg]

Adam Platt bites into bibimbap at Jungsik, an experimental, upscale Korean restaurant. He's not entirely sated: "As one stylish, mannered course succeeds another, however, it's hard not to feel that infectious, communal quality that makes good Korean cooking special being slowly leached out of the meal."
[NY Magazine]

Tables for Two tries Untitled, the new eatery at the Whitney Museum. The food is good, when it arrives: "Service, while friendly, is less than impeccable. On one recent Sunday, a party of four was seated in just twenty minutes and drink orders were taken immediately, but an hour and a query later, a Bloody Mary had still not materialized."
[New Yorker]

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