Macao Trading Co. (Photo: Roxana Marroquin)

TONY gives two out of six stars to Pranna, where the food isn’t enough to compensate for the “head-splitting racket” or the “beat-heavy music” that “floods the back dining room.”

We also award four stars to the tipples at the erotically charged Macao Trading Co., where “the bustling crowd and enticing decor are fine distractions, but once your drink arrives, good luck focusing on anything else.”

Frank Bruni is so enthralled with Ippudo’s ramen that he realized while eating it that he “hadn’t acknowledged [his] companions for several minutes,” and gives the U.S. outpost of the Japanese chain one star. [NYT]

In “$25 and Under,” Oliver Schwaner-Albright says that it’s “okay to skip the pizzas” at Roberta’s. “Self-trained and only 28 years old,” the chef, Carlo Mirachi, is “turning out subtle and polished dishes in the back.” [NYT]

Alan Richman, continuing his pizza theme, discusses three of the newest “serious pizzerias”: Emporio, where the service is “both incredibly sweet and totally inflexible“; Ignazio’s, which Mr. Richman “wanted nothing to do with”; and Tonda, whose pizza oven “is sort of creepy.” [GQ]

Robin Raisfeld and Rob Patronite give the still boozeless El Almacén two stars and suggest the “manna for homesick porteños“: grilled meats, along with the “generously panko-crumbed morsels” of “butter soft” avocado fries. [NYM]

Robert Sietsema ventures to Gazala Palace, which “claims to be the country’s only Druze restaurant,” and delights in the fresh pita, but warns that the “zaatar and the other pies that look like small pizzas should be avoided like the swine flu.” [VV]

Sarah DiGregorio hits “the culinary jackpot” at Metro Café, when after four visits the all-Chinese menu is translated for her (”sea cucumber, cubed pig’s blood, cuttlefish, etc.”), although “the Sichuan dishes on the English-language menu had been just as great.” [VV]

In this week’s “Tables for Two,” Lauren Collins checks up on Socarrat, where she suggests you eschew the help of “handsome waiters” and instead scrape “the socarrat—the caramelized rice at the bottom of the pan” yourself. [The New Yorker]

Steve Cuozzo discusses the success of the Upper West Side’s dining scene, announcing that the “Upper Best Side kicks Upper Least Side butt, and it will likely be doing it for a long time” as long as restaurants like Dovetail, Fatty Crab and BarBao continue to open there. [NYP]

Gael Greene doesn’t sample the peen at Pho Sure, but loves “the panfried rice cake with Chinese sausage and a fried duck egg” and hopes that Michael Huynh’s “ hit-and-run lifestyle” doesn’t sully the West Village twiglet. [The Insatiable Critic]

Danyelle Freeman give three out of five stars to pie-shop-turned-restaurant Bubby’s, where orders of “a martini and a meatloaf” after dark are as common as slabs of “terrifically sour” cherry pie or waffles made with pancake batter. [NYDN]–Justine Sterling