Fried oysters with corn-and-jalapeño relish at Ed's Chowder House (Photograph: Virginia Rollison)

Jeffrey Chodorow’s new project featured the aquatic skills of chef Ed Brown, who “has a master’s talent, but at Ed’s Chowder House, it mostly seems wasted,” writes Jay Cheshes in his three-star review. [TONY]

Three-star Onda raises the bar in South Street Seaport, but “the kitchen turns out a wide range of dishes that, while mostly good, suffer from inconsistency.” [TONY]

Forty Eight is a four-star “New York paradox: a destination cocktail lounge in midtown.” [TONY]

Sam Sifton returns to “an era of silver plate and good manners, the simplicity of salad, steak and fries, heavy on the salt and butter, rich as a cardiologist” at one-star Le Relais de Venise L’Entrecôte. [NYT]

Alan Richman ventures to Harlem for the first time in ten years to try the “the best fried chicken in New York” at the reopened Charles’ Country Pan Fried Chicken. [GQ]

Robert Sietsema finds “a very ancient idea of what a restaurant should be: a place to provide rudimentary yet substantial refreshment” at Ambiance, a Haitian eatery in Brooklyn. [VV]

President Obama may have dined there, but Ryan Sutton believes “Blue Hill needs work.” [Bloomberg]

“Tables for Two” says Saraghina in Bed-Stuy, “justly lauded for its Neapolitan-style pies,” is not one of the “city’s new crop of hoity-toity pizzerias,” but “a serious restaurant that doesn’t take itself too seriously.” [New Yorker]

The Insatiable Critic “likes most of what [she's] eating” at Casa Lever. [Insatiable Critic]