Wednesday Food Round-Up

Bocca Lupo
“Superb veal-and-porcini meatballs are ladled over a nice thick slice of soft bread, like a clever neo-Italian-American take on that old diner classic, the hot open-face sandwich. Thinly sliced roast pork is dabbed with creamy tuna sauce in a low-budget riff on vitello tonnato. The imported, Italian-oil-packed tuna dispersed with meaty olives in a green salad is so good you want to ask the chef where he got it.” [New York Magazine]

After the jump: Gothamist peddles some food porn from iCi, La Lunetta replaces Taku on Smith Street, and Noo Na (serving Korean food!) opens in Prospect Heights

iCi
“For brunch and lunch, egg dishes are a must-have. Shirred eggs (eggs baked in a dish) with collard greens and prosiutto were topped with a crisp skin of sharp cheddar cheese, yolks oozing between garlicky greens and moist chunks of fatty prosciutto.” [Gothamist]

La Lunetta
“Adam Shepard made a name for himself in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, cooking praiseworthy Japanese-style dishes like ramen with Berkshire pork, hanger steak with tempura onions, and grilled shrimp soba at his restaurant Taku. But customers in the neighborhood considered Taku to be a weekend and special occasion place, and it was hard to make ends meet. So he has turned it into a more casual place serving small plates of hearty Mediterranean-style food like pumpkin gnocchi with brown butter, fried artichokes and crispy chicken agrodolce. It opened on Monday: 116 Smith Street (Dean Street), Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, (718) 488-6269.” [NY Times]

Noo Na
“Thanks to Cathy Palm, a Fort Greene resident who tired of trekking to Manhattan’s 32nd Street for a bulgogi fix, Korean cooking has arrived on Prospect Heights’s Vanderbilt Avenue. Palm also owns the nearby Le Gamin café, but at Noo Na (an endearment a Korean boy uses for his older sister), there’s not a whiff of Franco-fusion—at least not until dessert. Before the ginger crème brûlée and five-spice chocolate cake with candied-ginger crème fraîche, there’s beef and pork man du, bi bim bab, and spicy soft-tofu-and-seafood stew. BYO for now.” [New York Magazine]