Fancy Restaurant Chooses Questionable Decor

Times dining critic Sam Sifton has mixed feelings about SD26, Tony May’s downtown 21st century version of the venerable San Domenico. On the one hand, the candele with cauliflower, saffron, pine nuts and anchovy oil evokes “the very essence of great Italian cooking.” On the other, the octopus carpaccio with sun-dried tomatoes, “to the good, looked like a Chuck Close painting,” but, to the bad, also “tasted like one.” (And, in a nice touch: “SD26 is the restaurant equivalent of a second wife: younger, considerably more nervous, dressed in a way that might raise eyebrows in the social circles the original restaurant was opened to serve.”) Either way, I don’t want to eat food while sitting under a wall-hanging that looks so much like used Q-Tips.