In the Times, Sam Sifton gives Del Posto, the coveted four-star rating:

GREAT restaurants may start out that way. But an extraordinary restaurant generally develops only over time, the product of prolonged artistic risk and managerial attention. An extraordinary restaurant uses the threat of failure first as a spur to improvement, then as a vision of unimaginable calamity. An extraordinary restaurant can transcend the identity of its owners or chef or concept.

And of course an extraordinary restaurant serves food that leads to gasps and laughter, to serious discussion and demands for more of that, please, now. The point of fine dining is intense pleasure. For the customer, at any rate, an extraordinary restaurant should never be work.

It is a strange feeling, sitting in Má Pêche on a Friday night, well underneath Midtown in the basement of the Chambers Hotel, Modest Mouse playing at half volume on the stereo system as people drink wine and talk and stab at sticky pork ribs with chopsticks. The seats at the restaurant have backs to them. They are comfortable. There is plenty of space.

There is nothing like this at the other restaurants in David Chang’s four-restaurant Momofuku confederation — of which Má Pêche is the newest, the largest and the first not located in the East Village. There is no extra space in the other Momofuku restaurants at all, no real creature comforts beyond the food and the service. There are just counters, nooks, sharp corners and little chance for intimate conversation, even at Momofuku Ko, which flies the standard of excellence for them all. (There, you just stare at the chefs and wait for the magic.)

Got to be a worth a try, no?

[Photo Credit: Oyster Locals]