The New York Daily News has revived regular restaurant criticism in its pages, some three years after it stopped running reviews by its last critic, Danyelle Freeman, whose sobriquet was “the Restaurant Girl.”  Without fanfare — or even an announcement — the newspaper ran a review of Blue Ribbon Sushi Izakaya on Orchard Street in Manhattan, by Stan Sagner, appending a capsule résumé stating that Mr. Sagner had “cooked both privately and at some of New York’s premier food venues.”  Mr. Sagner, 46, will write reviews every other week, alternating with a second regular critic, Michael Kaminer, 45. Both will be working on a freelance basis, and “here and there, now and again, we can have guest reviewers,” said John Oswald, the newspaper’s managing editor for features, who designated both critics.  At a time when print newspapers are cutting back on coverage, criticism and staffing, the addition of not one, but two restaurant critics — even on a freelance basis — seems unusual, especially since Brett Anderson, the award-winning restaurant critic of the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, was laid off on Tuesday, along with about 200 other employees.  Mr. Oswald said the Daily News’s “food section had retrenched in recent years, but we have a new dedication to expansion, and to being the full-service paper we’ve been.”  Mr. Oswald, who was officially named to his post several weeks ago, said the newspaper’s new Wednesday food coverage would regularly include a food-news feature, “Eats Beat,” appearing underneath the review, as an extension of the newspaper’s Sunday “Eats” coverage in the “Your New York” section. “We wanted to have a Wednesday presence because that’s when people begin making their restaurant plans,” Mr. Oswald said.  Mr. Sagner and Mr. Kaminer did not respond to email messages seeking comment on their new roles. “We do not want to make them available,” Mr. Oswald said. “They just want to do their jobs, and move ahead.”  Mr. Sagner has cooked at the Michelin-starred Rouge Tomate in Manhattan, Mr. Oswald said, and received a degree from the French Culinary Institute in 2007. He previously worked for the Hearst Corporation as managing director of its international cable and satellite television development group.  Mr. Oswald added that Mr. Sagner “is a student of the food culture in New York, and his knowledge is extensive.” He said he first met Mr. Sagner “many years ago when I worked with him on the Columbia Daily Spectator.” Mr. Sagner holds B.A. and M.B.A. degrees from Columbia University, Mr. Oswald said.  As for Mr. Kaminer, “he knows the restaurant scene and is a passionate foodie,” Mr. Oswald said, adding that Mr. Kaminer has written online reviews for New York magazine. He is also the author of a series of books, “Table for One: The Solo Diner’s Restaurant Guide,” which has rated restaurants from the perspective of the single diner in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Mr. Kaminer, who has worked as a public-relations executive, was also a restaurant and nightlife editor for Frommer’s New York for several years.  Mr. Oswald said that the new critics “will try to remain as anonymous as possible,” adding that they would not be accepting the hospitality of the restaurants they reviewed. “They are absolutely paying,” he said. No announcement of the new critics’ arrival was made “because we just wanted to slowly roll this out and see what the reaction to it is,” he said, adding that the news would have been “kind of inside media baseball.”  In his review on Wednesday, Mr. Sagner awarded three stars out of five to Blue Ribbon Sushi. While praising the cooking (“leek sunomono, a deceptively simple dish of leek hearts in a cool citrusy ponzu sauce, is a stark reminder of how that vegetable can sing when treated well”), his final judgment on the restaurant was that “its soul seems to, thus far, have gotten stuck in transit,” adding that “the vibe is more Tucson hotel bar than hip New York late-night oasis.”  Pascale Le Draoulec, who wrote restaurant reviews for the paper from 2001 to 2006, and won a James Beard award in 2002 for her criticism at the newspaper, said that “it’s great to see the Daily News back in the business of reviewing,” adding: “New Yorkers are passionate about their city’s food offerings, and this was a noticeable gap in the paper’s coverage.”
On Wednesday, the New York tabloid ran its first restaurant review in about three years, as part of expanded food coverage.