New Astoria Restaurant Earns Rave Review In New York Times

ASTORIA, QUEENS — A new Astoria restaurant has earned an honor not often bestowed on Steinway Street eateries: a positive review by the New York Times's restaurant critic.

Dar Yemma, a Moroccan restaurant that opened in February on Steinway Street near 25th Avenue, was written up on Tuesday by Pete Wells, the Times food critic known for excoriating Guy Fieri's Times Square restaurant and Peter Luger's pricey Brooklyn steaks.

But Wells had almost nothing but praise for Dar Yemma, which specializes in tagines — the slow-cooked, heavily spiced North African stews that share a name with the clay pots in which they are served.

"Fat, pink shrimp arrive in a bright-red tomato sauce that is very lightly seasoned, apart from fresh cilantro. For cubes of beef liver, the kitchen makes an entirely different tomato sauce, a thick gravy dark with the funk of offal," Wells writes of a few of Dar Yemma's stews.

"The spices in it are so closely integrated that you can only guess at their identities. Cinnamon? Paprika?"

The Times critic appears to be gravitating toward the strip of North African restaurants, groceries and hookah bars along that stretch of Steinway Street — known collectively as Little Egypt, or, for businesses like Dar Yemma, Little Morocco. Last fall, Wells wrote glowingly about Foda Egyptian Sandwiches, a food cart on Steinway and 28th Street.

Wells reserved most of his praise for Dar Yemma's tagines, briouate pastries and zaalouk eggplant salad, saying some other dishes — like its harira soup or "tough" kebabs — "should be left alone."

Still, the eatery earned a "critic's pick," for its food, hot mint tea and "cosmopolitan atmosphere."

Read the full New York Times review here.

Dar Yemma is open daily from 11 a.m. to 12 a.m. at 25-21 Steinway St.