Review from New York Magazine: Chino's doesn't label its multi-ethnic small plates "Asian tapas," but if it had any interest in jumping on the current menu-concept bandwagon, it could. Its roster of salads, rolls, noodles and skewers is a little Kuma Inn, a little Ruby Foo's, and very Chow Bar, the West Village Pan-Asian place that happens to be its parent restaurant.

Chef Peter Klein whittles down some of Chow Bar's greatest hits, shaving the price and the portion size (a good thing, since the tables are so small). Red-pepper-flecked coconut-curried udon noodles with moist chunks of chicken are pure comfort in a bowl. It's also easy to imagine the roast-pork sandwich becoming a new addiction, with its sweet shards of mahogany barbecued meat garnished with cilantro and kimchi and tucked inside a dense grilled "bao" bun from Chinatown. It's delicious to start with, but the accompanying creamy hot Chinese mustard makes it.

Klein's got a deft touch with all his sauces, in fact-the nearly greaseless chicken tonkatsu's chili-lime dip; the red-chili-basil sauce coating calamari "noodles"; the pickled ginger ponzu that graces the tuna sashimi. It all adds up to a cheap, fun place for the neighborhood to congregate over a nibble and a theme cocktail or a multicourse meal of lively, low-cost bites.

www.Chinosnyc.com

Solicited by Jennifer Rucker