The Italian-born chef and co-owner, Roberto Aita who was last the chef and co-owner of Williamsburg’s similarly humble Fiore, has an instinct for appetizers, and, especially, vegetables.
The chef Soulayphet Schwader opened Khe-Yo with the chef and restaurateur Marc Forgione with Laos food's careful balance of sweet and spicy, but with the sour, funky element turned up a notch.
Nadery’s menu was originally designed by Louisa Shafia, whose vegetarian-forward influence can be seen in the lovely lemony kale salad and in the pleasantly sweet beet burger. Delicious ash-e reshteh
Georgette Farkas was the head of public relations for Daniel Boulud. Rotisserie Georgette has a simple conceit—roast chicken—but it’s a strikingly sophisticated space, with a clientele to match.
Jonathan Wu, a Bronx-born Chinese-American who once cooked at Per Se, opened Fung Tu, a “creative” Chinese restaurant on the Lower East Side, in what used to be a small noodle factory. SHANGHAINESE!!!
The new-American restaurant’s uneasy status as a pioneer of a movement (rustic, farm-fresh) that has changed over time is encapsulated in the emphasis on vegetables. simple food, but interesting.
Amanda Freitag, formerly of Tribeca’s coziest restaurant, the Harrison, has reinvented the icon. Signature patty melt is a sandwich that has all been bound together with butter and drippings.
The executive chef, Bryce Shuman, who comes from Eleven Madison Park, looks like an insurance salesman but cooks like a maestro, extracting more flavor than seems possible from familiar ingredients.
Foragers Market and Table serving quality food that feels “healthy,” and is often local and organic, but with none of that dull avocado-based asceticism. lamb Bolognese,brown beech mushrooms,porchetta
All’Onda has fashioned a lovely menu of seafood-driven crudi, and homemade pastas. The chef, Chris Jaeckle, who cooked previously at Ai Fiori, takes what he has learned and twists it.
Little crescents of celery in your elderflower-granita dessert, or pears blended into the onion soubise on your slow-roasted cod. Some of these unexpected elements work beautifully.
Narcissa the cow “presides over” Balazs’s farm in the Hudson Valley, which is the main source of the vegetables, herbs, and eggs on an elegant but accessible menu from the chef John Fraser of Dovetail
